A Full Church

Will my church be full or empty?

In my family it's not a matter of if you will get cancer, but where and when. All four of my grandparents and one of my uncles have tangled with (and lost to) cancer. I have already battled thyroid cancer and I am staring down a second biopsy for breast cancer in just a couple of weeks. I don't really want to talk about dying here, though that's an inescapable part of the conversation. I want to talk about the way we live.

I was very young when my grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died when I was 7 so I don't remember many of the details of his illness. What I do remember is being at the funeral home the day of the funeral and all I could see were knees in dark dress pants. I actually got lost in the crowd of business suits thinking I was still standing next to my dad. Later that day, I remember exiting the limousine at St. Patrick Church and walking through a crowd of people standing all the way out to the sidewalk. I didn't realize what that meant as a small child.

It wasn't until my uncle died of cancer about 7 years ago and there was a similar traffic jam at the funeral home and the church that I realized that both of these men had made a tremendous impact on the community around them. The church was absolutely packed for both of their funerals and the crowds spilled out onto the sidewalks with people whose lives were touched in a very real way by these men. At my uncle's funeral, I heard story after story from people who he had cared for and whose lives were better for him being in it -not because it was him, but because God called him to serve the poor and the lonely, and he heeded that call.

When I think of these men, I think of the Just Man as described in  Psalm 112: 9 "Open-handed he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn shall be exalted in honor."

My brother is currently fighting cancer and right now he's fighting off pneumonia and a sinus infection, too. It's hard to watch him go through this. John has always been the one who was more active, more in shape, more driven, more generous, really - kind of more "everything". He is a great friend and a wonderful and supportive brother. To see him scrambled and gasping for breath was disturbing to say the least.

In my grief over my brother's illness, I have realized that John's church will be full. Over the years, he has served the community in many ways - inviting those without family around to share Thanksgiving with us; donating time, money and toys to struggling local families; working as a volunteer firefighter; giving of his substance to people when ever and where ever they needed him. He, like his grandfather and uncle before him, has made an impact on his community, and, God willing, will continue to have an impact for years to come.

I want my church to be full when I die, too -not because I am so awesome (I am not), not because I am ready to die (again, I am not) -but because I am ready to live. I am ready for God to use me to really make a difference in people's lives. I am not so sure that my life right now is one that inspires a full church at my funeral, but I hope that I can live up to that charge. Just like the cancer, it seems to be a family tradition.

Photo Attribution: St. Patrick Church, Columbus, OH by Nheyob (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Christmas Tree that I absolutely, positively could not get up before Christmas Eve

Years ago, my husband and I started a tradition born of a conflict between two family traditions. His: Put the tree and every piece of tinsel you can find out on the weekend after Thanksgiving so we can enjoy it all the way through December. Mine: Get the tree up, simply decked out with just enough lights and no tinsel, on the weekend closest to Christmas Eve.

I adored his Mom's fabulous Christmases! And I wanted more flash and dazzle than my Mom did, but I didn't think it was appropriate to put it all up quite so early. So, we compromised and decided that St. Nicholas would "bring" the tree on December 6th. We always put the tree up on the 6th or the weekend closest to it and then it comes down on Epiphany (January 6th). Up for a nice, neat month that brackets the entire Christmas celebration, we thought we had the perfect solution. This worked for years. The kids grew up under this model and there was great joy in the O'Keefe household. But times have changed.

Last year was the first time it happened. The weekend closest to the 6th, we had a concert. The next weekend was a party. As there was the following weekend. And, because I direct choirs, just forget all about evenings. Those are completely booked from November 1st until Christmas Eve.

And so it happened that the children were in bed, we had guests coming over the next day and my husband and I sat sagging on the couch. We stared at the little grouping of trees, set up and lit, but not one ornament on them, at 2 AM, following Midnight Mass. Without looking at each other, we conversed. We were that tired.

"Well," he said," you know, they kind of look nice that way."

"Hmmm...." I replied, kind of absently, "Kind of rustic."

"Maybe we could just leave them that way, " he suggested hopefully.

"Well, I think they need a few ornaments." I said, sitting up a little to get a better view of them. "Maybe we'll just use our very favorite ornaments." I started digging through boxes. "At the very least we have to find Engel Elsa." (Engel Elsa - "Angel Elsa" in English- is our tree topper.)

