Seasons

I always become a little melancholy this time of year. Summer is turning to autumn which means the long winter lies ahead. Baseball season will soon be over (the Red Sox seem determined to end it early this year), and while we will have football to get us through half the winter, it will end in the numbing cold of late January leaving us several weeks before spring training and the boys of summer arrive once more.

But why be so blue? After all, it is among the prettiest times of year. Leaves are turning, there is a clean crispness in the air, and if one is lucky they can catch whiffs of hearth fires burning. I grew up knowing there were four seasons in a year, but really just believed in three: baseball season, football season and (to a lesser extent) basketball season. After becoming a Catholic I learned about another calendar: The Liturgical Year. And, in the Church’s liturgy, it’s the second round of Ordinary Time.

Turning to the sports calendar it’s playoff time and the World Series is on deck. Whether your team is alive or not it is the most exciting time of the baseball season. And the young college football season has kicked off, too. But one can’t ignore the specter of the winter that lies ahead.

Or that’s how I used to be. And that’s why I embraced the liturgical calendar so much. Sure, Ordinary Time sounds well…ordinary. But it’s anything but ordinary. It, and winter, is a time of preparation before the new year, Advent followed by Christmas, will soon arrive.

“We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song.” – Pope John Paul II

Regarded as the “bleakest” of the seasons, winter serves essentially as the adagio of the calendar year. It stands in much the same place as does the Third Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. Far from being weak, it prepares us, through sorrow, for glory. I no longer find it to be so bleak.

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This second period of Ordinary Time (the first part of Ordinary Time is sandwiched between Christmas and Lent) focuses on the importance of the Christ event for the life of the believing community. It celebrates the presence of Christ’s Spirit in the members of his body and looks to the fulfillment of the kingdom that is to come. This period of Ordinary Time not only ends the Church’s liturgical year but also heralds in the new. It shares with Advent a deep concern for the final (The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell) nature of the Christ event and helps us to view all that happens to us with the eyes of faith. It is in this season that we look back (Pentecost), look around (the continuation of Christ’s mission on earth, the Sacraments, and grace), and look forward (the four last things). By using this approach to examine our lives during this period of Ordinary Time, we uncover a call to urgent living. We come face to face with our own mortality. Seeing that we have only one life to live and that we have no idea when our own final hour will come, a sense of urgency to live our life the best way we know how gradually arises in our hearts. It reminds us that where our treasure is, there also we will find our hearts. (Matthew 6:19-21).

This call is not a call to compulsive living. It does not mean busying ourselves with our work and leaving no time for our relationships with ourselves, others, and God. Living life with urgency does not mean fitting more and more into less and less increments of time. It asks us only to allow God to accompany us in our daily tasks. The call to urgency means that we take a good look inside our hearts and ask ourselves what matters most to us in life.

And here’s where at long last I’ll get to my point.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together…” – Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

While I can safely be accused of reflecting on events throughout the year, it is without a doubt during autumn that I do it the most. I don’t know why, but it’s always been that way. And even moreso since I became Catholic over eighteen years ago and began to follow the readings from Scripture at daily Mass. This year is shaping up to be no different. Every year on earth brings more exposure to saying goodbye it seems. I suppose this makes sense as I am getting older. Whether by indifference or due to death, the parting of ways is increasingly prevalent. We grow up, grow old and grow apart. The embers of friendship cool and grow cold, much as the temperatures do outside. Good friends are diagnosed with illnesses that are unpredictable at best.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

T.S. Eliot, “East Coker” (The Four Quartets)

Facing this reality we may find ourselves reflecting upon our own lives. Of things we did do or should have done. I don’t do this to endlessly beat myself up, but this self-examination is important to assist one in accepting God’s grace, forgiving oneself (often the hardest person in the world to forgive) and moving forward with life. These are “lessons in humility” as Don Henley sang in “The Genie” in 2001 that help us to go forward and answer that call to urgent living that I mentioned earlier.

And the past comes back to smack you around
For all the things you thought you got for free
For the arrogance to think that you could somehow
Defy the laws of gravity
These are lessons in humility
Penitence for past offenses
Consequences, consequences

That is always the part no one likes to think about. Not just judgment from God or from others, but having to judge ourselves. It’s not often pretty, but in the end it bears fruit because we dare to look at that man or woman in the mirror with intensity and honesty.

