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Doing More

Their mothers and fathers gave them names. Hugged them. Fed them. Carried them. They sent them off to school, packed their lunches, corrected their homework, and signed their tests. Their brothers and sisters shared their rooms, inspired them, fought with them, borrowed their clothes, and protected them.

They had friends, co-workers, bosses, employees, partners, husbands, and wives. They drove cars, took buses, checked books out of the library, and rented movies.

They lived in Columbine, Ft. Hood, San Bernadino, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Buffalo, Uvalde, and too many other cities to name.

So we cry and wear ribbons, light candles and say prayers. We will remember them and care for those they leave behind. And these are good things. These are appropriate actions.

But will we learn anything?

Will we stop to talk about how this happens? Will we talk about guns? Will we talk about the bullets? Will we talk about the hate, the indifference, mental health, or the banality of it all?

We have to resist the urge to let the talking heads on television reduce it to allegiance to a foreign movement. We have to talk about it, even as we talk about the victims.

It’s not enough to say that love wins.

We have to act as though it really does.

And that requires action, conversation, and maybe even change.

The headlines will list the number of victims. Headlines always do.

But the numbers had names.

And they deserve more than headlines.

Our Lady of Humility, Pray for Us.

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Dancing in the Kitchen

Yesterday was Mothers’ Day so in my house, it means generally leaving mom alone. Let her rest, watch whatever she wants. Or, as I joked with my siblings, we leave her alone so she can catch up on laundry.

I know. I am hilarious.

My children took it to the extreme and hardly even mentioned Mothers’ Day. Still, we had a nice time visiting Aunt B in her rehab unit/assisted living, watching television, and generally doing nothing. Dinner of steak and chicken, brussel sprouts and cauliflower, along with twice baked potatoes wrapped up the day.

While doing dishes, Ace Number One and I started listening to music. First Carbon Leaf, then John Denver, then Dave Matthews. As we danced around the kitchen, it occurred to me that it has been a while since that happened. Between work and the loss of my mom in December, the treadmill we are on with Aunt B, and four teenagers, the dancing seems to have waned.

It was good to spend time outdoors, planting new flowers with my youngest. It was good to sit and watch the same episode we’ve seen a hundred times of the crime show the second oldest one likes. And it was good to hear from child number three about his art project, chosen to represent the school system in the local art show.

But as I went to bed last night, it was the dancing that made my heart sing. There is just something about blissfully moving around with the music and the freedom of dancing with such abandonment with the people you love the most.

This week, I will intentionally find those opportunities to dance some more, no matter what the roller coaster of life brings our way.

pjd

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Aunt B

The tomb is empty. Alleluia.

In the last two week or so, I have memorized the locations of every pot hole from Fairfield to Philadelphia.

When my dad died, he asked me to look after his sister. I have taken that invitation seriously since 2011. When we were in Delaware, we visited often, vacationed with her, and enjoyed many birthdays and special occasions with her. Since we moved in 2016, Aunt B has been with us for holidays and special feasts, not to mention the first stop on any trip south.

She fell Tuesday of Holy Week after being released “too soon,” she says by a doctor who “wasn’t paying attention.” She is nothing if not opinionated. At nearly 83, she has earned that right.

So I came down to Philly. Then again on Wednesday of Holy Week, so I came back. This time, she landed in the hospital and then rehab. I’ve made the trip five or six times and yesterday decided to stay for a day or two. While home last week, Maureen and I visited and spoke with about a half dozen facilities and last night, using the posters my kids made, Aunt B chose one near our house. Today and the next few days will involve trying to get the paperwork filled out, a few things packed, and then moving the patient north.

It’s all very overwhelming for her. We do not like to see the ones we love suffer. Aunt B has been a grandmother to my own children and a confidant to me for quite some time. She is a retired school teacher, lifelong skier, Irish step dancer, and a fighter. She is fiercely independent, so when the doctor told her she can no longer live on her own, it was a punch in the gut. My prayer these last weeks is to implore my dad to help me avoid doing a big thing badly. It is just so hard to make a decision for someone else, especially someone so independent.

