Life during wartime

Like everybody else, I can't get the song out of my head.

"Heard about Houston? heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody might see you up there
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
To last a couple of days....

He's not playing golf.

My brother died a year ago today. I miss him more than I can write about, so I won't even try.

A friend pondered, in a sort of joking/sort of not joking way, "I wonder who is in his foursome today". Around  major sporting events, he has told me my brother has "the best view of all".

I don't have any real conception of what heaven is like, but I think I am on firm ground when I assert that it is not at all like golf. It is not like watching Alabama/Auburn in football

The Bible tells us over and again that our mind cannot conceive the glory of this new land. Perhaps it will be familiar but in a way that gives new meaning to the word familiarity. My brother is going to this land beyond land in a time beyond time worshiping the King of all Kings. Perhaps he is already there.

Closing Churches in March of 2020

Having grown up in the Baptist Church, I fully expected the wave of shutdowns over the virus. In the church of the first 50 years of my life, closures were rare, but not unheard of. Particularly in the South where any threat of ice or snow was reason to call off church. Love for senior citizens was always the excuse, "we don't want the old folks slipping on the sidewalk". This also meant, "the senior citizens are too stupid to make decisions for themselves". Power out, close the church. Hurricane warning, close the church.

This was a key reason the handful of non-Catholic churches I am in touch with gave for closing. "we have lots of old folks". No you don't, no more than any other church. You have SOME old folks, they dominate your finances, but not your membership. However, you still think they are too stupid to make their own decisions. Got it. 

I was particularly disappointed when my Catholic Church here stopped all masses. At the time it did not seem the right thing to do, and after several days it still does not. However, I don't have to make the decision, I just get to sit in the stands and second guess the coach.

Seems we could have worked around this. No more than 50 at a mass, got it. Not more than 10, we'll work around that. Have more masses or communion services and spread the people out. We could have found a way to stay open. In fairness I should point out that my parish is expanding Eucharistic Adoration from one day a week to seven, and asking that no more than ten be in the church sanctuary at one time. That is good and much much better than totally shutting down. 

Behind the closings there is an assumption that during times like these, all gatherings of large groups of people are bad. It's bad for a bunch of sports fans to gather at a casino, it's bad for teenagers to party at the beach, and it's bad for Catholics to gather together to drink the precious blood of Christ and eat his precious body. Listen to the public pronouncements. Gatherings of the Church are lumped into the same category as all other meetings. The secular rulers of this age see nothing special about who we are or what we do when we gather, which is to be expected.

In this current round of church closing, it is all being done under the guise of some good end. My little country parish proclaimed that the common good should be our aim. Pope Francis has said similar things. Does this mean that as a Christian my highest priority is something other than to be more and more like Christ? That is what I thought at first reading. Perhaps it just means the common good is important. I get that, but there is something about the Church being in agreement with government that makes me a bit uneasy. There is a always a conflict between the secular idea of a common good and the devotion to Christ of His Church.

During this time the parish I live in proclaims....

It is important for us to be in solidarity with one another and seek the common good the best we can together. With that in mind, I am choosing to honor the recommendations of government authorities...

Wow, that's a scary one. How many times in history have good people said that and ended up on the wrong side of history.

Perhaps the church is right and the government is right and we should close the churches as a way to help our fellow man survive this crisis. Perhaps. Perhaps. Closing churches does not make us a better people. It does not make us more like Christ, who walked among those with terrible diseases. It does not make us physically stronger and more virus resistant. It is not a common good. We are weaker today than a week ago. We will be weaker still a week from now.

Jail time, I need more

Once a month I help conduct a church service at the local jail. Like hospice, this is an "I get to", not an "I have to".

The attendance is usually very light, never more than a half-dozen. After all, this is a fairly small county jail, not a Riker's Island or Folsom Prison.

Today there were three of us. Me and two women in their mid-30s. The Sunday Mass gospel reading for today is the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in Samaria. Many of you know that story, of the discarded, rejected, outcast woman who encountered Christ in two drinks of water. The drink of physical water that she provided him. The drink of everlasting life of living water that He offered to her.

You know the story, we all do. But I know it better from sharing it with two women who are also scorned, discarded, rejected and outcast. Right now. Right here. They knew that woman in the passage. They knew her tears. They knew how hard her life was. Face to face.

We held hands and shared prayers. I will likely not see either of them again. But time and again the gospel message comes to life for me in the faces and voices and tears of the hurting and the dying. I am drawn to them for reasons that I do not understand.

My life has just been so much more than it should have been...

What I will do/not do during virus time

I will not stop being with people.
I will not stop shaking their hand.
I will run to the Eucharist, the Church, the Body
I will offer a touch to the hurting and suffering.
I will be paranoid and irrational.
I will joke about the virus and my mortality
I will buy things I don't need.
I will go places I shouldn't.
Just as I always do.

One good thing from this virus stuff

Perhaps when this is all over with guys will discard hugging, as quickly as they seemed to adopt it.
Or is this a Minnesota thing?

When I lived in Arkansas in the mid-80s, men shook hands, boys high-fived. Normal greetings.

When I lived in Missouri in the mid-80s to early 2000s, men shook hands. McGwire and Sosa made variations of the fist bump or fore arm bump acceptable in certain settings.

By 2003 or 4, around the time we moved to Minnesota, men were hugging. It's always been ok in times of extreme emotions, such as a wedding or a funeral. But for the past twenty years or so, men have been hugging as a normal standard greeting. You stick out a hand to shake, and some will say, "come on bud, gimme a bro hug". Yes, I'm about as likely to do that as give you some of Tinkerbelle's pixie dust, a silver chair from Narnia, or a piece of cake from Wonderland.

