GROWTH

IN WISDOM, AGE AND GRACE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Monday - December 30th - is, “Growth in Wisdom, Age and Grace.”

I like the old translation of the gospel for this day - Luke 2:36-40 - that says Jesus grew “in wisdom, age and grace.”

Let me say a few words about each - knowing it’s easy to measure Age, but difficult to measure Wisdom and Grace.

AGE

We can measure age by the birth certificate. That’s easy. It’s also on our driver’s license, our wedding license and what have you.

Yet we age differently. Class reunions can be a great or a horrendous moment. We ask, “Who’s that!” Or we say, “You haven’t changed at all. I’d recognize you from a mile away.” And haven’t we all said, better, haven’t we all whispered, “What the heck happened to her or him?”

So too obituary columns - or funerals - we wonder about the age of the person who died. And sometimes we notice the person is much younger than we are and say, “Uh oh!”

So like the circles of a cut down tree, we can measure age.

WISDOM

Next comes Wisdom.

This is difficult to measure. It’s tricky.

For starters, I have learned that there is a big difference between wisdom and information.

A person can have a Ph.D. as you know - in philosophy or quantum physics - and be a total jerk.

We go to school for education - but mainly it’s in information: reading, writing and arithmetic.

This doesn’t mean kids don’t learn wisdom in school. We can learn from mistakes, fights, to volunteer. We can learn how to interact, how to ask questions, how to deal with rejections, how to deal with perceived unfairness - in making teams, in how we are marked, in whom a teacher likes or dislikes.

I notice that the scriptures - our Bible - often gives wisdom stuff - but it seems it’s mainly for young men - as in today’s first reading from 1 John 12-17. It uses the word children and fathers and then young men - but as in most societies and cultures the mothers raise the girls - and the boys till they start to become young men.

Wisdom: what have I learned about life?

Just last week, I visited my niece Patty and her husband George for Christmas dinner. While in the bathroom on the first floor, just off the kitchen area, I spotted a bathroom book. It was one of three books in a basket. It was for bathroom reading. One book - I just read the cover - I didn’t pick it up or open it - had the title - something like: Life Lessons - What I Learned Is The Most Important Thing In Life. Then it added something like, “from 78 famous people.”

Driving home that night I asked myself, “If I was asked to answer my #1 life lesson, what would it be?”

I gave myself several answers like: Step by step, inch by inch, page by page, moment by moment, life is lived.

I learned that from the time I was putting together a boardwalk - that was ripped up by a Nor’easter Storm - when I lived on the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey. As I rebuilding that boardwalk, as I hammered each board, I found myself saying, “Board by board the boardwalk is built.”

That’s a basic wisdom leaning. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

You take the jigsaw puzzle out of the box, turn all the pieces face up, start sorting out the flat edged pieces for the frame, and then piece by piece the puzzle is put together. So too life.

I jotted down a quote somewhere along the line - without listing who the author was. I make that mistake often. In reality, the quote is more important than the author - but I like to give credit where credit is due. Here’s the quote - which was in my shirt pocket before I put it in the washer. “Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about himself and his destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.”

What were the experiences in that person’s life for her or him to come up with that wisdom statement?

So to wisdom. That’s how we learn life. I’ve learned that we learn more from suffering than from successes, hurts more than helps, etc. etc. etc. We learn more from dumb moves than smart moves.

What would be your # 1 life learning.

GRACE

Lastly a few words about grace. I didn’t go into what the Greek word here in Luke is. I simply thought about being graceful.

I think figure skaters are the quintessential image or icon for whom the graceful person is.

We have the Winter Olympics coming up soon. Check out the figure skaters. They are going along beautifully and ooops they fall or slip and all go, “Oooh!” They fall on their behinds, but they get up off their butts - forget what is behind, what just happened, and skate on.

I assume getting up and starting again comes from practice, practice, practice.

Who are the graceful folks in the rooms of our lives? We know who the sandpaper people are. They walk into a room and start to rub people the wrong way.

The graceful person - has learned not to put her foot in her mouth - but to become smooth as silk and satin.

They are those who have learned to make life smooth.

