IN REALITY 

NOT  JUST ON  PAPER

Quote for Today - March 12,  2011


"What one has not experienced
one will never understand in print."

Isadora Duncan [1877-1927] My Life, 1927


Photo on top: Isadora Duncan - the famous Dancer - check out her life and work and legacy on Google.

FROZEN  COLD

Quote for Today  - March 11,  2011


"I have, in my seventy-three years of life, rubbed elbows with a great many celebrities, both in politics and in the arts. I have seen many players become hot and then stop being hot. To those who, overnight, become white-hot, as Peter did, any cooling is unwelcome. Indeed, so powerful is the rush of being white-hot that those who are enjoying that status lose all sense that they might someday be cool. Or worse, cold; or, worse still, frozen."

Larry McMurtry in his book, Hollywood, page 40. He's talking about Peter Bogdanovich whom he worked it - for example, in the movie, The Last Picture Show. The book is a good read if you like movies and what goes into them - especially script writing. This comment begins Chapter 14. Confer, Hollywood, A Third Memoir, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010.

AVOIDING 

THE EYE 

OF GOD

Quote for Today - March 10, 2011


"By and by
God caught his eye."


David McCord [1897-1987], Epitaphs: The Waiter

ASH WEDNESDAY – 2011

Ash Wednesday – 2011.

Lent – the season of Lent – the 40 Days of Lent – this year later than usual. Hopefully this means - Easter – April 24th – will be warm – very Spring like – with flowers – gardens – Annapolis in full bloom – ladies with big Easter bonnets – our lives better that day than this day.

Ash Wednesday – 2011.

Lent – the season of Lent – 40 Days to become a bit – a good bit more serious – to see where we have to spring – to walk into the garden of our soul – to walk around inside ourselves and see the earth we come from calling for cultivation – digging – raking and planting – and watering – so by Easter – April 24th – we’ll look like a garden of paradise – filled with new life – Resurrection for all.

Ash Wednesday – 2011.


Lent – the season that starts with ashes rubbed into our thick skulls. “Remember you are dust and into dust you shall return.” The reminder that all stuff gets old – ages – cracks and crumbles. Colors fade. Flowers wilt. Cars get scratched and dented. Tires wear. The odometer numbers increase. We age. Our skins wrinkle or as old lady told me the other day, “My wrinkles now have wrinkles.” The reminder that there is end date on our tombstone. We have a shelf life.

Ash Wednesday – 2011.

Lent – the season of Lent – the reminder as we heard in today’s gospel that there is more to us than meets the eye. There is an inner space, an inner room, inside us – behind the door of our forehead - where the ashes are about to be put. There’s an inner room inside us. Today Christians are asked to stop at that inner door. What does the door look like? Have we lost the key? When was the last time we were on the other side of that door? When was the last time we cleaned our inner room? Are the two chairs in there dusty – or clean? When was the last time we sat in there by ourselves? When was the last time we heard Jesus knock on that door? When was the last time we prayed to Our Father inside? I have a theory: “Show me the trunk of your car and I’ll tell you who you are.” It’s the same with our inner room, “Show me your inner room and I’ll tell you who you are.” We come inside the doors of this church as a reminder to come inside the doors of our inner room. In Lent people clean that inner room. They go to confession. Check our bulletin for our regular times of confession or the special Confessions for Lent – the Wednesday evening, “The Light is On Program” – all through this Lent.

Ash Wednesday – 2011.

Lent – the season of Lent – the reminder that Lent is connected to the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert – before he sprang into action with his new life. The 40 days when we go within and ask ourselves, “What is my biggest temptation?” Or, “What are my three temptations?” – as we’ll hear about this Sunday. What are my inner sounds? When alone in the desert, or my inner room, or alone in my car, or in my moments in the night when alone when I have trouble sleeping – what are my voices – gossip, anger, regrets, resentments, regurgitations from the past? What are my sounds? Do I ever listen to myself? Do I ever sit alone with a good book – or some good music – or the scriptures – or a prayer book – perhaps the prayer book of a parent long gone – a prayer book that gets me in touch with them and myself and 3 great issues like faith, hope and charity.

Ash Wednesday – 2011.

Lent – the season of Lent – the time to get in touch with some of this – to ponder the call and the challenge of the next 40 days: to fast not just from food – but from envy and anger, laziness and being just a lump – to pray – not just babble, babble words, but to have real conversations with God and each other – to be kind and charitable to each other – especially with those who drive us crazy.

