THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS

With apologies to Erma Bombeck--it is true that the grass is always greener on the other side of the- septic tank, also on the other side of the fence. Always and invariably, it is greener. It is also just as difficult to cut. The one on the other side of the tank and/or the fence didn't get that lush and verdant field simply by looking at the patch and praying that all would be well. He and/or she toiled long and hard and at a great deal of physical and financial cost to produce something that makes us green with envy; pun intended.

There is not very much in this life that comes easy or cheap, except perhaps envy. We see what another has, think it is so much better than what we have, and desire it. That would not be so bad if our dreams stopped right there. But sometimes they don't. And they are dreams, you see. Because once we start fantasizing about what the other has, we start living in a dream world. We quite easily forget all that is entailed in making our dream come true; or we mesmerize ourself into believing that it'll all be easy. All I have to do is toss out some seed, sprinkle a little of lime and fertilizer, add some water (preferably of the rain variety) and, presto!, the green, green grass of our dreams.

We really know it doesn't work that way. We really know that if we want our neighbor's lawn, we'll have to work just as long and just as hard as our neighbor; maybe even longer and harder. And if that is what we really and truly want, we ought to go for it. Give it our all. But we must not forget: the end results will demand more, not less, of us.

What we also forget, what we fail to realize while we are gazing over our fence in envy, is that our own yard might not be all that bad. All too often envy not only hides the reality of what we desire but it also prevents us from seeing how good what we already have really is. That green grass is so deceptive. And we fall for it. Readily, easily, almost willingly. While we are watching our neighbor toil and labor to make what he has the object of our dreams, our own grass gets out of hand with weeds and dandelions and whatever. And that's too bad because what we had really was so good.

For each of us there is a greener grass, a greener pasture. Sometimes it only remains in the realm of our dreams. Sometimes we start to make our dreams come true and discover that they'll take more work, more sacrifices, than we're willing to give or make. Sometimes, as we gaze longingly over the fence, we look down at our feet and feel just how comfortable we are, how good what we have is. And so we smile and go back to cutting our own grass.

We’ll sweat, of course. We might even cuss a little. But when the job is done, we'll sit back and enjoy the beauty of the green. But if we listen closely, we'll probably hear all those blades making noise. They're laughing at us. They're growing. Our work is never done, is it?

It’s all right to dream, to be green, to want, to be envious at times. But at the same time, we cannot allow ourselves to overlook what we already have. It is probably better than what we see over the fence. And if it isn't, it can be if we want it to be.

ACT YOUR AGE?

All of us sometime in our life, probably many times, have been told "Act your age!" We were doing something silly, maybe downright immature, and an elder called us to task by reminding us that some­one of our years does not act in that sort of way. They were right – but they were also wrong, for the most part most of the time.

So, too, would someone be wrong if he told us to "Act like, a Christian" when catching us doing something unChristlike. You see, the problem we all have is not so much in acting our age or acting like a Christian. We do that all of the time. I act like an 80-year-old Christian almost all of the time. What I don't do is always react as a Christian should.

We all know what actions are demanded of us by both society and ourself according to our age. We don't expect a six-year-old to act like one who is sixteen or sixty, and vice versa. With age and maturity comes a knowledge of how to act, how to live. The same is true as for us acting like a Christian. Six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds act differently. The emphasis is not on acting, as in faking it. It is acting as in actions. Our actions, what we do, are done according to what our age and maturity would require.

Our reactions, often, are not. We tend to react not as Christians, not according to our age. Someone hurts us and we react quickly. And in that reaction, we turn, not the other cheek, but the back of our hand or the back side of our character. We do and say things that, given time, given thought, we would not say or do. Reactions, all too often, are passionate responses to a situation. Actions tend to be reflective responses to that situation.

We get hurt and we immediately react. We become defensive. We pout. We shout. We repay in kind or worse. Acting as Jesus would, responding as Jesus would have us, is not in the forefront of our thinking at that moment of real hurting, at that moment in our life. What we wind up doing then is something stupid...and paying for it for a long time because the person whom we are reacting to reacts to our immature, unChristlike reaction – and then the vicious cycle begins and goes on and on and on.

That has to stop. That has to change. That's basically what the Church is about: teaching us, helping us to make our reactions Christlike actions. It's not easy to spontaneously do the Christian thing, say loving words, especially when we've been hurt. That takes a lot of time and effort and very hard work.

There will probably never be a time when we always say and do what we know we should. We will never always react as a Christian. But that does not mean that we give up. We must keep working at it through prayer, through good works, through the Sacraments, through reading Scripture – through doing all those things we know are necessary in order to grow up into a Christian person. When we fail, we ask forgiveness and start over. When we succeed, we simply thank God for God is the one, through God’s Son and Spirit, who enables us to react as our age and faith demand.                                              

IT’S THE LAW

Sometimes, not often, mind you, just every once in a while, I walk the straight and narrow simply because I don't want to go to jail – or maybe worse (although I can't think of anything worse than being locked up). There are times when I am really in a hurry that I'd love to go 80-90 miles an hour. But the "law" says that I can't. And if I do...So I don't.

For that I cannot pat myself on the back or remind myself of my virtues or anything else along the lines of self-serving justification. I'm "good" simply because I am afraid of the consequences of being "bad." Sometimes it's simply as simple as that.

Now it shouldn't be that way. We should all do what we know is right, even what the law demands, just because that is what we should be doing as a Christian person and not because we are afraid or are unwilling to pay the price for doing what is wrong. But sometimes fear of pain is the final deterrent.

Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" What allows us to be so brash as to defy the law is that sometimes (that word again) we do manage to avoid the torpedoes – or the radar. Sometimes we don't get caught. And that gives us the courage to maybe try it again next time. Then, if we don't get caught that time.... The jails, however, are living proof that discretion should have been the better part of valor.