CONCLUSION

Take some time today to examine ourselves on these three gifts Jesus grows in: wisdom, age and grace. Amen.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Quote for Today - DECEMBER 30, 2013



"Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn."



Katherine Graham, in Jane Howard, "The Power That Didn't Corrupt," Ms. October, 1974

FAMILY:

TIES, FLAWS, FEUDS

INTRODUCTION

Today is Holy Family Sunday - so I would like to place on the table some family stuff and see if something triggers something. So the title of my homily is, “Family: Ties, Flaws, Feuds.”

There have been movies and TV programs called, “Family Ties” and “Family Feuds.” I don’t know if there have been any entitled, “Family Flaws.” Yet I do know Shakespeare and many movies and novels have gotten into Family Flaws. For example: The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides - both novels by Pat Conroy about dysfunctional family stuff - both becoming movies. Diane Rehm had Pat Conroy on her program this past week - and yes tough family stuff.

Today is Holy Family Sunday - a Sunday at the end of every year and the beginning of a new year - this Sunday after Christmas. Each year this Sunday challenges us and offers us the chance to look backwards at the past year and look forward to the new year - and check out our lives - especially - our family life.

How are we doing? What’s going right? What needs improvement? What we thank God and each other for? What do we ask God and each other forgiveness for?

The title of my homily is, “Family: Ties, Flaws and Feuds.”

Let me take those three issues in my title one by one: Ties, Flaws and Feuds.

FAMILY TIES

Whether we like it or not - we are tied to each other. Whether we agree to it or not - we are tied to each other.

I am at a red light - in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Walking up the street to my left - I see a lady teacher or somebody - with about 15 kids all connected - hooked or leashed together - heading for something or going from something. It was a sight to photograph into my mind and memory.

Were they a kindergarten class going to a museum or a library or back to a classroom? I don’t know.

The light turned green and I began to think - everyone of us walks up and down the streets of where we are - with a whole gaggle of folks all tied to each other heading for somewhere - or going from somewhere.

I’ve seen the same scene with 15 dogs or more - but let’s stick with people.

Family ties ….

It starts with our umbilical cord. We are tied to our mom - more or less. And our dad - more or less. Of course some of us have been adopted or raised by others.

I’ve always heard of the blessing and benefit of having at least one daughter. They will be there for us in our old age.

I like quotes and one that is hanging like a sign on the wall of my mind comes from something Robert C. Byrd, the famous West Virginia senator once said, “One’s family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way: One of these days I’ll be in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me. And the only people who’ll be with me will be my family.” [New York Times, March 1977]

He died June 28 2010 at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia - at 3 AM. I assume his family were around him especially those days he was in the hospital.

I also like to look at Family Photos - especially enjoying this new way of sending Christmas cards with not just the pictures of the kids - but various family members - especially the parents. And at times I’ve heard folks make fun of family Christmas letters. I think they are wonderful - people summing up their year - especially telling about family moments.

So the first area is to just look at those whom I am tied to. We walk down each block and into each situation connected to them.

We sound like them. We speak their language. We have their mannerisms and their genes.

As Gail Lumet Buckley put it: “Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future.”

FAMILY FLAWS

The second area to look at would be family flaws - issues with those we are tied or connected to.

At times, flaws are hard to name and hard to see and even if we knew them face to face, they are hard to admit.

Various ancient Greek playwrights and philosophers challenge us to see ourselves on stage and see our fatal flaws - our Achilles heel.

Questions: What is my main fatal flaw? What kills, drains, messes me up every time?

I’m sure those who see us day in and day out - know our key flaw: laziness, pride, anger, impatience, procrastination, lust, gluttony, one-up-man-ship, can’t lose, gossip, cut people off in the middle of their story - to tell a story their story triggered.

Are our flaws born with us or acquired from our surroundings? How can three kids in the same household be so, so different?

Baptism - into Christ - is a washing - in the presence of others of the Original Sin - which has never been defined. Baptism is an entrance into the church - with the hope that these folks - especially parents and god-parents and family will make an effort to give us good example.

