“Bless me Father for I’ve kinda sinned. My last confession was quite a while ago. Every so often, I miss Mass. Once in a while I curse at traffic. Now and then I tell a lie but nothing serious. Every now and then I get mad at my wife which I sometimes regret. Almost always I miss my morning and evening prayers.
Otherwise, I think I’m doing okay. Was I clear enough? Amen.”
My response: “For your penance, please learn to count. Amen.”
I wonder what happens to wonder as we age? How about the word anticipation? Or, how about that churchy word, awe. If I hear one more young person say, “It’s an awesome movie, you gotta see it” then I’ll lose it. Awesome is when the sun smashes into the earth, then she may rightly use that most awesome of words.
The Christmas season continues to be full of those exciting and inspiring words that are no longer mere words but feelings of something bigger. Always something larger than ourselves.
I will also lose it to those who say, “Been there, done that” as though boredom is now the order of their boring days. Or, equally vulgar is, “Same old, same old.” Said twice as though the first old just got older. And, the worst of all is, “It is what it is” as though resignation is their only recourse. Sad Christians, if they are even Christian anymore. Because Christianity is nothing and empty without those feelings of wonder, anticipation, and awe.
If you have children or grandchildren then you’re able to live those feelings through them. But what about your own excitement? Where do those three words continue to feel their way into your life? My spectacle is like a book with several chapters – all intended to capture the attention and devotion of a child.
Chapter One. Raised in the ’50s when the Iron Curtain was an imaginary and exaggerated fear, our home had its own iron curtain on Christmas Eve. Although only made of cotton, it still kept us from one place to the other. The “other,” in this case, was the decorated Christmas tree in our living room.
To this day, I have never decorated a Christmas tree. I’ve always had “people” to do it for me. “People” in those days were my older brother and two sisters. Along with my parents, it was their job to prepare the tree while my younger sister and I were forced into Russia, aka grandmother’s house. (Sorry, grandma!) Those forever few hours tortured us wondering what would be under the Christmas tree and if it would shine and glimmer the way it did last year.
Chapter Two. The telephone call from the free world finally rings to Russia, and we are permitted to return to our homeland. Darkness and cold descend upon Manitowoc, Wisconsin. My grandmother has my little sister and I carry her wicker laundry basket full of gifts to the waiting car. The drive home finally arrives. (About ten minutes in real time but to a child, an infinity.)
When we arrive home we see the four separate letters my dad assembles and lights up each year on the front of our house. “Noel.” (He said he always wanted to spell “Leon” but thought the better of it.) Now this yearly dramatic ritual continues with even more suspense. Ritual, by the way, is the repetition of something to firmly fix within you something important. Repeated in real time, but recreated in aging minds ever since.
Chapter Three. We need to change into our pajamas but to do that, we need to get upstairs which is through the living room now blocked by the iron curtain. We promise to close our eyes while running through the living room upstairs. (What trust we placed in young people!) I only half-peeked once and have done self-imposed penance ever since. After changing, we need to return once more through this sacred and secretly decorated room. How much time has passed? Way too much for a youngster.
Chapter Four. The ritual continues. (If you thought Advent’s four weeks is long than you haven’t been to our home on Christmas Eve.) We kneel down (right next to the iron curtain) to pray the rosary. All five decades. All said supremely solemn as though to punish two young people all the more. The third decade brings the relief of something different. My younger sister gets to place the child Jesus in the manger crib. It was the gift of the youngest to do this. (I used to do it until she came along.)
The rosary is finally completed, and none too soon. With proud fanfare on all their faces, the iron/cotton curtain is removed, and the majestic Christmas tree lights up our dark living room. Smiles abound. Another Christmas ritual has been methodically and religiously carried out. Not a detail missed. Not a feeling ignored. The mounting momentum, a racing child’s pulse, the anticipation of another Christmas surprise that was really no different from the previous year is successfully carried out.