But the jails are also living proof that fear, discretion, good common sense, Christian principles and the law win out more often than not, but not always. I would like to believe that our Christian faith is our first and last deterrent from straying off the path. It probably is. But the law is also a powerful force.

What is somewhat unfortunate is that it is all too tempting to cite the law, to instill the fear of punishment, to scare people into doing good and avoiding evil rather than trying to teach right attitudes. It's easier and takes less time to pull out the wooden spoon and wave it around (and maybe use it) to keep the kids in line than to sit down and talk with them about what would bring out the spoon in the first place.

But the wooden spoon is only a temporary deterrent. It doesn't get to the root of the situation. Neither does the threat of jail nor the fear of hell. Hell-fire and brimstone works only for a time, "time" being the time it takes to realize that that's a threat the consequences of which will only be experienced some time off in the distant future, if ever, and not now.

That's not to say that the law or the wooden spoon or even some reverential fear of the Lord is unimportant. They do serve a purpose: they remind us that perhaps we are for the moment taking our Christian responsibilities and obligations for granted. As a reminder, the law is good and necessary. As a reason for doing or not doing something, it should not even be a reason.

Unless that law is the law of Love. Then it's the only reason.

AVOIDING THE TRUTH

There's a classic line, okay, semi-classic, in the Tom Cruise - Jack Nicholson movie "A Few Good Men." Lawyer Cruise is confronting General-and-Antagonist Nicholson about the truth. Nicholson rises from his witness chair and shouts at Cruise, "You can't handle  the truth!"

Most of us can't. Not the Gospel truth anyway; or perhaps I should say the truth of the Gospel. We may not be as contemptuous as Pilate who asked Jesus, "What is truth?" But we run from it, shy away from it, almost avoid it at all costs. For the truth of the Gospel message is very, very costly in terms of commitment and consequences. It comes at a price: that of our very lives.

Most of us, I suspect, pick and choose when it comes to the truth, like Nicholson's General. We choose that part which suits us and neglect, overlook or deny that which causes us anguish. Then in order to defend our denial of the whole truth, we turn the tables and accuse those who call us on the carpet of not being able to understand or, in Nicholson's words, handle the truth.

We also use the tactic of vociferously defending that part of the truth, that part of the Gospel message which suits us and which we can uphold. We make so much noise that those who would challenge us on the other aspects of the truth which we neglect can hardly get a word in edgewise. We become relentless in our pursuit of a partial truth, often very relentless.

We become crusaders for an issue that seems valid but which seems to become the only issue. But what we do in the process is miss the greater issue, the greater Gospel truth perhaps because it is so clear and so simple. That very basic message is that we must love everyone else with our total being, no matter who they are, no matter what they do., even what they believe.

But we do not. We claim that we love the sinner but hate the sin. But the sin that we crusade against subsumes the sinner and we can no longer recognize that fact. We claim we love Joe Smith but hate his adulterous ways. Actually we hate that Adulterous Joe Smith. We cannot seem to separate the two.

It is easy to condemn sins. It is very difficult to love the one who commits those sins or what we perceive to be sins: they may, in fact, not be sins, only that we have decided they are. Jesus loved everyone no matter what they did. He loved each person as a person. That was what brought about their conversions, not the condemnation of their sins.

Nicholson was right. As Christians, we do not really want to hear the truth of the Gospel because we would have to spend most of our time dealing with how we as individuals do not live out the truth of the message. That's no fun. It's more fun telling others that they can't handle the truth, that they are sinners. It's not fun realizing that at times we are no better than they, no fun at all.

AD-LIBBING OUR WAY THROUGH LIFE

 I saw a cartoon the other day of a husband and wife in bed, not being able to sleep. The husband says: "It's funny...when I was a kid, I thought grown-ups never worried about anything. I trusted my parents to take care of everything, and it never occurred to me that they might not know how. I figured that once you grew up, you automatically knew what to do in any scenario. I don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed."

A little comic license in that conversation. Not all of life, nor even most of life is ad-libbed. Most of the time we know what to do, what is right, what our faith demands. That does not mean that it will be easy to do what we should. It does mean, though, that knowledge and experience give us the courage to do what is right even when it is difficult, sometimes very difficult.

But there are indeed times in our lives when we simply are not sure what we should do, what is right, what our faith demands. But we have to do something. We have to make a response. When we do, while we are responding, or at least in hindsight, it often seems like we are ad-libbing our response. Our prayer is that before we act, we get it right or after we have acted that we got it right.

We all want answers, the right answers. We all want to know what to do, what our faith demands that we do – or not do. We want black and white. We want the church to be the place where the right answer is given to every question. We certainly don’t want our church to be the place where there are more questions than answers, even more and worse, a place where there is no answer.

And yet to believe that we have all the answers means that all the questions have already been asked. They haven't, of course. Moral and ethical questions keep being asked as we learn more and more about the human condition we live in. And when in our daily lives we come up against a question that has not been asked and for which an answer has not been ascertained and for which we have to make a response, we have to ad-lib, do the best we can.

There is a lot of controversy in the church today over certain questions, questions to which many demand answers, questions which some say are already answered but which others say otherwise. There are those who are unwilling to live with uncertainty, especially in this time of change, time of discontinuity. There are those who say that the church must be the rock of stability with rock-solid answers.

No one of us really wants to ad-lib our way through life. It would be too discomforting, sometimes too discouraging. Yet, there are times when we really do not have any other choice. We have to live our life of faith as best we can, not always knowing for certain, praying that our ad-libbed response is based on what we truly believe Jesus would have us do; and if it is not, asking for forgiveness, insight, and the strength to make amends if at all possible.