To be humble is to admit I’m not God. Was that Adam and Eve’s sin - like Lucifer’s sin - this wanting to be totally in charge of my life - without God - without the need for others - without acknowledging others - and I can eat up any forbidden fruit - and think that I won’t be poisoned?

Is the original sin - not so original? Is it basically the sin of choosing to go it alone - whether married on single - being and becoming a walled in self. Is it simply the refusal to receive communion not only with God, not only with Christ - but with all others? I’ll get my own food - my own bread and wine - and basically go it alone.

Or do I admit I need others - and Sunday Mass is a group of people coming together - like at an AA meeting - saying we are powerless over some things. We are flawed and we need God and each other.

FAMILY FEUDS

And lastly there are family feuds.

Some feuds and fights in some families go on for years - well into adulthood - and they show up - at weddings, wakes and funerals.

We walk around tied to and dragging around bad memories of family fights and struggles. We’re like that lady in Meadville, Pennsylvania - walking down the street with all those kids in tow.

Today’s readings from the Wisdom book of Sirach and Paul’s Letter to the people of Colossae, challenge us to be holy, compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient, bearing with one another, forgiving one another - and on and on and on.

That second reading has the message to wives to be subordinate to their husbands. Some folks just see that message. It hits buttons and they miss the various other stresses in the text.

Of course, Paul is male and grew up in a very patriarchic society. Attitudes and the place of women are still very much part of the cities in the Mediterranean Basin - and that includes Greece, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, the whole Middle East. But read all his words. There are calls for males to treat their wives better - with deeper love. Read all this words and see that he has come a long way.

Every family has feuds - gripes and grievances - and Paul calls all to challenge each other, avoid all bitterness, encourage and not discourage each other.

CONCLUSION

Today’s gospel ends with Mary and Joseph leaving Egypt and heading back north to Nazareth - not to Bethlehem or Jerusalem in the south.

Today’s gospel ends with the words: “He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, He shall be called a Nazorean.”

I got to Israel once - in January of 2000. When we got off the bus in Nazareth, we went to a Franciscan site - and our tour guide gave a door keeper somewhere there who lead us down under a church to what might have been Jesus’ home in Nazareth. I spotted our guide giving the house guide some cash. He opened up this big door to this place down below and said, “This might well have been Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s home in Nazareth - or at least like this.

It was small and dirty and dark - but we stood there and heard about what it might have been like.

I would assume it would be worth opening up some of our inner closed doors and going down deep inside ourselves and look at our roots, our home, our background - and get in touch with our family ties, family flaws and family feuds.

Best guides: I have found more and more, the best guides and the place to begin is talking with each other. If really bad, get thee to good family therapists.

Just before my sister Peggy died in November, she and my other sister Mary and I, the 3 of us who are left - had a lot of great conversations about our childhood. Good stuff.

In fact, that would be my recommendation for the New Year. Have great family conversations - in person - or e-mail or phone.

Isn’t that a modern need? I hear it on these many high school retreats I’ve been on. Families need to talk to each other.

Aren’t the great meals, those we stay at the table with - long after the last bite.

On Christmas night, at my nieces house, 8 of us did some great talking about years ago. We sat there for about an hour and a half after the Christmas meal. More.

FAMILY

QUOTE FOR TODAY - December 29, 2013 - Sunday




"How many different things a family can be - a nest of tenderness, a jail for the heart, a nursery of souls. Families name us and define us, gives us strength, give us grief. All our lives we struggle to embrace of escape their influence. They are magnets that both hold us close and drive us away."


George Howe Colt, Life, April, 1991

THE  POEM

Quote for Today - December 28, 2013 - Saturday

"The poem ... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.  And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life."

Robert Penn Warren, Saturday Review, March 22, 1958

THE  INVISIBLE  POET

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “The Invisible Poet.”

Years ago there was a saying to put on refrigerator doors, “Inside every fat person, there is a thin person trying to get out.”

Could we say, “Inside every person, there is a poet trying to get out.”

THE LADY IN PENNSYLVANIA

I remember visiting a nursing home in Pennsylvania. It was part of a parish mission we were giving in a parish there.

