Salt and Light

Well, last Saturday I wrote about the appropriations process and the unimaginably hard decisions our legislators face regarding tax dollars that pay for care for the poor, the homeless, the old, and the disabled. 

They must reconcile a dearth of funds with a world of need.

And then I mentioned a question someone had asked me recently about whether it really is the taxpayer who should be required to care for those in need after all.  I scratched my head and wondered, too.

Comes Fr. Larry Sunday morning to shed light (he brought a salt shaker with him) and discourse on the matter.  The readings were from Isaiah 58:7-10 and Matthew 5:13-16.  Fr. Larry said that Isaiah is telling us what we should do, and Jesus is reminding us who we should be.

We are to share with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, clothe the naked "when you see them," and not turn our back on our own.

As for the role of salt in all this, Fr. Larry reminded us that salt was once a precious commodity for its properties of making food taste better and preserving it from spoilage--so precious it was offered up as a sacrifice in the temple ceremonies.  Our bodies absolutely must have it to live.

Likewise light.  I try to imagine night time in the Middle East during the time of Jesus, the enveloping darkness held at bay for only a few hours in the evening by a small oil lamp.

We are salt, called to make things better.  We are light, called to carry the truth to the dark recesses of the human soul.  Formidable callings.

I recall arguing once with a conservative friend who was angered by the Church's stance toward undocumented Mexicans, its insistence on providing assistance to those within our borders illegally.  I quite agreed that yes, as a society we face serious problems resulting from the huge disparities in opportunity and freedom that drive people to come into our country at almost any cost.

But the Church, represented in this case by the Bishop of Los Angeles, is doing exactly what it is called to do and in fact, cannot do otherwise and remain faithful to its calling.  That phrase from Isaiah--when you see them--put things in stark relief.

I wrote the other day about the yes, buts that overtake me when I ponder how best to deal with social issues that set conservatives and liberals at each other's throats.  If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that you get more of whatever behavior you reward, which leads to some serious problems for society as a whole over time (and for the individual, too, and pretty darned quick).

Some people who work with the homeless beg us not to give money to panhandlers because we're enabling them, and I suspect they're right: If the panhandlers got no reward for their behavior, they'd move on to something else, maybe even something better.

But we see them, standing there on the corner.  Usually I pass them by, making a mental note to send a check to St. Vincent de Paul or Mary House Catholic Worker.  But this week, the cold has been so extreme, so bitter, when I encountered one old man on a corner, his eyes streaming from the north wind, I couldn't believe he was out there, and I really didn't care what he'd done or not done to wind up there.

I was incapable of driving past him as though I did not see him.  I whipped out a ten dollar bill and handed it to him. 

"God bless you, ma'm!" he said to me.  "I'm off this corner for tonight!  God bless you, ma'm!"

Maybe I did it for the right reasons, maybe for the wrong reasons.  If it was more to appease my conscience than concern for my fellow man, I ask God to use it for good anyway. 

And blame Fr. Larry.

Mess to Messiah

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico

Yesterday the gospel reading centered upon Joseph's dilemma, to wit: he had found that his young betrothed was with child, and in this confusing mess there was only one thing of which he could be certain, and that was that he's had nothing at all to do with it.

Scripture says Joseph was an honorable man, and so decided to divorce Mary quietly.  In other words, he would not publically denounce her and perhaps force her family into killing her or worse.

For women, yes, there is worse.

But then the angel came to Joseph in a dream and told him with whom Mary was pregnant, and the role this baby was to play in human events.  The angel assured Joseph that indeed, Mary had commited no betrayal, but in fact that  she had acceded to the audacious request of the Most High.

Beyond that the details were probably  pretty fuzzy.

So Joseph went to bed with a dilemma, and woke up to a miraculous mess, as Fr. Larry characterized it.  How many men would pop out of bed like Joseph, look themselves in the mirror, and say, "Whoa! This is going to be an interesting ride!"?

Most would just see their world and plans crumbling about them.  But Joseph seems to have been a peculiarly unflappable man,  who was from the House of David, late of the shoot of Jesse.  He was familiar with the passage in which all this was foretold.

And I guess if an angel takes the trouble to visit you, it's hard not to pay attention to what he says.

Fr. Larry says Joseph is a prime example of what to do when you find yourself in a mess: invite God to join you in it.

Fr. Larry's right.  When our Kelly was born a baby was the last thing we needed in our lives.  We were struggling, trying to finish Jerry's degree, caring for our two fragile aging mothers and struggling with college bills.  Life was good, but it was full to overflowing, and when I found out I was pregnant things went way over the top.

When Kelly was born with Down syndrome, we felt as though our world had completely collapsed. 

When the hospital told us it looked like she had neonatal leukemia we realized the thing we wanted most in the world was for her to live.

In those dark days before her blood chemistry began to resolve, we invited God in to be a part of our mess.  With that Guidestar before us, things began to sort themselves out.  I prayed the Lord's prayer 50 times a day some days.

