Happy Father's Day

My grandfather was 64 years old when I was born and 93 years old when I celebrated his funeral.  At his funeral I said that my grandfather was a gentleman and a gentle man.  I was blessed to have my grandfather when he was older. My memories of him are after he retired. He had the time to dote on my sister and I. 

My grandfather was the archetypal Grosse Pointe gentleman.  When he dressed up he wore Harry Safrin suits.  When he dressed down he still wore a tie.  I can remember him working in his garden wearing casual slacks, a flannel shirt and a tie.  I see him going hunting wearing knee boots and a dress hat.  When we got to the blind the dress hat came off and a hunting hat appeared, but the dress hat was back on for the ride home.  He held the door for women and girls.  He was very patient with me and my temper when he taught me how to play golf.  I never heard him raise his voice.  He greeted everyone who came to him home warmly, even if he didn't know who they were.  He picked up the tab.

My father, who was grandpas oldest son, was very much like his father.  Dad also treated women and children with great respect.  He tipped his hat when he passed a church.  While dad's temper would flare and an expletive beginning with "s" was quick on his tongue, he was never angry.  It was his favorite word and my grandmother said in frustration one day that it was the first word he ever said.  (I am sure she told me this, even if it wasn't true to make a point).  While his temper would flare, is would as quickly pass.  I never remember my father holding a grudge.  He had a great sense of humor and a childish sense of glee.  I remember being on vacation.  Dad and I shared a room and my little sister and mother shared another.  The wall separating the two had a two foot gap at the top.  I remember all of us going to sleep and after about 15 minutes dad waking me up with his finger to his lips.  He quietly got out of bed, collected our shoes, and began tossing them over the wall like hand grenades onto my mother and sister's bed. That was dad.

When Alzheimer disease began to take its toll, my older sister asked the doctor if, in his dementia,  dad would become mean as some patients did.  The doctor said that he would be no different with the dementia, "If he was a mean man before the disease, he would be mean with it.  If he was gentle, then he would be gentle."  If anything, my father became even more the gentleman with the Alzheimer's.  His true self, the self he learned from his father, came to the fore.  He may have lost his memory but he never lost his gentle spirit.

On this Father's Day I remember and miss these two great gentlemen.  Grandpa would be 127 years old this year.  Dad would be 100 next month.  I pray today that I would have some measure of their gentle spirit.

GOOD FRIDAY MEMORIES

Good Friday was April 15 in 1960.  I was 12 years old. It was the custom in our family, and in the families of most of our neighbors, that the hours between noon and 3:00 were so sacred that we were not allowed to listen to the radio or have the television on or even to talk to one another.  Silence was to be observed.  The sacred silence.

Our parish church was about a mile and a half away.  We attended the Good Friday liturgy together as a family.  My mother brought my sister, who was 10 years old, and myself to church.  Dad met us from work.  The Good Friday services ended about a half hour early.  Dad headed back to work and mom had to stay back as a member of the Altar Society, to clean the church.  Mom told me to walk my sister home reminding us to remain silent.

I vividly remember the walk home.  It was as if the whole world had gone silent.  I recall that it was warm and windy.  There was almost no traffic as we walked along the sidewalk beside Kelly Rd.  Papers blew down the street.  Everything was closed.  Merit Drugs, Chatham Village Market, Bidigare Hardware and even Kelly's Bar were closed.  The parking lots were empty.  Carol and I were the only ones about.  We walked in silence and waited for three o'clock.

Marty Haugen, a Catholic composer once wrote, "For you, O lord, my soul in stillness waits. Truly my hope is in you."  That day it was as if the whole world waited in silence.

There are days that I miss that kind of sacred silence.  I can turn off the music, silence the BlackBerry and even put the dog outside for an hour a day but it is still not silent.  Planes still take off from the nearby airport.  Traffic moves down Dixie Hwy. around the clock.  Dumpsters are emptied behind the school.  There really isn't any silence.  Even on Good Friday things really never go quiet.  I miss that.

There are some good spiritual reasons for silence.  Unless we quiet down, we can never hear God, never hear hope as it is voiced in our hearts. 

There are also some good common sense reasons for silence also.  We are bombarded with noise and, while we can't silence the airplanes of garbage trucks, we can dial down the sounds that we create.  All those devices that surround us have power buttons.  They can be turned off.  We can silence our own words and listen.  When I silence the noise, I also find that I walk more slowly.  I sit in the chair or on the porch longer.  When I silence the noise my other senses are heightened and the sky is much more beautiful.  When I silence the noise I find that I begin to wonder about the world around me more and more.

Today is Good Friday, 2011.  While I wont be walking my sister home from church, I do hope that I can tap into that sacred silence that I remember so clearly from years ago.

Awe Come On Now. Grow Up!

