stevedonnellyfaith-blog

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Natalie’s Special Talent (Post 125) 1-27-16

Natalie had her 11th birthday over the weekend and all went pretty well.  I had thought to have a party for her the other week and then totally forgot about the idea until Thursday when she proposed having a few friends over for Saturday afternoon. I felt like I had dodged a bullet.  

There just wasn’t time to plan anything more involved like a skating expedition, bowling, or the type of complexly managed extravaganza that now passes for a kid’s birthday celebration in our modern world.  She wanted to invite six friends over for about five hours of whatever, so it sounded as if her simple tastes were melding well with my total inability to plan and execute anything more intricate than store-bought cake with random ice cream leftovers.  I approved.  So Natalie got on her phone for a while and then let me know that her afternoon play-date had been upgraded to “birthday party” status.  The boomerang kerchunked off my forehead and came to rest at my feet accusingly.

So I shopped for snacks on Friday and got up early on Saturday morning with a plan to buy a last minute birthday cake, but, luckily Abby, arrived unsolicited but greatly welcome with cake in hand, decorations to hang, festive disposable plates to use and plan that relegated me to position of very junior assistant party host. 

I was greatly relieved and dropped down periodically into Nicholas’ commandeered basement bachelor pad to provide chopped vegetable snacks, chips, drinks and such while Abby acted as ring master for the occasion.  She had everything well organized including enforcing a ten minute rotation between the teams of three as they shared the game console. Because of Abby’s expert contribution the guests had a great time and whatever mayhem might have happened with me steering the ship was either eliminated or so greatly reduced that I couldn’t detect it.  About the worst damage was what looks like the remains of a Barbie sorority blow-out in Natalie’s room and a fresh smelling dog – one of my daughter’s friends was obsessed with perfuming poor Buddy.

Natalie is at a pretty fun age.  She is in band, but she and her bandmates practice little enough so that the concerts don’t take a very long time.  The tunes are recognizable because the teacher is very talented, but they generally play just a stanza or two so that as soon as you recognize the composition, the band is already stowing their instruments to the fervent applause of the parents.  

She is also in some activity called Ensemble, which I thought would be another band activity, but appears not to be.  I pick her up at 5 PM each Tuesday and sometimes she gives me some details about their activity which mostly sound like goofing around.  The finished product of all this Ensembling is a show in the spring, but “practice” takes all year and the script appears sketchy. It is run Natalie’s music teacher from last year, who, evidently, is fascinated by a unique skill that my daughter developed during her sabbatical year alone with my parents in Ohio while Nick underwent his chemo treatment.

During her hiatus, as near as I can discover, Natalie was trying to learn to whistle, but couldn’t master the technique. Instead, within her attempts, she stumbled on a way to produce a warbling counterpoint of tweets that sounds like an actual bird.  It was very disconcerting to me when I first moved in to my parents’ house because there are scores of birds that nest and feed in the back yard of the family home.  Also they have a clock in their sun-room that emits twelve unique bird calls depending on the hour struck.  I was forever looking for birds out the window or checking my cell phone to see what time it was only to have Natalie stroll by, absent-mindedly tweeting away.

Natalie says that her music teacher discovered Natalie’s talent when she heard one of my daughter’s distracted avian concerto during a break in the zither scraping and xylophone plinking music sessions.  The whole class was gathered to listen to Natalie’s talent.  The teacher must have been truly impressed as this year Natalie has been cast in Ensemble as some type of wandering bird in search of her song or on some other errand. 

Spring will tell whether this is a starring role or a bit part.  I was kind of hoping that Natalie could play her neglected clarinet as part of the ensemble so that I could feel like I was getting some kind of return for my debited monthly investment, but realistically there is no way that the music teacher could have parlayed the couple of stanzas of Twinkle Twinkle into a long enough arrangement so that all the summed weekly hours in Ensemble practice would not have looked like ridiculous over-kill retrospectively. 

Natalie was explaining all this to me as we drove from Ensemble to the grocery store one Tuesday afternoon a couple of weeks ago. I have been thinking about our conversation with regard to the recent readings concerning Gifts of the Spirit over the successive weeks.  Natalie has been given many unique and special talents that will reveal themselves over the course of her lifetime.  In this case the talent in question is actual tweeting – not electronically bashing of celebrities using a numerically constrained quantity of typed characters, although, possibly, a talent in that arena will also manifest in time.  

Bird chirping is a talent that she has no interest in teaching even her closest friends, as the allure of being the center of attention is greatly coveted by my youngest daughter.  Her talent will serve as a part of a greater Ensemble, but there will be no avian chorus. She is a solo artist, while I am a humble narrator. We each serve the Body in our way.

But the question remains:  “How will you serve the Body?” This weekend the ministries of IHM will ensemble with a buffet of information, offering you the opportunity to further incorporate yourself into the parish, which is an organ of the diocese, in an appendage of The Pilgrim Church, an aspect of the Communion of Saints. Each of us can choose to invest our ten talents as we see fit, or we can bury them if we dare, emulating a reading that none of us care for.  Certainly, IHM is not a small parish where the choices are limited to chocolate, strawberry or vanilla.  IHM is the Haagen Dazs of parish opportunity.  Choose one, or choose two.  Participate in the parish and grow with the Body of Christ.  Our family did and liked it.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faith #love #beleif #Birthday #family #talents #school #Gifts of the Spirit #The Body of Christ #IHM

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Three Things I Saw On Facebook (Post 124) 1-20-16

Natalie and I went through about a week of watching an episode a night of an HGTV show called Fixer Uppers on YouTube.  It was good father-daughter time and we both like the show.  Natalie likes the decorating and relationships, while, for me, the transformation aspect of the show reminds me of the kaizen events that I participate in at work, just in a different venue.  

Anyway we curled up on the bed nightly to watch Chip and Joanna Gaines provide a family with a dream house made out of a domicile that usually starts out as just plain ugly.  Among all the demolishing, building and decorating, the show is peppered with scenes of the Gaines’ family farm in Waco, Texas.  They have four young kids and do all the right things that parents should do while providing a wonderful finished product for their customers.

Natalie and I ran through several episodes successfully while others contained annoying glitches that made the picture freeze but the sound continue.  Those episodes were disappointments because the foul-ups would always occur around the first quarter point of the broadcast – just enough to wet our taste for the first of three proposed houses to renovate.  Undismayed we would just move on to the next available episode, forgetting eternally the poor couple forever trapped in a frozen loop of video but with continuing audio.  

After getting to know and love the Gaines family I happened across a short clip on Facebook of Joanna Gaines giving her personal testimony of how God has worked in her life and guided her through several very difficult family decision with His Still Small Voice.  Joanna has been given a gift and something about her quiet goodness draws people of faith to watch her show and her family even though her show is not overtly Christian.  Christ and love shine through them even though they are never quote scripture.

“He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said.” [1 Corinthians 12:10]

Neither is Penn Jillette’s act overtly Christian, because he and his partner Teller are atheist Libertarians.  So it was a great surprise to me to see a Facebook post my friend Jay shared, in which Penn was tearfully describing receiving a Book of Psalms from a fan at an autograph session after a show.  His description of the encounter is quite moving and although Penn professes to have proved that there is no God, Penn thinks it is totally consistent and admirable for Christian’s to evangelize him.  

Penn explains in the video that if any decent person were in a position where he was watching someone about to be run over by a bus, the person would certainly try to tackle the prospective victim despite the danger.  Penn extends his analogy by saying that a believing Christian who fails to try to reach out to an atheist is actually engaged in a form of hatred or spiritual laziness.  It is highly ironic that an avowed atheist like Pen Jillette can make such a strong argument for evangelism on the internet.  The man who contacted Penn has clearly affected him and it is possible to see that a bridge has possibly been opened by which Christ may eventually breach the wall erected by Penn against conversion.

The final Trifecta of spiritual messages that I encountered this week on the internet was an article about the importance of mathematician Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, an idea which the article calls the most important idea of the 20th Century.  

“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”

Gödel’s theorem was a major setback to Bertram Russel and his school of atheistic scientists who were searching for a combined theory of everything. The Incompleteness Theorem posits that no such combined theory could ever exist. 

Gödel’s idea also successfully explained why unprovable axioms are needed within the highly rational field of Mathematical Science.  Although Gödel’s theorem can be used for many purposes outside of Mathematics, the most interesting application is to prove the existence of God as a prerequisite for all other existence.  It may be the that Incompleteness Theorem which finally convinces Penn Jillette about the falseness of whatever flawed method by which he and Teller have proved that God doesn’t exist.  I can see how the comedian’s atheism is at risk already and how a rationale Theorem that indicates that nothing on Earth can prove the non-existence of God is an important development for rational atheists that consider themselves to be open minded.

 Overall I saw the Holy Spirit at work in each of the three gold nuggets that I happened upon.  I could see how Joanna Gaines was being lead to live a faithful, fulfilling and fruitful life with her family in front of the cameras as an example to the rest of us.  I saw how the Holy Spirit guided a Christian ninja through all of Penn Jillette’s atheistic barriers to make a powerful impression on Penn and on me. Also, I read about a powerful mathematical tool that strongly implies the existence of God.  Finally, I have passed on these three items from the internet for you to contemplate possibly completing whatever task God has provided for me when this week began.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #love #faith #belief #Fixer Uppers #family #testimony #Joanna Gaines #gift #1 corinthians 12 #Penn Jillette #evangelize #Kurt Goedel #Incompleteness Theorem

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A Hairy Science Project (Post 123) 1-13-16

Nicholas had a science experiment while he was a student at Excelsior Middle School that is famous in our family.  Pam and I were always pretty hands off with respect to that type of assignment as we thought that parental domination of school activities can be pretty smothering and lead to dependent behavior that inhibits initiative and accountability.  The most extreme example of out of control parenting was something that a friend shared while we were midshipmen at the Naval Academy.  He was one of my classmates, and upon discovering that I was from the Akron, Ohio area my friend told me that he had participated in the famous Akron Soap Box Derby as a kid.  I remember seeing pictures of the homemade race-cars in the paper that I delivered each morning, but I never attended.

My classmate explained that the kids in his neighborhood of Annapolis all took turns either winning or doing very well in the annual competition because their fathers were on staff in the USNA Engineering Department and which gave them access to a wind tunnel to test their derby entry each year.  My head nearly exploded as the racket was described.  A cabal of fathers colluding to leverage their access to specialized government lab equipment for the purpose of manipulating a win in a kid’s competition repulsed me.  Teaching kids to cheat seems to be exactly what parents should never do.

More interested in allowing my kids to get hands on experience building stuff, I usually just acted as safety observer when Stephen and Nick put together Pinewood Derby cars and Gutter Regatta boats for scouts.  With Nicholas’ homework, I participated only when he had an assignment that mandated parental participation or when he brought a question to me on his own initiative. My parents had brought us up to be as independent as possible so I tried to do that for my children as well. Certainly that worked out well for Abby, but with Stephen and Nicholas there were plenty of bumps in the road.

One of the bumps in the road for Nicholas was his science project.  Always a procrastinator, Nick invaded my bedroom in the evening of one work night and announced that he needed help on a project. He had a guilty look on his face, which he didn’t understand was an open invitation to cross-examination.  In very short order, I established four very disturbing facts: the project was due the next day, the project had not been started, the assignment had been made approximately two months before, and Nicholas’ approved project proposal was on hair growth.   

Now because most households today have access to the internet and also have at least one blank folding poster board lying around, completing a project in one night is definitely doable.  Nostalgically, I recalled that a standard project in my day was a diorama requiring only cotton balls, a shoe box, construction paper, glue and some plastic figurines of some sort.  Everybody kept that stuff around and a Sunday night emergency project was definitely feasible back then too.

Unfortunately, an emergency science project on hair growth is a total non-starter. Nicholas learned a valuable lesson about procrastination that night – unfortunately, the lesson was not that procrastination was bad, but rather, that self-aware procrastinators should carefully avoid proposing projects that require painstaking, prolonged and detailed records of experimental data. Even Chia pets can’t grow their hair in one night.  Nicholas’s project was totally doomed.

 We came up with something, though.  I believe that I even clipped and donated a lock of head hair of some sort as a sample.  In my memory Abby succumbed to a giggle fit when she reviewed the final train wreck that Nick was carting off to school the next day.  A clump of hair, a graph with two data points, and some informational printouts all garnered from Wikipedia undoubtedly was all that was there.  

In my day an equivalent half-hearted last minute submission would have been a collage of pictures all from the stack of National Geographic magazines that were obligatory for any fully-equipped basement or attic in the 70’s.  It would have garnered a well-deserved F or D-.  Nicholas’s project didn’t receive a failing grade, though, because these days the only way to fail a project is to express a Christian viewpoint.  Still Nicholas project certainly tested all the teacher’s self-esteem protection fail-safes.  His hackneyed mess stood out in full regalia among the highly glossed projects many of which appeared to have been produced by marketing firms.