"OK, we'll just work for a little bit and see where we get."

Well, we worked until 4 AM and the trees were beautiful. We used every ornament in the boxes (once they were open they all came out). The next day we garnered rave reviews of the decoration job, even if we had bags under our eyes, it was worth it. On the downside, we didn't actually take the trees down until February (or so...)

Well, it looks like this year, we are headed in the same direction. When I left for work this morning, there weren't even any lights on the tree. We are as far behind as we were last year. This year, however, I do not have to sing a Midnight Mass, which will make things earlier. Plus, we are planning it all out. We have a dinner planner and snacks for setting the tree up (donuts and mulled cider...). But, of course, anything could happen.

Whatever the outcome, whether the tree is dressed or not, Christmas will come. Just as Jesus comes to us, ready or not, in His birth at Bethlehem. Mary was certainly not prepared to have her baby sleeping in what amounts to the animals' food bowl. I am sure that she never imagined that a manger is where she would lay her Lord and Son. The Shepherds were surely surprised. They were sleeping, after all!

But, Jesus didn't seem too concerned about all the trappings of His Kingship. He was ready to be here. It was the fullness of time. He wasn't embarassed by sleeping in a manger. That was the plan. The star shone brightly and all the angels sang of the Glory of His coming to us on Earth. All we are asked to do is show up and pay him homage, and then go out and tell of His glory.

Not prepared for Christmas?
Maybe the only person that has ever really been ready for Christmas is Jesus.

Painting: Nativity (Holy Night) - Correggio

Nada de Turbe (Let nothing disturb you)

A re-post (with a little bit extra) in Honor of the Feast of St. Teresa of Avila.


The Ecstasy of St. Teresa - Bernini

I have been looking for something. A piece that is missing from my life. I cannot tell you what it is or where I might find it. I suspect, though, that many people feel the same way that I do. They fill their days and nights with pursuits of things that will make them feel better or feel less pain or more pleasure and just to feel whole, But no matter how many drinks or pills, things bought on shopping trips or fancy cars, Mocha Mint Frappucinos or strawberry cheesecakes, pleasures of the flesh or lost pounds in hopes of regaining some semblance of one's youth...there will always be a missing piece.

The truth is inescapable. We are not whole without God. All the missing pieces are to be found within him...and we will never find them anywhere else.

I am reminded sharply of St. Teresa's Bookmark. St. Teresa was a Spanish Carmelite nun from the city of Avila. For those of you who know Renaissance music, her time in Avila coincides with the time that Tomas Luis de Victoria was composing in the Avila Cathedral. It is suspected that she suffered from migraine headaches and also from some sort of mental illness (probably bi-polar disorder). St. Teresa's Bookmark was found scribbled on a margin in a book that she kept.

Nada te turbe;
Let nothing disturb you.
Nada te espante;
Nothing frighten you.
Todo se pasa;
All things are passing.
Dios no se muda,
God never changes.
La pacïencia todo lo alcanza.
Patience obtains all things.
Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta.
Nothing is wanting to him who possesses God.
Solo Dios basta.
God alone suffices.

Yes...I think that says it best. I could write for hours and never say it so well.

Passion

Crimson Passion Flower

Passion has been on my mind lately.

There are so many ways that one can experience passion. The definition in the dictionary takes up about 30 lines. You can have a passion for something, or a passion for someone. You can experience it as a feeling or a thought. It can be positive or negative. Or it could be both at the same time. It can be an extreme trial (such as The Passion of Christ). It can be all consuming (passions usually are). It can be a physical manifestation of distress or excitement (both good and bad). It can be an intense anger or and intense feeling of love or lust.

Sometimes, my passion runs away with me. I allow my strong emotions to overpower my common sense, but indeed, that is the essence of a "passion". It defies logic. The trick is to master your passions and develop a passion for the "right" things. Right? But, what are the right things?

That's a question I have spent an entire weekend trying to answer for myself. Are the right things the ones that people will find "acceptable"? Are they the "normal things", like my children, my spouse, my religion, my music? They are surely not the things that will cause the world to crumble around me, like people and things that I cannot or should not have. Or should I govern my passions completely, as if I were a Benedictine Monk? Are passions something to be mastered, or leashed, if you will, even if they are for the "right" things?

