Reflections By The Bay

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

WALK THE TALK

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this December 29^th is, “Walk The Talk.”

I could tackle two themes in today’s gospel: Is there anything we’re waiting for - something or someone we have unfinished business with?; swords that pierce the heart can reveal various thoughts and learnings. [Cf. Luke 2: 22-35]

Instead however, last night I decided to go with the simpler theme: walk the talk. It’s a basic message - a cliché to be honest.

I think that spells out what John is saying in his First Letter 2: 3-11.

Talking the talk is important - especially to oneself - but if it doesn’t flow into action, then we can be labeled, “All talk.”

Or we ourselves - or others - will say, “Talk is cheap.”

LISTEN TO JOHN AGAIN

John says, “Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar….”

John says that those who say they are in the light, yet hates their brother or sister, is still in the dark….”

In other words, “Walk the Talk.”

In other words, “Action speaks louder than words.”

That’s something we have been hearing all our lives.

TO BE HONEST: START WITH OURSELVES

But to be honest, I don’t know about you, but I make many self promises in the morning - about what I am going to do that day - but by evening, I have to admit, I never got to them.

So I would assume that a key thing is pause more - realize more - that if we keep on giving our word and then we don’t keep it - we are lying to ourselves, we are kidding ourselves, we are weakening the sacredness of words - those personal decisions we spell and verbalize to ourselves.

That’s words to oneself. Giving our word to others is another issue.

I have not done my homework - that is - I haven’t done enough thinking to make the following statement: “If we keep on breaking our word to ourselves - we’ll be doing that a lot more to our neighbor.

Based on all the sayings, there must be a lot of people who experienced the realithy that some people are all talk.

There is the Chinese proverb: “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

We’ve all heard the same message in the English proverb, “Wishes don’t wash dishes.”

Or as Anonymous put it, “After all is said and done, a lot more will have been said than done.”

CONCLUSION

But some people do - and we learn a lot more about people from their hands - their actions - that we learn from their mouth and their words.

Robert Brault, in his poem entitled, “A Poem Missing the Word Woulda” goes like this,

“A nod,
a bow,
and a tip of the lid
to the person
who coulda
and shoulda
and did.”

Monday, December 28, 2015

December 28, 2015

SORRY

I didn’t realize I hurt you till after

I hurt you. I was numb, dumb too.

So will my saying, “I’m sorry” help?

P.S. And by the way now I get

those words Jesus said from the

cross, “Father forgive them,

because they don’t know what

they are doing.” Neither did I?

MURDERING, MAIMING, AND MINIMIZING THE INNOCENT

The title of my homily is, “Murdering, Maiming, and Minimizing the Innocent.”

Today - December 28, has the feast of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. It has many possible messages. Bastin, Pinckers and Teheux in their God Day By Day Spiritual Reflections on the Readings of the Day, Volume Four, write, about this text, Matthew 2:13-18, “Are they symbolic, those children who were massacred in Bethlehem? Or course they are, but we should not forget that symbols are always rooted in human realities, and the reality here is that of human suffering - people dying of hunger, the bitter complaints of exiles and the silence of frightened prisoners.” [Page 84]

With that in mind I put together this reflection for today.

In our lifetime we’ve seen the slaughter of the unborn - the Holy Innocents.

In our lifetime we have seen the slaughter of millions of children, women, men in the Holocaust.

In our lifetime we have seen the murder of all kinds of babies, children because of race and religion issues in Serbia, Macedonia, and the former Yugoslavian countries.

In our lifetime we have seen the same thing happen with the slaughter of so many in Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, in so many other African and Middle East countries.

In our lifetime we seen the Killing Fields in Cambodia and so many other places on the planet.

In our lifetime we have heard about various many priests and bishops who were not protective of young people in the sexual abuse stories in the Catholic Church.

In our lifetime we have heard how kids can get shortchanged in education - which can be a ladder out of poverty.

In our lifetime we have seen some rich get richer because of scams and skim offs and manipulation in the markets.

In our lifetime we have heard lies and “claimed innocence” when it comes to public people - in sports, the arts, politics - who try to explain ways out of living a life of lies, cheating, and misbehaving - giving bad example to the young.

In our lifetime we’ve seen and heard people whose ethics and truth telling seems to have disappeared and they have walked in the dark and not in the light as we heard in today’s first reading from 1 John 1: 5-2:2.

In our lifetime we have heard people show little concern for the many migrants and their children who are “pitchforked” - as one preacher put it - from one place to the next.

In our lifetime we have heard politicians - and dictators - and elected officials - concerned more about the polls and their numbers than the number of people who are suffering, starving and homeless.

In our lifetime we have heard people criticize prophets, priests, preachers, writers, world leaders, who have preached the Catholic Church’s Social Justice and Human Charity teachings - or have only been selective when it comes to these issues - with no concern for the hurting and the humbled - but only for their agenda.

