March  23,  2022 

Thought for Today

 

“A lady of 47 who has been married 27 years and has six children knows what love is and once described it for me like this: ‘Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.’”

James Thurber,

Life, March 14, 1960

 March 23, 2022

PROVERBS 6: 6-11

  
Each Spring, when the moths appear, we all remember to put up or pull down our screens – especially in the night.
 
Moths search for the light.
 
Each Spring, when the moths appear, after I put up my screens, I think of Monkey Monahan.
 
We were teenage boys at the time – around 14 or 15 years of age. Or maybe we were 13.  Well, anyway, it was Spring and this meant we became big game hunters.
 
I’ve gone fishing and crabbing a few times, but that Spring was the only time I did anything like this – hunting and killing.
 
I was no Franciscan. I was no Hindu or Buddhist. Monkey Monahan and I were cold blooded killers.
 
Now, 50 years latler, I don’t remember the exact circumstances or the chain of particulars on how we came up with what we started to do that Spring.
 
The first step was the hunt.
 
Our prey were the moths.  We used bath towels as our weapon of choice. We had a nearby ball field as the best hunting ground.   We would kill about 25 moths and put them in a cardboard shoe box.  One night we killed 100 moths.
 
The second step was to find an ant hole.
 
Yes, ant hole…. We would find an ant hole and sit down on the grass near it. Out of the shoe box would come one dead moth. We would place it next to ant hole.
 
At the entrance of the ant hole would be 2 guard ants.  They would spot the dead moth. They headed down the hole.  Out came hundreds of ants.
 
I can still picture the scene some 50 years later.
 
They would drag the moth down the hole.  What a scene. To them it must have been like dragging a 747 into a hanger or an elephant down into a cellar.
 
Then we would proceed to put moth 2,3, 4, 5 to 25 at the hole.  They never gave up.  They took all we could give them.
 
There’s a story here – but I’ve never mentioned this in a sermon. Hey, I wouldn’t want to be thought to be that strange. Then again, it might make a good sermon on Proverbs 6: 6-11.
 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

 March 22, 2022

GIVERS AND TAKERS

 

Their kids were draining them – emptying them – of time, money and energy.

 

“Some people just bring your life. You love these people when they come in the door.  They are alive, refreshing -  and then there’s our kids.”

 

After a pause they added, “And they are draining us.”

 

She then added: “And we just don’t know what to do.”

 

I joking said, “Move!”

 

His face, his head,  jumped back at  that – as if I had punched him in the stomach.

 

“Yeah,” I added, “I read somewhere about a couple with 3 kids who were in their late 20’s and early 30’s – who were not moving out."

I paused and continued, "They then decided to move out.  They retired. They bought a mobile home.  Off they went to have the best year of their life.”

 

She asked, “Did they sell their home.”

 

I said, “I don’t know.”  

I then added that I didn’t remember the other details of the story. But once more,  I said: “All I remember was they thought it was a great move.”

 

“We can’t do that,” he said.

 

She countered, “Why not?”

 

“We wouldn’t have enough money to buy a good truck and a good mobile home.”

 

“Well,” she responded, “Let’s tell our kids we’re selling our house and then get moving.”

 

Silence. 

 

People are thinking.

 

She continued, “You always say, ‘There are givers and there are takers.’”

 

Silence.

 

People still thinking

 

She said, “And we’ve been taken and we keep giving.”

 

More silence ….

 

He said, “Okay. Let’s give them a chance to become what we are about to become: movers.”

 

I sat there. I saw two people converted before my very eyes.

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

March  22,  2022 

Thought for Today

 

“Our masters taught: Who is wealthy? He who is content with his wealth – so said Rabbi Meir.  But Rabbi  Tarfon said: He who has one hundred vineyards, one hundred fields, and one hundred  slaves working in then. Rabbi  Akiva said: He who has a wife comely in deeds, Rabbi Yose said: He who has a privy not far from his table.” 11

Footnote 11: “At that time, privies were out in the fields. B. Shah 25b.

From page 602 in The Book of Legends  Sefer Ha – Aggadah, legends from the Talmud and Midrash, edited by Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, translated by Willim G, Braude

 

 

 March  21,  2022

 

BLESSED ARE THEY

WHO DO NOT SEE,

YET THEY STILL BELIEVE

 

 

Saw a Zen saying, “The seed never sees the flower.”

 

Wow!

 

I added in my own thought, “The writer does not see the reader – most of the time – 99,999 times out of a 100,000 times.”

 

Most books over 10,000 sales are a good deal.

 

Yet, the author,  he or she writes on.

 

Who am I writing for: me or she or he?

 

Me!

 

Yet it does help to have an audience – better,  a reader in mind.

 

Words are seeds….

 

Planted in hearts ….

 

Earth….

 

Formed by God’s hands – sculpted into me and you.

 

The parents who slave 2 jobs at times – and sometimes more – while working  -  don’t see their kids in college having a great time – feeling free – enjoying a great basketball game – screaming – happy – running onto the court – pizza afterwards – a beer – fun – joy – yet if they saw all that would they still see all their work and slavery – that it was all worth it?

 

Of course ….

 

Okay, better they see graduations.

 

So the Zen writer was saying something significant when she or he wrote, “The seed never sees the flower.”

 

That’s life 101.

 

We don’t see where our money in the special collection in church goes – but we still take out our wallet and make that extra donation.

 

We pray – we sing at church – we reflect there Sunday after Sunday -  knowing – faith sinks down deep into the soil of our hearts – like a seed.

 

Yet we pray seeds – knowing faith increases without our knowing or seeing it happening.  Didn’t Jesus say something like that a long time ago?

 

We write words – seeds of black ink on white pages or screens – knowing some of them will sink into the unconscious of others.

 

We know that. We just know that.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“What can I say?  It’s Spring.”

Line in the movie,

Escape From Stalin’s

Death Camp, 2017

 March 20, 2022

 

I WAS WRONG!

 

Sometimes it is very easy to say, “I was wrong” and sometimes those three words are the most difficult words to say in one’s whole life.
 
“I was wrong!”
 
Take Jephthal in the Book of Judges.  I always wish he copt out and told God, “I was wrong. I made a mistake when I made that dumb vow to you.”
 
Nope.
 
He had vowed to God to sacrifice the first creature that came out his front door when he got home – if he beat the Ammonites in battle. [Cf. Judges 11:29-40.]
 
He killed his daughter.
 
What a dumb move. What a dumb vow.  Why not say, “I was wrong” and move on.
 
How many people have taken vows in marriage or religious life or priesthood – for the wrong reason – and discover it was a dumb move. It’s self-destructive. It’s murder and suicide and others are involved.
 
“I was wrong!”
 
I can always hear God saying to Jephthah, “Wrong!”
 
And I hear God saying the same thing to those in knots – in dumb vows.
 
“I was wrong!”
 
And then there are those who admit they are wrong, but they don’t get moving  - they carry that wrong for the rest of their lives.
 
They need to see Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and have a spiritual catharsis in seeing here washing and washing and washing those hands after her terrible wrong.
 
“I was wrong!”
 
There I said it.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

 March  20,  2022 

Thought for Today

 

“He that learns to pray, let him be in a small plane in heavy turbulence.”

 

Bergen Evans, page 550

in Dictionary of Quotations