Wearing it Out

As I reached to open the door of the northern Michigan 7-11 for Kathy, two young men came out, one of them holding the door open for us, wearing a black tee shirt in the warm afternoon. Their dark complexions at first made me think of the Chaldeans we’d left behind in these stores in Detroit. But then, as I turned to thank them for their courtesy, I saw that the tee shirt one of them was wearing was covered across the back with a rendering of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I watched them walk out of the store and down the sidewalk, engaged in comfortable chatter. It may as well have been a NASCAR tee shirt, or one emblazoned with “Detroit Tigers.”  I envied the casual gift of some Hispanic youth I’ve known, who can wear their religion on the outside without telling me I ought to join it. They seem to do it not because they think it’s good for me, but out of joy and honor and gladness that is so good for them.

I struggle with writing in this blog about faith sometimes, belief in God. I don’t want to turn readers off, turn them away by touching a scar left by an old wound, one inflicted by some crusader who once saw them as an infidel, a wrong-thinker, an outsider.  We got back in the car and on the radio was an NPR feature on a just proposed Belgian law that prevents the wearing of the niqab, for reasons of security and identity, since it shows only the eyes. The participants included a female government minister from Quebec, where even the much simpler hijab, which shows the entire face, is disallowed in the schools. Some feel that these restrictions are anti-Muslim.

A week after Easter, some Christians consider what it was like for the followers of the now crucified Jesus, as they struggled with believing his rising from the dead. They became torn between believers and non-believers. The language used in the stories of the time said that the believers “spoke boldly” about their risen Lord.  But the Tea Party movement and the Are You Saved zealots these days and so many others are indeed speaking boldly, and it seems to be doing the world more harm than good.  I recall the words that a priest friend had used that morning, facing the challenge of expressing our belief in a God of Love. He rejected ‘Speak boldly” as appropriate mandate in today’s divided world. “Live boldly” was his alternative advice. He suggested that we consider St. Francis, who said that while preaching the good news of a loving God constantly was our duty, to use words was optional.

I see the back of that Hispanic youth, so comfortably wearing that image of his Lady. He trusts, I suspect, that if we find her beautiful, we will make her ours too. He trusts the beauty of truth to speak without words, and for the good news to be spread not by tongues, but by hearts.

I prefer his quiet crusade, not a cross on the front of his armor, but beauty worn on the back of his tee shirt.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Come Again?

Imagine yourself missing a party, maybe a birthday of a close friend, or an anniversary of a couple you hold dear, or St. Patty’s Day or the Fourth of July. You think about the friends that will be there, the chance to see them, the things that they’ll do that would be so much fun to do with them. Oh, it’s not whining, not really, to feel this longing, is it? Mostly, for me as I imagine it, it’s recalling past such occasions, and the stories that were told, the reading of cards, the glow on faces, the sitting around tables full of food and laughter. I remember my brother-in-law Dick, on his thirtieth birthday, receiving a card with photos of scantily clad women with the heads of Supreme Court Justices glued over their own, celebrating his budding law practice. I remember my mom and dad dancing in the basement of our old house, murals of the German countryside of her heritage, and his wartime memory, dancing the polka as uncles and aunts watched them, smiling. I remember Trinity Church with Kathy on St. Patty’s Day. I remember sitting in my Uncle Joe’s backyard on the 4th of July, watching not fireworks, but photo slides of us as kids, and my dad as a young man whizzing by on long-bladed speed skates on the oval ice rink at nearby Riis Park.


Easter Mass at Gesu Church in Detroit was, for nearly 40 years, this kind of thing, not to be missed. The veil of Lent lifted from faces as the stone was rolled away, the Gospel Choir stood and rocked and clapped Alleluia like this was the celebration of all celebrations – because it was. But on Easter Sunday a week ago, Kathy and I had for the first time been instead in our new home parish 250 miles north in Traverse City, where the Mass was bright, and the homily was encouraging, but it wasn’t Gesu.

So just because we wanted to make use of my retiree dental benefits at the University’s dental clinic in the city, Kathy and I had driven down for this weekend. I worked on the database at Manresa and we visited friends and walked walks we had walked for years…and yesterday we went to Mass at Gesu. The Gospel Choir was warming up with some of my favorites. (Listen and enjoy other renditions by Clicking and Clicking)  I wish they were on YouTube themselves!

“Carl,” the pastor said, starting his homily by looking at Carl Clendenning, the Gospel Choir director, “Give me an octave.” Carl, sitting at the organ, smiled and pressed middle C and the C above it, the pipes filling the church. “It’s Sunday in the Octave of Easter,” he said. It’s Easter again, just like Carl gave us a C and a C. The decorations are all still up. The Choir is singing the same alleluias. The Gospel is about Jesus showing up, alive…AGAIN. It’s been a week of Easters, and today is Easter all over again. We’re here having the same party we had last Sunday, and it’s great all over again.”

Imagine yourself coming one week later to the scene of that birthday party, or that anniversary, or on March 24th or July 11th and seeing everybody smiling at you, and realizing that they’re doing it all over again…just for you, just because you’re that important to them.

I like to think that God’s like that, that we’re all that important to Him,  that if we miss Him the first time around, we can...come again.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Communion

Here visiting Detroit and staying at Manresa, I took a long pre-dawn walk trying to urge the digestion of a full dinner and a full day, unprocessed in a night of sleep. After three miles my stomach and my mind were both still busy trying to sort out what had been put into them. At home I have a habit of waking up empty, the first thought like a the drop of dew on the morning blade of grass, coalesced from night’s mist, pulling into itself all that is around it, the universe in its tiny crystal sphere.

My walk here in the dark before robin song took me again and again along the river that winds through the neighborhood around the retreat center and finally over a 20’ dam, tumbling down a series of steps that turns the flow into drops, the drops into mist, white noise, white water.

As I turned back toward Manresa, I realized that my mind was like the downstream side of that dam, my thoughts spilling over, not coalescing but dispersing, not becoming discreet but dissipated.  Our visit has been a tumble of conversations with people we left back here when we moved north. Catching up with the past year that we have not shared and arriving at the present, we realize that our car does not come to a clean stop in the present, but rolls a bit into the future, leaving us hanging in the unknown, the front wheels of our minds turning, turning, turning over the precipice, nothing to grip.