Please pray for us this week as we upend our lives to bring her closer and for her as she leaves the only home she’s known for decades. As many of you know, caring for those in their wisdom years can be taxing, even exhausting.

But the tomb is empty, and there is hope all around us. May we find our strength in that simple statement. The tomb is empty.

Alleluia.

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On Lent and Crosses

The acting out of love to the extent of dying on a cross is a mystery I have never been fully able to understand. My limited ability to love stands embarrassed at such extravagance. My daily attempt falls short of my dreams. I carry my crosses carefully, trying to make sure they don’t take too much out of me.

I always leave a little pink around the edges of my crosses. I can not bear unpleasant things. I honestly don’t know how Jesus did it! I can hardly accept WHY he did it. The why he did it always makes me feel guilty about the pink around the edges.

During Lent, at least, I’d like to let the pink go. I’d like to be content for forty days with a cross that is not pretty. But I am so young in my faith. It is hard not to cheat a little and search for soft, easy, pretty crosses.

O God of Lent, remember me. Help me to take all the clutter that I try to decorate my crosses with, all the ways I try to camouflage your death and dying because my faith has not grown enough and to look at death as it really is: an emptiness that brings me face to face with LIFE.

And yet, within my fragile, questioning heart I know that if I would ever dare get close enough to dying, to death, it would fall over into life.

O God of Lent, Your love has opened my eyes. It is my own pink edged crosses that have broken my heart.

But your cross has saved me.

From Seasons of Your Heart by Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB

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Living Lent Well

We had a conversation at dinner last night about how we could “live Lent well.” One child thought that we could begin by putting away the Christmas decorations.

We sent her to her room.

I’m kidding, of course. I suggested we visit a new fish fry every week and then judge which one was best. I thought it was a great idea until one of the children reminded me that the whole judging thing might undo any holiness we achieved by the weekly Stations of the Cross, Taize prayer, or retreats we might attend.

So we will spend some time this week looking at the right ways for our family to keep watch during this holy season of hope. I know it starts Wednesday, so I already feel a bit behind, but it seems that every year, these seasons sneak up on us and we are halfway through them before we get out the Advent wreath or make it to Stations.

We will see if this year can be different. Honestly, it’s been too long since anything felt normal.

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Purgatorial Departments

Two of the children and I were talking about the afterlife on our way to faith formation Sunday morning. I’m not sure how the topic came up, but we started to imagine what it would be like if you got to heaven, and you were faced with the number of times you missed an opportunity.

I suggested that it sounded a little bit more like purgatory and then the ideas started flowing.

What if there was a department that told you all the times you actually had a lottery ticket that was a winner?

What if there was a department that kept track of all the times you have been unkind to someone?

What about a department where they kept track of all the money you wasted throughout your lifetime?

What about a guy at the counter who had tracked all the times you missed a chance to be kind (and his assistant that indicated which of those times was intentional)?

Then, down the hallway, there was a department that let you review the footage of all the times you were faced with a choice for good and evil and you had to reflect upon the choice you made.

It was a fun conversation, though some of those departments sound like they belong in hell, and it got me thinking about that voice in our head we call a conscience. I couldn’t help but think about the example I set for others, the missed opportunities, the wasted time, and the chances lost to selfishness.

Perhaps this week, I can keep those fictional purgatorial departments in mind and strive to be a better role model and friend.

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Fall In Love

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

 

Happy St. Valentine’s Day.

Often attributed to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ (1907–1991), but by Joseph Whelan, SJ.

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Brrr…

The heat was out at the Donovan home for a few days last week. No hot water either. It got a little chilly inside, so everyone donned more socks and sweaters. There was little complaining, which surprised me, because everyone likes to be comfortable. Perhaps the lack of moaning and groaning had something to do with why the heat was off. It turns out, yours truly got distracted by work and home and family and all the little things that fill my mind that I simply forgot to order oil before we ran out. It was a dumb mistake and one that was fairly predictable. I had even left myself notes to order oil the week before. But then one child was home, another needed a doctor, Mom was buried in Knoxville, and I simply got distracted. The oil tank just ran dry. No oil. No heat.