Chapter Five. The curtain separating us from wonder, anticipation, and awe has been removed and is now ours to savor and enjoy and carry us through the new year. Forever. Or at least, for another year. We attend midnight Mass when it was held at that hour. We return home. My dad eats some gelatin, artificial meat and for the rest, it’s ice cream.
It’s a memory that I hold dear to my life today. It’s those three words I said at the beginning that I pray none of you will ever forget. Feelings that define who we are Christians in our prayers and relationships.
Because of my age, I’m now considered a senior priest. So am I able to say along with Scrooge, “Humbug” because of the this’s or that’s in my life or the this’s or that’s of someone I like? Is that childhood Iron Curtain truly now made of iron instead of cotton? So am I now able to close with the antithesis and reverse of Advent, Christmas, and our beautiful Christian faith? “Been there, done that.” “It is what it is.”
Chapter Six…
What’s the word I’m looking for. Is it unparalleled or incomparable? Is it faultless or flawless? No, those are not the words I want. The word I want is “perfect.”
We look at someone in a wheelchair and thing to ourselves, “She’s perfect,” in other words, she’s doing her best under the circumstances. We soften words to show perfection. The “insane” are now mentally challenged, trying the best that they can. The term garbage men was dumped to become “sanitation engineers” and the title undertakers was buried to now be called “funeral directors.” Oh, and their hearse is now called a “coach.”
We attend Mass, this glorious amalgamation of our lives, and the word “perfection” is thrown out the window. Instead, feelings of being unworthy abound, feeling less then fills our hearts, and heaven becomes a game to win as though it’s a lottery ticket. Those thoughts often preoccupy and cloud our God-given souls. Feelings like that only hold us down when God’s intention is to always lift us up.
Can we rehear Zephaniah when he told those folks long ago and tells us during Advent,
“The Lord has removed the judgment against you he has turned away your enemies, the Lord, is in your midst, you have no further misfortune to fear. Fear not … be not discouraged! The Lord…is in your midst, he will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love, he will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals.”
You may not agree with this but perhaps think and pray about it. You are perfect even in your imperfections. You are perfect in your goodness and in your hopes, both for yourself and for others. Sounds weird, but it’s really not.
You think that none of you are saints when all the saints were never, ever perfect in the dictionary meaning but truly perfect in their life’s efforts. That is our faith. I don’t want to be the one to tell you but you will continue to sin and you will always fall short. I do want to be the one to tell you that you will touch the lives of many people with grace-filled compassion, sympathy and selfless deeds.
I wonder at what age we finally own and embrace both our gifts and our sins. That’s the moment, I believe, that we truly become Catholic. That’s the pinnacle that, in faith, is called “perfection.”
Everybody was asking John the Baptist, “What do you want us to do?” It’s a question that we can only address in our personal lives, as did those holy saints. What are my strengths? Where do I continually fail? That’s uncovering perfection’s balance.
Now, back to Zephaniah. What song do you want God to sing at your heavenly festival? Which Paul Anka song? Is it that selfish preoccupation, “I Did It My Way,” or is it all the good we’ve done and continue to do, “Put Your Head on My Shoulder?”
What remains with the remains, when your future is far shorter than its past. Do you cue Peggy Lee’s, singing “Is That All There Is” or Frank singing to himself, “My Way?”
Aging. Most try to hide it as though it can be protected and others just let that Turkey neck take its course. All proudly displaying life’s earned wrinkles. Facial wrinkles? I thought of botox for myself until a dermatologist told me that as a priest, “No one would know what you’re feeling!” I didn’t have it done.
They are so proud of their many years when proudly saying, “I’m 86-and-a-half” as a youngster of soon-to-be-five says, “I’m 4-and-a-half.” Recall takes a few seconds (or longer). The person they met this morning at breakfast isn’t recalled but their friend of fifty years is instantly in sight, complete with memorable stories containing all its details. And talk about details! “Was that in 1941 or 42?” says the senior in the middle of an exciting remembrance. I think to myself that a year or two between friends doesn’t really matter, but I let the recalling pause pick a year. (That year may very well change at the conclusion of his/her story.)