“I should have gone to confession before driving class tonight. You never know the date or the hour,” my oldest son quipped this week, paraphrasing St. Matthew when describing the capabilities of the other person he was partnered with in his weekly driver’s education lesson on the streets of our town. Apparently she’s more than a little erratic.

Life is often erratic. It’s not all smooth sailing. In the end we make most of our own waves that crash into the boats of other lives and sometimes bounce back harder into our own. Or sometimes they happen for reasons not known to us, but we still have a choice as to how we’ll react to them.

This week I received an email from a dear friend of mine that confirmed she had been diagnosed with cancer. Without giving her away I will quote something she wrote because I found a deep strength within it:

I am past the panic and pity party. I really and truly have turned it all over to God. I have many wonderful friends and family that are praying. And so am I. … My heart and soul are in a better place. I do have cancer. I will have to have surgery. Anything beyond that isn’t certain. … Decisions to be made after we get all the data we need. Plus side, it is early…you can’t even feel the mass. Caught on mammogram. Make your wife stay current with hers. … Also on the plus side, I have some of the most amazing friends. Angels disguised as humans. Anyway, one can never ever get too many prayers so keep them flowing, please.

As Eliot continued in East Coker:

Old men ought to be explorers*
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

(*I would change the first line to read “Older men and women ought to be explorers.”)

My friend is an explorer. She is a prime example of one who is being still while still moving.

This represents one of the paradoxes of the liturgical calendar. For those of us who utilize it, our experience is, at one and the same time, both forward moving and cyclical, an image of an upward spiral. We are journeying upwards towards God through a series of cleansing, transformative and unitive experiences. We are reminded that our journey to God is not merely an individual venture, but one of an entire people: explorers finding their end in their beginning. And that’s nothing to be melancholy about.

*****

Note: There Is a Season: Living the Liturgical Year, by Dennis J. Billy and published by Liguori Publications was used while researching portions of this post.

Violations Against Sensibility

So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?”– Theoden, King of Rohan. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Indeed. What are we to do in the face of such blind hatred? The kind of hatred that results in the senseless and vicious murder of a Jewish family? As horrific as the crime is, almost as awful is the slanted reporting in our own media.

A cousin of hatred is ignorance. This is another trait that I would love to see wane in the land. But as long as we remain as divided along partisan lines as we are I see no end in sight. If the past four weeks should have proved anything to us it’s that rational thinking is not a trait of the hyper-partisan. How else can one rationally reason with people who scream that democracy was hijacked while they run away and essentially “break” the representative democratic model that has worked for over 200 years? Up is down and black is white in their twisted realm of logic. And all while threatening the lives of their opponents, their families and businesses who support them. The “New Tone of Civility” indeed.

Then there are people like Anne Moser who are attempting to frame the loss of their public union’s collective bargaining privileges as somehow equivalent to a human rights violation:

“The frustration from the defeat will be channeled elsewhere. Wiping tears from beneath her dark rimmed glasses, Anne Moser, 47, who works for University of Wisconsin Madison’s science-based Water Library, said, ‘People know that violence doesn’t get you anywhere. The attack the Republicans have made is violent and a violation of human rights. It is an attack on the middle class. We teach our children to follow rules and to sit and the table and work it out, but that certainly hasn’t happened here.’ And so she and her allies may seek there revenge elsewhere: in a court of law or, most probably, in a polling booth.”

The boldface emphasis is mine.

The incredible stupidity of that statement is breathtaking on its surface. Comparisons of the governor to Hitler, of Wisconsin to Egypt, and on and on only served to show the complete idiocy of these people to the world. To her and those like her that are cluelessly and with the utmost hyperbole shedding crocodile tears over their basic human rights being stolen I would like to make a few introductions.

Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet. He is the Afro-Cuban physician and democracy leader who has been in the Castros’ dungeons for a very long time. His models are Gandhi and Martin Luther King. George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom which he was unable to show up to accept.

Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina. He is a Cuban prisoner of conscience, near death on a hunger strike. If he had been a hunger-striking prisoner in apartheid South Africa, he would have been on the cover of every magazine in the Western world. But no one — trust me, no one — cares about Cuba. Except to the extent we want to make a little money, go sip our mojitos, indulge in underage prostitution . . .

Said Musa

Said Mufa. Musa was one of about 25 Christians arrested on May 31, 2010, after a May 27 Noorin TV program showed video of a worship service held by indigenous Afghan Christians; he was arrested as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy. He converted to Christianity eight years ago, is the father of six young children, had a leg amputated after he stepped on a landmine while serving in the Afghan Army, and now has a prosthetic leg. His oldest child is eight and one is disabled (she cannot speak). He worked for the Red Cross/Red Crescent as an adviser to other amputees.

He was forced to appear before a judge without any legal counsel and without knowledge of the charges against him. “Nobody [wanted to be my] defender before the court. When I said ‘I am a Christian man,’ he [a potential lawyer] immediately spat on me and abused me and mocked me. . . . I am alone between 400 [people with] terrible values in the jail, like a sheep.” He has been beaten, mocked, and subjected to sleep deprivation and sexual abuse while in prison. No Afghan lawyer will defend him and authorities denied him access to a foreign lawyer.

Any and every human being who is imprisoned, abused, or tortured for the free and peaceful expression of their faith deserves our support, but Musa is also a remarkable person and Christian. In a letter smuggled to the West, he says, “The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, they did sexual things with me, beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head.”

He added a thing much more important to him, that they “mocked me ‘he’s Jesus Christ,’ spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. . . . Please, please, for the sake of Lord Jesus Christ help me.” (View the full letter here)

Mufa, thankfully, was spared execution and released on Feb. 24.

The Fogel Family of Itamar. ***WARNING***: this link contains extremely graphic photographs of the crime. The surviving family members requested that the photos be released in order to shed light on the brutality of this horrific hate crime against humanity. There is a video as well that I will not watch. The pictures were enough.

And then, when the news of the crimes hit their streets, the bastards celebrated by handing out candy.

Shall I go on, Ms. Moser? I could chronicle for you scores and hundreds of sex trafficking victims. Or the increase in the murder rate of Coptic Christians, priests, nuns and schoolchildren in the Middle East and around the world. Sadly, I could.

Moron.

Honestly I feel as if the left has collectively lost its mind. But of course it’s not just those on the left. For though the spotlight is brightly shining on the stupidity and moral vacuousness that is the left at the moment, the cockroaches on the far right remain ever vigilant as well. The pendulum will swing, and they will scurry out of the darkness as well.

Which brings me back to Theoden’s question: what does one do when faced with such hate and evil?

Last night I found myself praying over this question as the sheer weight of all of this settled onto my shoulders. That was mistake number one on my part: taking on a burden that is not mine to carry. Nevertheless it was there and I experienced the two common reactions: anger and despair.

Anger and Despair
I have had to ban myself for a month from commenting or saying anything related to unions to friends online because I’m at the point where I just want to scatter buckshot wildly in all directions, casualties be damned. The people who cannot see what is happening in Wisconsin and elsewhere due to their blind loyalties to these union thugs are beyond hope to me. At best they are blindly loyal; at worst they are dishonest liars.

Jesus is often referred to as a “man of sorrows”. There are times when I find myself too engrossed in the news and can begin to identify with Him. On a much smaller scale, mind you, but enough to get a feel for it. Do I wish I could shut off my empathy switch and my humanity at times? Yes, but ultimately no. To shut that part of me off would render me on par with those who broke into that sleepy Jewish household at night and slit the throats of a three-month old baby girl and her father, and stab in the heart a 3-year old and 11-year old before brutalizing the mother. No…painful as it can be I’ll keep my empathy thank you very much.

I found myself on my couch last night alternating between clenched fists of righteous anger and sobbing with eyes stung by tears. “How do you do it Lord?” I asked. “How do you get through endless scenes like this day after day for centuries? It’s all too much.”

I wasn’t looking for an audible reply but decided to calm myself before bed with the tools He had given me through the Church. Because I could not afford to let the sun go down on my anger. I did not want “tears to drench my bed” (Psalm 6:6). No, before I went to bed I knew I had to find some sort of solace.