The future is unknown, of course, but I was struck this morning that the future in a busy life is a jumble of unknownness, while facing death made the unknown future so clear. Life in the tumble of the river is a jumble of indistinguishable concerns. Living in the face of death is like waking up to that single droplet and seeing all of life. We spent last evening with good friends who like us had faced the prospect of death. And like us, their brush with death had simplified life, brought it into focus. And like us, they now face the unknown future of retirement, our front wheels turning, turning, turning over the precipice beyond the life of work.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Jesus died was to bring us this gift of pulling us away from the tumble, the jumble, the rushing river of indistinguishable and unstoppable concerns, and bringing us to the silence of that single drop, reflecting all of life.

I imagine communion as receiving that single cool drop on my tongue.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Party Party Party Partry Party Party Party Party.

"Christos Aneste!" Smiling Fr. Greg Hyde, SJ is greeted by quizzical expressions in the small gathering here at Manresa on Friday morning. "Alethos Aneste!" Yeah, we think, that’s it, that’s the ticket: Alethos Aneste.


We’re here in Detroit for the weekend, taking advantage of the School of Dentistry’s services and seeing friends. It brings us back to two homes, Manresa and UDM. And as I asked you to do in "Yoooo Hoooo" on April 8th, I’ve been watching for appearances. And Fr. Greg’s smiling right through our not knowing what the heck Christos Aneste meant was the first thing that caught me. “This is Friday in the Octave of Easter,” he said, Catholicspeak for the eight days (octopus, eight arms, eight games to win the Stanley Cup in the old days) of celebrating the greatest party of the year, because The Big J beat death. “It’s a week of Sundays,” he said. In the Greek Orthodox Church the faithful greet each other during this week-long party not with whatever “Howdy” is in Greek, but Christos Aneste! (Christ is Risen) and the response is not the customary “Howdy yourself, Bub,” but Alethos Aneste! (He is risen indeed.)

A week of Sundays. I smiled. Retired for almost a year now, I still think I need to squeeze every minute of “free” time because Monday must be right around the corner; Monday, when I need to, you know, work. So Sundays were kind of the antithesis of work – no work allowed, bigger dinner than usual, maybe some friends over. Retired now, I have a year of Sundays, but somehow it’s like eating chocolate for lunch every day; it loses its specialness. So the “week of Sundays” started to lose its grip on me, even as Fr. Greg’s smile held right on.

Octave of…. Now that grabbed me, and kept holding on. Kathy is the queen of celebration of birthdays. She starts smiling funny at me a week before mine every year, and doing the same with the kids and grandkids. The table is set a week in advance of every gathering, and stays that way all week. By now I’ve come to understand and almost appreciate the custom, and certainly to appreciate her generosity of spirit. So if on December 15th she starts searching my face intently, I’ll remember, and say, "Oh, yeah; it’s Sunday in the Octave of my birthday!" And she’ll smile really big, gleefully joining me in my (feigned) anticipation. She has so much innocent goodness that my sarcasm bounces right off and hits me in the heart, and each year my resistance is worn down a bit more by my delight in her.

So I’m sitting there looking at Fr. Greg’s smiling face, and looking over at Kathy’s smiling face, and thinking about how I have a way to go to get into their spirit, their joy in how really cool this is, this Easter thing, like my life, something to really celebrate. 

A week of Sundays: working folks, consider that. Eight days of celebrating your birthday: try that if the first doesn’t take. What are we missing in this Octave of Easter thing? Why’s that?

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Keeping Up Appearances

Yesterday when I got dressed, I put on a tee shirt that was Dan’s. I pulled it from a pile of his clothes that our younger brother Bob had brought back when he and our sister had closed up his apartment. I’d been in Spain with my son Chris, and so Bob had done the work of the closest brother. Despite Dan’s penny-pinching, he’d bought darned good clothes, and so even after five years, the shirt is holding up, letting me put on his memory, letting me wear him on sunny, perfect days so he can feel the warmth of the sun, or on days when I’m not quite sure where I’m going, and I can, as so many times as adolescents together in the bigness of downtown Chicago, rest in his gift of always finding his way to get to our destination.

If Dan had not died, I’d have been able to call him yesterday on his birthday, his 65th, and wish him happy Medicare. I’d have been able to tell him that now he could maybe take better care of himself. But Maybe I’d actually need to say I’m sorry, that whatever kept me from getting from Detroit to St. Paul…but I’d told him I was sorry, and he’d brusquely shoved it away, didn’t want to hear it, got angry as he did when I ….

When someone dies, the distance between us becomes infinite and at the same time diminishes to zero. We can’t reach them physically, but somehow their memory becomes a part of our mentality, our thoughts changing forever like the center of gravity of a little boat changes when a second passenger gets in. Often, as with myself and my big brother, there can be a disturbance in our thinking, a guilt or regret that plays a flat note that turns the harmony of our memory to a minor chord, never quite resolves.

Again and again Jesus appeared to those with whom he had lived. And often, the first words that he would say would be “fear not”. Regardless of your belief, the stories that are told in Catholic Masses these days can be of interest to those of us who have lost someone suddenly, without resolution of regret or guilt. In today’s (click for a link) http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/040910.shtml one reading describes the life of the friends left behind, and another describes one of these after-death appearances of Jesus, in which he worked to help them relax with his presence by feeding them fish and bread as he had done in brighter times. I smile as I think of this as comfort food.

Bob called yesterday, and I asked him what it had been like to be with Dan’s body, after they had re-started his heart but his brain stayed dead. He told me how he decided that Dan wanted him to leave him, so that Dan himself could let go of this useless body. As he was driving west across the river from Minnesota into Wisconsin, Bob took a wrong turn and ended up off the highway. He thought of how Dan always had this sense of direction, and relaxed into that Dan moment, and soon enough he had found his way back to the highway. Just as he mouthed the words “Way to go, Dan!” his cell phone rang and he got the news that Dan’s heart had finally stopped.

How do we find comfort with the unresolved memories of those who have died? As in life, this Jesus character seems to know in his appearances after his death what we need, what holds us back from freedom, from being our truest selves. He reaches back to a time when he knew we were comforted, calmed, when we let him give us the gift he had, when we let him help us find our way, when he would help us let go of the past and bring us to the present. Fear not. Let’s eat.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Yoooo Hooooo!