They walk slower. It often takes three tries to get off the chair. Their appetite for food hasn’t changed (but watch your salt intake!) and for so many, their thirst for life, learning and spirituality has only been heightened. A 90-year-old came to my office and said that she’s Catholic but hasn’t practiced for many years. “What do I need to do?” I said, “You come to Mass.” She smiled at me as though some initiation was missing. I didn’t see her at Mass for years but subbing at Alexian Village now, I see her every Sunday. Silent but present in her 96th year.
They remember when wars were fought for a nation instead of presidents. They remember when a sports coat or dress were worn for religious services instead of looking like you’re going to a baseball game. With failing health amid pains, they gladly share that, “I’m fine, but thanks for asking.”
They hoard more they need or admit, they’re sad when that granddaughter’s promised call on their birthday was missed but only remark, ”She’s so busy.” The bottles of wine or whiskey are in a secret cabinet as well as those sleeping pills, “That my doctor told me to take.” Yeah, right.
They want three things, whereas a younger person wants only two of the three. Older adults want to be understood, appreciated and remembered. Young people are too young to care about of the last one.
Older adults want a piece of you, every single day. A part of your ear to hear about their bowel or bladder experience the previous day (I learned that eating with older adults includes this topic), a piece of your smile that tells them to continue living as best they can, a part of your nose that smells behind the spoken word about something going on in their lives that they’re not sharing, a small step to walk with them through lost best friends or the pet that seemed to mean more to them than their son or daughter, and a mouth that only speaks encouraging, thoughtful words along with a hint of humor to lighten up even the gravest of situations.
Older adults. You gotta love ‘em. They are showing us, as best they can, what it means to continue growing and how we may very well act and behave if we reach their lucky old age.
“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.” John the Baptist
We all tend to think that we’re important people…and we are, yet how many times in our lives do we need to step back and be the second banana, the sidekick.
Johnny Carson had his banana, second, of course. Ed would introduce Johnny and then sit on the couch and laugh at each passing remark, whether funny or not … for 30 years. Jack Benny had Don Wilson. “The Price is Right” had Johnny Olson. “Jeopardy” and “Saturday Night Live” had Don Pardow. Joey Bishop had Regis Philbin and Merv Griffin had Arthur Treacher.
They were the those guy’s sidekicks. They’re the ones who didn’t create shadows; it’s the star in whose shadow they stood. After their routine build-up of the star they were out of the picture.
And so enters and exits John the Baptist. I guess if you wore camel’s hair and ate locust with wild honey long enough you couldn’t be the star. It’s “someone else,” John keeps telling us building up the suspense until the star arrives.
Who would be our sidekick in this wonderful journey of life? You’d might guess who I think it is. The most significant is our parents and those who become parents. They are the ones who paved the way for children to enter this world, fed/clothed/admonished/counseled and tons of others duties to help enter each of life’s stages.
Advent is about anticipation. We kinda know what’s coming but we’re not sure how or when or most importantly, who we will be. No matter how many Christmases you’ve honored through your life, you don’t know what this Christmas will bring, will mean, or will prove out to be.
A Christmas for many of you may your first full-time or your last, a child’s first big gift under the Christmas tree, a resolve to do better at work or in your relationships, a hope that things go as well next year as they did for you this year or … or is it a wish that it has to get better after this awfully long year of whatever preoccupied your attention.
“Honey, did you put the quarter under her pillow, you know she lost a tooth this morning.” “I got it covered dear, it’s done.” Sidekick.
“Honey, you know that promised raise at work? Well, I got it.” Star.
Here’s an example when both husband and wife are star and sidekick. “I know you’re right,” says the lying husband.
To humanize John the Baptist a bit, I believe that his first thought must have been that he’s the star. After all, his mother was way beyond child bearing years and yet, here he is. His cousin, Mary is pregnant but he’s six months older so surely he must be the chosen one. I wonder if Ed ever hosted “The Tonight Show.” I doubt it. It took a “desert experience” for both John and Jesus to figure out their role in life. We need to have “desert experiences” as well.
