BLISS PARK

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Second Sunday in Lent [B] is, “Bliss Park.”

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, as a kid, almost every Sunday we would walk down to a 24 acre park called, “Bliss Park.”

It’s real name was, “Owl’s Head Park” - perhaps because some thought the land was in the shape of an owl - or because the Nyack Indians called it that - or because there were owls in the barns or trees there early on.

We grew up calling it “Bliss Park” - but we knew it also had the name, “Owl’s Head Park.”

It was a great spot for kids.  We didn’t think as kids to say, “It was a great place for families - but it was. We grew up thinking everything was for kids - nothing was for parents. They were there to  take care of us.

It had a big hill that was great  for sledding in winter. If it snowed everyone for two or three miles around headed for Bliss Park. It was perfect. People skied. People used the big main hill as well as back sections for sleds. There was ice skating in the kiddie pool. It was bliss.

During the summer it was perfect for bike riding and roller skating. It was perfect for rolling down the grassy main hill. It was perfect for picnics - a whole family on blanket, potato salad, peanut butter and jelly and baloney or ham and cheese sandwiches.  It didn’t have tennis courts, but there were seesaws, basketball courts, slides and monkey bars - and a kiddie pool.  It was perfect for kites and catch [baseball, football or spaldeens].

One of my earliest memories is falling in that kiddy pool and cutting my stomach.

What are your earliest memories?  Are they filled with bliss and joy - running, rolling, riding,  sledding, or hurts and cuts.

At the top of the hill we could walk to a big wall, climb up on it, and look out at the water - a place called, “The Narrows” - where boats could come into and out of New York Harbor. The Verrazano Bridge wasn’t built yet. We could see the Statue of Liberty, some of the lower part of New York City, Staten Island on the other side of the water - as well as with parts of New Jersey with interesting names like Hoboken.

We could also see the New York Ferry - which went from Brooklyn, to Staten island to Manhattan and back.

Many times we would walk down the back side of that hill and take that  ferry ride to Staten Island and back to Brooklyn. It was a nickel - maybe even free for kids. I don’t remember that - but my dad would hide with us in the bathroom - till the ferry boat emptied out - and then come out and ride back for free.

We were poor - but this worked.  None of us became thieves by that bad example.

It was bliss. It is bliss looking back now.

Looking back on your life, what were your moments of bliss? What was your childhood like?  Have you taken the time at family get togethers to remember what it was like when you were a kid?  Have you told your kids and grandkids what your growing up was like?

How to do that, when to do that, and the kids liking that - and not being bored - that has a right time and a wrong time. Watch for the yawns. Read faces and eyes. Story telling is essential home schooling education for all kids.

In reading about this yesterday - doing my homework for this homily -  I found out the park was nicknamed Bliss Park, not because it was a place of bliss, but because a guy name Eliphalet Williams Bliss owned it. He bought if around 1881 for $80,000 from a guy named Murphy.

Reading back much earlier, I loved it that an owner from way back in the 1670’s, a Dutchman, sold some land - part of which would eventually be Owl’s Head Park to a man named Swaen Janse Van Lowaanen - who might have been a black man who emigrated to the colony in 1654 - from Sierra Leone. Some thought he was a freeman. Some thought that he had been a slave. Great story - perfect to mention in Black History Month.

TODAY’S READINGS

Today’s readings triggered these memories of childhood.

Today’s two readings mention two mountains.

In preaching contrasts are important.  So let me contrast two mountains - well actually 3.

The first reading talks about the mountain that Abraham was asked to climb and sacrifice his son. Abraham was to build an altar - line up wood - start a fire and make a holocaust - a sacrifice of his son.

It’s a mysterious story - perhaps constructed to put an end to the horrible religious practice some folks had of thinking God wanted fathers to sacrifice their sons. Or to put an end to the religious thinking that when a child died -  God wanted that kid as a sacrifice.

Religion has the idea of sacrifice. Offer it up. To get what I want - especially when someone is sick - you have to make a sacrifice.

Many kids did die early. Why does God allow that? Does God want that. Is that God’s will? Walk through old cemeteries and study the dates on the stones.

Make sacrifices - but not of your children.

So what is this sacrifice story of Abraham and his son Issac about?  I don’t know yet - really.  I know Kierkegarde tells the story about a couple who lost their son as a child - and they spent their lives after that talking and crying to God using this story of Abraham and Isaac. I think it’s in his book: Fear and Trembling.

This image of the possible sacrifice of Isaac by his father can lead us to the story of Mount Calvary and the sacrifice of Christ - the only son of the Father.

Going there is a horror story - not a story of bliss.

Every one of us who is Christian has to go through Lent every year and get into the mystery of Christ dying for us - and in place of us.  Good Friday at first is a bad Friday.

Every one of us has to get into the mystery of sacrifice - that’s one reason we come to Mass - that life is all about sacrificing our life for our children and caring for our parents when they start to lose it.

Every one of us has to learn what Christ meant when he said, “Greater love than this, no one has, than to lay down their life for their friends.”

I think of this big guy - Aaron Feis, aged 37, an assistant football coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida,  who rushed his body into the bullets to save kids. Thank God he was big - with plenty of weight because maybe that saved some kids.

I don’t know if I could do that. I hope so - because I’ve had plenty of the gift of life so far - the kids who were killed had only just begun.

I don’t know if I’d be like the police guard or guards who couldn’t go it - if that’s what happened -  I don’t know - and I pray for those police as well.

During Lent we have to climb Mount Calvary and be with Christ under his cross and think about these heavy thoughts.

Life is not always bliss.

Yet we need to do what Christ does in today’s gospel.

We can’t forget the other mountain - the mount of Bliss.

When I was in Israel in the year 2000 we went by bus to the mount of transfiguration - and then for the top half, Mercedes cabs to the top.  We prayed up there. We also had a spaghetti dinner up there. It was good to be up there. What a view!

We need to climb mountains in our lifetime.

We need to take time off. We need Sabbath. Weekends.  We need blissful moments.  We need family time. We need kids to say what Peter, James and John on the mount of the transfiguration said, “Lord, it is good that we are here.”

They are saying: “Let’s stay here forever.”

I can relate to that. That’s what we felt at Bliss park as kids with family.

I hope my mom and dad pinched themselves seeing us sledding in winter and rolling down a grassy green grass hill and laughing in summer.

CONCLUSION

Obviously we need moments and mountains of bliss - because sometimes we’re on the mount of sacrifice and it’s tough to give one’s whole life for others.  It hard to  hear, “Okay now you’re finished school. You have to get  a job and do your life’s work.”  Vacations end. Monday morning arrives. Doctors and plumbers and rescue squads get calls at 2:30 in the morning.

I think today’s readings can get us in touch with some of these life moments: whether we’re at Bliss Park or Calvary or Abraham’s mountain in Mariah.