“Here I am, Jonas! Here I am, Jonas” the smiling youthful gray-haired woman called from the podium, like someone trying to catch the eye of a person they’ve come to meet in a crowded airport. She was a Sister of Mercy, and Jonas was Dr. Jonas Salk, the discoverer of Polio vaccine. She was enacting what was in her imagination, her interior knowing, of how the truth was calling out to the researcher, aching to be recognized. I remember this vividly after ten years, and I know why. Not because this she was appealing. Not because she was attractive. Not because she had one of those voices that had a certain warmth, and eyes that sparkled. This middle aged celibate woman stuck in the memory of a happily married, still-in-love-with-his-wife old man because she was playing the role of God, and playing it well.

That God could call to me like my wife called to me forty years ago, with her smiliness, the bounce of her long brown hair, the brightness of her yellow shoes.... Oh, yeah, this is all physical stuff…ohhhh, yeahhh. One of the tough things about focusing on Lent with this blog is that it can be a turn-off to heathens, pagans, the unwashed, Tea Party members, and good, compassionate humanists without whom we would all die. Forget the name we call this calling. Or just call it truth.

What’s the truth that called to you yesterday? Forget about the G word. What’s the truth that you noticed? I noticed as I was trying to yet one more time clean off my desk and empty my e-mail that I’m turning into a woodworker, that most of the stuff there related to my efforts to find a way to do good with wood, to be useful in my enjoyment of it by creating benefit and revenue for those here who work with the poor. I noticed that the same fear slows me down here that did on my job in Detroit – that I may be inadequate to the task, that I’d like to run away from it. But I notice that once I start, it sustains me and the fear goes away.  I noticed that Kathy and Amy were more like sisters than mother and daughter when they went to listen to Diane Rehm at the Traverse City Opera House last night. And I noticed that while I was alone at home, I felt free to weep out loud into a towel while I watched Freedom Writers (click for a link) , and that it really felt good. I noticed that the image that I used in Monday’s blog, that fresh green shoot cutting its way through that dry gray soil sticks with me, makes me wonder what is calling to it, so appealing, so attractive.

Forget names. Something was calling to you yesterday like the truth that called to Jonas Salk, called and called until he “discovered” it. Reflect. And today, watch and listen. Physical stuff.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Risen? I Doubt It.

He showed up yesterday. I should have known, after all, I expect it. But I have doubt.

I lied to Stan last night. I didn’t mean to. When I asked him if he could show me his 30 day sobriety chip, I tried to read his face as he turned in his chair to get his hand into the pocket of his jeans. I thought that he might think I was an alcoholic too, or maybe I was afraid he wouldn’t think I understand addiction. “I’m not in A.A.,” I said; “My addiction is worry and work.” It wasn’t the truth; not exactly. The truth came to me as I awoke, 2/3 of the way through the night, and wondered why.

Yesterday, you see, was the second time I returned to my weekly ritual of serving dinner at the local homeless shelter and then spending an hour with a group of residents in what they call a “Goals Group,” mine again since returning from an involuntary four-month medical time out. With the end of Lent I was released from my cave, the Mayo Clinic cardiothoracic surgeon telling me heart surgery was not needed after all, that I could return to normal activity and monitor the bulge on my aorta. Last week, my first week back to at the shelter, was tough, appropriate to Holy Week. I wept on my way home over the news that during my four month hiatus a number of my old group had relapsed into intoxication, lost jobs, lost housing.

So yesterday after dinner, I was glad to see two people in the group room, doubling the previous week. All during the time I had served dinner prior to the Goals Group, I had been looking intensely at the faces of the “new” residents, faces I did not know. How would I be useful to them?  Flo was there waiting as I came in, and she said that another would be coming; that would be Stan, who I had seen coming into the building. The two of them were a great gift to me, trusting me to let me know who they were, what they were going through, what they thought would be useful on their Thursday evenings in the group. I came home grateful to have been useful.

As I awakened this morning, it was Stan and Flo who were on my mind, and the things we talked about. It really was a good group. They both left looking forward to next week, and I left looking forward to spending time with these two talented people who began to see their worth a bit more in just that one hour of companionship and conversation. That’s when I realized that I had lied to Stan and to myself while he reached for that blue metal 30 day chip.  I knew the truth.

My name is John and I’m a Doubtaholic. I didn’t know if it would “take”, this Life after Lent, this believing that this Jesus really beat death, that he really lives. I had my doubts last night before the Goals Group. I have doubts today about my ability to weave my interests into a meaningful life, about being useful and good and having enough saved and being able to earn what more might be needed.

You too?  You say that it’s hard to believe that God sent his son to save us from ourselves, through the complicity of a teenage virgin, and that his son fed the hungry and healed the sick and challenged the powerful, and that they crucified him and he rose from the dead?  Me too. Let’s watch for him. He shows up.  If you read the Scriptures these next few weeks, like the gospel today (click for a link)  you’ll see a pattern. Jesus shows up. He appears again and again to his doubters, in the stories and in our lives right now.  Watch for him.  Each night, stop for a moment and recall when he showed up.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Will You Fall For That?

One of the joys of my life at the University of Detroit Mercy was recruiting and training groups of students. From Student Government to the radio station to those who ran freshman orientation, these gatherings of young people come to mind as I struggle her at my keyboard to find a handle for belief in God. 

Dora was a beautiful, talented sophomore, a magnet for everybody. She was always accompanied by one or two other students, and always calling out to others as they passed on the sidewalk from the Student Union to the classroom buildings, calling them by name, her big smile putting one on their faces. As director of student life, Dora was a gift to me, because she had attracted a large group of students to start up a campus radio station, their music bringing life to the building, so that students and staff would feel their culture when they entered it.

Early in the term, just after the students had returned from summer recess, we would take groups like Dora's away for a day, to help them learn to work together. I brought them to Manresa, the Jesuit Retreat House where Kathy and I lived for ten years, and we occupied the area behind the old barns, so they could be noisy without disturbing the silent retreatants on the grounds. The first thing I had them do was a “trust walk”, putting them in pairs equipped with one blindfold each. One of the pair would be blindfolded and guided by the other for a walk through the woods and along the river, over the hilly trail and through the gardens. Then they’d switch roles. They could speak, hold hands, as long as the one was blind, and reliant upon the other. When they came back a half hour later, we gave them time to reflect on the experience, what it was like to have to trust.

