NEEDING A BREAK

Around five months into the covid imprisonment – or at least it seems like one – daughter Tracy, Carter’s mom, called. She and her husband have high-stress jobs and both have been working from home all the while. At the same time Carter was with them, upfront and personal. So, besides working they had to see to it that Carter kept up on his pre-school lessons and was kept busy enough so that they could do their jobs. Five-year-old’s can be a handful. Tracy’s message was short and to the point: “Covid or no covid, we need a break. Can you watch Carter for a week?”

Silly question. We couldn’t wait to get him along with his trusty companion, Carmine. We met them on a Saturday and brought the boys home. Unfortunately, grandmother-wise, Arlena had to board a plane to Denver on Monday to, fortunately, be able to take care of our niece who was recovering from a very serious mountain-biking accident. Nurse Arlena saw her through the critical days of recovery and came home a week later. By that time, however, Carter and Carmine had been returned home.

Arlena’s niece was blessed to have a wonderful and caring nurse to help in the healing process. And I was blessed to have the boys to myself. Carter and I went to the pool, three doors down, almost three times a day, most of the time having it all to ourselves, mostly because our community is doing a great job social distancing and because, even though it was warm, the sun wasn’t out and the tan-seekers stayed home.

We had a great time eating bachelor meals: Eggos, PB&J sandwiches, mac and cheese, pizza, Chick-fil-A and the like and 35 calorie popsicles for dessert and to keep us hydrated. When Carter arrived home and sat down to dinner, Carter found on his plant what he usually does: vegetables. It’s a task to get some down. When Tracy asked him how he did with vegetables while he was with me, he responded: “Pap gave me a break from vegetables this week.”

His parents needed a break from Carter and Carter needed a break from vegetables. There are times in our lives when we truly need a break from someone or something even when we truly love that someone or something. In the process we often discover how important that person or thing really is to us. Okay, it may take Carter time to discover the importance of vegetables in his diet and I was of absolutely no help. But he will learn.

Sometimes needing a break and being able to take a break can’t happen. As long as covid is with us, there is no way to really take a break. If and when we do, we put our own life and the life of others at risk. Sometimes we take the risk because we have to, as Arlena had to. Carter’s parents knew we were as safe as could be because we have never taken the risk. Yes, there are times, like now, when we all could use a break from the “vegetables” of our lives, this covid. Perhaps we already have and it hasn’t come back to bite us. We might not be so lucky the next time, to our pain and perhaps to those we love.

WHY ME/US?

Over the years my suspicion is that we all ask the question, when something completely unexpected and traumatic happens to us, “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” The answer, more often than not, is “nothing”. And that is true. We did nothing that merited or caused what happened. It simply did and now we have to deal with it. That same question arises not only individually but collectively, as a community, small or large, from a family to a city to a state – and sometimes to the entire world.

Not very long after I arrived in Cedar Rapids in 2003 living next door to the church in the rectory while Arlena was still in Spokane trying to sell our home, my dog, Albert, and I went to bed. During the night a tornado tore through Cedar Rapids and the surrounding area. When Albert and I woke up, the power was off. When we went outside to take our morning walk through the large cemetery behind the church, we discovered branches and leaves in the front yard, a tree next to the rectory torn from its roots, wires attached to the garage pulled from their steel frame, and in the cemetery at least sixteen uprooted trees. Devastation everywhere but no one really asked, “Why me? Why us?” When you live where tornadoes are a fact of life, sometimes life bites you.

But then, five years later in 2008 a massive storm arose and flooded the downtown and surrounding areas. A parishioner a mile from the river had six feet of water in her basement. Much of the community was in shambles. Many probably wondered why this tragedy happened so soon after the tornado. What was worse was that the country was in the midst of a recession. People were already hurting. The flood was adding insult to injury. But as in the aftermath of the tornado, after the flood, the community rose up and worked together to heal and rebuild.

And then came the derecho, a massive windstorm that damaged a third of the corn crop, tore trees from their roots and collapsed structures that had withstood the tornado and the flood. My guess is that citizenry again wondered why this happened. Wasn’t a tornado and a flood enough for one community in a relatively short period of time? Now this! Yet no one who asked “why?” would be taken to task. And the old and honest response “Why not us?” doesn’t hold.

So what are the people of Cedar Rapids doing? They are doing what they did after the tornado and after the flood, shaking their heads, rolling up their sleeves and working together to find and make resurrection, new life. And they will just as they did before, just as they always will. God bless them. They are an example the rest of us seem to need while in the midst of this pandemic. They are putting aside political differences, religious difference, all differences and working together. That is the only way. In any tragedy there are not two sides to recovery but one.

They are teaching us a lesson we should have learned long ago. I, for one, thank them.

WHY WE DON’T LISTEN

“Let anyone with ears listen,” (Mt. 13:9) Jesus says to the people as he tells them a parable. Why did he have to say that? Didn’t they specifically come out to listen to what he had to say? Why would they not be listening? Even more, why would he have to say the same thing to us today were we the audience? Don’t we all have ears? Don’t we all listen? Obviously not.

It is just as obvious why we do not. We not listen because, deep down, we really do not want to hear what is being said. We do not want to hear what is being said because we do not want to do what we are being told we must do. Then when we do not hear what has been said, we somehow believe we have an excuse for not having done what we know we should have done in the first place.

But we have no excuse. That, I think, was part of Jesus’s message from Day One. Those who heard him whenever he spoke had no excuse for not understanding what he was talking about. What he was saying was not rocket science even if there was no such entity back then. The Gospel message was clear and to the point. The only excuse they would have was that they were not willing to listen to his words. They were not willing to take his message to heart and make it their own, make it part of their own lives.