People and situations can all be sidekicks and stars in our one performance called life. They can introduce us to all sorts of circumstances – some welcomed, sometimes forced, other times tolerated.
I given us all both roles in this life’s journey. What if we are the sidekick to someone else. The husband says to himself holding his wife’s hand in hospice, “I was supposed to die first,.” You are then wearing the dreadful camel’s hair and eating locust with that obligatory wild honey. But you wouldn’t change it for anything. You were both star and sidekick to your own children – propelling them into a world that was foreign to you but trusting that they’d succeed – even counseling a grandchild with advice you’re not sure is heard. (Believe me, grandchildren listened. I’ve heard grandchildren tear up during your funeral eulogizing what an influence you’ve had on them.)
We can be and are both the sidekick and the star of our one life’s performance. Sometimes we get to sit behind the desk with the microphone … and other times we must … sit on the couch and laugh on cue. Both roles are necessary because, “The show must go on.”
How many times the comment is made when the movie ends, “I liked it, but the book is better.”
The book. Full of page after page of descriptive information and most especially nuances that film can never capture. “They left out a whole part of her life,” says the moviegoer. Condensed into two hours what took hundreds of pages to develop, explore and explain.
How often can we treat family and friends as though we’re watching a movie? We’ve condensed them into characters or isolated situations and freeze frame them. Sometimes, forever. Where’s that fuller context, those subtle feelings and unspoken words that only a book can contain instead of a film that feebly attempts to capture emotions through a glance, a smile, a frown or just walking away.
Reading a book first can wreck your moving watching experience. How about making your relationships like reading a book instead of segmented scenes that we seem to freeze into our minds and hearts. The complexity expressed in the written word stirs the imagination and drives us deeper into the life of the heroine or her villain. Films are linear when the read page brings to life the depth of anger, happiness or separation.
Dad waves goodbye to his estranged young son in the film’s closing scene with his practiced tear. Credits roll, and you’re left with what you think he’s feeling. The book contains the same parting scene, but you’re able to smell and breathe the sensations he was feeling. (Yes, you can smell a book’s words!)
Relationships ought to rightly and justly be about reading instead of viewing. Our lives are about smells, scents, complexities, and wonders. A movie teases us just as our judgments do about someone or even about ourselves. The book of each of our lives is fully human – never to be viewed from a comfortable seat and eating popcorn from afar but front row seats seated next to those we love and care for.
Every thing is working now, except me.
My kitchen faucet said “Farewell” two weeks ago, and it took two weeks for the plumber to charge me $400.00. I couldn’t use the garbage disposal, so I’m hoping it still works. Washing dinner dishes in the bathroom was kinda fun, like being on a camping trip. The toaster still works as long as you’re willing to watch paint dry. My coffee machine stopped providing inviting morning caffeine scents, so the Mr. was replaced with a new Mr. Those wonderful scents resumed.
The wall mounted grandfather clock that I’ve had for over twenty years needed a tuneup. Sadly, I was without his quarterly sounds for a quarter of a year. “My repair man has a day job,” said the owner which ended that relationship. The clock is working again as long as I tuneup it up myself each week.
Relationship. We all love that word. It means connection, investment and a working partnership that becomes a comfortable, predictable routine. “Do your job, and we’ll be happy,” says me in my quiet apartment. Owen, my cat, wasn’t doing his job. He was working at being a happy cat until peeing became a problem. (For me, a $1,400.00 problem.) He approaches me one night and yells out what humans would translate as, “Do something!” I did, and now he’s proficient at the art of relieving himself.
Pens that stop working, I don’t mind. I’ve got lots of them. Setting light timers to work when I want them to has always been a hassle with tiny buttons that either go up or down to turn on or off. Very frustrating twice a year until the beauty of Wifi allowed me to buy Alexia controlled lights. All the lights now obey hers and my commands. (My stupid timers are now available on eBay for those who still watch black and white television.) Speaking of Wifi, I tried Apple TV hoping it would work but I tired of waiting and watching its pizza sign spin and spin right as the criminal was about to be killed.