As the president of the station, Dora had a big job, and a big staff. So helping her learn trust in all of the students was s specific objective of the day. For that we used the “trust fall”. We took her to a tree stump that was five feet high, just wide enough for her to stand on. We helped her up and her fifteen student staff surrounded her on the ground. I said “OK, Dora, now keep your arms folded and your body stiff, your feet on the stump, and fall. They’ll catch you. Dora’s forehead furrowed with the idea, even as she tried to lighten the moment with words, She struggled to let herself fall, even as the students called to her with encouragement. “We’re here, Dora, we won’t let you fall! Come on; we’ll catch you! We’re right here! We’ve got you, Dora!” She looked over at me as I watched the group gathered around her. She closed her eyes and let herself fall.

Some students who did the trust fall would cheer when they accomplished it. Some would breathe an audible sigh of relief. Dora wept and wept and wept, accepting their hugs of consolation and affirmation. Then Dora told them that she had lost her father two years earlier, her father who had always been there to catch her. Her trusting them had been so hard, and such a relief. Her group that year was among the most effective and cohesive I experienced in a lifetime of work with students.

Can we trust? Can we? In the Good Stories told after the death of Jesus, the focus is on what his followers do when he has died . . . and disappeared from the tomb. Can we fall into invisible arms? What are the wounds in our memories that hold us from trust?


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

He is Risen…So What?

The tomb is empty. The story tells us that this man, this son of God, rose from the dead. So what? What do I do with this? What do you? In our old Prayer Group at Gesu parish decades ago, someone asked this same question in a different way, and the question returns to me in the quiet wake of every Easter. “Are you Eastered?”

This week I would like to invite you to join me in considering this essential question of faith, and  of the potential unfolding of our own humanity, as a flower opens with the first rains of spring, its green shoot having burst through cold earth, not dead after all. Do we allow ourselves to be acted upon, to be changed, by mystery? 

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A Rumor of Hope

We are not born into certainty this Easter morning. We are born into hope. While death is conquered, life remains conquest, a daily process of leaning on faith, learning from love.

Four months ago everything had changed in my life. For thirty years I had fought to avoid my father’s decline into heart disease, to avoid the open-heart operation that he’d undergone. I had become trim and fit, full of boundless energy and youthful endurance. Four months ago my doctor told me, his face grave, that I was a lucky man, that aneurisms like the one he’d found on my aorta are rarely found before they cause serious problems. He said I’d need to be a slug until more tests could be run, that open-heart surgery would be the means of repair.

The next months were a kind of slow-motion Holy Week. The brightness of my life became clear against the dark backdrop of mortality. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Lent were somehow carved in deeper relief on our hearts. Finally a few weeks ago we scheduled surgery here near home and asked for a second opinion at Mayo clinic, just in case. Our out-of-town daughter and out-of-the-country son made plans to be here a few days before the operation, to spend some time with me knowing that there was the 1% chance it would be the last time, and to be here to celebrate…or not celebrate…when the surgery was over. All of this was quite resonant with Lent, living with dying.

Ten days ago, I was surprised by a personal telephone call from the surgeon at Mayo Clinic who we were planning to visit. I listened to him saying that he, along with a cardiologist and radiologist there had thoroughly studied my case. “All three of us agree, that your tests indicate…” my head was already nodding in acceptance of his concurrence with the plan for the open-heart operation, when I was startled to hear “…no surgery in your case.”  I sat in disbelief as he described his hypothesis that the bulge on my aorta may have been there since birth, an adjustment to a problem in my heart’s fetal development that may be stable, and not growing or in need of repair. He said that it was not necessary or me to “be a slug”, that there was no need for restrictions while my cardiologist here monitors the aneurism through six-month scans.

I had my Easter ten days early. I looked into the cave and found death gone, found life in its place. But I didn’t run, like Mary Magdalene, to shout the news. I sat, just sat, in gratitude, and relief, and acceptance of life as a gift endlessly more precious for its having been threatened. I calmly shared the news with Kathy, and we wept in each others’ arms, much as we had four months earlier when we had found death to be closer that we’d thought. We told the kids, of course, and we told our families and our closest friends. And the word is getting around, as it did that first Easter morning. This Good News spreads, like the late evangelist Carl F. Henry called a rumor of hope: “He planted the only durable rumor of hope amid the widespread despair of a hopeless world.”

We are not born into certainty this Easter morning. We are born into Hope. I didn’t run because while death is conquered, life remains conquest, a daily process of leaning on faith, learning from love.

for information of the graphic, see http://janknegt.eccwireless.com/index.html.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Second Great Silence

“M ware China” I saw, even as I began to pour my morning cup of tea, and realized that it was the bottom of the mug! I inverted the cup just in time and poured the hot tea into the open and waiting interior. But even as I poured, I knew that this particular morning, I should have poured that hot liquid onto the bottom of the cup, and it should have splashed onto my hand, and into the worn fabric of my faded jeans turning them fresh blue, sticking to the flesh above my knee, burning, making me pull my arm back, spilling tea on the floor now, and my sock getting wet, and my foot pulling back too late, and I yell God damn it, and the tears begin to flow, because it is this particular morning. 

I sit now in reality, taking a sip of tea from the righted-just-in-time mug, in reality that is somehow less real than that imagined tea-spill, that reminder of how things go when things go wrong, when one thing after another just goes wrong.

Easter Saturday was the day that Danny and I would look at our Easter Baskets, the smell of the chocolate giving flesh to the concept “near occasion of sin” that we would learn by rote in religion class at St. Mary’s. The nearer you got to that chocolate bunny, the harder it was to resist. We seemed to alternate in our lustful advances, each brother watching the other, vicariously enjoying the other’s approach, salivating together, knowing that the really heavy day, Good Friday, was over, but you couldn’t eat the candy until Easter. Easter Saturday was this the longest day in the year, even longer than the last day of school.

But on this particular morning this humorous memory is merely a bright thread in a dull fabric of days-after-dyings, the silence where there had been sound, of absence when there had been presence, of un, of non, of saying was instead of is, and stopping for a moment the first time it happens, but getting used to it.  So on this particular morning it was not surprising to me that the tears came, in the gift of that almost-inverted mug, when my imagination took me into the place where I really am, into the Great Silence that is emptiness and the beginning of grief. But it was surprising that the anger flashed out, the rage.