Nick’s last minute hair project does make me chuckle, but it also could serve as a metaphor for what it must be like for an atheist or agnostic to discover Jesus late in life and decide that they better get cooking. I understand that no one can earn their way into Heaven, but the parable of the servant burying gold certainly makes me self-conscious about whether I am accomplishing enough as a Christian. I wasted a good amount of my early years chasing worldly things, so my batting average with respect to living my faith has only truly improved over the last decade.  Luckily God loves us all very deeply.

A Christian understanding of God is that He loves us very much even to the extent of sacrificing His Only Son for our salvation. Implicit in His great love for us and consistent with my experience, God will do everything in His power to achieve our salvation except violate our free-will.  

Ostensibly, I sought God to some extent for many years, but I didn’t search very effectively and I question how motivated I was to encounter The Holy Spirit, a meeting that would have served to curb my worldliness.  In my view, once a person becomes truly convinced God exists, then sinfulness becomes really really problematic.  Up until God proved His existence definitively to me during my journey with Pam’s illness, I always rationalized my sins by the argument that because I wasn’t 100 percent sure that God existed, my sin was understandable and defensible under the subterfuge of my doubt.

My feigned ignorance and unsurety about God made my continued sinful ways explainable rationally.  I tried to live my life in a Christian fashion and tried to do what I could to earn by merit what we can never earn by our actions until it was time for a good bout of sinning.  In those cases, I would “extinguish my belief,”  flip the God light switch to the off position so that, in my mind, I became invisible to Him, my Guardian Angel and all the other souls in Heaven and Purgatory, for my sinfest.  Then after the sinning was done, in remorse, I could reenter the universe of God like the Millennium Falcon dropping to sub-light speed.  Then it was off to Reconciliation for a quick car wash and a return to my daily Christian hypocrisy.

In many ways I was a functional agnostic hedging my bets through many years of Christian seeming pantomime.  Then, one day, I needed God to be real.  In desperation and fear at Pam’s early diagnosis, I truly wanted to encounter Jesus in a way that would extinguish all my doubt because I needed for our lives to matter and for a merciful God to be running the whole show.  

So I skedaddled across Ignacio Valley Road from John Muir Hospital where a surgeon was operating on my Pam’s brain.  I needed to find an occupied Tabernacle and I was sure that one would be present in the sanctuary of St John Vianny Parish, arriving there in desperation, I fell down on my knees and met Him and knew that He was there, in the place that I needed Him to be - where He had always been all those times that I had been pretending to look for Him.  No ruby slippers needed to be clicked.

Here in this time between Christmas and Lent as I type away at the start of the week, I am thankful for having been assured about the existence of God.  That I 100% believe, is a great relief to me as uncertainly only leads only to unhappiness and fear.  Belief in the afterlife resolves all the anxiety for me.  God truly does set me free.

Anyway, the Donnelly family is happy to be through the holidays, but for a late believer like myself, each day seems a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge’s Christmas Day.  In this New Year, this 2016, I will have the opportunity to prove that I believe, strengthen my belief through participating in the Church and happily, like Ebenezer, I discover each day that I have still more time.  My Christian project can still be done properly.  While I cannot claim that I have or even can earn an “A” with regard to my Christian behavior, I can prove that I grasp the concept through acting as Christ instructed us to behave towards others.  Although I surely will sin, I can do so without pretending that God does not exist.  I will not mentally negate Him, but instead I will do my best to proclaim Him in this Jubilee Year of Mercy.  Thanks be to God.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faith'family #parenthood #Christian #Good Servant #Golden Talents #sacrifice #salvation #free-willconcupience #Gardian Angel #heaven #reconciliation #St John Vianny #beleive #Year of Mercy

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A Bear Returns to Brooklyn (Post 122) 12-30-15

It was a Christmas where I thought about keepsakes and their value quite a bit.  I guess my understanding of keepsakes has formed that something is really a keepsake only when its personal value exceeds its monetary value by a factor of ten. For instance, the keepsake that reminds me most of my grandfather is a sales trophy that he won years ago selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners door-to-door in Boston.  He never gave me the trophy, it was in my parents’ house and it was not displayed prominently … with pretty thorough justification.  The statue is in the shape a gilded man like and Oscar with arms extended on high as if he is displaying a heavy weight champion belt, except he is holding a vacuum, one of the old-fashioned kinds that you pulled along behind you until eventually the plug pulled out of the wall.

Certainly the trophy is saleable; I have watched enough episodes of American Pickers to know that there is a market for oddball relics of the prosperity boom of the 50’s, but  I won’t be packing it off to Dayton, Ohio or wherever Antiques Roadshow holds their next swap meet disguised as a soiree. I know I am not depriving Natalie of a year’s tuition to Notre Dame or Ohio State, by keeping the statue.  It means more to me than the $20 that Mike Wolfe or Frank Fritz would offer due to its outstanding funkiness monetized.  Nor will the statue ever probably bask in the soft glow of a recessed spotlight as the centerpiece of my mantle, but neither will it languish in a box in the attic.  Each time I spy the Electrolux Oscar as he resides like a gargoyle on a bookcase above my desk, I will think of my grandfather fishing with me on his dock in Winter Harbor on Lake Winnipesauke in New Hampshire.  In my mind I consider the statue to be a major award, more modestly displayed than the ill-fated leg lamp in A Christmas Story.

My few keepsakes and their importance to me made the bear in the basement a problem to my conscience like the buried pulmonary organ in Poe’s story The Telltale Heart.  The keepsake bear has no place of suitable prominence in my home currently with nothing promising in the near future either.  I don’t have a lot of places to display a large-sized stuffed animal that was probably very special to my wife, but about which I had no knowledge whatsoever.  He isn’t a giant grizzly by any means.  Overall he is about the size of Natalie’s American Girl doll.  The most obvious and easiest cop-out solution would have been to add the bear to Natalie’s bounteous collection of stuffed critters.  She offered to house him several times, but her room is already near bursting with curios.  Natalie could outfit an entire battalion with various pellet filled frogs, over-stuffed ursine playthings and dolls or all sorts.  All of them are named and cherished, but they are legion. This bear had been particularly loved by Pam and he didn’t seem to deserve second-teamer status, like Kobe Bryant as an eighth man.

The bear had all the signs of being special to a kid, despite the fact that Pam never told me his name or relayed anything about his origin and history.  The bear had a tag that identified him as a Knickerbocker product.  That the tag was still affixed was truly wondrous because the bear was well worn.  His pelt was looking pretty spotty; he would have been a good candidate for a fur club purveying whatever treatment the Donald or Joe Biden have procured for their cranial rugs.  On the whole, though, that wasn’t the big problem.  The bear looked to have suffered what they termed in the navy as a sucking chest wound. His back left side rib cage had been kind of blasted to shreds by shotgun  so that the best emergency treatment option would have been wrapping him in Saran-wrap or a plastic bag to continue minimal lung function until a corpsman or a priest arrives to provide a better solution.

Anyway, no sheet of cellophane was necessary for the bear, as he had been sewn back together by a seamstress of rudimentary skill that could only have been a ten year old Pam.  A dog must have gotten a hold of Pam’s treasured toy at one time or another, which is exactly the dilemma I worried about if we brought him up into the house.  The bear was safe from dog attack in his plastic container residence in the basement utility room, but he might as well have been in a stuffed animal morgue.  I do keep some keepsakes for the kids there that I don’t feel are necessary to display continuously:  Wonder Woman lunch boxes, school memorabilia, souvenirs from long ago trips and old clothes that were once favorites.  The bear, on the other hand, had been a first teamer of some sort.  Each of my children has had a special stuffed animal, but never have I seen one as worn out as this bear.  There had been a lot of love poured into this particular keepsake, by a very special person to all of us.

Pamela bear is the only keepsake that I would put in a higher class.  She is Natalie’s bear, but only by inheritance.  With Pam home under hospice care at her last Valentine’s Day, I bought her a pink bear that smelled like the chocolate that she loved but could no longer eat.  Short of items to give to a six-year-old girl at the passing of her mother two days later, I gave Natalie the pink bear that had sat in bed with her mother as she slept her last few hours away before leaving us for a better place.  Pamela bear has been Natalie’ constant bed companion ever since and it shows.  The bear in the basement had been loved on the same level.

In the weeks after Pam’s death, I sent a few things to her sisters that I thought they might have wanted. A carving of her name and a Garfield doll that all of our children had tried to steal from Pam at one time or another.  Pam was an eldest child and considered here stuff to be her stuff, so I always imagined that her sisters probably had an eye out for Garfield as well.  I imagine that the little stuffed animal sits somewhere special in Pam’s sister Annette’s house where it catches her eye occasionally and reminds Annette of her sister Pam at the age when they grew up together. For so much of their adults lives the sisters were separated by miles and commitments that didn’t exist in their little four bedroom house in Brooklyn, Maryland where they had just been close family, not far-flung siblings.

I guess that connection through time was what finally convinced me that the bear should travel back to Maryland to Pam’s other sister Stephanie.  So I packed him up last Saturday along with Natalie’s, Stephen’s and my overnight bags for the six hour pilgrimage back to Kramme Avenue near the Annapolis snack bar where I first met Pam and began our life together.  It seemed the right decision:  either store the bear, risk the bear to Natalie and her doggies or return the bear to someone who would recognize him immediately.

As expected, Stephanie provided the name for the bear and stories about how an elder aunt had tried to separate Pam from her bear and blanket as officious adults sometimes do.  Stephanie let me see her imitation of the scowling freeze stare that Pam used on any of her siblings that attempted to touch the bear, blanket, Garfield doll or any other possession of their eldest sister.  

It is a pretty universal visage that I am sure my older brother used on me once upon a time.  It interested me greatly that the bear’s name was the same one that my oldest boy called his own favorite bear that remains in its own plastic container in the utility room of my basement.  I guess I will now consider the remaining animal who Walt Disney like awaits rediscovery to be Bear Bear Junior going forward.  As for Bear Bear Sr., in my estimation, the decision to repatriate Pam’s bear to Maryland was the right one.  I think Stephanie will cherish the keepsake because she has few reminders of Pam.

This ends my discussion of the Christmas of the Keepsakes. Some would chide me for even bringing up all this materialistic stuff in a column about Christian family life, but I don’t really see it that way.  Although we are cautioned against collecting material possessions, I think that refers to more worldly items.  In the Catholic faith images, relics and sacramentals are very important not because of their earthly value but because they draw our soul towards what they are spiritually connected to.  Stephanie will not worship Mr. Bear Bear Sr, anymore than I worship my Electrolux trophy, and neither of us are likely to worship our family members that have the Pilgrim Church to assume their places in the Church Triumphant.  It is helpful for us to think of them still because we all remain parts of the Body of Christ together.  By keeping the trophy where I can see it, I maintain a stronger bond to my grandfather than I would otherwise hold.  My pictures of Jesus and Mary work likewise.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #love #faith #keepsakes #A Christmas Story #The Telltale Heart #bereavement #happiness #siblings #Christmas #relics #sacrementals #The Body of Christ

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The Coconut Monkey (Post 121) 12-31-15

My younger brother Sean has told my children several times that I have carted around the same odd five or six personal possessions for the last forty years. Of course that is an exaggeration, but I don’t have large collections of stamps, coins, beer cans, Star Trek figurines, or Beanie Babies that I mindlessly transport from domicile to domicile. I have some few items that remind me of Pam or my grandparents, some junior high woodworking projects, some mementos of my naval service and a coconut monkey given to me as a Christmas gift by my younger brother Dan when we were in elementary school.

We didn’t start out giving each other gifts at all, but when we got into grade school my mother set aside some money for us each to buy each other presents.  The budget was small as four boys times six presents can run into a lot of time and money during a season where mom’s routinely have little of either.  At the time we started the present swap, my sister Amy was still being fed Gerber products with a spoon, so she wasn’t shopping, but I’m sure managing a toddler along with four older brothers just added to the chaos.

Anyway things got easier once we got old enough to have paper routes, and we had Christmas tips added to the kiddie.  We could also walk around a mall by ourselves. These days, most people would probably not cut a tribe of kids that age loose in a mall by themselves, but those were different times with fewer known crazies and a gun shootout at Spenser’s Gifts, Orange Julius or Kay Bee Toys was something that no one would have considered. 

 Having us split up throughout the mall was never my parent’s intention to begin with.  Usually our dispersal just sort of happened, although all of us boys would immediately make off and ditch the family whenever my dad headed into a book store.  Our entire house was full of books and there was nothing more boring than watching our father stand in the same spot for fifteen minutes staring at a row of bindings, reaching out and selecting one, opening the book to read the jacket, closing the tome and returning it to its approximate position on the same shelf. We all knew that when Dad headed towards Walden’s, it was time to peel off the back of the formation and escape up the nearest escalator.

