November 18, 2022
Reflection
Circles: Church Circle, State Circle, and the downtown circle that I'm not sure if it has a name - at the bottom of Main Street.
Restaurants: Cafe Normandy, McGarvey's, Galway Bay, Picola Roma, Chick and Ruth's ....
Gardens: St. Mary's, Paca House, ....
Red bricks: Lots of red bricks.
Churches: St. Mary's, St. Anne's, The Presbyterian Church, so man more - once you get out of the downtown area.
Naval Academy: with its youth and its uniforms....
St. John's College: with its Great Books history ....
Benches: the Seelos Bench at St. Mary's, key benches around town to give the weary walker a break....
People: Buckwheat, the Mayor, the Governor, the Speaker of the House, visitors, the Traffic Control people giving tickets and citations....
Shops T-shirt shops, Storm Brother's Ice Cream, trinket and souvenir shops ....
Alleys: guick sneak throughs to the next street....
Annapolis: 17 of the best years of my life....
November 17. 2022
Reflection
SELF DESTRUCTION
People self-destruct.
Some do it slowly; some to it quickly; some do it dramatically.
When Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York State got caught with prostitutes, the press articles and TV commentators voiced various theories.
For example, "He wanted to get caught."
Someone else said, "People in high places think they are exempt from being caught. So it's a power question."
Others said, "It's all connected and it's complicated. It's being the son of a powerful father."
Others added, "What was he thinking or not thinking? Is he stupid?"
As priest - as male - as human - as me - I know we all do stupid things. We self-destruct.
We don't get enough sleep - and we'e dragging ourselves like an overweight suitcasre.
Then we resolve not to do stupid again.
But we do.
Expet deja vu.
Expect more stupidity.
Expect repeat performances.
We overeat. We over indulge. We over mess up.
We want to be rational - but our inners can be more than an electrical system. We have snakes, owls, and sharks in our deep waters. Probably an octopus or two as well.
St. Paul in Romans tried to get his hand on all this, He said, "We don't do what we said we were going to do and vice versa, we do what we don't want to do."
St. Augustine - reading and reflecting on what Paul said - realized Paul was speaking my reality.
Don't we all?
Don't we all mess up and we ddon't know why.
It's the onging struggle of resolution vs. stupidity - sin and grace - recovery and fall - Genesis and Exodus.
"Father forgive me, I don't know what I am doing?"
November 16, 2022
Reflection
YOU HAD ME WHEN ....
Once more, in the movie, As Good As It Gets, Holly Hunter says the line she said to Melvin, "You had me when...."
Then he loses her with his return comment .... as he puts his foot in his mouth.
The message she gives is: "You should have stopped then and there."
In relationships I see this going on at times.
A person says something and they are our friend for life - or the opposite happens - a person says or does something and we give up on them for life.
When we were studying the Jungian Personality Types - one of the personality traits for those who have a strong suit when it comes to operating out of or functioning with feelings, it's that when they have doubts, they become absolute doubts.
Those who function out of thinking can have intellectual doubts and the person they have doubts about can recover more easily.
Being a feeler type, I resonated with this.
If I have doubts about another, I am not logical about them. My gut sends the signal: "Avoid this person!"
It's not logical. It could be their beard or their tattoos or something they say or do or what have you.
We know cultures who know this stuff with the repetition of the old saying: "Fool me once, it's not my fault. Fool me twice, it is my fault."
There is the same message with dogs peeing on our leg. It's that second time....
So folks have doubts about others - just as the have gut feelings about this person - as being a good one.
The stuff of life is in the meetings after a mistake in a relationship - or not being blind after a commitment.