I pour another cup of tea and sit back, away from the keyboard. I turn off the light and listen to the robin singing to the dawn I cannot yet see. I wonder at the persistence of evil, at the politics and ego and greed that finds innocent victims even as I ponder. It is during a slow walk in the dawn birdsong that I realize it. I need God risen. This admiration for a Jesus willing to die for love, this desire to emulate him is not enough. The rage that erupted in me over and imagined teas spill shows me that I need him not merely to accept death, but to defeat it. I need someone to care with me amidst all the need in the world, so I will not resort to rage, or hide in indifference.

I need to see the stone rolled away. I need hope.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Just Dream - Good Friday

My head is spinning, and I choose to sit in the dark.

I see Bobby Kennedy there, lying there, Ethel weeping, holding his head in both hands, helplessly trying to shield him from the already spent bullet, at home in his already-spent body. I see Martin Luther King, and the stillness of his face, the piercing-gentle eyes now closed, the always moving lips now still. I see JFK slumping, slumping, and an “Oh, NO!” finds its way to my mind’s throat, and the tears come, hot tears. They were our hope, and they have been killed. I wept for us. I wept for Ethel, and for Coretta, and for Jackie. I wept for their children. But I wept most for myself, that the dream I dared dream seemed to be now just dream.

Imagine reading a story, in which a benevolent and powerful extraterrestrial sent a representative to give Earth all of the secrets of sustainability and happiness, enabling us to live without polluting, without war, without required labor, without sickness…and we killed him. Imagine that then he sent his daughter, and we killed her. Would we read the book? Could we stand to? Would we weep?

Kathy shakes her head sadly when Good Friday comes along. “If we would just get it, he wouldn’t need to die, would he? Why don’t we get it? What a waste.” Somehow, while I’m inclined to sit in a dark church at noon, she finds herself preparing for the kids to come over in a couple of days.

When Christ died, the story goes, the curtain in the Temple of Jerusalem tore from top to bottom. The curtain’s inner layer kept everybody away from the Ark of the Covenant, the gold box in which the commandments were kept, the Holy of Holies, the presence of God. Only the High Priest could enter past that inner curtain, only once a year, the Day of Atonement. On that day, a goat would be killed and sacrificed, because blood was required for forgiveness. Now anyone could enter God’s presence, anytime. Now forgiveness does not require blood.

Even as he dies, Jesus continues to be compassionate. He consoles the criminal who believes in him, promises him paradise. He connects his beloved disciple to his mother, and his mother to the disciple, that they might share the embrace that his death will take from them.

Even as he is suffering in loneliness, mocked in powerlessness, he continues to trust his father until the end. His cry “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” is the opening minor chord of David’s Psalm 22, a lament that ends in resolution, the crescendo of praise for a God who never abandons us, despite all appearances. And it is Psalm 31 that he intones as he dies: “Into your hands I commend my Spirit.

I think of the beautiful young wife of a murdered Olympic athlete, consoling their young daughter. “Will I ever see Daddy again?” the child implores. Somehow the mother is able to smile at her. “Close your eyes; do you see him?” “Yes!” “He will always be there; you can see him whenever you want. He will never be gone.”

In John’s Gospel, Pilate seemed to know. Isaiah tells of the scapegoat. Paul tells of the new High Priest. Listen to these stories. Close your eyes and listen. (Click to hear today’s readings)  Where is God in this for you today?

In the darkness outside, a robin is singing his heart out.

Thanks to SH4WN for the remarkable graphic


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Likewise, I'm Sure

Carl and Lorraine Rauen were a really neat couple. They had a certain gentleness, an inner calm that silently poured oil on my psyche’s waters that I didn’t even know were uncalm until a kind of interior “ahhhh” happened inside me when I saw them, either of them, both of them. One of the things that I remember most vividly about Carl and Lorraine is that there was one mannerism that they performed identically. When I was speaking and they wanted to verbally convey that they understood, they would say the usual “uh-huh,” and nod their head affirmatively. But they would say it in a way particular to them, and exactly the same way, with a momentary delay between the syllables, the second one rising slightly: “Uh…huhhhh?” Now thirty years since I have seen them, I am still struck that they would become so much like each other.

I met Angela’s mother several years ago in a little town in Ohio, when I drove from Detroit with my little pickup truck and my neighbor’s chain saw to gradually collect the enormous logs of her felled walnut tree, a gift for my woodworking pursuits. It took three or four trips, and each time the white-haired woman would quietly watch this crazy young man work alone to muscle these huge treasures into his little truck. Each time she would come out in her cotton dress and well-used apron with a cold drink for me; after handing it to me, she would gracefully take the strands of her hair that were hanging loose on her right cheek, give them a half twist, and place them neatly behind her ear. I don’t know that I even noticed that gesture until, years after she had died, I was talking with Angela and she repeated that very same motion. I smiled when she did it, and she asked me why. When I told her that I had seen her mother do that exact thing, she smiled, and said “yeah, I guess she did, didn’t she. Hmmm.”

Who do you take after? I try to listen like the Rauens, calming and affirming. My wife and I both notice that there are things we’ve come to do similarly to each other. I consider the things that I do my mother did, ways that I am like my father.  Today is the day that Christians remember the Last Supper. Jesus shared bread and wine with his friends, and he said he was sharing his very self with them. Uh…huhhhh? In John’s version, he didn’t feed them, he washed their feet. Hmmm. But all four versions of the story of what he did before being taken away and killed include what he said to them after he fed them, or washed their feet. “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do”… “When you do these things, do them in memory of me.”

Jesus didn’t call us to die on the cross like he did. But he did tell us to serve, to share our selves, to take after him.

When people look at us, who do they see in us? We would do worse than that they would see Him.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The First Great Silence

Tomorrow it begins. We call it Holy Thursday. The downhill movement begins, gathering momentum, clearly unstoppable, riding on tracks laid by Roman occupation and legalistic dehumanization of the Scribes and Pharisees and the complicity of the Judases who thought they knew what the Messiah OUGHT to do. Then there is Good Friday, and the question of why we call it GOOD. But today, Wednesday, has no name.