Because we all usually walked around the mall in one direction or the other, we would usually collect again naturally as we collided like ions attaching themselves to a larger molecules.  Usually brother Dan was the last to be found. Sometimes we would have to split the main molecule back up into smaller search parties to locate him from his several peculiar haunts throughout the mall, but eventually he would be found usually by whoever was staking out Hot Sam’s in the food court. Dan loved candy bars, powdered donuts and anything available in a mall food court so he was bound to turn up there eventually.

Dan was easy to buy presents for as his taste was pretty low-brow.  He liked decorated mirrors, velvet art, KISS memorabilia, and tee-shirts with bad jokes – I liked those too.  Usually you could shop for Dan in Spencer’s without fail, except you had to time your stop in that shop very specifically so as not to run into Dan himself or any of the other family members shopping for Dan.  It was usually OK to kind of case Spencer’s entrance from another store like Chess King and wait until Dan’s glucose dropped to an unusually low level, maybe 100, at which time Dan would book out of there in search of some cotton candy or caramel popcorn.  Then it was OK to rush into Spencer’s quick and buy him a Smokey and the Bandit lager stein, tee-shirt depicting the orangutan from Every Which Way But Loose making an obscene gesture or whatever item you last saw Dan pick up and put down.

 My brother spent a lot of quality time in that store, which made it very unsurprising to me when I opened up my gift from Dan one Christmas and discovered I was the proud owner of the a coconut rudely carved into the likeness of Curious George the chimpanzee of storybook fame.  I was less than delighted.  I was heavily into board games of all sorts: Clue, Risk, Yahtzee, Life, etc.  My brother had purchased me something that he liked instead of what I liked.  It represented a total failure of empathy on his part.  He had in no ways paid any attention to my Christmas List.  It was a bummer.

 But I kept the monkey.  It followed me to High School in Boston and was a decoration for my room in the family Ohio house during my four years at Annapolis.  Once I graduated, the coconut monkey was packed into my little chest of eight or so most personal belongings that followed me into matrimony and life in Virginia, Kentucky, Carolina, Indiana and California. Finally, the coconut monkey has returned to Ohio with me and sits on a book case in Stephen’s room where the décor suits the much-traveled simian.  When I happen in there each evening to rake up my son’s laundry, I often notice George staring down from his gargoyle perch and think of my brother Dan both as he was at ten and as he is now, a protestant minister in his late forties who I call for counsel whenever I need to make a difficult decision.

It is odd how the monkey was at one time a very imperfect gift from my brother who desired the monkey for his own; Dan collected monkeys of all sorts.  But the monkey became something else for me, a touchstone that can transport me back Chutes and Ladders style passing by much pain and difficulty to my childhood where we were innocent, or as innocent as a bunch of boys could be who would ditch their family to search for the taste of illicit corn-dogs and some time to weigh the value of purchasing a second lava lamp against the marginal utility of owning yet another black light poster.

 I believe that we are all imperfect gift givers of various sorts.  We give each other love … well sort of anyway.  We buy each other gifts and hope that the return gift is that secret thing that we have had our eye on.  We buy our spouse the thing that she has been hinting at, but botch the brand or color. Sick of missing the mark with the kids, we get a gift card to a place where they can pick out their own electronics, clothing or music.  Sometimes we hit the mark and there is joy; other times we get a shake of the head and toleration.  Infrequently, there are tears of a good kind or the other.

We are also gift givers to Jesus, and the Son of Man truly does have everything.  We offer Him our prayers, our gold, our frankincense and our myrrh.  Our gifts to Him please Him although He wants for nothing. He does desire our love, which our sacrificial gifts demonstrate.  Our special gifts to our spouses, children and family members are really just another aspect of our practice in love which brings us closer to Him.  Sometimes we give an imperfect gift like the coconut monkey that I received so many years ago, but with Christ even a gift that is imperfect is transformed.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #Teh Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faith #life #gifts #memories #family #childhood #joy #Christmas #Son of Man #sacrifice

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

The Gift of Sacred Art (Post 120) 12-16-15

Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God - the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ, who "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature," in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily."297 This spiritual beauty of God is reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the angels, and saints. Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier. [2502 CCC]

I saw a link on Facebook that my younger brother had liked that, for me, was the equivalent of sticking a fork in a toaster.  I get that sometimes as I scroll through hoping that one of my friends had shared something truly funny, uplifting or thoughtful. I like pictures of family happenings or friendly Californians mostly.  It is good to see which babies have been born, whether it was a boy or a girl, or whether the bundles of joy resemble whichever grandfather I know from the Men of Saint Joseph.  Usually the babies look much cuter, but that is most certainly for the better.

Strolling on my scrolling, I will often stumble across something unlooked for of the powerfully Christian variety or the story of a soldier or fireman that prevents me from proceeding further on my merry way, a story that demands attention, one that cannot be ignored.  Often, though, these posts invite but have attached videos that may take too much time or appear to be chilly mountain spring pools of untold depth of emotional content.  Invigorating – maybe, but also with the possibility of having a dangerous undertow into a nadir of depression.  When the siren song is not too overcoming, I cautiously avoid getting wrapped up in those that appear most dangerous.

Sometimes, though, my curiosity overcomes my caution and I click on the link without stopping and weighing the pros and cons, risks and rewards.  For instance, I continue to avoid the commercial of the old man who tricks his children into visiting him with a funeral invitation.  It is a good practice to take a daily dip into some pool of emotion, bathing equally in happiness, sadness and thoughtfulness, but I try to stay out of the deep end.  Certainly, life without happiness is drudgery.  Sadness, in moderation, provides the perspective to appreciate happiness.  Existence without thought is a never-ending episode of Sponge Bob. Despair seems to result from choosing one of the three pools exclusively.

In this case the link was only a picture of Jesus, not a sad or time absorbing link, but I knew I recognized the piece. I was hooked, but still I could not decide where I had seen the painting or why I found that particular face of Jesus mesmerizing.  I didn’t think it was the picture that Pam and I had gotten from her Grandmother but had never hung.  I am partial to religious art, but the background of the picture that now sits in the “to be hung” stack in the corner of my bedroom was a chocolate that has never appealed to me.  It is kind of a brownish pallet that reminds me of basement veneer paneling from the 70s. Sometimes pieces of sacred art pierce my soul, but the unhung picture that I was thinking of had never laid a glove on me.  

I experienced a similar fascination with the statue of Rachel by the Parish Life Center of IHM.  I cannot walk by it without praying for the healing of mothers who have chosen abortion. The Stations of the Cross in the contemplation garden also draw me to prayer, yet the sculptures of Mary by the same sculptor do not.  Abby, on the other hand, prefers the Marian statues that I remember Father Jim once referring to as spooky.  Art impacts me to a varying degree regardless of whether works are considered masterpieces.  Certainly I can recognize differentiate a Renaissance master work from a velvet Elvis, but spiritual impact often intrigues me more that than the fame of the artist.  For some reason this picture radiated and resonated prayerfulness through me.

Anyway because I was cooling my jets in a hospital ER for a routine IV treatment that Natalie needs about once a year when she gets the flu, I decided to dive in and click on my brother’s link.  I judged the prospect that the video would be depressing, offensive or political to be low and although I didn’t know where I recognized the painting from, I knew that I wanted to know more about it.  The result was about 6 minutes of happiness. I discovered that the painting was The Head of Christ by Warner Sallman, a Protestant artist from the early part of the last century who, up against a magazine deadline, had a vision of Christ that he captured in oil.  He painted a series of paintings of Christ using the visage he had been given to convey a variety of the manifestations of Christ’s goodness. Sallman’s portrait of Christ knocking at the door of a heart made me feel the greatest influx of His love, but it was his simplest painting, The Head of Christ, on the other hand, was the most hauntingly familiar.  I knew I had seen it before and that there was mysterious connection of it to my soul.

Later that afternoon my mother solved the mystery for me. A family print of the portrait hangs in the back portion of her bedroom where I only usually go to get something on an errand for my father.  The print hung for years in my grandparent’s bedroom in Hampton, New Hampshire.  The print was very familiar to me yet I do not remember going into my grandparent’s bedroom more than a handful of times over the years and not at all since 1983.  My mother would not have acquired the painting until nearly the time that we moved to California so my attraction to Sallman’s work is not nostalgia. There is no reason why I should feel a special connection to the painting, but it jumped out at me on a routine scroll down through Facebook, where, thanks to my devout brother, I am confronted with pictures of Jesus routinely.

Upon my return home, I checked on the other portrait as well.  My mother couldn’t understand why anyone would own a picture of Jesus and not display it reverently.  I am guilty as charged.  I found I am a proud owner of a partially flaking print on cardboard of Charles Bosseron Chamber’s Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Once it is hung, the painting will be one of several different rendition of Jesus’ Sacred Heart in my bedroom and it will unfortunately be the third favorite of the three.  That is probably okay, though.  I doubt that I would know which of the two portraits would be more favored by an art critic; my younger brother might hazard a guess as I believe he had a minor in art history, a possible reason for the link. 

I am drawn to the Sallman’s work, though, possibly because it has been present throughout my life, albeit as a very very background influence.  I think it more than possible that each of our spiritual sensibilities is slightly different, like the different reeds used in woodwind instruments. (I think a lot about reeds every time I see the case of Natalie’s unplayed clarinet sitting abandoned on the bookcase next to the table where I take my morning repast.)  I think there is a unique timber to how God has made our souls in relation to him so that if we all choose to exercise our spiritually in the way that he intended, our faith will weave together a beautifully coordinated melody that would serve as a counterpoint to angelic voices.  There is a purpose to the differences of our eyes, emotions and voices that is entailment to our intended contribution to His masterwork of which we are intended to play a part.  We need only cooperate  for our soul to harmonize with the rest of creation.

Note – Natalie is fully recovered and was back to school just in time to play her clarinet at her 5th grade band concert.  She played well.  Maybe music speaks to her.  Also my favorite piece of sacred art is the Madonna of the Streets because it reminds me of Pam for no rational reason, but that is why sacred art is different than regular art.  Sacred art impacts the soul through the eye in a way that allows us to discern more about God emotionally than we can learn with written words.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faith love #sacred art #creation #Rachel #Stations of the Cross #Father Jim Sullivan #prayerfulness #Head of Christ #Warner Sallman #CHarles Bosseron CHambers #Sacred Heart of Jesus #soul #Madonna of the Streets

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Christmas Cards (Post 119) 12-9-19

I remember a couple decades ago when I ceased to give out Christmas cards. In fact, I stopped almost all my habitual practices that characterized the holiday season.  I think we were living in Fort Wayne and I had noticed that the icicle lights, which I had risked life and limb to hang, had been transformed through a Midwestern freezing rain storm into actual icicles. There was no way that those lights would be electrically safe the next year and I was sick of all the holiday routine of unpacking ornaments and decorations,  installing them, repacking them and finally removing them to storage usually around St Patrick’s Day.   Pam loved Christmas, but I reduced our entire holiday extravaganza down to just the tree, presents, stockings, railing garland and a door wreath – so the neighbors didn’t think we were atheists.

I think that may have been the year that I didn’t send out any Christmas cards and nobody complained.  One of the survival strategies that I learned as a perpetually overworked Surface Warfare Officer was to periodically test the importance of any administrative task by “forgetting” to perform said task.  If no senior officer yelled at me, I assumed the system test was a success and parlayed the time management coup into fifteen extra minutes of daily sleep, bring my total to around four hours.  Anyway, I retired from my annual exercise in perpetuating Hallmark’s corporate profitably at about the same time I ceased and desisted the ladder-work portion of my Christmas preps … until about four years ago.

Something changed in my heart during Pam’s and my struggle to reorient our lives as her battle with cancer raged through different chemo’s, rounds of radiation and endless physical, occupational and speech therapies. She explained that we should be doing more for Catholic Charities as all of them did a very good job for people usually on a shoe-string budget.  Pam thought that the good people who were involved in all the mailings that we were receiving would be quite satisfied with any donations we could make as God was working with them to bring abundant fruit even from our smallest offerings.

I took her words to heart and began to do more whenever we could.  We had plenty of opportunity, as I, after reading a biography of Solanus Casey that Barb, my Mother-In-Law, had given the family, I decided to try out a method to obtain healing for Pam that was related to him. Father Solanus had been a conduit for many miracles worked in Detroit during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s through the Capuchin charity the Seraphic Mass Society.  I discovered that the Society still had an online presence and hoped that Pam might be cured through the intercession of the Venerable Father Casey. Although Pam was not physically cured, through my online donation I did discover something very fundamental about all Catholic Charities: they share their mailing list and donor rosters. Quite soon I was receiving a vast snowdrift of charitable solicitations from worthy Catholic causes in Stockbridge, MA; Bellville, IL; and somewhere in Alabama as well as Wisconsin.  Happily they did not do any phone solicitations, as the kindly vampires from the Red Cross would have been quite put out to have someone honing in on their gig.  

