Soulful Muse

I’m listening to an “easy listening” station right now that plays instrumental versions of the originals songs. It’s relaxing and I can fill in many of the lyrics.

Those guys like Roger Williams, Percy Faith, Bert Kämpfert, (I think you need to be over fifty to recognize the names) do not produce original music. One finger on a piano with a backup band produces an instrumental variation of the genuine song.

We are all “instrumentalists” attempting to copy the Jesus we follow. His 2,000-year-old lyrics still provides us with a melody for our lives. We can remember the lyrics, at least some them. We especially remember the chorus of any song we hear. Since his time – the names change, new issues arise but the musical notes Jesus left for us remain, amazingly, the same.

“Mack the Knife” is playing now but I can never remember all those weird names. So much for remembering.

Jesus wrote loads of songs for us about total forgiveness, offering the best wine last (the elderly?), a tiny seed becomes huge, asking a blind man what he wants from Him (as though it’s not obvious!), giving into a woman who wants justice and Jesus’ “dog” reference doesn’t cut it, making a big man out of the small-minded man in that tree, and constantly telling the twelve deaf guys that the music is about fishing for the benefit of all. (Jesus meant “fishing” to be a verb and not a noun.)

I can recall the beginning lyrics to, “The Way We Were,” the song playing now. Mem’ries light the corners of my mind, Misty water-colored mem’ries of the way we were…Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind, Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were…

Each of us is entrusted with the beautiful melodies written for us by Jesus. Our task, inside and outside Lent, is to allow that melody to continue. Entrusted to keep those musical notes heard to the rich and from the poor.  There may be flats and sharps along the way the melody of community and reaching out to each other will always have a resounding ending to it. The original composer, Jesus, promises us that.

Whitney Houston’s, “Saving All My Love for You” is playing now. No lyrics but the same melody. The lyrics to be made in our days and times are left up to us.

books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS, available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon:
“Soulful Musings”
“Living Faith’s Mysteries”
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings”

I’m told an unreasonable child at two or three years of age will refute all of mom’s declarative statements seeking a reasonable response to the question, “Why?”

Mom tries her best to show her best reasoning by speaking to a mind that’s the size of an acorn but will grow to its fullest many years later. Mom gives the kid her best shot and the kid replies with a second dose of “Why?”

Mom, unflustered with her college degree tucked away and a full-time working profession, offers the unreasonable but adorable child a second plausible explanation to her declarative directive. Mom smiles to herself at her quick offer of her second response when the first one was just as valid.

Nada, not a second passes before the still unreasonable-but-seeking-a-reason-but-now-becoming-a-precocious-child says back to mom without hesitation, “Why?” Mom now with clenched teeth offers a sterner reason, with less reasonable reasoning than her first two reasonable responses. (“Three strikes and you’re out, kid?”)

A young person asks, “Why?” and we fill their opening heads with concepts and formulas that we hope will see them throughout life. The “Why’s” of the young are rarely answered but only signals and clues are slowly planted into their growing heads. During the child’s high school and college years, the “How” begins to play trying to figure out the “this from that” from every arena of life. (The “How’s” of our lives are more easily explained.)
When the child’s mind is fully developed that silly “Why” still arises only without mother and her canned, clever responses. The “How” is understood and then made into a job or career. (A “job” is something you do for money, a “career” is your investment in something important.)

But what is the remaining, unanswered question? That’s easy, it’s the “Who” question. “Who” are you at any given point in your life? “Who” do you want to be? How do other people answer your “Who” question for you? “You’re going to this college and that’s that!” When you are the only person on this planet to answer your “Who” question. “Who” have you become and are you content with that self-definition? And why do these three kids keep saying, “Who?”

Or, as Jesus asked, “Who”‘ do others say that I am?” So asking that question of ourselves puts us in pretty good company. “Who” will you continue to be with all your habits and routines already cemented in your life? Simply stated, can you answer this simple question that God asks of you every time you enter this sacred space or seek God out in prayer, “Who” are you?