Can you remember riding a roller coaster? Which part of the ride do you remember? Was it the height of it; was it the weightlessness of the drops? Was it the way the car eventually slowed down, the ups and downs becoming less and less steep the feeling of it coming to an end? Was it sitting in the car while it is loading, listening to the voices of the strangers who would soon be screaming and bouncing, all of us one voice, one 64-armed, 32-mouthed caterpillar that screams. Or was it the forward lurch of the coaster as it is grabbed by the hook under the track, the hook that is attached to the enormous, silent motor that pulls the cars up and up and up, 64 eyes looking into the blue sky, 32 hearts whose pounding would be audible except for the clank-clank-clanking of the ratchet that prevents the car from a backward slide in case that enormous silent engine failed?

I recall the moment at the top, when we are being nether pulled up nor let fall, when 64 lungs involuntarily suck in all the air that they can hold, all the air that will, moments later be released into the first of a number of screams that will be heard past all of the other screams and laughter and calliope sounds and not –so-silent enormous motors and cotton candy sellers all the way across the amusement park and into the mundane world beyond.

I’ll call this unnamed Wednesday the First Great Silence. Did the morning creatures two millennia ago feel in the stillness of the soil that the enormous engine had stopped? Did the birds hear the clank-clank-clanking slow, and then stop, and did they choose not to sing? Did the folded beggar at the gate notice, while the busy ones walked by, on their good legs? Did the women somehow know, at the morning well, looking at the dust, unable to look the truth of it in each others’ eyes?

We are here, you and I, at the top. Once it begins, we are carried wherever it takes us. That’s what the word Passion means. Tomorrow we will feel the movement begin, and soon it will be hurtling, and there will be screaming and it will be too late to get out. And so soon we will be there at the bottom. There at the bottom will be Saturday...
The Second Great Silence:
Momentum all spent, all humanity’s weak legs will disembark,
Will step fumblingly onto ground that is so unmoving,
All ears will hear no bird in air that is so still,
All eyes will look at the dust,
All hearts slowing,
Not yet knowing.

Morning will reveal
Stone rolled away,
Evil derailed.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Enough, Already!

I grew up in a pack. Dan and I were 20 months apart; three years later Bob joined us, and two years after that, Dave. The moderating influence of our sisters came later. Things would get pretty raucous in our little house, when four boys turned carbohydrates into sugar and sugar into movement and noise. One of us, chosen at random by the fates (no God could be so mischievous) would “start something” up in our room and pretty soon there was a cacophony of joyful energy swelling to a crescendo when the tiny woman from whom we had all somehow emerged would yell up the stairs, “Enough already!” All became quiet; we’d stop for awhile.

One day a co-worker came to my office with a little package and a big smile. “I made something for you,” she said. I self-consciously unwrapped the shiny, brightly colored paper as she stood smiling at me. “EEEENOUGH” the yarn spelled on the white plastic needlepoint screen, the screen not even hidden by other stitches, just serving to hold those essential letters, satisfied with its enoughness. I knew what she meant.

Fr. Jim Lohtse was our kind, humorous, and very hard working pastor. He had a little dog that was a visual mistake, a characteristic he used to his advantage on his walks, attracting the kids in the mostly Black neighborhood so they could receive the warm smile of the white priest. “What’s your dog’s name”, they’d ask. “His name is Jenkins” he’d reply.” “Jenkins?” they’d remark. “Yeah”, he’d say, smiling broadly, his eyes twinkling at them. “That was my first girlfriend’s name; isn’t he ugly?” They’d laugh, and he’d continue on his ministry in this neighborhood in his city, his city in which children were bereft of so much, but he and Jenkins could at least give them a smile. But Jim was never satisfied with his efforts. Time after time he’d do really good things, but every time I’d thank or congratulate him, he’d kind of look down, shake his head a little, and point to some inadequacy in the result. There was so much more he could have done. One night, his heart just stopped, there in his bed in the rectory in the neighborhood in the city where he and his perfectly ugly dog had just begun their work, and had so much more to do. I had told Kathleen that I thought Jim had bequeathed me the word “enough” because he never used it, and knew I ought to.

This week is called Holy because millions of Christians try to recall the pastor two thousand years ago who wept over his city, his work not nearly finished, his followers still not quite getting it, still thinking sometimes that it’s about status, and not service. And most of us will find our work week shorter by one day, God’s way (no fates would be so foolish) to try to slow us down, to quiet our cacophony, so we can think, reflect, or perhaps even weep over the fact that there is more work than we could ever possibly finish. Two thousand years later we still don’t get it, still thinking sometimes that it’s more about status, and not service.

But we do stop, for those three hours on Good Friday, and maybe, for now, that’s enough.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Just Watching?

In Lent and in life, merely watching is not just. Entering the Good Story of the passion and death of a man from Galilee offers all of us, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Agnostic, or Atheist to consider the ethical call to response in the face of an innocent victim.

Imagine this scenario vividly, as if it were really happening to you: You are standing on the sidewalk waiting for a friend to come out of a shop, when you see two things happen simultaneously

• A man on a bicycle who looks homeless and a bit confused catches the leg of his pants in the chain and almost falls. He stops the bike near you and is struggling to get off without dropping the bag he is carrying and falling over. If you move quickly, you can probably prevent his getting hurt.
• A little child, perhaps three years old, is smiling up at her mother as they walk along the sidewalk. Two feet from you, the door of a shop opens wide, the hard edge of the metal frame just a foot in front of her face. She is going to walk right into it. If you move quickly, you can probably prevent her getting hurt.

What do you do? QUICK!

To NOT help: is that a moral choice? Edmund Burke said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil to triumph for good men to do nothing.”
Which to help? Proximity, power, innocence, and identification: these are four factors that influence how we make decisions that involve helping someone in trouble. The closer we are, the more likely we are to help. The more capable we are of being effective, the more likely we are to help. And the more we see the victim as innocent, the more likely we are to help. And the more we can identify with the person, connect them with someone in our life, the more we are likely to help.

What did you do? If you’re just reading, please stop. Go back. Enter the scene; make the people real. What DID you do?

If we distance ourselves, consider ourselves powerless, if we judge, if we don’t see people as part of our lives, we...let…evil…triumph.  Sounds ugly; it is. And if you’re like me, you do it every day. This week let’s stay with the story of the passion of Jesus as a scenario that enables us to learn about ourselves as moral agents, as people free to do good…or to watch from the sidelines, tacitly cheering for evil’s triumph.

Get in the game.  Enter the Story (click for a link). Examen nightly the experiences of your day, and how your moral compass guided you. Start or continue your fast in order to remind yourself repeatedly of your relationship with God, with your truest self.