I actually liked the mail, as I usually don’t get much that is very interesting, but these mailings often included likable trinkets, so upon receipt I carefully stored all the envelopes awaiting inspiration from the Holy Spirit.  By carefully stored, I mean that haphazardly stuffed them into a large recycled gift bag and stored them in the walk-in closet that I had partially converted into a Barbie zone and “dance club” for Natalie.  Periodically, from that point, as friends, family members or people for whom I was otherwise praying had a sick or ill family member I would be reminded of my stockpile of blessings in the closet.  Usually the reminder was receiving another load of cards from the usual Catholic subjects. 

So I began a habit of interceding for people through these organizations.  I liked the economy of sending cards from a Catholic charity because they usually include a Mass stipend of some sort, so I was not only notifying people of my empathy, which can have been done with a Hallmark style card that I tended never to get around to.  A condolence or get well card from a Catholic Charity also let the person know that they were theoretically in my prayers, (more or less I’m not Mother Theresa) which I guess one could also do on Facebook.  Being remembered in a Mass, though, is the highest form or prayer, so I felt good about providing spiritual sustenance from people who actually do it well.  Additionally, I knew that the money I sent will also being spent charitably, another feature not offered by Facebook or Hallmark.  In the system I had adopted from practices as old as the Church, the condolence cards bought from the various charities might put a new pair of shoes on a kid in Africa or it might merely help keep the lights on in an underfunded monastery.  So there was extra grace distributed throughout the Body of Christ whenever I went digging in the Barbie zone for my stockpile of cards.

I also really liked the various trinkets.  I couldn’t in good conscience claim whatever rosary or doodad was enclosed until I had made a donation.  So I looked forward to any opportunity to give to St Bertha the Great’s monastery in upstate Arkansas or whatever organization sent me the most enticingly Catholic Cracker Jack prize.   As each of my donations led to more mailings, the selection was always pretty good. My bag would fill up pretty fast and I would conduct an archaeological excavation pretty frequently.  It all worked:  my friends were getting cards and prayers, the charities were getting money and I was getting a variety of Catholic bric-a-brac that I mostly just stored away as I already had a lifetime’s worth of rosaries, scapulars and prayer cards from my Mother-In-Law and Pam’s grandmother.  I imagine all the Saints and poor souls in purgatory also played a part in the giant lattice of grace that was triggered by the simple need of one of my friends or relatives.

Eventually the bag would fill up and I would have to winnow out my haystack of potential intercessors.   I guess I didn’t know enough sick and dead people to use up the avalanche of material I was receiving, but I always carefully opened up everything I received, because several of the charities were sending sacramentals along with their solicitations.  I felt bad that I couldn’t respond to each solicitation, but I also felt it wasn’t right to pitch all the oils, waters and statuettes into the dustbin.  On several occasions I discovered that charities had mailed me relics of Padre Pio or other saints.  I would rather they had not done that because I am sure that many of the relics do end up in landfills.  Still my meager donations have not, to this point, resulted in any of the charities asking me to sit on their board of directors, so, in the meantime, I try to be careful to see what is enclosed in all the extra packages that I don’t use before I pitch them. 

That is how I ran across the Christmas cards.  We had always used to get Christmas cards from Pam’s grandmother who acquired extra packages at garage sales, flea markets, five-and-dime stores (she was pretty old) and even from kids selling them door to door.  They were of varying quality and sometimes had secular verbiage - I discarded those.  Overall the price was right, so I used the free stockpile throughout the first decade or so of my marriage until I went Grinch-style after the frozen Christmas light episode.

As I was hunting through the bag of mass Catholic mailings, I noticed that many of them were related to a particular holiday or Saint’s day.  If I had missed the novena for the feast of St Andrew, I knew it was safe to pitch that stack of cards as I would surely receive another round of solicitations related to that day about 300 days hence.  So as I was purging the All Saints day layer back about three years ago, I discovered that all my favorite intercessory players were sending me packs of Christmas cards as well.  I considered what I was doing to celebrate Christmas which was the bare minimum passable for the kids not to be permanently scarred.  I considered Pam’s love of Christmas and her instruction to me to give to Catholic Charities in her memory.

So if you happen to receive a card from me from the Society of St Bartholomew or some such please think of Pam smiling at you from heaven.  The cards will generally be Christ related as the secularization of Christmas was one of the things that began to dampen my enthusiasm for the season. Most of all enjoy the cards with the understanding that the lattice of the Body of Christ has been strengthened in some small way in this cold time of year when many poor and others are suffering. Certainly give gifts to each other, but don’t forget all the various Catholic organizations as well.  They do good work.

#God #Jesus #the Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope faith #love #holidays #Christmas Cards #Christmas #charity #Solanus Casey #offering #miracles #capuchino #Seraphic Mass Society #intercession #prayer #Mass #relics #sacrementals

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Family Gatherings (Post 118) 12-2-15

About two months ago Pam's mother Barb let me know about that Pam's Aunt Patty was planning a family reunion for the Saturday after Thanksgiving and asked us if we would be able to make it down.  I told her we would attend as my social calendar is as empty as the state of Wyoming in a spring snow storm.  I think my next semi-firm appointment is my brother's retirement from the Navy this spring. I don't count the plant Christmas party because really that is business.  

I will probably attend that as well, as my office mate has solemnly promised me that he will not twerk this year.  Several people have offered to provide me with video clips of his outstanding performance last year, but I am a "no twerking none of the time" type of guy.  Anyway I guess I have a few things I will be going to this holiday season, but a trip down to Maryland sounded like a good way for Natalie to get to meet more of Pam's family than she has gotten to see since we migrated back East.

Although Abby had made plans to spend Thanksgiving with her friend Tyler in New York City, she arranged her schedule so that she could catch a bus down to Baltimore on Friday morning.  As usual, she had everything about her week in New York and the transit south to meet up with the rest of the family planned down to a tee.  Nicholas also performed to his consistent level of planning efficiency by forgetting to ask off from work at O'Reilly's Auto Parts but that was serendipitous for me as his oversight freed me from having to kennel the two dogs that my middle children conned me into allowing them to purchase nearly two years ago.  One of the two critters is actually lying on my legs and gnawing on a raw hide product as I am typing.

So everything about the trip to Maryland went smoothly unless you count the text message that I got almost immediately after leaving my Ohio house. It was from Tyler who let me know Abby's schedule because Abby had left her phone accidentally in Tyler's dormitory room and was headed to Baltimore incommunicado - something no normal person has considered doing on purpose since 2005.  Unfortunately for Abby, I had goofed off that morning and slept in late enough so that my vector was trailing her now silent arrival into the greater Baltimore area by several hours.  Luckily, Barb was able to coordinate an effective meetup without the need of cellular communication.  I wasn't all that disturbed as the rendezvous was in broad daylight at the White Marsh park-and-drive which, in no way, resembles the hood.

Stephen, Natalie and I arrived at Barb's house a few hours later to find Abby and Denny, Pam's father, binge watching some type of post zombie apocalypse martial arts cable series of which I had never heard.  Abby had planned to stay at the house with Denny, Barb, Pam's brother and his son.  She wanted to do what she could to cheer up Denny who was recovering from shoulder surgery and has been feeling out of sorts.  In retirement Denny likes to keep busy but physical activity does not mix well with a shoulder sling.  My father-in-law looked quite pleased to have his granddaughter handy for watching what looked to me to be the modern equivalent of a spaghetti western.

The rest of us, on the other hand, were scheduled to stay with Pam's uncle Johnnie, a retired probation officer who lives alone in the old house that his father had built for the family fifty or sixty years previous.  Johnnie gets a kick out of Natalie and Abby, but was quite satisfied to have at least one of them under his roof, which is located about twenty minutes away and within a couple of minutes' drive of the family plot where Pam is buried along with her grandparents.  We met up with Johnnie at one of Pam's sisters' houses located another twenty minutes from Pam's folk's house in another direction entirely.  Pam's Baltimore-centric immediate family does a Friday night post-Thanksgiving left-over pot luck that was quite enjoyable.  Plates cleared, we trailed behind Uncle Johnnie, or UJ as the kids call him, back towards his Hanover, MD abode after the dinner broke up.

I stayed up a while talking with him after Natalie shuffled off to her guest bedroom.  Stephen and I were sleeping in the living room.  I enjoy talking to Johnnie as he and I share many interests.  His politics are more conservative than mine and he prefers the Latin Mass only while I am more Catholic with respect to my Catholic masses, but we both share a love for military history.  With regard to the Civil War, he likes the gentility of the Gray while I prefer the idealism of the Blue.  I am forever a Yankee in all respects other than baseball, but Johnnie and I appreciate each other's opinion.  We also share an unspoken camaraderie as circumstances have turned both of our lives into sometimes lonely but not morose slogs in the footprints of those who have preceded us towards and though the veil to eternal life.

We woke up relatively late, breakfasted and made a quick stop at the cemetery for a visit with Pam and her grandparents before heading to the family reunion on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  Natalie was pleased that her memorial stones painted as a butterfly and hamburger were still in the same positions on the graves where she had left them in September.  Some poor soul had pilfered the bronze vase from the marker assembly of Pam's grandmother, but Johnnie was already aware of the desecration and seemed resigned to the fact that we live among a generation of grave robbers.  

After a short visit and no tears we began a much longer car trip than I expected to where Barb's other sibling, Patty, now resides.  Her husband, a twice retired cop - formerly a barracks commander for the State Police and then a County Sherriff - has now found work in an unelected second-in-command at the Sherriff's office of a county that is very close to a place called Ocean City that I had heard of but never visited.  I believe that Ocean City is a Maryland equivalent of the Jersey Shore without as much swearing and orange toner.  That might be an inaccurate characterization as I am a rank amateur with respect to Maryland cultural studies.

The journey did include a fly-by of Annapolis, my stomping ground several decades previous, but mostly the drive broke new ground for me.  I am sure that I probably have been across the Bay Bridge - Chesapeake version, but I didn't really remember the road or the scenery.  I did notice a definite improvement in how property was maintained in the towns of the Eastern Shore in comparison with some of the Baltimore neighborhoods we had driven through the previous day.  Things appeared conservatively well-kept if not crazy wealthy and the drive was a pleasant one.  I was just glad that the reunion was not planned for the summer as there seemed to be only one main drag, Route 50, which probably would be grossly inadequate for the onslaught of weekend beachcombers if we were visiting in the last days of July instead of the final November weekend.

Once we arrived, we enjoyed the party although we found the festivities slightly divided along family lines as many reunions tend to be.  Patty's relatives tended to congregate in the living room and sun room of the house, while her husband's relations mostly conversed in the kitchen and family room.  It was a natural division and an amicable one.  I had joined the family over a quarter century pervious and had encountered a couple of Scott's extended family members less than a handful of times.  

I caught up with the lives of those few that I knew, but mostly played wingman for Johnnie when I wasn't conversing with Abby.  Natalie played with the pack of collective kiddies, while Stephen wandered around the yard which had little bit of a beachhead on a creek-side location that let into a river then into the Chesapeake and eventually into the Atlantic. I was disappointed not to catch of whiff of salt marsh, an odor that evokes my seafaring days.  Unfortunately, this property was more inland and manicured like a golf-course in a tasteful and charming sort of way.  Perhaps Copperopolis, Round Valley and Muir Wood has spoiled me so that I can now only appreciate the breathtaking.  Ohio fall forest colors does fit the bill, though.

While we were frittering through the afternoon in small talk over light snacks, I did catch a bad vibe from Johnnie.  The nexus of his discomfort seemed to be the respective spouses of the brother and sister who had been the flower girl and ring bearer at my wedding what seems like eons ago.  To my eye both had married well.  The ring bearer had picked up the tools of the family trade, a badge and pistol of some sort.  His spouse was a pretty blonde whose slim waist seemed in congruent with her three rug rats that I could see pictured in the family portrait on the coffee table next to where we sat.  His sister had married a nice looking young man that was thoroughly balding but pretty athletic for a posture that was probably pushing thirty-five. I watched him pitch whiffle balls to his two pre-school aged sons alternately.  The younger one was a tiger. 

I didn't see the problem, so Johnnie explained the issue.  Both the spouses were atheists and none of the kids had been baptized.  Under closer observation, I noticed that neither of the spouses really smiled or enjoyed other people. Maybe they were put off by being tertiary participants in a family gathering that didn't interest them, but they seemed to be alone within a large group of joyous people. It is possible that other people were thinking the same thoughts about me, but their separation seemed to be palpably different, and I considered adding the two of them to my prayer list, but I didn't know their names.  Johnnie couldn't provide them, he said that he had never been introduced in the half decade since the two joined the family.  Evidently, both the flower girl and ring bearer live quite close to Johnnie, but there is no contact between them. I expect that UJ is the Godfather of both of them as he is to one of my children.

 The separation seemed strange and disheartening to the both of us.  Both of the little families had raised high bulwarks to prevent any possible intrusion of Jesus Christ. I expect that someday and unforeseen tragedy will visit them in their purposefully insular worlds and they will discover that their walls bricked to keep out Our Savior will unfortunately form a bathtub of pain for them to marinate in.  Neither Johnnie, Jesus nor I are satisfied with that situation, but we respect and disagree with their choices as responsible adults.  