I’m talking to this one lady, For some reason, I blurted out, “You’re a poet!” 

She smiled and pointed to a chair on the other side of her room. I headed towards her point [POINT]. Then she signaled to go behind the big cushioned chair.  I spotted a loose leaf filler and picked it up. She signaled with her smile. “Good!”

She then spoke, “Turn to page 16 or so.” 

The binder  was filled with poems. As I was looking at page 16,  she recited the poem from memory.

I said, “These are your poems?”

She said, “Yes!”

Then she recited a few more of her poems.

She was good.

EVERYONE A POET

Could we say, “Inside every person, there is a poet trying to get out”?

Does everyone have their loose-leaf binder of poems - or at least one poem somewhere?

I would think that all of us in our lifetime wrote a poem at some time.

Then there are those who try their hand at a poem at a wedding or with a Christmas greeting - or somewhere along the time line of their life.

TODAY IS THE FEAST OF ST. JOHN

Today is the feast of St. John the Evangelist - the writer of the 4^th Gospel.

If there is one thing, you can say of the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, John captures the poetry of Jesus - the most.

John’s symbol is that of the eagle - high above it all. Soaring way up above the earth with ox and lion below.

Jesus was a poet of sorts.

John was a poet of sorts.

It takes a poet to spot a poet.

A poet spots the invisible in the visible.

A poet lets us fly - make leaps - see poetry on the other side of a broken branch or a flower petal caught on a metal fence or in a loose-leaf binder - behind a chair - on the other side of a room.

John was a poet - and a poet sees the invisible.

John has preserved for us many of the great images of Jesus - images that give us insight into the hand behind the bread - or the mind behind the creation - the who and the why behind whatever we’re seeing: light, doors, water, shepherd,  wine, wind, walls, birth, tomb, stone, eyes, word, healing, night, gates, oil …..

See Jesus walking on the water; see Jesus in every body of water we see.  See rocks in the field; see the hands of rock throwers who have walked away. See Jesus in every piece of bread and cup of wine. Feel Jesus’ spirit shaking in the wind and the washing of feet.  Feel Jesus’ presence with Mary at every wedding. Stand in any cemetery and make acts of faith in resurrection and hope for new life.

I love to say there is a invisible difference between a postcard on a metal rack in the airport gift shop and a postcard in a book - with or without writing on it - and it’s been sitting there as a book mark for 27 years. So too there is a difference between a wedding ring on someone’s hand and that same ring years ago in a jewelry store. The one on the ring finger has mystery and history going around and around the music in its band.

This earth is filled with energies, jumping out of birds, flowers, cemeteries, churches, rings and dates.

For example, on the top of Main and Duke of Gloucester Streets here in Annapolis, stands the Maryland Inn. I go by it at least a dozen times a week - and each time I whisper a prayer for my niece Margie and her husband Jerry. That’s where Jerry proposed to her. And every time I’m at St. Andrew by the Bay, I remember doing their wedding there.

I’m asking you the question: what are you seeing, sensing, every day?

Today is December 27, 2013. For many it’s just December 27, 2013.

For others today is an anniversary of a loved one who died on this date or it’s a wedding anniversary. In fact, just this morning I did a marriage renewal of vows for a couple - Jose and Jamie - who were married right here in this church - exactly 10 years ago today. Today they stood with their two little boys. Jamie told me - pointing to her tiny son, “In the car, he asked, ‘Why didn’t you invite me to your wedding?’  ‘In a way,’ she said, ‘I did.’”

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “The Invisible Poet.”

Inside every person, there is a poet, a Fourth Gospel, waiting to come out.

Don’t forget the last line in today’s gospel: “... the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.”

The invisible…. The poet in us sees all and believes. Amen.

SAD STORY

Quote for Today - December 27, 2013

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

Ford Madox Ford [1873-1939] - First line in The Good Soldier [1915].

Comment: I spotted this quote when I was looking for a quote for today. Wouldn't that want one to get into the book to find out what that story was?  Then I asked: What's the saddest story I ever heard?  I came up with 5 - and how does one then judge which was the saddest?