The Latin word, from which Passion is taken, passionem, indicates that it is "suffering or enduring". No one ever said that life was easy. And passions, no matter what form they take, seem to be a trial for our spirits. They make our hearts beat faster. They make our breathing come more quickly. They can be frightening or exciting, or both at the same time. They make life colorful. They can feel like an explosion. They can cause trouble for us if we let them take control. Or they can turn us toward God who created them all for some purpose.

Now, if I could only figure out what that purpose is.

There is a hymn that I love called "Come Down, O Love Divine" by Ralph Vaughan Williams (whose birthday was yesterday, by the way...). The words were written by Bianco of Siena. The hymn is about the descent of the Holy Spirit upon our souls. It's an invitation to the Holy Spirit to dwell within our hearts. Here is the second stanza:

"O let it freely burn,
'til earthly passions turn To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let Thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming."

Kindness and spitefulness

I am grieved. Really.
What is happening to our society?

I ride the bus everywhere because I don't drive. I have seen some wonderful things happen and some not so wonderful things happen. Yesterday, I got to see the two extremes manifested.

In the morning, our bus was running just a minute or two late. Sometimes, that minute or two can make the difference of making your connection and being on time to work, and missing your connection and being 40 minutes late to work.

As we pulled up to the main intersection, a woman asked our driver if he thought she would be able to catch the bus that was standing at the stop, since that was her bus. He said that he thought so and stopped just a little short so she could hurry over and catch her connection.

When she got to the door of the connecting bus, the driver had shut the door and, though he was standing still at a red light, he refused to let her on. Honestly! How hard would it have been to open that door and let that woman on? The bus wasn't full. She wasn't a trouble maker (at least not apparently so), but a businesswoman trying to get to work. The bus driver was just being spiteful. I don't know if he was having a bad morning, or what, but it made me so angry to see his complete disregard for her obvious and genuine distress. The bus that she needed would not come again for another 30 -40 minutes and, by that time, she was going to be late for work. But this anecdote is just that: an anecdote for the state of human affairs in this world. The inconsideration with which we all seem to treat one another is staggering. I even see it in my own behavior.

How often do we go through a line at a cash register and are barely polite to the person ringing us out. Do we ever stop to smile and genuinely wish them a good day? Or do we treat them, instead, like the wallpaper; ignoring them until we must say "plastic" or "paper"?

A few years ago, I decided that I was going to make a genuine effort to look people in the eye and smile at them and wish them a good day when they waited on me. Of course, I have bad days, when I snap at a clerk or a driver or someone. Then I feel horrible for days. Even if they deserved it. In fact, in recent months, I have gotten away from making the extra effort, totally. It boils down to this: Is their work worth any less than mine just because they are at McDonald's or Kroger at a check-out counter? No, there is dignity in all work. In God's eyes, my state in life is not elevated more than any other person's. We are all equal in His eyes. It all goes back to the Golden Rule. So, I try my best to treat people with the respect that I would expect from them. And, usually, they respond in kind.

Now, having said all that, in the evening as I was heading toward home, I ran into a different situation. Our bus was, again, running just a minute or two behind. There was a blind man on our bus who needed to catch a connection downtown and he was very worried that the driver would leave him. Our driver caught up to the connector at the second stop in the downtown and honked his horn to indicate that he had a passenger to transfer. Normally, the bus ahead will wait as the passenger runs to the front of the next bus. But, there was no way that the blind man was going to "run" up there. So, our driver took him by the arm and personally escorted him to the next bus.

He didn't have to do that, but he did. And that small kindness made all the difference to me.

Generosity and Selfishness

Over the past week I have heard and read many stories of events during the big power outage after Hurricane Ike unexpectedly blew through Ohio. It is unusual, to say the least, to have 75 mile an hour winds in this neck of the woods and we were completely unprepared for the onslaught. Unlike the flexible palm trees of the coastlands, our deciduous trees snapped like twigs and our power lines were helpless against the falling boughs.

For a while, most of us thought that the power would come right back on. After all, it was just some wind. But over the next few hours, we all began to realize that this was a disaster and, having sent all of our electric crews to Texas to help with the much worse damage there, we were completely unprepared. It was going to be days, not hours, before the power would come on again. People started to hunker down to make the best of a bad situation. Ice was bought. Coolers were packed with all the perishables and then covered in ice to make them last as long as they would. And people began to come up with alternatives to cooking on their electric stoves and in their microwaves.