It doesn’t take a genius to draw the parallel to the rest of our lives – spiritually, emotionally, and mentally – and the tank in the basement. The empty tank, it turns out, was only a symptom of a greater problem. It gave me time to reflect whether I am a person of prayer or whether I try to solve everything on my own? Do I share the things I am struggling with or do I wander around in darkness looking for the proverbial light switch? Do I let my own tank run dry instead of filling it with the peace, love, and joy that comes from true friendship and healthy relationships?

The oil guy came as the snow started to fall and no real damage was done. The blankets and quilts were put away for another time when dad messes up and life returned to normal.

Still, the memory of the empty tank haunts me and serves as a gentle kick in the pants that no man is an island. This week, let’s all check the balance in our emotional bank accounts and check in on those around us that might need some support.

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The List

There is a card in my wallet that tells a story. Many of you have heard the story and some may even have lists of your own. The list, the card, battered and torn, started, as all good stories do, with a teacher who made a difference.

It was my junior year in high school and Sr. Judy Eby, RSM asked us to reflect on the reading from Mark’s Gospel that we will proclaim at Mass on Friday morning this week. You’ve heard the story before: there are crowds gathered around Jesus and so some guys carry a paralytic, drop him through the roof, and in front of Jesus.

After we read the story in Sr. Judy’s class, she wheeled in that big glorious television that promised a break from the text and we all move our seats so we could see it. It was a scene of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 masterpiece, Jesus of Nazareth. The story unfolds sort of like like it does in Mark’s (and Luke’s) Gospel: the crowds have gathered and there is no room for the men to bring their friend to Jesus. He cannot walk so they carry him over the wall, through the thatched roof, and place him before the Teacher.

You know what happens next. The man is told his sins are forgiven. The crowd goes nuts. “Only God can forgive sins,” they reproach Jesus. Putting yourself on the same plane as God is only going to cause trouble. To this, we get a classic Jesus response: “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”

Think about it. Surely forgiving sins is easier. But how can someone who is not harmed be the one to forgive sins? To show the crowd what he’s really capable of, he tells the man to get up, pick up his mat, and go home. The man obliges. The crowd goes nuts for a new reason and everyone learns an important lesson.

But back to the card in my wallet.

We wrap up the reading, the watching, and the discussion about the friends who carried the stretcher, and Sr. Judy hands us all an index card. “Now,” she tells us, “write down the names of those who carry you to Christ.”

I have repeated that exercise with youth and adults alike for years. Like Sr. Judy, I challenge people to think of those who, when we are paralyzed with fear, sinfulness, guilt, and selfishness, carry us to Christ. When you cannot move, who lifts you up? When you are sick or alone or unhappy or in serious need of a friend, who do you call?

I have edited my list throughout the years. Friends come and go. People die. But my list has been there since that spring day in 1987. I have moved it from wallet to wallet. It’s a thirty-year-old ratty piece of paper that I carry with me everywhere.  On more than one occasion, the list has saved my life, my soul, my sanity.

Go ahead, take out a piece of paper.

Who is on your list?

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A Christmas Wish

I don’t know if you believe in Christmas
Or if you have presents underneath the Christmas tree
But if you believe in love, that will be more than enough
For you to come and celebrate with me
For I have held the precious gift that love brings
Even though I never saw a Christmas star
I know there is a light, I have felt it burn inside
And I have seen it shining from afar
Christmas is the time to come together
a time to put all differences aside
And I reach out my hand to the family of man
To share the joy I feel at Christmas time
For the truth that binds us all together
I would like to say a simple prayer
That at this special time
you will have true peace of mind
And love to last throughout the coming year
And if you believe in love, that will be more than enough
For peace to last throughout the coming year
And peace on earth will last throughout the year

I first heard these words, written by Danny Akken Wheetman and sung by Kermit the Frog, when Kermit and the Muppets joined John Denver on television for a Christmas special. It is a nice reminder that Christmas is bigger than any of us, than any single loss, or any collective issues we might share. For one day, at least, we can put peace first, let joy reign in our hearts, and pray that hope will spring anew. 

May the wonder and joy of that first Christmas be yours today and always.
-pjd