I am not a particularly good prayer warrior, but I do plan to spend some time praying for something to innocuously breach the walls of their atheistic aquaria.  Advent seems like an excellent time to affix our eyes on a better outcome for whatever relatives and friends we have that have chosen problematic paths that are currently orientated away from True North.

#Jesus #God #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faith #love #family #holidays #gathering #bereavement #Latin Mass #Catholic #eternal life #baptism

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

A Drive with Abby (Post 117) 11-25-15

Instead of our usual Saturday morning breakfast, Abby asked me to take her to the bus terminal in Cleveland so that she could head farther east to New York City for a vacation rendezvous with one of the first friends that she met at Excelsior Middle School when we moved in Discovery Bay. Unfortunately since the bus ride is a ten hours slog, I ended up having to get up early enough to arrive at my brother’s house where she is staying in time for our 6:30 AM rendezvous.  Saturday is a morning of the week on which I usually sleep in to recharge my batteries, but I often only get to see Abby once a week because of our busy schedules so I cut my weekend recuperative somnolence short. Driving her to Cleveland was a priority, but the early hours necessitated a pit stop at Duncan Donuts. We tried Panera first, but they only serve late risers who can eat a leisurely breakfast later in the morning than we had time for.

It was a good ride of close to an hour that could have actually been forty-five minutes, as I don’t follow GPS instructions well when I am in conversation.  The polite lady voice had to recalculate and redirect us several times much to Abby’s disgust, but my daughter and the anonymous disembodied voice both tolerated my navigational shortcomings.  My ability to filter out interruptions did not serve me well in this case.  A skill that probably started as a coping response to parenting four young children, may one day manifest into the type of indecisiveness that transforms me into an abominable road hazard.  

Currently, I have no problem bombing off into the wrong direction with the understanding that my electronic helping orienteer will eventually get me over the river and through the woods.  One day I will certainly be the guy freezing at all intersections while everyone honks at me.  I figure that I probably have about 20 more years before all my bad driving habits metastasize, but hopefully by then the nice electronic lady will actually be turning the wheel herself and pushing the pedals.

Anyway, as I was missing turns and passing correct exits, we talked about just about every subject under the sun.   We talked about ISIS and about her nostalgia for our North Carolina days when we were habitually poor.  Her favorite anecdote is about how I often used to turn left-over taco cheese into bread fondue with the magic RF energy of our microwave. There must not have been any further change left to be found out of the couch cushions during the week that I created that tasty dish.  I am sure that it is a story she will share with her children one day as a modern version of a Depression Era fried bologna or SPAM meal tale from a bygone age.  We covered such a wide variety of subjects that I can scarcely remember them all.  Such is a drive with Abby.

I will miss her on Thanksgiving Day.  For a twenty-two year old, she cooks a mean turkey even though she now has so many food allergies that her enjoyment of holiday meals is extremely limited.  Mostly I miss talking to the one person who most fully shared what I went through in the final months with Pam.  Whether I was leaving my sleeping station on the floor by my wife’s bed or relinquishing my spot helping her move around the house, it was Abby who relived me of my duties in our perpetual rotation that finally resolved itself in a way that we dreaded and probably expected although we chose not to discuss what we knew was inevitably coming for Pam.

Abby will be spending her holiday with her friend in NYC, while I spend mine here with Stephen, Nick and Natalie in Ohio. Two lives on separate trajectories: one enjoying new adventures and staring forward in anticipation of earthly things to come, the other looking to complete his mortal projects while trying to uncover and discover what happens in the next journey.  It strikes me more and more how the work I am doing in Ohio is really the logical extension of the work I had started for my last employer that had gotten bogged down and derailed for various reasons over the last several years.  It is a great gift to me to see what actually might have been done within an organization that is cohesive.

Family life should also have a singleness of purpose – that all members attain their place at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Abby and I felt a great unity and mutual respect with regards to our care for Pam.  We knew what our main thing was.  The arguments that we had at the time were trivial and we can no longer remember them except when we are nostalgic for portions of the past that are as comedic and stupid as nacho cheese fondue with stale bread for dinner. 

Although Abby will not be with me eating much better fare on this Thanksgiving Day, I remain as grateful as can be for the great change in my life that Jesus has wrought.  As is our new tradition, the Donnelly’s will attend Mass on Thursday morning.   We are now wont to give thanks twice over, having discovered Father Jerry’s favorite Mass of the year, when none are obligated but many arrive knowing it is proper to seek a blessing on their bread and wine for the great feast of togetherness that this great nation celebrates in imitation of another greater feast that we will someday join.  

Isn’t it odd that like Cain so many American’s are fleeing the idea of God, but they still celebrate Thanksgiving.  Just who do they think they are thanking? For me Thanksgiving starts with the Eucharist, but no matter how you celebrate be at peace.  May all your families enjoy a lovingly long weekend enjoying each other’s company and forgetting irritations that are unimportant within God’s individual development plan for each and every one of us.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #faith #hope #love #bereavement #Thanksgiving Day #thanks #illness #family #Wedding Feast #memories #gratefulness #Father Jerry Brown

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Our Maccabean Choice (Post 116) 11-18-15

“Before she could finish speaking, the boy said,

King Antiochus, what are you waiting for? I refuse to obey your orders. I only obey the commands in the Law which Moses gave to our ancestors. You have thought up all kinds of cruel things to do to our people, but you won't escape the punishment that God has in store for you. It is true that our living Lord is angry with us and is making us suffer because of our sins, in order to correct and discipline us. But this will last only a short while, for we are still his servants, and he will forgive us.”

[2 Maccabees 7:30-33]

In a way the terrorists of ISIS are as irrelevant as Antiochus was to the seventh son of the faithful mother in Second Maccabees.  Terrorists of whatever era have never been able to harm the immortal souls of believing Christians, and while they can blow out the wicks of earthly lives by the score, the length and quality of our future existence with Jesus will be so much greater and better than what we have here on Earth.  Psychopaths only truly possess the power to hasten our entry into eternal bliss. That is the great impotence to all of Satan’s machinations.  We have only need to trust in Jesus or ask for forgiveness and Satan’s plans for us dissipate like deadly smog from a tail-pipe.

When I was about ten years old my younger brother and I begged my father to take us to a haunted house for Halloween, because all the other kids in school were going.  As my dad expected, we were both petrified to the point that I clamped his hand like a vice and shut my eyes tightly for however long it to us to make the circuit through the rooms of faux ghouls, vampires and psychos.  Certainly, shutting my eyes in the haunted house made the price of my admission ticket a great waste of money (my father has repeatedly pointed that out over the course of the last four decades.)  My chicken-heartedness does demonstrate the true powerlessness of evil, though.  

Theoretically, a blind man holds a superior spiritual advantage over his neighbor with regard to being susceptible to the barrage of visual smut that our society assaults us with on a daily basis.  It is possible that St Peter would have performed better at nautical ambulation had he merely thought to shut his eyes, but it would have been even better if he had been able to keep his eyes on Christ and remain recollected.  

The first Pope eventually discovered that ability in the end once he was full of the Holy Spirit.  Our tradition holds that he died a martyr’s death willingly in similar circumstances to our Lord.  Christians like Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp also died bravely for their faith. Recollection of the soul has not been lost over the ages either, as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and St Maximilian Kolbe both died pouring out their lives like libations at the hands of the Nazis.  Today we have reports of Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi Christians dying willingly for their faith with even young children refusing the temptation of apostasy.

With regard to these terrorist attacks the only souls in true spiritual danger are the souls of the terrorists.  Certainly they were successful in creating fear, outrage and the desire for revenge in our society.  They probably generated the desired notoriety, donations and sense of triumphalism among their cheerleaders and benefactors.  For Satan the goal of driving an increasingly large wedge between Muslim and Western cultures was probably his chief aim – mission accomplished. It is possible that he gained the souls of the attackers for eternity, I don’t know how the final seconds played out for the men who chose to be his minions.

I feel sad to think that those men began their operation with the expectation that by murdering a bunch of innocent people as they enjoyed a concert, ate dinner or watched a soccer game, the reward would be some kind of eternal Sandals Resort or residence in a cosmic Playboy Mansion.

As Catholics, we expect that Heaven is a place of eternal peace and contentment that we earn through Christ’s sacrifice for our souls and confirm by living a life of charity, fidelity and penance.  What type of Heaven could be earned by slaughtering random secularists as they recreate?  How could murdering strangers and kids result in the eternal equivalent of a Corona commercial?  I pity terrorists and hope beyond hope that the their souls did not end up in the giant hate-filled cauldron of violence and pain that their actions surely merited.  My hope is, in a way, selfish as I am banking on mercy being available for my own soul at my personal judgement.  Like Christ’s tormentors, these terrorists know not what they do, while I am fully cognizant when I choose to sin.  My true hope is that Hell is as empty as Kmart on a weeknight, but I am not optimistic. The children saw something at Fatima and it did not sound like Club Med.  

Certainly God will make some good out of the terrorists’ despicable actions; He always does.  That does not mean these attacks were planned by God or that He is responsible for them. God is all good, and evil is a choice that we make in opposition to Him.  He allows these demented choices only because to deny any of us the opportunity to choose evil also denies us the opportunity to choose goodness.  For each of us who is seeking God and remains open to the Holy Spirit, salvation will be the result of all such choices. Sometimes we temporarily may reject the influence of God and sin, but by confessing our faults and continuing to seek God, we allow Him to work our salvation out for us and through us.  He assists us towards salvation as much as we allow Him to do so.

For the purpose of my own salvation, it is probably helpful to me that most of these attacks are of the suicide variety so that I am not tempted towards revenge and a failure to forgive.  Certainly it is important to break up the terrorist infrastructure and find out what we can about how and why this happened, but we are left mostly punching at a ghost as we seek to strike back. ISIS has overrun a bunch of innocent towns and cities that they hold in thrall so responding with a lot of bombing will just serve to victimize the victims.  We should probably just mostly pray for healing for all the French, Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi people that are being hurt by this satanic organization. I certainly support whatever means are necessary to protect the next round of victims, but mostly myself, I can only contribute prayers  … even for the secularists as much as that offends them.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope faith love #Maccabees #Antiochis #Immortal Soul #heaven #salvation #recollected #st petersburg #edith stein #Maximilian Kolbe #Polycarp #prayer #eternity #fidelity #Divine Mercy #Personal Judgement #Fatima

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

A Bad Slide Show (Post 115) 11-11-15

I knew that my slideshow on the Fish Philosophy was not going well when I spied the other process engineer, with whom I share an office, wiping a tear for the corner of his eye.  Evoking extremes of emotion can be good in some presentations, but making people cry during a training session about a methodology that is supposed to make people happier at work is an extremely counterintuitive strategy … or a gross miscalculation.  

I will go with the latter.  I probably should have done a roll out for my new program by doing a forward roll into the training room and laying down a barrage with a Nerf weaponry while dressed in Elvis garb. Truthfully, I got so entranced with the Christian nature of the subject that I kind of undersold the happy aspects of the four tenants of the fishy business tool and concentrated my slideshow on the aspects of engaging employees through listening an attentiveness. Thus I created waterworks from an engineer who is a secret softy under the crusty shell of the son of a Jersey cop.

Based on the work culture of the world famous Pike’s Place Fish Market in Seattle, the Fish Philosophy includes three of four cornerstones that are also important in Christian life.  The fourth cornerstone, Play, isn’t overtly Christian, but enjoying ministries and other aspects of faith is certainly possible.  The Franciscan Fathers of the Renewal, for example, enjoy what they do and work very hard for Jesus at the same time.  The Fishy tenants of: Choose Your Attitude, Being Present for others and finding ways to Make Someone’s Day are all necessary for any Catholic attempting to participate effectively in the New Evangelization.  

Because many of us will be spending some time over the holidays with people who are lukewarm in their faith as well as out-and-out heathens, I will describe those three most useful elements of a business philosophy that is also applied by some schools to improve classroom performance.  I suspect that they might also present an effective avenue to approach heretical relatives at the great national turkey truce.  Christianity is most effectively communicated peacefully, after all, without yelling or brandishing an electric carving knife.

Choose Your Attitude is the first vital part of what has made the Seattle Fishmongers a local institution.  No normal person goes out of their way to visit a commercial establishment where people are grumpy.  I know there is at least one restaurant where the wait staff mistreats the customers, but really that is just a gimmick.  Pike’s Place employees know that however their own days have gone previously, once they walk onto the stage of their workplace the fishmongers put all negativity behind them and perform for their customers.  Isn’t that what we are called to do as Christians as well?  While there have been many great saints with grumpy dispositions, they weren’t necessarily the most effective evangelists.  It is the kindness, serenity and charity of Christians that most intrigues and attracts people to the faith.  Certainly the Fish Philosophy is not about insincerity. If someone adopts an attitude of serene, warmth and caring, the Holy Spirit will likely take care of the rest and a Catholic will don Christ and act like the authentic Christian that we all intend to be.