For Lent I am making a concerted effort to pray a rosary each day. Usually I pray it myself but last night I listened to the version of the Glorious mysteries by Vinny Flynn and Still Waters. I had purchased the CDs some years ago and when I finally bought an iTouch I added them to my playlist. They are probably the most listened to tracks I have.

Just before shutting off the light, I prayed the Office of the Dead.

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat eis.

I gave up my anger. I threw away despair. I decided to fight.

Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spíritum rectum ínnova in viscéribus meis. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Taking my cue from Tolkien I remembered another scene from the LOTR trilogy. It’s one of my favorites. Hope is kindled.

I choose Hope.

To be continued in time…

Mother Standing

Stabat Mater (“Mother Standing”). On this day in which we remember Our Lady of Sorrows we also remember and honor the unique suffering, pain and strength of mothers everywhere.

Bill Donaghy wrote an excellent reflection on Catholic Exchange this morning.

I think about the many images taken from recent news stories, where the young are slain through meaningless acts of violence, or natural disasters strike, taking little ones away. I think of the strength of mothers. Strong for their families, for their young ones. But in this awful place of suffering, what do we do? When tragedy falls upon us, like structures of steel and stone, and we feel we cannot bear them, what is our position?

So often we ask the question “Where was God?” Where was He in my pain? Why did it come to me at all, or to those innocent little ones? In the gap left by that question of questions, “Where was God?”… a Mother stands. At the contradicting crossroads, where life and death meet, in the tension of that suffering that wants us to give up or give in, to despair or to hope, a Mother stands.

A Zenit article on the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady.

A beautiful website containing the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows as well as gorgeous imagery is here. It includes the Latin to English translations of the Stabat Mater which will help those who don’t speak Latin understand what’s being sung in the video below.

There are many versions of Stabat Mater to choose from on YouTube. I chose Palestrina’s.

Immediately. God Alone. Leave Us.

Amy Welborn would probably blanch at my saying this, but she is ever more a hero to me now. She was before as a provider of inspiration when it came to the field of blogging and writing and praying. But since the loss of her beloved husband Michael in such a sudden manner she is demonstrating the moxi and resolve of someone who doesn’t just talk the talk. She truly is walking the walk of a Christian in a time of great sorrow, confusion and questioning. She is doing it with grace.

Two of her recent posts demonstrate this beyond all doubt. Euthus and Yes. I defy you to not cry, nor to be more proud, of that woman than I am.

I will miss Michael as someone whose books I read, whose blog I read, and with whom I had exchanged an email or two. Not much really, but in this age of communication it was just a glimpse of the man…a personal touch. Amy and her family lost very much more.

But I believe that she is also finding more than she ever imagined. From Euthus:

There are stages, there are layers, there are bridges. There is a void, my best friend in the world is just – gone.  But in this moment I am confronted with the question, most brutally asked, of whether I really do believe all that I say I believe.  Into this time of strange, awful loss, Jesus stepped in. He wasted no time. He came immediately. His presence was real and vivid and in him the present and future, bound in love, moved close. The gratitude I felt for life now and forever and what had prepared us for this surged, I was tempted to push it away for the sake of propriety, for what is expected, for what was supposed to be normal – I was tempted to say, “Leave me” instead of accepting the Hand extended to me and to immediately allow him to define my life.

But I did not give into that temptation, and a few hours later I was able to do what I dreaded, what I thought was undoable, to be in a mystery that was both presence and absence and to not be afraid. To not be afraid for him, and for the first time ever in my entire life – to not be afraid for myself , either.

At last.

Michael Dubriel – Requiscat in Pace

I was going to write of this last night, but could not bring myself to do so. Janell came downstairs last night to ask me if I knew who Michael Dubriel was as she had just heard on our new Catholic radio station that he had passed away. I asked her to repeat the name thinking I had misunderstood her. She repeated it and I went immediately to Amy Welborn’s blog to see if it were true. Sadly, it was. Amy’s husband Michael collapsed while working out at the gym suddenly and effort to revive him were in vain. He was fifty.

