IT’LL BE THERE TOMORROW

One of the benefits of this universal slowdown because of the virus, even when at times it became a shutdown, is that we are all finding time to spare. Early on a small group of men, all retired, got together on Zoom. There were six or seven of us who logged on. We spent almost two hours talking about what was going on in our lives and how we were coping with basically being home-bound.

Four weeks later when we met again, we spent a little more than an hour taking and sharing. Four weeks after that we were together for less that forty-five minutes. Why? We simply did not have that much to talk about. The virus had kept us mostly locked in at home. Given all the free time we had because we social distanced only when we absolutely had to, we had completed all the work we needed to do around the house that we had been putting off. In that sense the virus did us a lot of good and pleased our spouses in the process.

Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, our restrictive lifestyles will be over and we will be free to going back to the good old ways and days, which means filling up all those minutes which, during the virus allowed and even forced us to rest and relax, something our culture tends to frown upon. We seem to buy into the adage that an idle mind and body is the devil’s workshop. It isn’t.

God gave us the commandment to keep a sabbath rest for a reason. While we may think the devil loves an idle mind and body, it is just the opposite. When we are too tired, too exhausted, to think and act properly, we think and act improperly. We make the wrong decisions. We say things we, in hindsight, regret. If we hadn’t been so tired, if we had thought before we spoke, if, if, if.

The truth is that most of what we think must be done today can wait until tomorrow, most,

not all. What that means is that we truly do not have any excuse for not taking sabbath

rests. That means once a week, regularly, not randomly. We know this is possible because

we have been keeping sabbath in one way or another all these months. My guess is that

most of those who have been infected have acted as if there was nothing to worry about.

Yes, keeping safe is no guarantee we will be safe. Not doing so means we won’t be.

 

Keeping sabbath is a good and Godly (by God) way to stay healthy and refreshed and

relaxed. It is no guarantee that we won’t get sick. But it is God’s reminder that good health

is only possible when we take the time to rest, relax and get in tuned with our body and

mind and our God.

 

I know I am beating a dead horse. But a horse can only go so far before it has to stop and

rest. So do we. As we enter a new year, perhaps resolving to take a weekly sabbath rest and

actually doing so may be the one good result of this virus. A Happy and Healthy 2021.

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL

It was December 24, 1968, Christmas Midnight Mass. I was home for the holydays (yes, “holy”) from my final year in seminary. As a deacon I was vested to assist at the service. Thanks to Vatican II the altar was facing the people and I was seated in front of the altar facing the congregation as the old Monsignor stepped to the pulpit to deliver his Christmas sermon. He began by asking everyone to stand and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. I was shocked and embarrassed and so, it seemed, were the people.

What an idiot I was! Why in the world were we gathering in the first place? What is Christmas except the celebration of Jesus’ birth. If it were not for that, the only reason I would have been home was for a planned winter break. And for everyone else in that congregation and in the world December 25 would be just another day on the calendar to be lived out as any other day.

As the old reminder reminds, Jesus is the reason for the season. He is now and was back then. Somehow I had forgotten about that even though I was assisting in a celebration that had nothing to do with Christmas trees and Christmas presents and all the rest but had everything to do with the celebration of Jesus’ birth. How could I? Where was my head? What was I thinking back then?

And today? Arlena and I walk through our neighborhood at night and marvel at all the decorations. I haven’t seen anything that reminds me of Jesus and everything that reminds me of Santa Claus. My guess is that if it hadn’t been for this virus, there would be those going to court asking local communities to take down manger scenes because they are a propagation of a certain faith. How dare they at Christmas!

Okay, okay. Enough of this rant because, in all honesty, the celebration of Christmas and what we are gathering for, wherever we gather, is, underneath it all, a celebration of Jesus’ birth. As another saying reminds us, there is nothing we can do to take Christ out of Christmas. Back then I was part of a Christ Mass, a ChristMass celebration. And the truth is, the Christmas holiday is still a holyday even if it is not acknowledged by the vast majority and is often forgotten by idiots like me back then.

My old pastor reminded me back then and still reminds me today whenever I think of that learning moment if my life all those years ago that I must never forget what Christmas in essence is all about. It is easy to do, as we all know. And my guess is that come Christmas morning we may forget what the real reason is for why we are gathering. If we play Christmas carols as background music that day or during this season, one song we won’t hear is “Happy Birthday, Jesus.”

My hope and prayer for you and for me is that maybe just for a moment on Christmas Day amid our celebration we might stop and silently say, “Happy birthday, Jesus.”