The second tenant, Being Present, to others is one of the most Christian of all attitudes.  Self-sacrifice is probably on a higher rung still, but really, they are akin. Listening to each other with focus is a dying art in our society, but it is highly necessary for any level of ministering to another person.  Of the four cornerstones it is the most difficult for me to pull off.  I tend to be multi-tasker writing on a yellow notepad, tapping on my laptop or scrolling on my cell phone while I should be paying full attention to another person in my office or in the meeting room.  Also I tend to avoid eye contact when situations become uncomfortable. I can’t think of any great Christians that were known for their shiftiness and poor social skills. I guess Judas comes to mind, but I can’t say that I like his company.  In my slideshow I use a picture downloaded from Google Images (thank you Mr. Katreep) to explain where we are as a society.  The picture shows four young women, I assume to be friends, seated at restaurant table in postures that demonstrate that they are totally oblivious to each other and absorbed in four internal worlds bounded by the screens of their cell phones.

When I type Make Someone’s Day, I always imagine me telling someone to do that in Clint Eastwood’s voice, but a better character for this third cornerstone of the Fish Philosophy is an internet character called Kid President. He looks to be about ten or so, Natalie’s age, and presents his remedies for what ails our society with quite a bit of pizazz although he seems to be more partial to corn dogs.  His video, Twenty Things We Should Say More Often, is a litany of how to be considerate of others – Christ’s Golden Rule.  Secularizing society seems to have distilled much of the charity and decency out of our interactions, but perhaps I am nostalgic for an America that never was.  People have always honked horns and argued in traffic, but its seems that social media has released a level of anonymous meanness that I can’t recall during my childhood, but perhaps people were just able to insult fewer people simultaneously. Anyway, Kid President’s parents and grandparents ought to be very proud because he has mastered adages and an attitude that my grandparents would called the American norm although it is really Christian sensibility with some star spangled backdrops.

Regardless, I am excited about using the Fish Philosophy at work because it is a covertly Christian methodology that allows me to act on my faith in the workplace without making non-Christians uncomfortable.  Actually by acting in a caring fashion, or properly, I seem to be connecting to people regardless of whether they know the Gospel or attend weekend services. Because my employer has adopted the philosophy and is embedding it within our leadership training program, the Golden Rule should become the rule of the day.  It will be interesting to see how all this works out.

My regret with regard to the slideshow is that I used a YouTube video of Christian speaker Nick Vujicic’s testimonial too early in the presentation. He stole the show and it made it very hard to refocus the group after seeing Nick choose his attitude.  Nick has no arms and legs, but spends all his energy bringing an anti-suicide message of hope to teens throughout the world. Kid President does a good job of demonstrating how to Make Somebody’s Day, but I was stuck for an example of Being Present to another person.  The story of Mitchell Marcus’s high school basket was what I finally settled on in the revised version.  I haven’t tried the new presentation out on my misty office mate, but I am sure that it is tear worthy.

As for the actual purpose of this column, let’s see if we can all do better during this holiday season with regard to kindness to one another.  It seems that our country is full of people who are mad at Starbucks, people who are mad at the people who are mad at Starbucks, and people who are mad at both sides for making the media happy by arguing. For Thanksgiving, let us leave all the controversy on Facebook and enjoy each other’s company, first at Father Jerry’s favorite mass of the year and then at table with friends, family and no electronics.

Also happy Veterans Day and thanks to all who served and their families who sacrificed as well.

#God #Jesus #Holy Spirit #grace #The Virgin Mary #hope #faith #love #The Fish Philosophy #Choose #Your Attitude #Be Present #Make Someone's day #New Evangelism #Christianity #Thanksgiving #Pike's Place Fish Market #sacrifice #Kid President #The Golden RUle #Nick Vujcic #Father Jerry Brown

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Discerning Jesus in the Host (Post 104) 11-4-15

Natalie Stephen and I have made a habit of visiting a Catholic Church in a nearby town for Eucharist Adoration each Friday afternoon as a way of saying thanks for another week to Our Lord.  We don’t usually stay long as Natalie gets antsy around the 15 minute mark and there is usually an older parishioner present praying quietly so we try not to be poorly mannered guests in their parish.  We appreciate that they have made a commitment to host Perpetual Adoration for us, as the parish we attend has Adoration on Thursday which doesn’t work well for our family schedule.

I usually pick Stephen up at our house after I am done with work and then swing by my folk’s house to dislodge Natalie from her after school haunt. In their domicile, I’ll usually poke my head in to my parent’s bedroom to interrupt my father’s binge watch of either sports, International House Hunt or Cops to say hello and to find out which college football games my father plans to watch the following day.  My parent’s understand that Natalie, Stephen and I go do something at church each Friday night, but I have, so far, been totally unable to explain Eucharistic Adoration in a way that is interesting or understandable to them.

While there are clear scriptural references to the Real Presence which logically lead to the practice of Adoration, my parents don’t read scripture, as far as I know.  The antecedents of Adoration found in the ancient Jewish religious practices are even less accessible as neither of my sires has Brant Pitre or Scott Hanh on their reading list.  There seems to be no chunk of shared faith that I can leverage off of to explain our little practice to Mom and Dad. In their minds Eucharistic Adoration will probably remain just another Byzantine practice of the California Donnellys going forward.

For many Catholics the practice of Eucharistic Adoration seems not to be a part of their practice of faith either.  For years it wasn’t even a blip on my radar.  I remember vaguely that as I was coming into the Church Pam tried to explain to me that my mother-in-law Barb, would participate in a vigil on Good Friday where parishioners would spend an hour alone with Jesus present in a Host in silent prayer in the rectory of their church while the Tabernacle stood empty in signification that Jesus had not yet arisen. My body language must have been squirrely or maybe I rolled my eyes during her story because it wasn’t for another decade before she actually took me to Eucharist Adoration.

I liked what I found once I finally went, but Pam probably had made a pretty accurate assessment of my spiritual maturity early on and waited for my faith to ferment some before inviting me to participate in Adoration.  Mostly I spent those earliest years not growing much as a Catholic, but instead polishing my skills as a cry room cage fighter.  For a while pinching was my signature move, but I had to progress on from that as Stephen developed effective counters like loudly screaming, “Stop pinching me!”  

Stephen and I staged an epic battle almost each and every Sunday.  I guess our most memorable bout was the time when he juked and jived his way by me and made it into the aisle at a service in the chapel at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach.  Once he created a pocket of separation in between us, Stephen exploited the opportunity and made a full on jail break up the aisle towards the ambo. Still in good shape from college athletics, I tracked my toddling son down about half way to the altar.  Although I prevented whatever sacrilege was bouncing around in Stephen’s cerebrum, I cannot truthfully score that episode as a win for “team dad.”  Let us just say that the usual decorum of the solemn liturgy was thoroughly disturbed by my search and destroy mission, although I suspect that several of the marines present silently applauded my hand-to-hand technique.

Anyway. because little Stephen probably should have been trussed up for Mass like Hannibal Lector, I didn’t spend much of my one Catholic hour a week contemplating the implications of John chapter 6.  Later once I moved the practice of my faith beyond the mere satisfaction of my weekly obligation, I began to get something out of my spirituality.  I learned that receiving the Eucharist was just the starting point of my weekly relationship with Christ.  As I strove to find Jesus and to understand Him, I received much more than I expected.

My participation in Adoration has become a metaphor for my entire faith life. Sometimes I go to Adoration broken and I am healed.  Sometimes I go to Adoration totally distracted and I leave feeling like I didn’t even pay attention to Christ … I guess that happens at Mass as well. Sometimes I go to Adoration with a question and leave with an answer.  Sometimes I go to Adoration with a question and I leave with forty more questions. Often I go to Adoration with a feeling of thankfulness and leave very contented.  Adoration is often like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates.  I never know what I am going to get.  What I don’t get anymore is complacency or boredom.  

I was in a conversation once where a friend was telling several of us that he usually avoided 12:30 Mass on Sunday because it was in the middle of the day and it broke up and disturbed his Sunday routine.  For me, Mass, Adoration and the practice of my faith has become more central to my week.  While I get frustrated that I am not making the progress that I should and that I back-slide often, I do recognize that Jesus is now a priority in my life.  I need to know Him better, but I expect that will come as I spend time with Him each week.

#God Jesus The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope faith love #Eucharist #perpetual adoration #Real Presence #Brant Petri #Scott Hanh #constant vigilance #Good Friday #Host #Tabernacle #liturgy #Mass

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

The Christian Outlook of a Vietnamese Woman (Post 113)

I saw a familiar picture with a link from my younger brother’s Facebook page. Because he is a very thoughtful Christian, I usually pause my scrolling to see whatever he has shared.  I think everyone has two or three Facebook friends like my brother Dan, who often share thoughtful faith related content that has some chewable meat.  In this case it was an updated story about the life of Kim Phuk, who was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize Winning photograph from the Vietnam War.  Kim Phuk is the napalm girl.  

I don’t think anyone my age or older will have missed the picture of the little naked girl running screaming from the burns caused by the inferno behind her.  The iconic picture was instrumental in breaking the resolve of the American people to continue supporting the war effort.  Because of the area of the country that I have chosen to return to, the Vietnam War is closer to my consciousness than it has been for years. While getting my oil changed in Kent on Saturday, Abby and I walked the campus near the location of the historic shooting.  For the napalm girl, quite understandably, the Vietnam war is never far from her consciousness.

Anyway, Kim Phuk’s story is an unusual one.  Disfigured for life, she felt that she had little chance of marriage so she decided to study to become a doctor.  Seeking a quiet life of study, she discovered the Bible and found the Peace of Christ.  Eventually she was noticed by the Vietnamese government who began to use her as a propaganda piece, which disturbed her studies.  A kindly and high ranking party member took pity on Kim’s status as a useful tool and arranged to send her overseas to study in Moscow and then Havana. In Cuba, much to her own surprise, Kim found a husband, the kindest of Vietnamese gentlemen.

Later, on a flight either towards or back from Cuba, Kim’s plane had to stop in Canada, where she convinced her husband to defect with her. Kim explained that something inside of her was attracted to freedom like our souls are attracted to great beauty and peace.  She now works for UNESCO helping other victims of war to heal.  

Inspired by Kim’s story a kindly person told her about a new laser technique for the treatment of scar tissue.  After more than 40 years living with horrific pain throughout the entire backside of her body, the napalm girl is now going through the process of removing some of her pain.  Unfortunately, the laser treatment, itself, is brutally painful in the short term although the overall result is beneficial.

It was very difficult for me to watch Kim, a woman of approximately my own age, go through such visibly excruciating laser treatments because I know that her pain tolerance must be off the charts already.  As a child, after her back was so burned as to flay her flesh, the kindly photographer wrapped her in a soldier’s rain poncho and delivered her to a military surgical center.  Evidently, her wounds were so terrible that she was sent after triage into the section of the medical center where those who cannot be helped further are left to die without even palliative measures. Three days later her family discovered Kim, took her home and nursed her back to health even though she had had no food, water or medical care for half a week.

 Her recovery is truly miraculous and goes to show that although Kim at that time did not know Christ, Jesus most certainly loved her, watched over her and met her needs until she was able to encounter Him through scripture. She has become a visible sign of His love to those who understand God’s teaching where once she was a propaganda tool for a communist regime.  

He fashions us to His own uses if we allow Him and cooperate with His will.  Kim says that while she enjoys life with her husband very much, she also looks forward to heaven where her skin will not be burned and there will be no pain.  While I understand her desire, I wonder about scars of her type in heaven.  Will Padre Pio, for instance, still bear his stigmata? It will be interesting to see.  If Kim is still scarred in heaven, I believe that her scars will be glorious and that there will be a great crescendo of angelic celebration when this quiet unassuming woman reaches the presence of Our Maker.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #Divine Mercy #grace #faith hope love #peace #Kent State #UNESCO #napalm #pain #suffering #miraculous #heaven #Padre pio #stigmata

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Knee Pain (Post 112) 10-21-15

During our move into this house I wrenched my knee and then forgot about it.  As I had already dropped a dresser on my big toe and tweaked my back carrying a large box of plates and dishes out of the garage, coming down wrong as I stepped to the lower basement landing seemed to indicate that this episode of my life would be Home Alone style slapstick.  The experience was not a searing flagellation of horror like morning plebe summer calisthenic sessions nor were there any large and memorable mishaps like the time I almost teetered off the U-Haul ramp on the underside of a large refrigerator I was dollying out of our Discovery Bay house on our move to Brentwood.  The pains of the Streetsboro immigration were a constellation of bee-stings none of which will make the high-light reel of my life’s injuries – most of those top ten will be head shots.