And notice those who share your sidewalk.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My God, My God: Abandoned in Translation – a Tale of Two Songs

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"  This cry is perhaps the most heart-wrenching part of the crucifixion of Jesus. “Where is his God now”, an observer taunted; “why doesn’t his God come and save him?”

I had unwittingly set myself up for a display of grief at a French border town a few years ago. Andrea Bocelli, a popular Italian tenor, had recorded a song, "Con Te Partiro", translated misleadingly as “Time to Say Goodbye”; the lyrics in English played in my head, focusing on the separation as people part. I was with Kathy, saying goodbye to our son as he dropped us at a not-yet-open station where we would rent a car and be on our way into France, and then back home. We see him only once or twice a year, his work as a car designer holding him in Europe for a dozen years now; parting is always hard on us. We had spent a week with him in the intimacy of his little apartment in Barcelona, reminding me of camping trips that we had enjoyed with our small kids, bunched into a little tent together. As he came around the car to embrace me, I began to sob HARD. Until this morning, I had not understood the violence of that weeping. This morning I know. I felt abandoned. Bocelli’s singing the English translation had misled me to focus on separation in this parting, while the true Italian lyrics console the listener with the deepest truth, that when we part, our son remains with me, that all I do I do with him, because he is part of me.

Like “Time to Say Goodbye”, this statement of Jesus on the cross is interpreted as abandonment, hiding a deeper meaning that is lost in translation. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” is the first line of Psalm 22, a song sung with lyre that eventually resolves to its truth in a later line: “For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.”  There on the cross, Jesus wept the first line of that Psalm, that song that he knew in his heart in its entirety. Consider that as a way of Entering this Good Story, this unfortunately hidden Good News, as hidden as the real meaning of that song that was going through my head that morning in Collieure. The deepest truth about my relationship with our son is that I hold him within, that I see life with him, here inside. And the deepest truth for Jesus - and for us - is the song that is insinuated in our hearts.

God never turns away. We are never lost…despite poor translation and words removed from the context that give them true meaning.

Please read the part of the Passion (click here for a link) where Jesus says these words. Then read Psalm 22 (click here for a link).  Finally, please listen at least once to “Con Te Partiro” with the real translation, the truth of love never broken, hearts never parted. (Click for a link) thanks to TheNewCitizen.

Consider again those words of Jesus in their context, not as words of abandonment, but trust.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Coming Up Empty

This morning as I found myself awakening, I felt empty. I climbed into it and found a treasure.  We are in the middle of two weeks of reading the Passion of Jesus, a man who some of us call the Christ, the anointed one of god, the son of god. It’s a grisly, troubling experience. It’s messy. And to add to the challenge, this blog has invited you its readers to enter the story, to climb into the mess, to experience it from the inside. I confess that I am not eager to do so, to enter a place where suffering and death will surround me, especially when the suffering and death involves an innocent victim.  So I have been in no hurry to move into this long text (click for a link)  from the time Jesus had his last meal until his death and burial the next day. I have gone back to the beginning, to the meal, and gone ahead only until something stops me; some inner door opens and invites me in. This morning it was the cup.
In Entering the Story, I have encouraged us to find ourselves as a part of it, one of the characters, or perhaps an observer at the periphery of the scene. This morning I found myself to be the cup. I was, by then, in my study, and at my computer I had typed the first line of this posting: “This morning as I found myself awakening, I felt empty.” I turned off the light and sat in the dark, feeling my emptiness, climbing into it. The climbing into led me to climb into the story, and I realized that I was the cup. I sat in my cup-ness. I imagined hands holding me, soft on my hardness, bringing me to their lips, warm on my coolness. And I realized that I was not the wine, I was just the cup, the hollow place that was useful in holding the wine, the shell that gave the hands a grip. I felt my durability; as the wine eventually became poured out and consumed, I remained.

Crusades were fought over this sacred cup, saving it from the Islamic people who occupied Spain. The term “Holy Grail” continues to be used to refer to the thing sought but never quite found, the unreachable goal.  And we have it all along, this Holy Grail, this treasure…within our reach. It is our emptiness.

Here is a link to something that you might consider using today to discover and embrace the treasure of your own emptiness. It is a Latin song. Ego sum pauper; nihil habeo; et nihil dabo; ego sum pauper. I am poor; I have nothing; nothing to give; I am poor. Listen to the harmony and beauty in it. Let it play in you today and during this Holy Week to come. (Click to play)

And this emptiness is put to use in availability.  Prayer is the practice of the presence of God, availability to God; are we?   Almsgiving is the pracice of the presence of another person, availability to them; are we?  Emptiness alone does not give us meaning.  That comes from being open to our capacity, our participation in divinity.  Here is a song worth listening to.  (Click to play)


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sideline Safety

Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out of the car that had ferried him to Marquette Park on Chicago's Southwest Side to lead a march of about 700 people. The civil-rights leader and his supporters were in the white ethnic enclave to protest housing segregation. Thousands of jeering, taunting whites had gathered. The mood was ominous. One placard read: "King would look good with a knife in his back."
As King marched, someone hurled a stone. It struck King on the head. Stunned, he fell to one knee. He stayed on the ground for several seconds. As he rose, aides and bodyguards surrounded him to protect him from the rocks, bottles and firecrackers that rained down on the demonstrators. King was one of 30 people who were injured; the disturbance resulted in 40 arrests. He later explained why he put himself at risk: "I have to do this--to expose myself--to bring this hate into the open." He had done that before, but Chicago was different. "I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today," he said. Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1966.
I had finished my sophomore year in college and was working as a groundskeeper for a couple of Mexican-American migrant workers, Tony and Modesto Cardoza.  King’s activism did not play well in conversations in my parents’ home. King was a rabble-rouser, who should go back “down south”.

"Down South” was Birmingham Alabama, where two weeks after Easter 1963, King is in the City Jail for continuing to lead nonviolent protests against racial inequality. The appropriately named Police Chief “Bull” Connor is on a rampage. Wikipedia reports: When Connor realized that the Birmingham jail was full, on May 3 he changed police tactics to keep protesters out of the downtown business area. Another thousand students gathered at the church and left to walk across Kelly Ingram Park while chanting, "We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom ... freedom ... freedom." As the demonstrators left the church, police warned them to stop and turn back, "or you'll get wet". When they continued, Connor ordered the city's fire hoses, set at a level that would peel bark off a tree or separate bricks from mortar, to be turned on the children. Boys' shirts were ripped off, and young women were pushed over the tops of cars by the force of the water. When the students crouched or fell, the blasts of water rolled them down the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks. Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, "Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want 'em to see the dogs work."