It's odd and very much out of character for most of us. Which explains why it never made it into the business world. Not the real one. Same with politics and the arts. Toby Keith hugs, Merle Haggard shakes hands. Kennedy and Nixon shook hands. Bernie Sanders and Jeb Bush offer hugs. Hank Paulson and Warren Buffet shake hands. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos seem more the hugging types.

Anyway, the strong handshake from a strong hand is always welcome, whether during virus time, Christmas time, or any other time.

What I learned at her funeral

Thoughts about her following Vivian's funeral

I should have known her better.

I could have known her better, I had the opportunity and passed on it. We both are to blame. If I had gone first she would have been thinking the same thing about me.

From a small service you see much bigger things. The whole of what matters in this life.

I was there not because I knew her well, but because I didn't. Because she was family. God created family for when times are fun and easy and for when it is hard.

Suffering differs so much across time and place. I cannot say I know what you are going through, because I don't. The suffering of the one who lost a sibling is different from my loss. I feel as inadequate in sharing his grief as he did in sharing mine. Nothing I say helps to fill that void, but it is good to know that others are there.

This priest is one acquainted with grief. 

Sunday worship, western rim of the known world

Two conversations an hour apart. One at a jail, the other at a nursing home. One with a man, the other with a woman. One is dying. One is locked up. Both were in tears.

"I miss my kids. I finally understand how much I hurt them"

"I miss my wife, I wish I could see her one more time to tell her that I love her".

Small things

I volunteer at times with hospice patients. At the end of life, and at the beginning, it is the small things that we often take for granted that can mean so much. Being warm. Being able to sleep throughout the night without discomfort. Having a loved one nearby.

Today I was with a man who wanted just one thing, relief from an itch. He got it.

Those tiny things we don't think about. When was the last time you gave thanks for being able to quench your thirst without assistance? Or walk to the mailbox under your own power? There is so much we don't think about. St. Paul said in 1 Thessalonians to give thanks in all things. For all things and in all things. I don't do it like I should, but my friend today gave me a wonderful reminder.

Deep Winter

I love winter. We say that a lot in Minnesota. Perhaps we do. Perhaps not.

We are reaching the point of the really hard days of the season we love. Highs around zero. Lows somewhere down on the minus scale. It is mid-February and the sun is much higher in the sky than at Christmas, though that fact has not yet made a difference in our temperatures. That will come.

This is the waiting time.

This period of winter is like many times of our lives. Waiting for something. For first grade. For a new bike. For a drivers license. For marriage. For a new job. Waiting for a sign. Some signal that what you wish for will come to be.

I am a hospice volunteer and just spent 15 months visiting a patient with a terminal illness, who became a friend. Waiting to die. I stopped by twice a week to chat, about his family, sports, occasionally his faith. He had the type of illness that shows no real symptoms to others until the very end. As predicted, that was how it played out. On Monday he was happy and alert. On Thursday he was much weaker and knew his last few days were upon him. On Saturday his body was dead.

I have tried to put myself in his place and imagine this period of waiting. For some it is a period of fear and dread. For my friend it was a time to enjoy with family and friends, to ponder his life in its triumphs and regrets, to read, to sleep, to meet a new nurse, to welcome a priest bearing the blessed eucharist. One day folded into the next, one season to the next. Now he is where there are no seasons, and no waiting, only joy and love in its purest of pure forms.

I look around my house for a sign of spring. The snow is piling up. The ice on the lake is thicker than last week. No birds in the air or squirrels in the trees. But the sun is higher in the sky today than yesterday. For a while that will suffice.

Day two of Retirement

Pondering this part of life.
Last week as I drove to work for one of the last times, I wondered how I would answer all the old friends who ask about my new status. This question and answer came to mind.....

What is the most important project you are working on now?

Answer: Repairing the damage to my soul

In the name of the Father

Pondering the Trinity

One recent evening I was reading the Easter story to my granddaughter, Lilly, who is three. During the time in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read that Jesus prayed. “Why was he praying?” she asked. “What do you mean, why?” I replied. “He’s God isn’t He? What was he doing, praying to Himself !?” In this simple sentence she laid open one of the deepest questions of theology.  

The truth is we don’t know. We believe that Jesus was fully God and fully Man. We can write books about that and talk in our Bible studies about it, but can’t ever understand it. God as man is a glimpse of what God is like and what we are to be as sons and daughters created in his image. His life and love and pain here was a tiny peek at his nature. What does it mean when God takes on all the suffering of the human body? Not as a punishment but as a redemptive act.   

I tried to explain to her that we know God in three ways, or that he shows himself to us in three forms, but dumb down the Trinity and you find yourself wandering from one heresy to another. Fortunately she’d had enough and turned the pages of the story book, to his arrest and death and then resurrection.  

What our talk reinforced to me, is what CS Lewis said so many times, one of the reasons Christianity rings true, is that it is not something we humans would have come up with. The very fact that at times it seems to not make sense bears witness to the fact that it was not man made. 

Lewis said...

“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is

one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have

guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected,

I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing

anyone would have made up.”

A three year old heart felt the tug that something fundamental to this story is very very different from every other story she's heard. It has no flying ponies, or talking rainbows. But something even more incredible. A God who is fully one of us and fully God. You need not ask her if it is true, just look on her face and listen to her voice when she says "He's alive!, that's my favorite part".