Because I am a tallish fellow who drives an Aveo, an automobile which seems only one size above a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, I do habitually suffer from some aches and pains around my right knee anyway.  When the weather is good on my commute, I look forward to hitting the highway where I can click in the cruise control and cease to contort my knee into an unnatural posture as I toggle my foot between the gas pedal and the brake. It was hard for me to discern the new injury from the regular ache so I began to lose track of the root of my present discomfort.

Slowly I forgot about my stumble during the move altogether.  Instead of subsiding the ache increased but slowly so that I was never consciously aware of my degrading condition.  Then one day I noticed that my usual long stride had become a weeble across the factory floor.  The revelation greatly alarmed me.  My mother has arthritic knees and limps quite a bit while my father has, within the last five years, had both knees replaced.  I began to wonder whether my own wheels had begun to wear out much earlier than theirs had.  I had also watched my younger brother rehab an ACL tear during his senior year of high school, so knee surgery came to mind as well.  The pain on the inside of my right knee directly below the knee cap seemed particularly unusual. The idea of surgery was very worrisome.

At night the pain started to interrupt my sleep and I began to wonder whether I would eventually need to see a doctor.  Of course the family couldn’t afford to run up more medical bills, nor would it be convenient to take disability leave to recuperate from surgery right as we had just purchased a house.  None of my options seemed very good.  About then I remembered that Stephen had a large picnic lemonade thermos of non-sacramental Holy water stashed in his bookcase.

For our trip to the Lourdes Shrine in Cleveland Stephen had rooted through my folks basement and found an old thermos that hadn’t been used since the last family picnic more than a decade ago.  He had washed the jug out carefully stored the empty container in his room when we were staying with my folks during the summer.  I had promised him another trip to the Lourdes grotto at Mount Saint Mary’s University on our next trip to Maryland and he planned to be fully prepared for the opportunity.  I asked him what exactly his plan was for the insulated blue three and a half gallon jug with the screw on white cap.  Stephen explained that he had seen a fount there and wanted to make sure that he collected enough water to last him until our next infrequent visit to Pam’s folks.

Instead I took him to a local shrine in Euclid, Ohio, a trip that I have written about previously, but I didn’t relate that Stephen spent much of his time filling his jug. He stood for about 45 minutes at the place where a little spring trickled water which washed across a special rock that had been retrieved from the real Lourdes grotto in France.  The process in no way filtered the H2O into the crystal clear Poland Springs, Deer Park, or Perrier product that Stephen must have expected.  The water had a greenish brown tinge that probably approximated the actual quality of the water that originally bubbled forth at Massabielle soon after Bernadette dug the first hole in the mid there with her bare hands.

A bit of a germaphobe, Stephen probably never used any of the water that he had so anticipated collecting, but the thermos sat like an abandoned Abdominizer on the dresser in his room in my folk’s house for the rest of the summer.  Unwilling to discard the water or to use it for dog baths or plant watering, I transferred that plastic vessel into his bookcase in the new house after we moved in.  I considered trying to use some on my big toe as I suffered through losing the toenail and worried that I might get an infection while the nailbed was largely unprotected, but the toe healed pretty well and there didn’t seem to be a need. My back also healed well, if slowly over several weeks’ time.  I did some extra stretching and actually slept on the floor for several days because my mattress is too soft for a weak back, but everything seemed to be OK.

The knee became an agony for me, though, and none of my options seemed to be good ones until finally I stumbled across the neglected canteen with its ready spigot on Stephen’s shelf next to the sundry math books that he has kept from his LMC days.  As I got ready for bed that night, I serendipitously ran a washcloth under the water and slept with the cloth on my bad knee. Also I prayed to Mary that she would reduce my level of knee pain so that I could sleep.  

And it worked.

I slept well that night and the next as well.  I began to set a routine of sneaking into Stephen’s room each room to wet my cloth before bed.  Each morning, not wanting to be disrespectful, I carefully laid out the cloth on my pillow to dry.  It didn’t seem right to ball up a cloth of healing water and shoot a three pointer from across the room into the hamper tucked behind my wardrobe.  I just left it spread across my pillow and left for work each morning with a smile on my face as my knee began to feel better and better.  There was noticeable improvement and then a recurrence of the injury as I put my foot down wrong and felt the pain again.  Then I remembered the original injury as well and actually felt less worried about the entire process as the pain was likely from a sprain that I had aggravated, but there was likely no tear.  Also I was confident that my knee was not rapidly spiraling into an arthritic mess that would leave me loping like a bow-legged cow hand.

Then the trouble hit.

I was sitting at my desk in Youngstown in the early AM perusing the night’s bountiful harvest of electronic communication, when Natalie called thoroughly distraught. Stephen had busted into her room babbling about me having a brain tumor and demanding to use her precious cell phone, which is actually Stephen’s but he is too distracted to make use of it and so Natalie uses it for an alarm clock.  I think she is also working through this season of Once Upon a Time on Netflix, but she says that it’s her alarm clock so I almost believe her.

She was deeply offended by the rude wake up and didn’t appreciate having her room tossed without a signed search warrant.  Mostly she didn’t like the idea of anyone touching her “precious.”  Having a pretty good idea of the root cause of the incident, I told her to give her brother the phone so that I could talk to him.  I explained that I didn’t have a brain tumor and that I intended to explain the situation to the both of them upon my return later that day to our Portage County abode.

I counseled Natalie first and explained that her brother’s worry over me was quite real to him. Also I expressed my disappointment that her attachment to a material object was a contributor to the disturbance in our family.  With Stephen I explained that my washcloth armed forays into his darkened room were aimed at remedying a knee injury and that although I was leaving the cloth on my pillow, I had no head issue – tumor or otherwise.  In the end both of them were quite pleased that the water had benefited my injury.  I expect that I may not be the only one in the family that ends up entering Stephen’s roomed armed with some sort of cloth.  

Sacramentals can be quite beneficial when reinforced with prayers and belief.  Jesus, after all, loves us each dearly and will seek to heal us by any means that we avail Him.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faith #love #pain #worry #Sacrementals #Lourdes #Grotto #Massabielle #St Bernadette #prayers #belief

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Penance at Discharge (Post 111) 10-14-15

                        Last Wednesday evening I traveled from work in Youngstown to Cleveland to pick up Stephen and take him home after the completion of his week of testing for epilepsy.  I decided to work the full day and arrive at around 5 PM because I believe I had previously tried every conceivable pick-up time at John Muir Medical Center and a dozen other hospitals and have always still found the hospital staff woefully unprepared to discharge either Pam, Nick, Abby, Stephen or Natalie on almost every single occasion.  Because I spend my professional life using Lean Manufacturing tools to carve minutes and seconds out of processes to achieve savings, unnecessary hospital discharge delays always grate on my nerves. Luckily, in a former life, decades ago, I wore the uniform of our country and am hardwired to tolerate circumstances where a “hurry up and wait “outcome is assured.

Upon arrival in Stephen’s room, I was greeted by mysteriously mixed signals.  Stephen was already garbed in sweatshirt, sweatpants and sneakers like he was ready to head home, but he still had an IV visible on his hand.  Usually when a person is being discharged after a serious illness, removing the IV is nearly the last precautionary order of business.  Stephen, though, had checked in for testing in a relatively healthy state and had not had any unexpected issues during the tests.  His nurse soon arrived to dispel my confusion; he let me know that Stephen would be ready for discharge immediately after completing an MRI, for which he had waited all day.  Evidently, University Hospital’s policy is to assign the highest daytime priority for MRI, CT, Ultrasound and probably every other possible test service to outpatients, because, theoretically, inpatients can stay all night.  We left the hospital about three hours later at 8 PM. Not the most customer pleasing denouement to our visit, but otherwise Stephen was treated very well.

If I were a cradle Catholic, I probably would have remembered to offer up the entire experience, but, in actuality, Stephen’s hospital room was equipped with a passable selection of cable television channels so I think I passed the time treating my senses to an electronic barrage following the entertainment fasting conditions we have been living under since we moved out of my parent’s house.  I can’t remember what I watched.  Maybe I didn’t watch television at all and instead scrolled through Facebook, but I don’t think I could have whiled away three solid hours weaving through all the pages of what my friends have posted.  Usually I can only take so much Facebook as the recycled memes are often very repetitive.  Also I have a number of Libertarian, atheist and Pro-Choice friends that rake my scrolling sensibilities with morally questionable material or untruths that I generally try to identify and pass by like the doggie deposits that Natalie’s pets have peppered across my lawn – mowing my lawn is somewhat like hopscotch. For instance, I am friends with one of my high school football coaches, with whom I seem to agree and am able to “like” for less than ten percent of his posts. Luckily he has children and grandchildren, but I digress.

By Thursday morning I had largely forgotten the ordeal of disembarking from UH the previous evening. Natalie and I shared a last breakfast together as I planned to return to my regular morning schedule of 3 AM reveilles and 4 AM departures on Friday morning.  The work day proceeded and ended without significant event as I prepared notes and outlines for a leadership course that I intend to teach for supervisors this week upcoming.  At the end of my shift I felt quite relieved to be headed on only an hour commute home to Streetsboro instead of orbiting onward for an extra forty five minutes north eastward through Cleveland and only back to our cozy two-story after visiting Stephen. Normality seemed an alluring flavor after a week of passing time in extra driving and all too familiar clinical surroundings.

My phone buzzed as I was pulling into a gas station to top off my tank near the on-ramp of I-76, my tollless thoroughfare of choice from the Eastern border towards north central Ohio. I thought it would be a receptionist calling to provide information for Stephen’s follow-up appointment, but instead I recognized the heavy accent of my son’s neurologist who was calling to provide the results from the forgotten MRI.  I made her give me the date and time for the follow-up appointment first as we were both surprised that no scheduling information had been provided at discharge.  She then let me know that they had found something abnormal on Stephen’s MRI.  It was a sunny afternoon, but my soul seemed to darken with her words.

There was an unusual but small spot on his scan, that hadn’t activated with contrast so she thought it was unlikely to be cancer.  I asked clarifying questions with the concerned detachment of a person used to the responsibility of interpreting medical information for others including the patient.  The spot was not in the vicinity of the locus of Stephen’s epileptic activity as determined by a PET scan during his hospital stay.  The spot was being termed an “incidental finding” to be monitored by a follow-up MRI before Stephen’s next neurology visit in November.  The spot was consistent with the lesions often found in the brains of people who suffer from migraine headaches.  Stephen doesn’t get migraines.  The phone call ended and I resumed my drive.

As I drove, I slipped back into long practiced habits.  I finished my Divine Mercy Chaplet for the afternoon and offered a few extra prayers accepting whatever the overall outcome might be but also with hope that Stephen’s continued bad health not lead us down the cancer trail into a terminal cul-de-sac.  Then I picked up the phone and gave Pam’s mother the first call as I drove.  It is not the type of phone call that I relish making, but I prefer to give correct and realistic information directly to Barb rather than have her hear half-information from second-hand sources. I called my brother Sean next because I’ve found that giving several key people complete information is much better than giving lots of people partial information.  I called Abby as well and repeated almost verbatim what I had told Sean and Barbara.

I knew that none of them would splash the news onto Facebook, but all would be able to provide clarification once the news did hit social media.  Everything eventually ends up on Facebook.  Nicholas, unfortunately, found out that his mother had died via social media while he was on break at Straw Hat.  I hadn’t considered that possibility when I informed several family members of Pam’s death, but chose not to tell Nicholas for safety reasons. I didn’t want him driving home in a condition where he couldn’t pay attention.  I have since remembered to consider the possibility of a Facebook spill with sensitive information.

By that time I had arrived my parent’s house to pick up Natalie.  (The bus drops her off there in case I am held up at work.)  I let my parents know about the spot on Stephen’s MRI face-to-face.  That is my preference for difficult news, but personal conversations are not always possible once the pebble has dropped into the pool in our information age.  With both sets of grandparents dutifully briefed, I drove the couple of miles remaining through Streetsboro boulevards and avenues so that I could pass the bad news to Stephen.  I expected that he would have questions.  My son is in a much better place now with regard to paranoia, but I remember some very bad times with him after Pam’s death.

Instead Stephen smiled at the news and asked me why I didn’t remember watching Nicola Tesla.  At first I thought he was talking gibberish, but after several minutes of further conversation, I realized that Stephen had remembered a forgotten incident from a decade previous back when we lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  

A bi-polar child misdiagnosed as hyper-active, Stephen’s made a long promenade through various unsuccessful treatment plans until eventually a doctor decided that Stephen needed a brain MRI.  In preparation for the scan Stephen had to stay up all night the day previous to his test. I stayed up with him.  At about 4 AM we ended up watching a long documentary about the imminently brilliant and simultaneously wacked-out physicist Nicola Tesla.  I had totally forgotten about the entire experience.  Nothing to help Stephen’s condition was found by the MRI, but Stephen did remember being petrified by the discovery of an “incidental finding” of a spot on his brain that was not immediately dangerous but should be monitored in the future.  I guess I forgot to do so.