Ash Wednesday – 2011

Lent – the season of Lent – a time to hear the words from today’s second reading: "Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." Amen. Amen. Amen.

ASH  WEDNESDAY 

Quote for Ash Wednesday - March 9, 2011


"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."

Carl Sandburg [1878-1967] in "Prairie" [1918]

WHEN DOES OUR TRUE

CHARACTER SHOW ITSELF?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “When Does Our True Character Show Itself?”

TODAY’S FIRST READING

Today’s readings are very interesting – containing very detailed down to earth incidents. I’ll leave the gospel story about Caesar and coins to Father Jack Kingsbury – who has made it his specialty and interest to concentrate on Biblical Coins.

The last line in today’s first reading from Tobit hit me: “See! Your true character is finally showing itself!”

Tobit goes blind and when Anna his wife brings home a goat that someone gave her – it gets Tobit’s goat. Tobit gets testy and gets nervous. He thinks it was stolen. Anna says it was a bonus – an extra – from those who paid her wages for work she did with cloth for them. Tobit doesn’t believe her. He gets angry with her. So Anna fires back, “Where are your charitable deeds now? Where are your virtuous acts? See! Your true character is finally showing itself!”

As I read that I asked myself, “How many times in the history of the world has this kind of an exchange taken place between husbands and wives – family members – fellow workers – church members?

It sounds so real – people being feisty and testy with each other – people challenging each other on the truth of some matter – one person not believing the other person – and who’s your true self?

Who am I when I’m alone? Does everyone have a real self and a public self? When am I in character? When am I out of character? Do we all put an act on at times? Have we ever been sick or out of sorts and we say the wrong thing – and those who know us say of us, “Relax. Don’t worry. He’s just not himself today.” Or, “She’s been a different person lately, but she’ll be back to her old self soon.” At our funeral will someone say of us, “Whom you saw is whom you got?” Or will someone not say: “You never knew who would show up when he showed up.”

CHARACTER

Then last night as I was putting together these thoughts I began wondering about that word “character” in today’s first reading. I asked myself, “What is character?” This English word is used in several ways. “She’s out of character.” or “He’s quite a character.”

So when the translators used this word “character” at the end of today’s first reading, I was wondering about it. In fact it seems to me that it’s a word and a concept that is out of character for our Bible.
That was my first reaction to this word. I also wondered about “cataracts” from bird droppings and could they have chosen a different English world – like eye problems.

Back to “character”. It’s probably grabbed me because it sounds Greek to me – something that would come out of Greek Philosophy – and not Hebrew thought. And sure enough the book of Tobit goes back to around 200 B.C. when there was heavy influence of Greek thought in Israel. Next I found out that some scholars say this book of Tobit was written in Aramaic – and translated into Greek and Hebrew. Up to modern times we didn’t have a Hebrew text for Tobit. It’s not part of the Jewish Bible. With the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries they now have Hebrew and Aramaic fragments of Tobit – which then brings me back to one of my original questions: what is the Hebrew context of this text? And after a tiny bit of research it seems that the New American Bible has a decent translation of the text – using the word “character”. It simply means who a person really is. (1)

It seems that Tobit got antsy when Anna brings home a goat – and into the house – and the new – the new sounds “baah” or “eeeh” or whatever goats sound like, caused conflict. Then his wife got in there under his skin – when she said, “You walk around with this pious look – and you’re so nice to others – but here you are not being nice and charitable to me – your own wife.”

CONCLUSION

So I would assume the challenge for all of us here – especially when we get older – and our sight goes or whatever goes – is that we better be nice to each other – especially if we know how to be nice to others – avoiding fitting the description of being a lamb abroad and an old angry goat at home. Amen.

Painting on top: Tobit Sees a Flock of Birds by Robert Lenkiewicz, from Paintings Painted Blind - on the Theme of Tobit - year 2000. He painted this series - called, "Project 21".



(1) “Tobit, Book of” John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, McMillan Publishing Company, New York, 1965, page 895; “Tobit” Irene Norwell, O.S.B. in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1990, p. 568

REREADING

Quote for Today - March 8, 2011


"When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."

Clifton Fadiman [1904-1999] Any Number Can Play [1957]