There is something to be said about politics the old way.  I mean, back in the day of smoke filled rooms, deals, cash under the table, and horse trading, things got accomplished and we didn't have to see how it was done.  Sure it was immoral at times.  Sure it was probably illegal too but the main thing was that we didn't have to watch.  Ignorance was bliss, sometimes.  All of these behind the scenes maneuvering did manage to get us Social Security Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Peace Corp, anti-poverty legislation, desegregation of schools, and on and on and on. Tip O'Neill could sit with Ronald Reagan or Bob Dole and work things out.  In public they were on opposite sides of the fence but they got stuff done!

Transparency can be a two-edged sword.  On the one hand, transparency can reveal the immoral or illegal goings-on by our elected officials.  It can be a means of teaching how the law making process goes on.  On the other hand, transparency leads to idiots on parade.

During these times of a 24 hour news cycle when every word and outspoken thought is recorded and replayed, the idiots seem to have the stage.  In Texas, state Representative Leo Berman is proposing legislation to prevent the state of Texas from adopting sharia law like Dearborn, MI. "It’s being done in Dearborn, Mich., right now. It’s being done in Dearborn, Mich., because of a large population of Middle Easterners. And the judges in Dearborn are using and allowing to be used Sharia law," Berman said to a panel of Texas legislators. An idiot!  Where did he get his information? "I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day," Berman said Monday in an interview. "I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan but I heard it (Sharia is accepted law there) on the radio. Isn’t that true?"  


On the right, idiots with microphones and willing vidiographers scream that President Obama is a Kenyan born Mau Mau.  On the left, idiots are screaming that republicans want to enslave women, destroy all unions, and destroy our democracy by turning everything over to Wall Street oligarchs.  Come on now!

Representatives and senators stand in front of the capitol and contradict each other on everything.   "Social Security is destroying the economy."  "Social Security makes money."  "They want to destroy Medicare and kill old people."  "They want to bankrupt  our grandchildren."  "Bomb Libya! No!  Wait a minute! Don't bomb Libya. No, wait..."  "Our Founding Fathers eliminated slavery." "The sun rises in the east."  "No it doesn't."  It seems to go on and on.  If no one can agree on the simplest of facts, how can anything be accomplished?


Can't we have a little civility and I don't mean just saying "my friend" or "my esteemed colleague" before denying every word the other said?  Is it possible to agree on anything?  Aren't any facts true and if so can't we watch someone go on Fox or MSNBC and admit it?  Must everything that the opposition say be demonized?  I get really tired of the name calling.  Can't we just do all of this behind closed doors with Cuban cigars and Bourbon and branch water like they used to do?

It seems that many of us are intent on electing idiots to do the people's business. That's our choice.  Somehow, however, it seems that somethings get accomplished. I just don't want to watch it anymore.  Transparency doesn't seem to be improving the quality of our representatives or our dialogue.  It just puts it in front of us all the time.  If that is the case, then I don't want to see it.  Close the doors.  Pour the drinks.  Light up the stogies and get to work.

Reflections on thinning hair, arthritis and qualifying for Social Security

Turning 63 last month was not very traumatic.  Odd number birthdays seem to fly under the radar.  The big ones, like 50 or 60, take on much more significance because as decades change, milestones are celebrated.  63? Not so much.

However, as I take my arthritis medication and say a silent prayer of gratitude for Metemucil, I am more and more aware of the passing of time.  The events that formed me and set me on a path of ministry are ancient history for the majority of the population.  The March on Selma, war protest marches down Woodward, the Second Vatican Council, riots and love-ins, poetry readings at Wayne State, coffee houses, bell bottoms and beads are so far in the past.  For the first time in my ministry I have an Associate whose parents are younger than me.  Student glass over when I speak of the excitement of the 60's and 70's.

These were times of great excitement.  We believed that we could change the world and in many cases, did.  We were part of a revolution that stretched across all areas of society.  The Vatican Council changed not only how we worshipped our God but also how were celebrated each other.  The liturgical music of the time might have been trite but it was our music.  We celebrated that God was love and knew it and embraced it.

The Summer of Love and all that went along with it such as music and art and hope stayed with us long after the smoke blew away and the flowers, and music, died.  Having been touched by the possibility that all was possible, we strapped on backpacks and hiked trails and mountains aware of the life that could be found there.  We became conscious of the impact that we had on the planet.

Dissolution with the Johnson and Nixon administrations led to protests against governmental actions which led in turn to a knew involvement in government.  We not only protested, we also became involved and put action to back up our words.

All of this, and much more, formed me and how I look at the world and how I try to minister to my brothers and sisters.  And I have come to realize that my students, and the majority of my parishioners, have no real idea of what I experienced. 

But that is fine.  They have their own experiences and I need the grace to be open to them.  I remember that, in 1966, I put a peace symbol bumper sticker on the bumper of my father's car.  My father, WW II veteran and not very pleased with the opinions of his long haired hippy son, left it there. And we talked.

That is the secret.  Talking.  Listening and trusting.

63 is no big deal except that it means that I am just that much closer to retiring at 70.