Monday, January 13, 2025
Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
News that’s fit to print
This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand.
All day Saturday I thought about the fires in California. The University of Southern California men’s basketball team unexpectedly won at Illinois. The Illini played badly and they played well. I am sure the USC victory was encouraging, especially after they lost a game with Indiana earlier in the week.
A broadcaster pointed out that the USC team has been in the midwest since before the Los Angeles fires began – they haven’t been back to their own homes in a week.. They must depend on what they hear from their friends and family on their phones. What will they find when they walk down their streets? At church in Austin yesterday both our pastor and our SS teacher spoke of family members who had lost their homes.
In Domestic Monastery, a book I just finished by Ron Rolheiser, Fr. Ron wrote about a 24 year old who died young. In conversation the young man expressed less disappointment in his impending death than if “I was fifty years old and had no values!”
I’m seventy-five and my friend Jim just turned seventy-six. Other friends are older than me either of us. How are our values doing?
I used to walk in the woods for hours communing with the life and death there.
I used to lose myself in the prairie.
I once was strong and steady, tall and robust, sharp of mind and memory.
I had so much energy to create and to connect with people.
I used to climb ladders unafraid.
And now I struggle to retrieve the mail at the end of my sidewalk.
Now there is vague and muted recollection.
Now I stay home alone not wanting more.
Now I am comfortable with myself.
Now I am content for how the river of life has lived me…and I am grateful.Â
– Clarence Heller
In my aging ears, Clarence’s observations ring true. My back gets sore just sitting in a could-be-comfortable chair at the Round Rock Library while Margaret honors her daughter at a baby shower down the road. On the way here Margaret spoke glowingly of our ability to get around “at our age.” And of course I agreed.
In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets …
Still, disappointment or discouragement wait just around one corner after another. I’m surprised at how little I trust those on TV who speak with confidence about rebuilding in California. I see what has been destroyed rather than what will be renewed. I am pretty sure that is a projection rooted in my own life, in my own slow and usually difficult rejuvenation each morning, each afternoon, each evening.
… in these last days, he spoke to us through the Son.
Of course there is an “other hand.” On the other hand, in conversation with others I love listening, I feel satisfaction when I look into someone else’s eyes, and when I breathe deeply my body relaxes as the oxygen fills my lungs. Margaret and I rise up and encourage each other, morning by morning, and new mercies we see. I love to write and read. I feel empathy and pain when a friend tells me of her suffering. Life goes on, and I love being alive.
The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice; let the many isles be glad.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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