NO GARDEN OF EDEN AFTER THE GARDEN OF EDEN

The creation story is just that: a story. It is a wonderful parable about creation and the place of us human beings in it. The central part of that story is that of the Garden of Eden, paradise on earth, inhabited by two so-far-sinless human beings. And then everything went to hell in the proverbial handcart. My guess is that the initial concepts of an eternal hell stemmed from a seemingly human need to punish those who knowingly and willingly eat those tempting apples, whatever those apples tend to be.

The truth is that there was no way for that biblical Eden to last. Given human nature and free will everyone one of us would and will decide to do something we know is selfish and wrong. Even if an original Eden existed, it was no going to last. But that was not the point of the parable. The point, or at least one of them, is that everything and everyone is good because God, who created and continues to create, is good and it is up to us to do all we can to keep us and all of creation good.

But we fail to do so and fail daily. That is why the world is in the shape it is in. To be sure, we know that. We all want a better world, a world where there is no hunger, no disease, no covid: an Eden-like world. That world will never be, at least not in our lifetime. Yet, that does not give us a pass so that we need not do all we can to do the best we can at every moment of every day.

The problem is that when we look at this world of ours and all the problems we personally observe, we can be and are overwhelmed by what it would take to resolve them. The temptation, then, is to not even try, knowing that what little we can do will be a drop in the bucket. Moreover, the truth is is that is all it will be: a drop, maybe two or three of them, but no more. But one drop is better than none at all.

All our failures, big and small, and we all have them, do not erase our successes. The good done cannot be undone even if it sometimes seems as if it had been. In the biblical story Adam and Eve did not pack it in. They had long lives to live doing the best they could to make their lives and the lives of their children as good as they could. They surely failed as did their children, as the stories of Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark make perfectly and abundantly clear.

The story of creation is held out to us as a constant reminder of creation’s goodness, of everything and everyone in it: cows and chickens, snakes and gnats, you and me. We are all good and we all have a purpose even if we sometimes wonder just exactly what that purpose truly is. Perhaps it will only be in death when we will be able to look back and see how well and, at times, how poorly we did. It won’t matter then. But in the meantime, in the here-and-now, when it is within our ability to enjoy, care for and use God’s creation as best we can, we must do so. It won’t be Eden, heaven on earth, but it will be what we make it.

OBEYING THE COMMANDMENTS FOR THE WRONG REASONS

Most of us, I assume, grew up learning the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, my guess is that most of those growing up today have never heard, and maybe never will, learn them, let alone memorize them and learn what they mean. That is sad. (And it’s the church’s fault. But that’s for another reflection.) My further assumption is that even if we who once could recite the ten could not do so today. That, to, is sad, maybe even sadder.

There is something else that is even sadder most of all. When we learned those commandments way back then and we set out to obey them, we obeyed them for the wrong reasons. We did so out of fear of present or future punishment. They were commandments handed down by God and, by God, God would make us pay somehow in some way if we disobeyed them.

The truth is that we do pay when we go astray from them. When we lie and cheat and steal, our sins eventually come back to haunt us as we all know well from experience. Our sins catch up to us. When we fail to keep sabbath rest, take time to relax and reflect, our health pays for it sooner or later. When we forget about God and God’s creation, when we abuse it, we and our world will pay for our negligence and abuse. And we are.

Keeping the commandments and obeying laws out of fear of some kind of punishment is not the way to live. Rather we are to live our lives, doing whatever we are to be doing, out of love and not fear. We honor our God not because we fear God’s retaliation if we do not, nor, on the other hand, because God will reward us if we do. We honor God because we love God even if we really do not know what that means, because we don’t.

We honor our parents, anyone in authority, not because we fear what they might do if we do not nor because we want to receive some kind of reward – praise, honor, a raise, etc. – but because it’s the right and loving thing to do. In fact, keeping the commandments is always the right thing to do. And let’s be honest, the right thing to do is somehow already written in our hearts and minds and souls from birth.

Keeping the commandments is the only way to live. The reason why the world is in the mess it is in, where we have divisions, sometimes great ones, is that individually and collectively we have decided that it is easier and presently more rewarding to disobey one or more of them. That present reward always comes with a price, often at a great price, as, again, history and our own life experiences teaches us.

God gave the commandments to Moses simply as a way of reminding him and the people he was leading to the Promised Land that is they wanted to arrive there, keeping them was the only way to get there. The same is true for us today. Loving another, especially (fill in the blank), is hard. But it is the only way to live. The truth is that in the end and through it all love always overcomes fear.