Cable companies love me since they’ve all worked for me. Even satellite worked for me for a short time. I suspect I have an AT&T record – nine technicians in one month working for me. One of them softly told me just to cancel the service, “It’s just not gonna work for you.” With Spectrum’s strong Wifi, I have a good working relationship with Netflix, HBO, and Showtime for my evening enjoyment.
My fifteen-year-old desktop computer valiantly worked for me until turning it on now sounds like my stomach in the morning. (How do you grieve an excellent, reliable relationship with a machine?!) It still tries but can’t seem to achieve working capability. (Make it now a coffee table so it can continue working?)
I’m not a pessimist, but I swear my water heater will no longer be working, but it is. I wait for the cold to continue but it doesn’t. But I’m still not working. My days stay cold, sometimes lukewarm, but the heat eludes me.
My two cats are sound asleep now, so I guess they’re working in their own way. They wonder why I’m home so much since they’re accustomed to eight hours of freedom. I assure them that it’s okay yet I’m still not working, but the things around me seem to be working quite well.
My new book is “Chiseled Grace,” available at Amazon.com
“I give up,” I screamed to my older brother with my arm twisted around my back so my seven-year-old life could continue a little while longer. The other release word was “uncle” which I still don’t understand since “aunt” could have served the same purpose.
“Giving up.” Americans can be deported saying those two simple words. They are words conveying that something is happening and you really, truly want it to stop. “Giving up” on an important homework assignment means either laziness or not taking right notes in class.
“Giving up” can also be a hopeful abandonment from something out of your control or discontinuing what you’ve been doing. There’s a relieving exhale to “giving up” as though saying or thinking those two words make it magically disappear. Saying those two words in a gangster film spells your imminent death; without a funeral reception but lots of cement.
Two words that spell expectant release appears to release you from you. You feel that the consequences are no longer within your power so you, “Give up.” It’s over in its intention. The policeman quickly arrests you because you said those two words.
Change “up” to “in” and see what changes. Two letters. Those two letters redefine your perception and participation. “Giving up” seemingly separates you from something no longer needed but once was. “In,” does not separate you but affords a yielding, a reluctant consent, a complying. A recurring regret? An unwritten apology letter? That look you ignored from her that may have led to marriage? That setback years ago that lingered back in your mind after the first drink.
The “up” word is foolishly used to free you by declaring that this chapter has ended and it’s now on to the next; with your involvement restored, of course. The “in” word moves and takes you from one place to another. Can we ever “give up” anything? Can we ever be no longer responsible for ourselves or our situations? Or, can we “give in” because a situation or predicament needs our attention and now it has it. Nothing is learned by “up”ing out. “In” makes your next life’s chapter worth reading.
Amid all the aches and pain that age heaps on us, the one absolute great loss is – you wouldn’t believe it – driving a car. “I give up,” says the ninety-year-old mom to her concerned children as she hands over the keys. Whether it’s the control over a machine (soon to be changing) or the motion or freedom of movement, I’ll never know, but the loss is severe. Aches and pains are accepted as the old get older, but the car? (There’s a motorized cart for those who need it in a retirement home, but that also includes a driver’s test! Those hallway turns can be dangerous.)
Alcoholics are to “give up” to a higher power as though it’s now “its” responsibility, however, defined, and you’re a mere responder. Those divorcing feel the same way, but there are still three kids sleeping upstairs. Reflect back on your own life and wonder if an “up” should have been an “in.” And, was it ever an “up.”
“I give in to alcohol abuse and want to partner with my higher power.”
“I loved you once, and still do in some ways, and we have three children to care for.”
That’s all “in” talk.
Even your last breath is an “in.” I “give in” to life, no matter my age, but I will never, ever “give up.” Just say “auntie.”
My friends told me after my doctor’s visit that it’ll be “Okay.” Interesting word with ambiguous meanings. “Okay,” as in it’s minor or “Okay,” handle it when you know the results? Tomorrow I’ll know the results.