I heard of blocks where people's freezers were full of food and they just opened it all up and cooked it on the grill and had a Block Party. One person brought the meat and another the veggies. Really...it happened in many neighborhoods. You could smell barbecues all over the city in the evening.

There was a man who visits our office frequently who brought in the contents of his freezer to the office (we have a big freezer and still had power). Upon leaving his groceries, he encouraged a couple of us who had been without power for a couple of days, to "help ourselves". People ran extension cords from one house to the next as power began to come on in spots around the city. Others opened their kitchens, bathrooms and refrigerators to their neighbors, friends and families without power.

But, by contrast, I heard a story from a co-worker of a neighbor who refused to allow them to charge their cell phones from an extension cord because "We don't know you very well." I also saw people lose pounds and pounds of food, rather than sharing with their neighbors, hoping against hope that their power would come on and they would have that food over the winter. But would it not have been better to share and to have someone get good from it, rather than letting it all spoil?

Hearing stories like this reminds me of the parable of the talents from the Bible. Of course, if you have studied scripture, you know that a talent is a unit of monetary measure within the context of the story. But, the message applies to our spiritual gifts as well as our material gifts. The servants who invested and gave of the talents increased the talents and were rewarded in return, while the one who buried his gained nothing and indeed ended up losing everything.

The gifts that we are given by God are manifold. They are material. They are spiritual. They are different from person to person. Those people who shared their food with their neighborhood probably share generously of their other gifts, too. They have generous hearts. Those who did not share, and instead horded up all their possessions and let them spoil, probably waste their other gifts, too. And that is something to think about. I had nothing to spoil (I hadn't been to the store), but would I have shared my food? I think that at one time I would have, but now that I am older, I am finding that I am not as generous as I once was. And that is sad.

It is in these crisis situations that you get a real look at your heart and soul. The generous know that God provided them with what they have and are willing to share it, knowing that God will provide for them again. The selfish are so worried about themselves, that instead of being blessed richly by God, they lose everything they had and get no more in the bargain.

These stories are a reminder to me to be more generous. To give of my time and talent, as well as the material possessions that I have been given.

I need not worry that I will lose myself. By losing myself, I gain heaven.

To turn the other cheek

In the last few days I have been left in the quiet to think. I have been battling the pain from having been assaulted on more than just the physical level. In those quiet times, I think about what I could have said (or not said) that would have changed things. I could have not let those women into the church, but that is not really my style. I could have just nodded and smiled when they decided to make a big deal out of the fact that it was a Catholic Church and not answered their questions about the Faith forthrightly, but that would have been dishonest, and again, not my style. And besides, all the "should'ves" in the world aren't going to take the pain away.

So, I have been turning instead to what to do next. I filed charges against them with the City Prosecutor and I am waiting for the Prosecutor to finish building a case so they can be charged and picked up. In the meantime, they are free. And, they ride the same bus route that I do in the evening. In fact, I saw one of them last night. And, yes, I was afraid. So I have done my civic duty in filing to prosecute, but what about my Christian Duty?

I keep telling people to pray for them. I have yet to mention their names in prayer, though. I need to do that. I do think of them often and think about why God allowed this to happen. There must be some reason for this to have occurred. Obviously, free will is at work here, but it was allowed to happen, and in God's Holy Dwelling, no less.

I think about turning the other cheek. I guess, at one point in the altercation, I managed to scratch one of them. Some of my religion teachers would tell me that I should have "turned the other cheek" and done nothing to defend myself. Many people have counseled me to get mace or a tazer or some other thing to defend myself with. One woman told my husband that I if continued to help people out, I would continue to get hurt. And I think, that perhaps, that is the heart of the matter.

You see, if I took this incident and decided never to help anyone again, many people would be left unaided and I would be closing myself off to God's grace. But, by standing up and continuing to do God's work in the world, regardless of the fact that I might get hurt, I am, in actual fact, turning the other cheek. But this time, it means more than offering no resistance. No, it means fighting back through unbelieveable odds. Turning the other cheek is the fight of a lifetime.

Christianity is not for whimps.