We'd felt like we were in one of those kids' games of long ago--the little picture disc with holes for the 5 BBs that you have to tilt and tap to get each BB in a hole.  At first all the BBs whirled wildly around the inside of the disc, but first one, and then another, settled into its hole, and before long we settled back into being a family. 

Same sick moms, same college bills, same demanding jobs, plus a fat baby girl with the world's best smile, who needed therapy three days a week.

But that was OK. 

Jerry had said the night Kelly was born, "Well, now we find out who we are as a family."

And so we had.

photo courtesy: http://www.artbible.info/art/large/255.html

Be Not Afraid

Last week was hard for me.  There was strife and I don't like strife.  There were disagreements and I don't like disagreements.  By the end of the week I was anxious and unable to sleep.

And fearful.

Never mind what's going on.  It's nothing that hasn't happened before and it will surely happen again.  The problem is that I let the fear eat me up, so much so that, not only didn't I avail myself of strategies to overcome it, I forgot they even existed.

Monday Jerry asked several of us staff to please reread the chapter of Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, specifically Habit Five: "Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood." 

I didn't.  Things didn't improve.

But Friday I was talking with a friend, who thanked me for putting him onto Don't Bite the Hook, by Pema Chodron, a series of CDs that deal with overcoming anger and resentment, both of which come from...fear.

"Oh!" I remembered.  "I should listen to those now."

Duh.

On Saturday friends arrived from Dallas.  I'd met them at a conference, and we spent the day walking around the Ranch, getting to know one another better, and discussing our spiritual journeys over dinner, which thankfully reminded me that I actually had one.

Then this morning they accompanied us to church--St. Louis Catholic in Austin.  I went in early to practice with the choir and on the way I listened intently to my CDs, beginning to reconnect with my saner self. 

We'd assured our friends that Fr. Larry was a superb homilist, so expectations were high, but I must say today he knocked it out of the park.

The gospel reading today concerned Jesus sending out the 72 disciples to do the work of the gospel in His name, and bearing His authority.

When time for the homily came, Fr. Larry moseyed out into the congregation and plopped himself down in a pew next to the parishioners.  There was nervous laughter, Fr. Larry being a stickler for liturgical correctness. 

"Just wanted to see what it looked like from here," he said.  "Looks different."

He then threatened to pass the preaching baton to a parishioner at the end of the pew, suggesting they "change roles" for a while.  He backed off before the man had a heart attack then and there.

Assuming his normal station at the pulpit, Fr. Larry then recounted two stories.

The first concerned the battleship which received an instruction to change course.  The commander replied, "Suggest you change course."

"Change course," came the reply.

"I'm in command of a battleship," sent the commander, "you change course!"

"I'm in command of a lighthouse," came the last communication.

The second concerned a man with three small children on a subway at night.  As he sat passively on his seat staring at his shoes, his children ran amuck, disturbing other passengers.

"Really, you should control those children!" said an outraged woman.

The man looked up and said, "Oh, I'm sorry.  It's just that we've just left the hospital where their mother died, and I don't know what to do."

Suddenly, in both cases, as with a kaleidoscope turning, all the facts fell together to form a very different version of reality.  The commander quite willingly changed course.  The woman was no doubt suffused with compassion.  The paradigm had shifted.

I recognized those stories right away.  They are both discussed in, yes, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

"This is no coincidence," I thought.

Fr. Larry went on to explain what a paradigm shift the commission of the 72 disciples experienced.  Until then, they'd been followers, listeners, witnesses to Jesus' work.  Now they were being asked to assume a completely new role--to do the work of Jesus in the Name of Jesus, empowered by their faith in Jesus, who told them they should not fear, because He would always be with them, even unto the end of the world.

After communion, the choir sang Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus.  If I learned that heaven would consist of nothing more than singing the Ave Verum Corpus for all eternity that would be fine with me.

For post-communion, with the congregation, we sang My Country, T'is of Thee, today being the Fourth of July.  I choked up on the second verse and scarcely made it back in before the end.

The recessional was America, the Beautiful.  If there was a dry eye in the house, I couldn't see it for my own.

Guest organist Peter Guy, a hugely talented young Australian on concert tour, finished off with a postlude, Widor's Toccata.  All of the choir and most of the congregation stayed around to hear it, and as people finally began to filter out of church I caught up with Jerry and crew.  Our friends looked dazed, and Jerry quipped, "Heck of a show for a buck!" referring to an old stewardship joke.

Someone once said that the opposite of love is not hatred, but fear.  Fear leads us to lose faith--in ourselves and in others.  Fear cuts us off--from ourselves and from others. 

Fear is the siren song of despair.

I say mea culpa for falling prey to fear, and hope I've learned a lesson this week.  I give thanks for friends and faith, for my church and priest, for my husband's wisdom and patience, and all the good things that have brought me back home.

The sermons of Fr. Larry Covington are available through the church web site:

http://www.st-louis.org/homilies.htm