Know? It’s been four days until the results are in and until then it’s been four days of my saying, “Okay” to myself while not believing one letter of that thrown-away word, or is it?
“So, okay,” I say to myself. Am I using that word as resignation or as my friend’s hopeful usage? “Okay,” I also say to myself since I’ve been there before and now may go through that vortex once again. This time, three new doctors since my previous three have retired from knowing my body and I have not. Three new perspectives, along with more tests and varying opinions about my prognosis. And is “prognosis” a result of hope or the reading of my last testament? And, what timeline is linked to that word? Is it that predictable “six months,” doctors always say, that can extend into long months for insurance purchases, or is it a reality that may be even less?
It’s funny (lightly used) because I feel “okay” right now but that test showed otherwise. It’s been twenty years since it occurred and was treated. It appears to be happening again, now. There are so many things I want to do with no limits about time yet this stupid visit tomorrow may reduce those years and days into only months. One appointment at a scheduled time. My friend’s all said, “It’ll be ‘okay’” because it’s either a nice thing to say or the only thing to say something when something shown on a test wasn’t seen again for many years.
For four days I’ve thought of things sixty years ago as well as not remembering what I ate last night. The former is so much clearer than the latter. Since my retirement, I’ve ventured into several fields, both spiritually and professionally. I’ve been enriched by each endeavor hopefully touching many lives along the way. My keen interest now is getting young people to vote. Shouldn’t be such a stretch in a democratic society where voting is the most basic of our beliefs, but it is. “Please sign up and make your vote count and everything will be ‘okay,’” says me. Voting is the next day, and I will be there, and my doctor’s vote is given to me tomorrow.
It’s a day before my doctor’s visit, and I really do feel ‘okay.’ The vortex is no stranger to me, and, if necessary, I’ll submerge myself once again. It’s simply but powerfully that I am “okay.” I’ve always been “okay” and this is no different.
I say, “Go ahead and put that pebble in my sock.” I don’t mind because my friends said that, “I’ll be okay.”
I thanked them for their concern and sympathies, but I already know that “I am ‘okay.’”
Sitting on my porch in early October, I see them all falling around me. Slowly, others faster, sometimes alone and others in groups. The ground holds them as their numbers increase each day.
I considered glue and buying a very, very tall ladder but smiled at its futility. Scotch tape? Same response. It’s happening and has been happening all my life but this time in my life it seems to kinda hurt to see those guys and gals falling from their beautiful branches that made summer so green. Now their green turns to amber, and then finally becoming a rich golden that says to all, “Another season is ending with a new season beginning.”
Like creating an angle in the snow, I also thought of creating my name out of them before they disappear. It’s only three letters, shouldn’t take that long. But then I thought, “Why would I use my name when they are the ones passing from season to another?” I should piece their name together, one leaf at a time until it identified someone loved and missed, gone but not forgotten.
Across from my family home was a vacant lot where my sixth-grade girlfriend and I would create a home out of the greens in the early fall. Flat, but 3-D in our minds, we created a kitchen where good food was served along with laughter and arguments about either religion or sports. Our living room was the smallest because every good conversation occurred in the kitchen, the largest room. Our leaf-created hallway led to each bedroom where our small green-leafed children slept and woke up to this beautiful fall day. We enjoyed our homemaking adventure until the next adventure began.
Spring is all about adventure as much as autumn is about reflection and preserving memories in minds that don’t hold things as well in its autumn years.
I don’t know enough people to link all the fallen leaves. I can think of names or stories read in newspapers over the past year – lives either tragically or peacefully becoming golden. The few loved names closest to me are the ones I’m saving for last. I hope to collect as many of them that I can and place them in my “real” kitchen and watch the richness of what their lives meant to me return to the dust from which they came.
There’s a sadness in autumn but also a rich gold feeling for the green and amber colors shared over many, many years.
Well, after typing, it’s back to my porch and watching how enriching life can be and it’s because of those we’ve loved. They have colored our lives golden with their lives and we now see their color turn to gold.
Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
Soulful Muse 