Francis and Gene

Try this in the pulpit. Let me know what happens.

The closest I ever saw of this was Fr Eugene Barrette MS at St Thomas the Apostle Church, Smyrna GA.  He would sing, do song reviews, movie reviews, TV reviews, a bit of a dance.  He would take as long for a homily as he thought necessary.  He was inspiring.  He was wonderful.  He was mostly gentle and kind.  Like us all he could be cranky at times.

He was/is my hero - a wounded healer.

He had been the head of the laSalette order in Rome and had some sort of exhaustion issue.  Some call it a mental breakdown.  He stepped down but continued to be a priest - a parish priest.

Wherever you are Gene, pax Christi tecum.

Physics joke

ajc2013Jul7comics Crackshaft

man: You look pretty pleased

woman: Yeah

m: Now what?

w: Oh, I was just wondering if Max is going to find someone ... or if Mindy is going to graduate from college ... or if Dad's okay in New York.  My happy times have a half-life shorter than a Higgs boson

COMMITTED FOR THE LONG RUN

Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a man who lived far away called his brother and told him, "Do something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill."

Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid. The next month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid, figuring it was some incidental expense.

But, when the bills for $200.00 kept arriving every month, he finally called his brother again to find out what was going on.

"Well," said the other brother, "You said to do something nice for Uncle Charlie. So I rented him a tuxedo."

That's not exactly the most appropriate gift for someone who has died! But the story made me think about how we are often willing to give, even to sacrifice great amounts, and we are happy to do so once or twice. But we don't want it to become something we have to do for the rest of our lives.

For example, we're happy to have friends or family stay in our homes for a short while, but we don't want it to go on for years and years. We'll agree to teach a Bible class at church for a quarter or two, but we don't want to be stuck in the class for the rest of our life. We'll take a mission trip and live in squalid conditions for a week or two, but would never dream of moving there permanently.

And our hesitancy in situations like those is perhaps understandable. Unfortunately, we sometimes are tempted to have the same attitude when it comes to serving Christ. We're willing to give up everything for Christ -- at least, for a while. But for our whole lives? Always seeking to put others first? Always willing to forgive? Always willing to suffer and sacrifice for the cause of Christ?

We need to be reminded that Christianity is not a sprint, it's a long-distance marathon, and we must be willing to commit ourselves to run the race to the very end. Be forewarned -- it can be tiring. But "let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." (Gal 6:9)

How old are you?

Usually one measures age by the number of birthdays you have had.  Special notice is given for birthdays ending in zero in the decimal system.  But these can be denied.

Then there are the telltale signs on the body, especially the hands and neck.  Loose skin.  Liver spots.  Things that are stiff and should be supple, and vice versa.  But plastic surgery and modern medicine can change or mask some of these.

Then there is the attitude people have to you and you to them.  Do people ignore you?  Not hear you?  Do you want to tell the truth to everyone, despite the cost?  Do you do it?  Do you have the urge to post on Facebook every hour?  Do you follow that urge?

But the true sign is "What's in your mailbox?"

• Do you have incessant solicitations for Medicare plans?
  
• Do you get questionnaires from "Cremation and funeral societies?"
  
• Do people want to sell you "Final expense insurance?"

zimmerman trial

Is there a chance for blind justice when the trial is being used as a political kick ball on all sides?

In Sanford, Fla., Zimmerman trial keeps a shaken community on edge

The real problem in the USA is that there appears to be no way depoliticize race.  The media are heavily invested in using controversy as the basis for making money.

On code-switching:

Was Zimmerman trial witness Rachel Jeantel tripped up by her inability to code switch?

For me, it is still true that the medium is the message.  One must take responsibility for the message one delivers.  Wherever one is, one must speak the language of the place to the people of the place.

teaching today

For years I’ve been introducing students in my college-level fine- arts courses to the photographs of Diane Arbus (1923–71)....  Together they form a communion of beings as ethereal as saints, whose lovely, silver-tone relics seem at home under glass.

Projected onto a lecture-room wall, their dearness vanishes. No longer objects to be held and studied like jewelry, the photos assume the scale of billboard graphics, which one might think would heighten their power. Lately, however, my students seem less responsive to Arbus’s pictures than they once were, even if I try nudging them in the direction of honest emotion with a few lines from Grace Bauer’s tribute poem The Eye of the Beholder. Bauer dares my classes in her evocation of Arbus,

Run your hands
across your average face,
your normal body,”And tell me
how you differ from these
miracles that always make you
want to look away.
And see.

More and more, however, my students don’t turn reflexively from Arbus’s anomalies of nature and culture, or show much interest in “seeing” in a way that doesn’t entail keeping at least one eye on the screens of their iPhones. Instead, an icy stupor possesses them, something partly induced by the bullet-point approach to learning they’ve endured since grade school—all prepackaged “data” with little affective content. Sitting beside classmates with Popsicle-colored hair and more angles on filigreeing one’s body parts than even Arbus’s subjects knew of, they balk at the chance to examine art that asks, Who among you is without blemish? and only half buy my claim we’re not doing religion....

I regard the classroom as a hallowed place and require male students to remove their baseball caps upon entering....  Experience tells me that five or ten years down the road they’ll write to say they’d stumbled on the [a certain graphic image] in the pages of some magazine, no older or less terrifying than they remembered him. They’ll recall the hours we shared letting great images and ideas wash over us like baptismal water, a trick to keep our hearts and minds supple against life’s hard edges, our eyes fine-tuned to behold the world as it points beyond itself. - Experience tells me that five or ten years down the road they’ll write to say they’d stumbled on the boy with the grenade in the pages of some magazine, no older or less terrifying than they remembered him. They’ll recall the hours we shared letting great images and ideas wash over us like baptismal water, a trick to keep our hearts and minds supple against life’s hard edges, our eyes fine-tuned to behold the world as it points beyond itself. - Michael E. DeSanctis cw2013Jun1p31

peace / good will

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. - Lk 2:14

Today the NAB has:

Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.

I have been meditating on the relationship between peace and good will. One can have good will without being in peace. Certainly one can have good will without being in a time or place of peace.

For good will to be effective, it must be reciprocated. That, in and of itself, is peace; the sharing of good will.

I find that, as I age, peace becomes more important; and more elusive.

I find it unhealthy not to be always seeking peace.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

- Although the authorship of this prayer, first printed in the early 20th century, remains unclear, it has traditionally been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.