Amy has posted Michael’s final column here.

I got to know Michael through Amy as I have read her blogs for over six years and eventually his blog as well. Amy’s Open Book was the standard amongst Catholic authors and bloggers for years. In August 2007 she shut it down to begin Charlotte Was Both, and take a different approach. Her influence on my attempts at blogging are obvious. I had exchanged occassional emails from Michael by way of encouragement and used his book The How-To Book of the Mass as one of my sources in creating a 40-part series on the Holy Mass, This Is My Body, used at our parish for RCIA classes each year.

I said I would have written this all last night. I wanted to, but I could not. I sat at the screen and read the news in stunned, shocked silence and cried. While I have never met Michael or Amy, I have gotten to know both of them through the words, their books, and their willingness to express and share themselves as they did. I will miss Michael, and feel badly for Amy and their children, but I try to remember that Michael is alson now where he so much wanted to be one day, and I rejoice in that.

Update on Derek

From a fellow little league board member who knows the family:

I talked to Krista this morning.  Yesterday he moved his foot and then also made a face when the nurse tried to brush his teeth.  The doctors commented these were the “good” reflexes so that sounded positive. 

They started to raise his body temp yesterday afternoon about 4:30.  I guess they raise it 1 degree every six hours – assuming all is well and no bleeding starts.  His temp was down at around 90 degrees so it will take 48+ hours to raise it back to normal.  As far as I know it has been going well but Krista had not talked to Royce or Jenn yet this morning.  I don’t know if at the same time they are raising him body temp if they start to wean him off the meds or if they keep him on meds until his body temp is back to normal.  I assume the latter but I really don’t know.

Although progress is slow and I’m sure the waiting is extremely hard for Jenn & Royce, at least all the news I am hearing is in the right direction.

Prayers for Derek

About fifteen minutes prior to my 7th grader’s midget football game kickoff yesterday, a friend of mine, Rick, told me that the son of a baseball coach I know had been critically injured in a junior high football game. Apparently there was a collision on the field and a few plays later Derek collapsed in convulsions and stopped breathing. They were able to get him breathing again and life-flighted him to a Lincoln hospital. Rick said it didn’t look good as they called a priest in and they’ve drilled some holes in his skull to relieve the pressure but that’s all I heard.
 
This has made me almost physically sick to the point of throwing up. I didn’t say anything obviously to Janell as Nolan is a hard hitting linebacker and running back and was about to start his game. Derek’s dad was a 7-8 year old’s coach of mine in 2007 when I was commissioner for that age division and this one has really hit home. I got physically sick prior to the game and still feel like I could lose my lunch at any moment. We drive to sporting events or watch our kids get into cars as they start to drive (or their friends do) and I found myself thinking about all I want to be sure to say to my kids each day. Instead I hear what I do in fact say and realize that the gap is a wide one.

 

I’ve received updates from two other little league board members below. Please keep this boy and his family in your prayers.

From Dina: He is in an induced coma right now. They will begin “warming up” his body at 5:30 tonight. The next 48 hours are critical (not just injuries but life threatening as well). Once they can stabilize him, they will see what damage has been done to the brain. They removed part of his skull (about 4 x 3) right above his ear and hope to re-attach it after the brain stops swelling.
 
The brain is not bleeding; the injury is a blood vessel on the left side of the head. 

From Deb: This family goes to our church. A rosary was set up kind of last minute last night at the hospital (I’d guess about 200 people came) – it was absolutely wonderful to see everyone come together. Derek’s football team was there – did a team huddle at the end which was very emotional. Royce & Jen came down from Derek’s room for it and their other sons were there for it too. They are holding up as well as can be expected – trying to stay positive. Royce said at the rosary that Derek had a CT scan done yesterday  and the results looked favorable. Another person also talked to Royce and Jen shortly after Derek arrived and said whatever scale the hospital uses to rate patients with this type of injury, Derek was “at standard or a little above”. I do know both sides of their family live around Lincoln so when you add that to friends they have lots of support and help with the boys (4 others with the youngest maybe 6-ish months old). I know I’m on a list where if anyone hears of something they need, they’ll let us know. As I get updates, I’ll pass them on to the group as well.