I spent the next half an hour reeling back in the thread of incomplete information that I had earlier cast out.  It made me chuckle to have finally found the missing bookend of experience to complete the short-lived horror from all those years ago.  An incident that had appeared to be random and pointlessly scary until its import made its comet-like return to my solar system at a time so remote that only my most distracted son remembered the original occurrence. Because there is a God, I know that everything in my life has a purpose and a reason even when the mosaic of occurrences appears too close to be deciphered from my vantage point.

Unhappily, I was reminded that life can be hard to understand in a different way on Sunday. A 16 year-old daughter of a good friend from my youth died unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage at Saturday field hockey practice at a high school in New England. I could see no purpose to the death of a young girl within a close proximity to her teammates.  I have seen the impact of that type of situation on servicemen and can’t fathom how a bunch of young women will suffer the impact of witnessing the loss of a friend in those circumstances.  Unfortunately, my imagination is probably sufficient to paint the details of the scene in my head if I try to do so:  a teary-eyed teammate sprinting for help, an adult coach working to revive or fix something in a little girl’s body that cannot be repaired, a collapsed collection of sobbing teenagers left at the scene after the ambulance has departed.  I can make no sense of what has become of the poor girl’s short and seemingly glorious years – she tutored underprivileged kids.

While there is a Mass card for her waiting for pickup in my mailbox, I have no adequate words to send to her teammates or family.  Yet I do know that flowers of love will sprout from the death of Casey Dunne in Braintree, Massachusetts just as good things have come from Pam’s death years removed and a continent away.  That does not mean that I am happy to have lost my wife, Barb’s daughter and the mother of my children.  I accept the experience and understand that good was achieved through God’s plan. While I am very happy that it does not look like Stephen will need a craniotomy, I am no longer naive enough to believe that Pam’s death was the last tragedy that I will experience. I do know that I will accept what comes and trust in God’s goodness even when my human understanding is insufficient to grasp the providence of a horrifying situation.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #grace #hope #faiht #love #illness #penance #thankfulness #offer up suffering #distraction #Divine Mercy #prayers #bereavement #facebookpost #memories #Nicola Tesla #providence #goodness

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

From A Different Hospital (Post 110) 10-7-15

 Yes, I am writing this week from the hospital, but the circumstances are neither dire nor disastrous. In August, on the way to a Cleveland Indians game, Stephen Jr suffered what looked to me to be a focal seizure similar to the ones that Pam experienced during a portion of her treatment for her brain tumor.  Stephen’s MRI was good, so we mostly have been waiting to see a neurologist, which happened last week. The doctor was very good and decided that a Video EEG for several days would be helpful for her to diagnose Stephen’s condition.  A Video EEG is the same as a regular EEG except that your miserably scratchy coiffure is captured on camera like some silly MTV reality show except without the needless yelling, tears and boozy behavior.

Anyway, Stephen has added epilepsy to his long list of maladies.  Luckily he already takes a medication that treats the condition, so it will likely just be a change of dosage.  On the Donnelly scale of challenges, this would rate as less than a 5, which is higher than bunions or needing an oil change, but a good deal lower than diabetes or losing an organ.  He will probably have to see a neurologist periodically going forward, but he is otherwise enjoying Ohio.  I’ll check his opinion again in February.

My life with Stephen and Natalie is an interesting contrast.  With Natalie, as with my other children, my role in her life seems to be very traditional.  I am a steward tasked with guiding her initial steps on a lifelong walk towards Christ.  Because Natalie was a preemie, born after another of the long series of illnesses that Pam suffered in her life, I am keenly aware that my youngest child is also a gift to me.  She makes me smile.

Stephen makes me smile as well, but unlike Natalie I expect he will be with me for the rest of my life. In the hours, days and weeks after Pam passed away, my expectation was that I would finish my stewardship over my children over a decade or so and then transition into some type of more thoroughly spiritual life.  I briefly considered the Carmelites, The Deaconate and missionary work, but once the change in Stephen’s health was apparent, I understood that my role would be to continue his care perpetually.  I will not be getting him started on the road, but walking it by his side.

Walking side by side towards Christ is something that I did with Pam.  Two years ago I realized almost immediately that sitting at her bedside as she died was the pinnacle of my life as a husband.  As I said verbalized my vows at the Annapolis altar years before, my vocation was determined and in the end I fulfilled that vocation as I am one hundred percent positive that Pam’s soul now abides with Christ.  That accomplished, it was hard to really fully concentrate on my work in California. Certainly, Stephen and Nicholas’ health challenges were a distraction as well, but I also had the sense that the purpose of the work that I was accomplishing for my employer was diminished.

Coming home to Ohio to interact with family began to make a lot of sense.  It made even more sense after receiving my final paycheck from the employer who had originally moved me from the Midwest to the West Coast. Moving back to Ohio provided me with extra support and resolved my inability to care for both Stephen and Natalie adequately.  This week, for instance, with Stephen in the hospital for tests, I was able to alter my work schedule so that I could eat breakfast with Natalie before work, visit Stephen after work with the peace of mind that Natalie was doing her homework at my parent’s house after school.  It just all seems to flow now with help from my parents, children and siblings.  I guess Father Jerry would say that is providence.

Driving, I have a lot of time to consider Stephen and on my extended triangular commute to Youngstown for work, then to the hospital in Cleveland and, finally, back to Streetsboro. I also often think about a young woman named Claire that I met several years ago and the question she once asked God. She wanted to know why she had been created as person in a wheelchair unable to accomplish the many thing that her army of siblings was likely to be able to do for Christ.  When I heard her speak at a Pan de Vida retreat, Claire never provided the answer that she had been given or even whether she had received more than the peaceful touch of Jesus’ love.

I am sure that she has since learned that there is plenty a person in a wheelchair can do for Christ. I expect that Claire will one day discover that mobility would only have distracted her from whatever she eventually accomplishes for God.  In some of the work classes I teach, I use a video by a motivational speaker called Nick Vujicic called Will You Finish Strong?  Nick has no arms and legs but provides school kids in Australia with a powerful demonstration of how much Jesus Christ loves us.

Stephen’s condition, while it doesn’t involve his mobility, does disable him in a way that prevents him from serving Jesus in any way that I would have considered “productive” or “useful” several years ago.  Stricken by schizophrenia, the voices in his head that have plagued him these last two years even interrupt his ability to worship God.  He is no longer able to make progress on the associate’s degree that he was working on during Pam’s illness.  Often he spends a good deal of the day staring into a mirror in a attempt to sort out his identity from among the cacophony that he hears in his head. He seeks to sift through the noise and remain Stephen, while other poor souls among us drink booze, or take drugs and blast themselves with electronic music as a way to obliterate what they feel about themselves.

Despite his brokenness, Stephen, like all of us, fulfills his purpose by being himself and by worshiping God.  He does this as best as he can.  He cannot sing in the choir, proclaim The Word from the ambo, serve the Eucharist or sometimes even listen to the homily, but he worships to the level that his human limitations allows. 

I can do all those things and have a pretty spotty record at accomplishing what is fully within my capabilities.  I don’t know that my inattention during certain homilies is always important, though. Daydreaming at Mass is certainly not good, but I doubt that it inhibits the primary purpose for which I now think God created me.  I was created to bring first Pam and then Stephen to Mass each week during their illness. Jesus thirsts for the worship and love of people like Pam, Stephen, Claire and Gianna that he has challenged beyond the level which I ever hope to know.  He loves me as well, because I am a servant of those He is perfecting.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #Illness #Stewardship #spiritual #journey #husband #father #vocations #servant #heaven #Father Jerry Brown #providence #Pan di Vida #Nick Vujcic #Will You Finish Strong? #worship #The Word #Eucharist #homily

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Reluctant to Agree (Post 108) 9-30-15

Without having television available in our new house yet, I didn’t follow the Pope’s visit like I would have liked to have.  Initially, when it seemed like the White House intended to embarrass Francis by inviting every Catholic dissident residing in the Western hemisphere to dinner with him, I was pretty sure that things were not going to go well.  I had thought that the trip was just for the conference in Philadelphia, but I suppose that a stop in DC was nearly obligatory and New York is not that far from the City of Brotherly Love either.   I guess getting invited to a prestigious ambush with entrees is to be expected.  I am glad that, by the sound of it, the dinner never happened, because world leaders tend to try to out-duel each other and I’m afraid that another future dinner might have included some people even further on the fringes of the Catholic faith and I don’t want to see what that looks like.  I am sure that Jerry Springer would be an excellent consultant for any subsequent supper to what was planned for this visit.

To my understanding the Pope rebuffed the invite and instead ate with the poor.  What an inspiration:  eschewing the powerful for the company of the meek.  Francis truly is the Vicar of Christ. He seems to have patterned the entire visit upon Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  He comforted those with burdens, ate with the poor and washed the feet of prisoners.  Despite not having a TV, I did see an online clip of Francis halting his Fiat to bless a child in a wheelchair.  I could see the tearful thankfulness of the mother as she lived her public version of a New Testament story there before us.  The healing was not miraculous and physical, but what I saw was a spiritual healing of the mother.  The tears of gratitude were the same as when Francis kissed the tumors of the disfigured man early in his pontificate.  He has come to serve the poor and to convert us all to the way of Jesus Christ.

Yet there is still the bickering about Climate Change, the role of wealth and Francis’ call to repudiate Capital Punishment.  I am on-board with most of what Francis has encouraged Catholics to advocate for.  I care about protecting the environment just not to the extent of participating in any of Al Gore’s shakedowns.  I can see how wealth without morals enslaves us to greed and hurt our souls.  With respect to Capital Punishment, I have slowly and reluctantly converted to John Paul II’s viewpoint over the last decade or so.

Back when the little Polish man sat on the Chair of Peter, I was pretty torqued off against an extremely insidious conglomerate of terrorists that had used airliners to attack our country.  I could understand John Paul’s belief that executing the guilty does nothing to repair the damage done to the victims, but it remained my belief that, in some cases, men in prison can still manage to harm innocents even when they are kept in solitary confinement.  People are still routinely killed at the order of Mexican gang lords incarcerated in Pelican Bay.  It happens. As men, we are charged with protecting those innocent people in the same way that we were obligated to stop the slaughter in Rwanda, an obligation that we failed to honor and for which are accountable.

Still I could see that Sadaam’s execution did nothing to quell the violence in Iraq as I had hoped. Removing him from power did prevent his regime from adding to the excess of four hundred thousand bodies of Shia, Kurds and other dissents that Sadaam’s Baathist government had executed and buried in mass graves.  Hanging him didn’t right any wrongs, although, for Sadaam, his time on death row was probably helpful to his soul.  It did seem like an awfully easy way out for a man who had ordered mass brutal killings of his own citizens.  The bodies of children shot while clutching stuffed animals were, in some cases, exhumed from the vast network of grave mounds distributed throughout Iraq.

Killing the killer is certainly vengeance, but that is not a healthy occupation for us.  That said, I don’t advocate the European solution of releasing terrorists or other mass murders back into society after five years or a decade.  In most every case, true life imprisonment is satisfactory for even the more heinous killers. Certainly, Charles Manson tests our patience with his antics, but he really doesn’t get much attention anymore. He rants and raves, but he, as of yet, has not been allowed to participate in Dancing With the Stars and after you have carved a swastika into your forehead there is a very limited list of outrageous stunts you can pull from a prison cell.  I expect that he will eventually understand that only endorsing Donald Trump will garner him the mass media attention that he craves and misses.  His execution, if he were eligible, would only provide a last trip through the klieg lights that he so misses rather than the irrelevance which is his current lot.  Which is worse punishment for a Narcissist?

By discovering the teachings of Divine Mercy in the last four years I came to understand in a small way that Jesus’ blood is infinitely more than sufficient to wipe away all the sins of Sadaam, his two rape happy sons and for Charles Manson and all the rogues’ gallery of serial and spree killers that have garnered such infamy and notoriety through our media feeding frenzies.  Despite our disgust, all those killers remain fully human both by DNA and by the effect of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice.  Francis encourages us to remember that they are men like us.  I agree with him, although I am not ready to wash Manson’s feet.

Most Catholics like a good deal of what Francis has to say, and don’t care for another portion of his teaching.  It was the same with Christ.  Not even his disciples understood much of what Jesus was saying during His lifetime. Peter was a particularly vociferous objector to several of the teachings, but the first Bishop of Rome came around in the end to Jesus’ point of view.  I think much of what Francis has to say will also convert us over years of thinking if our hearts remain open to the still small voice inside us. When we see him wash the feet of prisoners instead of dining with Pharisees, our choice is to try to understand what he is attempting to teach us, or to join his detractors.  His obvious openness to the life of Christ makes me very reluctant to join the chorus of Francis opponents.  

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #Pope Francis #Catholic #Sermon on the Mount #walk for the poor #blessings'healing #miraculous #souls #justice #capital punishment #JPII #Divine Mercy #sacrifice