Jesus answered all those preliminary questions but his only remaining, unanswered question always was, “Who are you?”
—“Are you the Son of God or just one of the prophets?
“What good can come out of Nazareth?”
—Constant demons, every step of Jesus’ way says, “I know ‘Who’ you are!”
                        —“If you are ‘who’ you say that you are, then jump off the cross and save yourself.”

Jesus gradually grew to know his “Who” in this life and then acted on it. His actions spoke for the “Who” that he was. He didn’t need to define it to anyone. If you believe that you’re a good person but cheat on your taxes because everybody does it, then your “Who” becomes a “What?”

Mom just wanted the (first cute-then precocious-then obnoxious) kid to get into the car. We just want to get through life with meaningful purposes in both our personal lives, relationships, and occupations.

Jesus just wanted to show us that if we answer the “Who” question first, then the “Why” of our lives will be resolved and solved.

books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS, available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon:
“Soulful Musings”
“Living Faith’s Mysteries”
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings”

“The Who” and “Who Are You,” vintage rock ‘n roll

“Note to Myself”

In the movie, the rich guy in the fancy car says to his handheld recorder, “Note to myself” which is later transcribed by his secretary and placed on his desk.

“Can’t forget that,” “Great quote,” “Gotta save this one.” Where do I put wanna-be-remembered-words except in notes? “I can use that in a sermon one day,” I say to myself as I write a note to myself and place it where myself can find it on that future day if I remember that I wrote that note to myself to “remember.” (You gotta be over sixty-years-old to appreciate that sentence.)

Alzheimer’s or just age as this saving began years ago and now I have an accumulation of notes either from my thoughts or thoughts of others that I feel were worth preserving and to be used some unknown day but surely worth saving and retrieved when the time is ripe. A friend at his exit door has a note saying, “Got lunch?” I’m not that bad, you gotta eat.

The ripe time? I’m glad I note my thoughts or the thoughts of others and store them, but it’s the remembering what I wrote that escapes me.

It’s a small pile that’s curling at the edges. Neatly stack but still qualifies as a pile of “wanting-to-be-remembered-things-to-be-used-at-some-future-unnamed-time.” When my apartment is cleaned after my death, I hope someone will sift through my small note stack instead of just throwing them out. (I thought they were important or I would not have made note of them.)

When a new sermon stares before me on a blank page I don’t go through those saved notes, I look at the page and fill it with it warm thoughts and remembrances of someone who’s in a better place. (There’s some place better than Wisconsin on a February’s night?!)

The mount grows taller the older I get but I rarely look at them. I remembered to write them down so I would not forget what they touched or provoked in me the first time. They’re neatly stacked to my left and I see them now. Without the notes the blank page becomes full of faithful information and faith-filled references. I can’t remember what I saved but I guess I saved what I remember.

If I flip through those notes now I suspect I’d find that what I filled those blank pages with is pretty close to those notes. Isn’t it why I saved those “wanting-to-be-remembered-thoughts” in the first place?

Here are some of those notes:

TV’s “Dr. House,” “Is it that I think so little of you or so highly of myself?”
Fran Leibowitz, “The world went into television and television became the world.”
Benjamin Button, “People we remember the least, make the greatest impression on us.”
Unknown, “In a public place it’s a restroom, in your home it’s a bathroom.”
Louis C.K., “You’re angry because an invention you didn’t know existed thirty seconds ago doesn’t work!” (Early days of airplane WiFi)
Archbishop Liestski, “Defined by our differences, polarized by our politics.”
Liam Neeson character, “Give me an hour, I’m good; give me a week, I’m great; give me six months, I’m unbeatable.”
Unknown, “I’m a victim and beneficiary of my own reputation.”
My sermon preparation: First draft is sarcastic, the second version is cynical and the final version is touchy-feely.
Carl Jung, “What’s missing in you has to be seen in another person,” and “I thought marriage was a solution to my mystery; then I fond out that I’m the mystery.”
and finally
Unknown, “Don’t leap, lean.”

Wouldn’t you save those?

books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS, available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon:
“Soulful Musings”
“Living Faith’s Mysteries”
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings”

Silence fills my kitchen. Not a mouse’s squeak nor a car’s crackle disturbs its enveloping presence.