In those three years of King’s activity, I had remained safe on the sidelines. In the summer of 1967, I had decided to work in Detroit rather than returning to my parents’ suburban Chicago home, and the action on the field spilled over the sidelines. Fires burned all over Detroit, the center of the riot just three miles from campus. We watched the smoke from fires burning just blocks away. Nearby black merchants spray painted “Soul Brother” on the windows of their shops, to keep looters away. Somehow I felt safe. Perhaps it was my whiteness. Bull Connor’s dogs and fire hoses attacked students my age with black skin. But I know too that I felt safe because I knew that I was good. My heart was kind. I never hurt Aanybody. I was, in the parlance of the time, “a lover and not a fighter.”

So here I am in this Good Story. (click for a link) Jesus is in jail. People are milling around, standing near fires to stay warm in the darkness. Somebody says, “Hey, didn’t I see you with Him?”

“Me?” I say my voice too loud, too high. “I was just watching.” 
...Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
(from "The Gift Outright" by Robert Frost, courtesy of Bill, and The Writers' Almanac)

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Asleep With Grief

Opening my eyes during a long sermon, I saw them all of them looking at me, all three of the kids, and Kathy too. They were kind of smiling. I remember this vividly, from one Sunday in our pew at Gesu Church 20 years ago, when the kids were all visiting from college. As we walked home after Mass, I asked them why they were smiling at me. They divulged that they had a kind of bet among themselves whether I would weep or sleep first, whether I’d be overcome by emotion or by sleep deprivation.

Reading the Passion, I was stopped by words I don’t remember seeing before: “He found them sleeping from grief.” He’s weeping over the city he loves, grieving so intensely that he breaks into a sweat. They escape into sleep.

Tears became an active part of my emotional life all at once on a retreat when I was in my late twenties. Drawn into the depth of prayer during an 8-day retreat at the nearby Jesuit Retreat Center, a subterranean spring in me pushed through my northern European constraint and began to gush. From that time, when I am taken to deep places, tears come. They are not tears of grief, like those shed in Gethsemane, but tears of what I’d describe as awe, as being moved beyond words. Gesu has always been blessed with worship that is shot through with God; it is an awesome place. So I’d often be moved to tears during good homilies, or simply looking at the faces of people in our congregation. The kids had become accustomed to the little sounds that would erupt despite my attempts to constrain them as my chest burst with racking sobs.

But a contrasting practice they came to expect from me was gently sleeping during the homilies that didn’t grab me. I’d found a technique to save myself from embarrassment by crossing my arms, placing one fist sideways under my chin as a prop, and closing my eyes as if in reverent meditation. It was in this latter pose that they had caught me that Sunday, and I realized that I had reached the age of being a dad who is the sport of his adult children.

Sleep or tears. What shall it be for us this Lent, this time walking through the passion and death of this good man to whom we are companion?

The kids are watching me again now, watching for tears, listening for weariness, smiling at me with love as we all move toward my heart surgery - Kathy too, but not in visits or phone calls, but right beside me. I’m not going to be nailed to a cross, to face humiliation and death; I’m going into a well-practiced procedure with a 99% rate of success. But these four who love me most, and especially the one who is constantly at my side, are in a situation like in this Good Story. They’re stuck being my companions. And I find consolation for them in this line – “He found them sleeping with grief” –suggesting that Jesus was not hurt or angered by their sleeping. He understood. Sometimes we are called to attention, but sometimes we are called to inattention, to acceptance of our helplessness, to rest in trust.

When are we called to weep? When are we called to sleep? When are we called to face things we can change, to accept things we can’t? God help us discern the difference. God help us accept our role, active or passive, not in the drama of Gethsemane, but in our daily lives.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The 8th Sacrament

30 Years ago today, my friend Bill reminds me, Archbishop Oscar Romero met with death. This grisly contemporary Pieta at the foot of the cross of the one who preceded him by 2000 years is a clue to his story. He followed the example of Jesus, and those in power in the so-ironically named El Salvador (“The Savior”) followed the example of Christ's killers.

A confession: this reading of the passion of Jesus has always been a pain for me. In the Catholic Church, it is traditional to stand during the reading of the Gospel. Perhaps it’s a way to keep sleep-deprived people like me awake. So the reading of this long gospel often made me aware of my own small pains more than the suffering of the main character. I would shift my weight from one tired leg to the other, my thoughts wandering to the things happening in MY life, things small, things not related to life and death, to good and evil. How petty of me.

Unlike his Savior's, Archbishop Romero’s death did not come after a day-long trial, an overnight humiliation, and a morning trudge up a hill to suffer for hours in naked humiliation. It came in an instant while he was celebrating Mass in the chapel of La Divina Providencia Hospital – the Hospital of Divine Providence. It came by a bullet from an American-made M-16 assault weapon wielded by an assassin trained at an American facility. He had aroused the ire of those in control of the poor country by preaching about the abuses of power. He had, just the day before, called to the soldiers to answer the call of God to love, rather than the call of their superiors to suppress the poor. He did not shift from leg to leg. He did not let his mind wander to petty things. The pain of the people was his burden; serving their needs was his mission.

On Monday we got word that we can anticipate surgery in a month. As with Lent, I have the opportunity to be present to this weeks-long journey or to waste time and wish it would just arrive. As with this Good Story, this long reading of the Passion, I can shift from tired leg to tired leg and let my mind wander to petty things. Or I can live the life of Oscar Romero, present to those around me, responding to them, serving them. But such service is not sacrifice.

Yesterday I asked you to just read this long story, read until something stopped you and stay with that as long as you can. What stopped you? For me, it was Jesus’ institution of Servant Leadership. Perhaps it is the 8th Sacrament, but we missed it. His followers quickly fell to petty things – which would have the power when Jesus was gone. Jesus response was calm and clear: “the first among you must be the servant of all.”  Today as we feel the tiredness in our legs and the reluctance of our mind to stick with this long reading, this slowly unfolding journey of Jesus, we recall the quick death and eternal life of such a Servant Leader. You can learn more about Oscar Romero by clicking (here).  Learn about Servant Leadership by clicking (here).


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.