We truly have to listen to the Gospel message. We have to be open to what is being said and willing to make it personal and take it personally. That is the first part of Jesus’ message. The other part is that what is heard takes work to be understood. Jesus wants us to not only listen and listen closely to what he says, he wants us to think about it and think about it deeply, in the recesses of our minds and hearts.

The parables are not simply good stories, and interesting ones at that, fine word pictures. They have a deep meaning. But to discover that meaning we have to think about what has been said, what the words mean, how they apply to our personal lives, what we are to do with what we have learned, and so forth.

Of course, the final part of Jesus’ message is that we have to actually do something. We have to put into action what Jesus’ words are calling us to do. That, I think, is the real reason why we don’t listen to that message: it isn’t easy to live out in our daily lives. It takes work, often hard and demanding and sacrificial work. And we are not always that willing to go that far.

Jesus did not tell parables just to hear himself speak. He spoke so we could hear and listen, could understand ourselves better, could learn how to live our lives to the fullest. None of that comes from a simple hearing of a parable. It comes from a life-long listening, listening to and hearing the message again and again and again, learning something more each time and putting it into practice each day.

That will never make the sometimes-difficult task of living out our faith easier, but it will make worthwhile, as we have all discovered.

SEEING THE KINGDOM OF GOD/HEAVEN

Every once in a while as I am driving somewhere I come across a sign that tells me in King James English or a more modern translation that unless I am born again, I’ll never see the kingdom of God, and by that I know the sign-posters mean I’ll never get to heaven when I die. They are wrong of course both about what it takes to get to heaven after death and about what the kingdom of God is all about.

First of all, there is nothing they or anyone else can do or has to do to get to heaven upon death. Heaven, the life to come, is God’s free gift to each and every one of us. Whether, upon death, we accept that free gift is up to us. We will still have the free will to decline the invitation. I can’t imagine anyone doing so, but there you go. Some fool might but I know I will not.

Second, I am born again every day. Every day is a new day to live the life I know God calls me to live and every day I know, at the end of the day and, in all honesty, at times during the day, I do not live the life I should. In other words, I sin. But come the next day, I can be born again to do better today that yesterday. I’ll never get it totally right, imperfect being that I am. That is no excuse. It is simply the truth.

And, third and finally, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is not some place out there. It is where each one of us lives and moves and has our being. The problem of course, and the reason I think the sign-makers get it wrong, is that this world is certainly no one’s idea of what heaven is to be like. As wonderful as it is at times, in all reality it is a mess and often a colossal mess. And it is no one’s fault but our own.

Jesus came among us not to show us how to get to heaven but to make this earth, the kingdom of God, into what God created it to be in the first place and which it is now not. And he showed us how to do it even if we already knew how to do it. Jesus’ message was nothing new. If we would only love God above all us and on another in the same way, including ourselves, as the Old Testament prophets said we should, we would bring in the kingdom in its fulness. We haven’t so far.

Thus, what we have to do is be born again every morning intent on doing all we can in every way we can, do our part in helping make this kingdom a reality. There is neither a magic formula nor a simple formula – like be baptized and profess faith in Jesus. What it is is hard work, sometimes really hard work. Sometimes pain and suffering are involved, maybe even death (see Jesus as an example).

When we awake each morning, born again to a new day, all we have to do is open our eyes and we will see the kingdom of God. It is a beautiful, messy, but hope-filled world waiting for us to do our part to get rid of some of the mess and help make it into what we know it can become. Or we can hide under the covers. The choice is ours.

RETROFITTED NOT RETIRED

There are times, not a lot, but noticeable, when I am standing in line waiting to be waited on. The person at the counter looks up and apologizes for the delay and tells me I’ll be taken care of soon. My response is always, “No problem. I’m in no hurry. I’m retired.” And it is never a problem because, well, I am retired. But, then, maybe not. Most people I come in contact with who are in the same position as I am – retired – all sing the same tune: We are busier now than when we worked.

Thus, the other day Arlena and I were talking and the word retired came up. She said that she didn’t like that term simply because of the busy lifestyles we now have. My response is that I would prefer retrofitted as a better way of understanding life now. And I think I am correct. The dictionary defines retired as “having left one’s job and ceased to work.” We may have left our jobs but we have not ceased to work.

What has happened is that in the process of moving from being paid for our work and into the volunteer field, we have been retrofitted to do some things we never did before or had time to do before. We, as the dictionary says, have been furnished “with new or modified parts or equipment not available or considered necessary at the time of manufacture.” I don’t know if that takes into consideration my two cataract surgeries and three hip replacements, but having been retrofitted with these new parts makes what I do now much easier.

The sad part is that I have known many people who have retired and never allowed themselves to be retrofitted. Quite a few died young because all they saw in themselves was who they once were, namely what job they had, and never considered what they could become. My Dad basically died with his boots on working on all the equipment on the family “farm” until his heart gave out. My Mom crocheted almost to her dying breath. Arlena’s Dad, a PTSD victim of WWII, worked till his lungs gave out. Her Mom finally stopped her needle work last month when she reached 98. The arthritic fingers quit working for her. Now she puts together jigsaw puzzles to keep her mind and fingers as active as possible.

We all have those stories. Many of us are those stories. We retrofit our lives to the circumstances around us – as we all are having to do in this time of virus crisis. We are finding new ways of being who we are and doing what needs to be done. There are those, of all ages and conditions, sadly and of course, who refuse to be retrofitted because change is too difficult or something from which they think they are to be exempted.

Our lives are being changed because of circumstances beyond our control, as they always have been, as they always will be, whether those circumstances are age, health, societal conditions, whatever. How we retrofit ourselves to those changes or refuse to do so defines our present and will decide and define our future.