Saturday, June 17, 2023
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Father’s Day tomorrow. All day …
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Bless his holy name.
All morning yesterday (granted, I didn’t get up till 10 A.M.) we talked about our lives and personalities, the lectionary verses in the Bible, and yesterday’s devotion about Paul and his letters. All of which was fascinating.
Then we moved into business, switching dates and times, sorting out a trip to Illinois next week, and talking with Robin at our newly named bank. She helped us set up online accounts and shared, in a friendly but not sorrowful way, that there were 500 emails to answer, and that she and a few others got to work on the Monday holiday. Not much Juneteenth for them.
All of which is to simply say how the currents of our life carry us forward, sometimes strongly, sometimes settling us in a shallow still pool. This movement, which does not depend on us very much, brings life to us, and us to life.
Whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old things have passed away, and behold, new things have come. And all of this is from God.
I want to move along in the lifestream with an attitude of what Henri Nouwen calls “compassion.” I want to belong to and remain with those he calls “the fellowship of the broken.”
Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant people, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference.
But this is often how we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. Those who can sit with their fellow man, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life into a dying heart. (from You Are the Beloved)
Tomorrow is Father’s Day. In the 1990’s we visited Danville Correctional Center on Sunday evenings with a team of various friends and students from the University of Illinois. We usually had visited a few Sundays earlier on Mother’s Day as well. I (or sometimes Rory Clark, who died a month ago) played the guitar, we sang several songs together with the inmates, and then gathered in groups of 5 or 6 or 7 to share and pray. We got to be pretty close to them, and vice versa.
Father’s Day wasn’t much celebrated in the Danville chapel, while Mother’s Day was lifted high. The guys had much to praise their mothers for. They often didn’t remember their dads, even if they knew who they were.
Oh, how sad that makes me feel! The mother-son bonds often kept them hopeful and faithful, lifted up by love. And the fathers … not so much. What could they have been like, not just for the inmates but for all of us?
The cat’s cradle song breaks my heart, even as I recognize its truth in my life as a kid and my life as a dad.
There were planes to catch and bills to pay
When you comin’ home, dad? I don’t know when
But we’ll get together then
We’re gonna have a good time then
… You know I’m gonna be just like you, dad
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
“When you coming home, son?”
Not just for boys and their dads – there are plenty of moms and daughters in the same race against time. Time wins, mostly. We get just a little while to beat it back, with our own sense of Kairos time, so different from the tyranny of the clocktower, which removes the self-centered hurry and worry from our lives at least long enough for us and our kids to fall in love with each other.
The river moves slowly today. But I feel a current sliding me out of the deep, quiet pool. I know there are rapids ahead. We will need each other in those rapids, to hold on and carry on.
God has given us the ministry of reconciliation and entrusted us with his message. We are ambassadors for Christ, and we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
(2 Corinthians 5, Psalm 103, Luke 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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