It's an amazing organ - this gift in the chest - in the center of the human body,
Thank You, God! Thank You.
Thank you, mom and dad. Thank you.
Thank you car drivers, who didn't cause and accident, that could have killed me - by stopping this heart of mine.
I'm 67. I guess I could add up the number of heart beats a person has on an average day and then multiply that number by 67 and then by 365 and come up with a good number.
Wow!
Life!
That's my beating heart.
What about the blinks of a lifetime? What about the words I've spoken, the steps I've taken, the meals I've eaten, the times I've fallen asleep?
A lifetime.
Heart beats seem to be the most central.
Yet the brain can fail - my eyes could go - so too my hearing.
Yet the heart beating still seems the most central activity.
But what about breath?
I guess I can't forget interconnections.
For starters I still want more heart beats.
October 11, 2022
Thought to Ponder
"American life storms about us daily, and is slow to find a tongue."
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Letters and Social Aims
Monday, October 10, 2022
October 10, 2022
Reflections
TRANSFIGURATION
To see God - another - gold - glass - time - life - a meal - in a new way - a new vision - a new view - wow - amazing - making tomorrow - different from today.
Transfiguration - I never thought of that before.
I never heard you speak or see or hear or sing - like this before.
Wow.
I never knew this mountain was here.
I never knew I could climb into this new view - but Christ you took me into this new view - a new scene - a new plateau.
Would I've able to understand the metaphor if I hadn't climbed the reality - having climbed a real mountain.
So thank you God for my younger days - days I climbed mountains in New Hampshire and Colorado with friends.
Jesus must have done what I have done - getting away - escaping - with friends - getting away from it all.
Go figure.
Do we have to go somewhere else - before we can figure out the right here - right now?
Transfiguration.
I like both parts of that word - the "trans" and the "figuring".
When was the last time I saw Jesus in a new light?
Go figure.
When was my last transfiguration moment?
Go figure
When was the last time I saw myself - and my life - and all life - in a new light?
Go figure.
October 10, 2022
Thoughts for Today
"Didn't you hear me keeping quiet?"
Sam Goldwyn,
Quoted by Alva Johnson,
The Great Goldwyn
Sunday, October 9, 2022
October 9, 2022
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
20QUESTIONS
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is,
“What’s It Like: 20 Questions?
I have 20 Questions to think
about as we come to the end of this retreat.
You have to be sitting here
wondering – questioning - thinking about lots of things – just before you’re
heading home.
I’m sure you’re wondering –
questioning your life – or the lives of those you live with, work with,
neighbor with - without even realizing
you have 4 or 5 good questions that came up while making this retreat.
Today’s First Reading and today’s
Gospel trigger the question: “What’s it
like to have leprosy – a skin disease – when everyone goes, ‘Oooooh! Oooh! Ugly!
Disappear!’?”
What’s it like?
Maybe one of these 20 questions that
I bring up – will trigger some questions you wonder about unconsciously.Maybe one of these 20 questions will help you
sum up this retreat – in a clearer way. Maybe you’ll realize it’s never over
till it’s over – and you have more work ahead.
20 QUESTIONS
What’s it like to make a retreat
on presence – real presence – with God and with each other – and you go home to
the same old same old - being with people who are in the room- but they are always on their phones with
people in far distant rooms and interests?
What’s it like to go to Mass – where
you experience God’s presence in the bread – and in the Love of God – and your
kids and grandkids – are into sleep and sports and everything else on Sunday
morning?
What’s it like to have terrible
skin?
What’s it like to have dark skin
– darker than anyone else in your family? You were adopted.
What’s it like to have more acne
on your face than a stop sign has paintball gun splotches on the first road
outside a paintball gun shooting range?
What’s it like to be alone at a
wedding – and your spouse has died or left you or you had to break up – or what
have you – and everyone seems connected to someone and you feel so single, so
singular, and so all alone?
What’s it like to come into
church late because it was tough getting an aged mother or four kids organized
for church and the traffic was crazy and the only seats are the front row of
church – and you got to go down that long aisle – feeling so conspicuous?
What’s it like to have a couple of kids – and grandkids - and you do everything
possible for them and nine of them never ever say, “Thank you!”
What’s it like to have 2 kids
with heavy duty tattoos – and at a lunch break or a coffee break – everyone is
making fun of people who are so dumb for getting tattooed?
What’s it like to have wrinkles –
lots and lots and lots of wrinkles?
What’s it like to have a sister with
3 college degrees and her kids college degrees on the walls of their basement pool table and
pingpong table room. You dropped out of high school – but did get a GED in
your 30’s?
What’s it like to have had an abortion and you come to a church that seems to
only have pamphlets and pictures at every entrance about abortion – and you
don’t notice anything else and you have made your very difficult and painful
peace with God twenty years ago - but it seems to get triggered every time you
come to church?
What’s it like to be a kid that
loves skateboarding and everyone curses you?
What’s it like to start telling a
story – and you’re cut off by someone who wants to tell their story – which
your story triggered – and they are louder and get more central than you?
What’s it like to be preaching
and you notice 37 yawns and 23 watch watchings – in your 9 minute and 49 second
homily?
What’s it like to be a Catholic
and a couple of people at work say things like: “I would think someone like you
would have got beyond church a long time ago?
What’s it like to have had a
mastectomy?
What’s it like to be overweight and you’ve tried 316 different diets and you
have estimated that you have taken off 1,160 pounds in your lifetime so far –
and you’re 6 pounds heavier than when you started your last diet?
What’s it like to have had plastic surgery and you overhear some friends in the
other room laughing at your plastic surgery?
CONCLUSION
What’s it like to be me?
What’s it like to be you?
October 9, 2022
Reflections
VALUES
I have never sat down and listed my values.
I would assume two things: One, there is a list somewhere of things people think are of value; Two, I can judge for myself what my values are,
If my memory serves me, as the phrase goes, there are distinctions when it comes to talking about values.
For example, there are social values and there are religious values.
We studied stuff like this when we took Sociology in college.
I'm sure if I simply typed "values" in the search box on Google I'd get a good variety of hits.
What's the Greek word for value?
What's the Aramaic word for value?
Is Jesus talking about values when he talks about the pearl of great price and the treasure in the field?
Was Jesus getting at values when he gave us the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
I believe Christianity is teaching us that people are more important than things.
If I saw a row boat slipping and it looks like it's going to slide off a pier into the water, I would try to do something. I would look for the owner. I might yell to anyone nearby. If I thought it was going to hurt someone and I could do something, I hope I would try to do something. If there was a kid or an old man in the boat, I better try to do something.
That example tells about my values.
I would chase after a $100 bill in the wind - more than a $1 dollar bill.
In a marriage I would think listening has a higher value than speaking.
I think I would feel more sad over a 150 year old church burning that a 5 year old rather new church.
Yet I guess when it comes to values, there are many variables - and the need to say, "It all depends."
October 9. 2022
Thoughts to Ponder
"The only alternative to co-existence is co-destruction."