In our lifetime we have seen and heard people who claim innocence when it comes to caring for our earth - not being aware of the health of all - for example poor children in West Virginia, Kentucky, China - whose lungs are damaged because of earth dumping and disregard of the reality of carbon emissions.

In our lifetime we have heard people screaming at children - hitting children - hurting children - with no concern for what they see with their eyes and hear with their ears.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

December 27, 2015

FAMILY

The place where we know each other’s cough,

step, moods, laugh, idiosyncrasies, stories, hurts, favorite cream flavor, cereal, fears, friends, gripes, TV programs, buttons, and yes, oh yes, what we hate, broccoli, cauliflower and talking about __________________________.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

HOLY FAMILY SUNDAY

[This Sunday the Church celebrates the Family - calling each family to be a Holy Family. Here is a list of 10 blessings - amongst others - that a family ought be giving to each other. If I see at least one of you reaching [GESTURE] for a ballpoint pen to jot one of these down, that would make my day. I’ll put this on my blog - which you can access from the parish web site. If you check out and reflect upon all 10, that too would make my day, but only if you would take and make at least one of these 10 blessings a challenge and a call for you to put it into practice in the New Year - because you want to make your family even better - holier. Amen.]

Number One: A family is a place where one learns one’s first words, first language. “Ma Ma” - “Da Da” - “Look!” - “Want” - “Need” - “Help” - “No” - “Yes” - "More" - “Love” - "Please! Please!" and “I’m sorry.” May the words and language spoken here in our home - be words of love and kindness, gentleness and joy, giving and forgiving.

Number One: The words we learned and the words we use.

Number Two: A family is a place of memories and stories - history, herstory, moments, incidents, time together, experiencing the twists and turns of life - where one is creating one’s unwritten autobiography - and reading the unwritten biography of those with us on the same shelf - the same house - that we are together in. As someone once said, “When an old person dies, it’s as if a library burnt down.”

Number Two: We are history books - in process - becoming who we are page by page. We are talking books - hopefully taking the time to read - to listen to - to talk to each other.

Number Three: A family is a place where not only mom and dad are honored, so too grandparents, visitors, the little ones - teenagers - and ourselves as well.

Number Three: A place of honor.

Number Four: A family is a place where people know the difference between an argument, a disagreement, a spat - compared to an angry tirade that can leave acid spill at the table, the bedroom, the heart - where kids know the difference between a pillow fight and a real fight.

Number Four: There are fights and there are fights.

Number Five: A family is the starting place where one learns the ability to compromise, readjust, reconsider, renegotiate, recalculate - because one has seen these attitudes and qualities in the ones above us - instead of experiencing others who are unwilling to adjust or change or recalculate.

Number Five: Learning to compromise.

Number Six: A family is a place where members learn to laugh and love - love being with one another - wanting to be with each other - not just on Thanksgiving and Christmas - but 365 days a year for those in the same house - 52 times a year - for those who have moved into new families - new homes - using “techie” stuff well - for communication at a distance - and turned off when up close - like at the dinner table. It’s a place where people eat with other - and eat up each other - seeing the sacredness of the family table - receiving in communion the other - if Christian, seeing each other as the Body of Christ and saying "Amen" to Christ within the other.

Number Six: Experiencing the Real Presence of each other.

Number Seven: A family is a place where one learns about faith and hope - in God and in one another - knowing the primary church is the home - where mom and dad are priests - and kids are parishioners - and members worship, pray, play with each other - and the classrooms and playgrounds in our homes are always open.

Number Seven: A home is a church and a school.

Number Eight: A family is a place where the truth will set us free. It’s a place where we can be the real me - the real we. It’s a place where we can be at home to each other - without masks or titles - walk around in t-shirt and sweat pants - but that doesn’t mean we can be PITA’s to each other. To make a family work, takes work. Go back and check Number Six.

Number Eight: A home is a place where we can become truly free - but that takes work.

Number Nine: A family is a place with a door - where people make significant - key - wonderful comments to each other - when another is leaving and when another is coming back home through that door - and those comments sculpt us into better and better persons.

Number Nine: We’re aware of what is said coming and going in and out the door of our home.

Number Ten and Last: A family is a place where people learn to overlook, forgive, understand, accept differences and peculiarities, as well as sin - but the messy gets cleaned up, people try to speak better, be better, and learn to understand each other. A “Holy Family” does not mean a sculpture or statues of people with hands folded [GESTURE] as in prayer - but hands that clap for each other, hands with a deck of playing cards in hand, forks in hand, hand in hand, hands on shoulders, hands in prayer and support of each other. Amen.

Number Ten: A family is a place where we are joined by hand and have to hand it to each other - generation after generation after generation.