RON DREHER
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018
March 28, 2018
MIDDLES
Middles - let’s be honest.
They don’t have the pizazz
of beginnings and endings.
Wednesday - the middle day
of the week - can be sort of grey -
compared to Monday and Friday.
Middle child - this is an, “It all
depends.” They can have comparison
problems from both sides.”
Middle of a meat loaf - juicy,
yes - but I’ll take the end piece
every time. How about you?
Middle! Surprise - maybe Dante was
right when he said it all changed
when he got to the middle of his life.
© Andy Costello, Reflections 2018
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
PLEASE EXPLAIN
THE DUMB MOVES
THE DUMB MOVES
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this Tuesday in Holy Week is,
“Please Explain Why the Dumb Moves?”
We all ask that
question in various ways in the pages of
our life story - especially when we or those connected to us make a dumb move.
How many times have we heard, “After all I did for you,
you did this to me. Why? Why? Why?”
Or someone says, “Why did my kid get mixed up with drugs
- after we put her in Catholic School - worked hard to make our family work?
Why? Why? Why? And then this happens.”
We miss seeing the good stuff - and the bad stuff dumbs
us and wipes us out.
Alcohol ….
Affairs…. Stealing …. Splits and not talking to each other in family …. We humans can do a lot of stupid things with
our lives.
The person who is being dumb keeps saying, “Stupid.
Stupid. Stupid.”
The person who is watching or seeing the dumb moves is
saying, “Why? Why? Why?”
IN OTHER WORDS:
WHY DO WE SELF DESTRUCT?
We self-destruct. Why?
Motive? Why the shootings? Why
the craziness?
We scratch our heads. We bite our nails. We nervously
bite tiny bits of uplifted skin on our lips - especially when we’re nervous and
the cold outside is biting. Does anybody
here ever do that?
EXPLANATIONS
Lots of people have tried to figure out why we do what we
do - especially self-destruct.
Genesis - the first book in the Bible - says right there
in its first pages - the following explanation on how life works: We’re given
paradise - but it’s never enough. We want more. Evil is pictured as a snake that
crawls along the garden floor of our soul and hisses whispers into our souls.
The snake knows us and whispers: “Want more power? Want
more control? Want to be like God?”
Then the sneaky snake says, “Eat the forbidden fruit and you’ll be just
like God.”
Adam and Eve - the male and female in us and in every
person - takes the fatal bite - and
bites into evil and we fall.
Then we turn the page and there’s a brother killing his
brother.
Many of those people marching on Saturday are asking
why? Why did that guy start shooting -
and killing in Florida, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Las Vegas, Charleston - and
bombing in Austin and on and on and on?
Freud came up with the human having an ego, a super-ego
and then the sometimes irritable
id. Freud and Jung and Adler and
many others talk about various other theories to explain why ids kill kids.
Some of us are old enough to remember the radio drama
called, “The Shadow.” Remember the opening question: “Who knows what
evil lurks in the heart of us? The
Shadow knows.”
Shakespeare and Hawthorne, Melville and mystery novels,
all ask about the why of evil.
NCIS opens with the NCIS team kibitzing and then Gibbs
says, “Get your gear! There’s been a murder.”
We’ve all heard variations of the Cherokee story about two wolves. It’s a parable.
One
evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes
on inside people.
He said, “my son, the battle is between two
‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow,
regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies,
false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is good. It is joy, peace love, hope
serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth,
compassion, and faith.”
The grandson though about it for a minute and
then asked his grandfather, “which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “the one that
you feed.”
Read enough literature and life and we find out we all
have evil within.
Charles Baudelaire wrote, “There are in every man, at
every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards
Satan.” in Mon Coeur Mis a Nu [1887]
XIX.
CONCLUSION: THIS
WEEK
The title of my homily for today is, “Please Explain Why the Dumb Moves?”
This is the question of this week: Holy Week.
One day we say and shout, “Hosanna” with and for Christ and each other - and then
a few days later we’re screaming, “Crucify
him.
As we heard in today’s gospel - at the Last Supper - Satan
is around - and Satan entered into Judas at a meal - and Jesus told Peter, be
careful - the same thing can happen to you.
_______________________________________________________________
Painting on Top:
The Last Supper
Simon Bening (c. 1525-30)
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