At my age, it’s wonderfully welcomed but glaringly empty for a twenty-year-old on a Friday night. Winter is silence’s sanctuary and silence is time’s sanctuary – the windows and doors are tightly closed and the hum of the refrigerator reminds me that it’s still working. Is this the time for self-indulgence that’s already occurred numerous times before or is it a respite from life’s nonstop noises?

Silence. I didn’t say “quiet” because in silence minds can race from forty to sixty years ago to the present time in seconds flat without missing a breath. Time seems to encapsulate itself in silence. Time is all contained and held tenderly while that refrigerator hums away.

If you have children then your silence occurs at the end of the evening when you hope that their dreams come true as you contemplate your own; gotten or forgotten. If you’re 80 years-old it may come after your 2:00 a.m. bathroom visit and you decide that another twenty minutes awake won’t make a difference.

We live in a loud and I mean very loud world. We turn on the TV and can’t hear the news analysts talk because they’re talking over each other. I place the TV remote on hold only to discover that “hold” in cable-land means a few minutes of hold before a nasally sounding girl yells about the shows I have no interest in watching. Silence.

Silence without the quiet recalls a past that either brings a smile or frown and a future that has no facial expression yet. If a smile does appear about the future then the future is yours, regardless of its unfolding.

Silence. The time that holds no time but incorporates all of it. You glance at the clock and think of two things left to do but then return allowing the silence to tell you there is no time but only the silence of this moment or that moment that just left. Andrew Sullivan wrote this for the Huffington Post about a movie he saw and its relationship to the silence of faith.

“I’ve managed to see Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ twice in the last couple of weeks. It literally silenced me. It’s a surpassingly beautiful movie — but its genius lies in the complexity of its understanding of what faith really is.

For Scorsese, (faith is) a riddle wrapped in a mystery, and often inseparable from crippling, perpetual doubt. Faith is a result, in the end, of living, of seeing your previous certainties crumble and be rebuilt, shakily, on new grounds. God is almost always silent, hidden, and sometimes most painfully so in the face of hideous injustice or suffering.

A life of faith is therefore not real unless it is riddled with despair.

There are moments — surpassingly rare but often indelible — when you do hear the voice of God and see the face of Jesus. You never forget them — and I count those few moments in my life when I have heard the voice and seen the face as mere intimations of what is to come. But the rest is indeed silence. And the conscience is something that cannot sometimes hear itself.

Those without faith have no patience for a long meditation on it; those with faith in our time are filled too often with a passionate certainty to appreciate it. And this movie’s mysterious imagery can confound anyone. We cannot avoid this surreality all around us. But it may be possible occasionally to transcend it.”

My day ending from work is recalled, “She doesn’t talk much,” followed by “He talks way too much about himself,” followed by “I wonder what her name is?” This is all thought about in silence’s time of ten or less seconds. “Why did I do that?” brings back my past and a frown appears and a silent apology offered in timelessness’s silence.

My two cats are watching me type trying to keep their sleepy eyes open. My refrigerator’s hum continues. I read in the manual that quirky sounds may occur but not to worry about them. I only hope the same for my silent thoughts during this time of silence.

books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS, available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon:
“Soulful Musings”
“Living Faith’s Mysteries”
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings”

Thank You God for making “gift” a verb. We only see “gift” as that beautifully wrapped (“Save the paper,” says stingy grandmother) box, a bow on top and under a December’s evergreen or before us on our birthday or anniversary.

You made “gift” an action – something to be shared, exchanged and used and reused again and again. It’s life, it’s our talents, it’s our potential as well as setbacks that teach us to redefine ourselves or revise a pattern of thinking, it’s a parent’s death that causes us to hug our children a little tighter at night, it’s our smile to the cashier whose last thought is you standing in front of her, it’s the space of silence your provide for a troubling friend, it’s your quiet of thirty minutes before you go to bed with the children asleep and your husband in the next room, it’s the “I don’t know” in your eyes when you truly do not know, it’s spotting a friend’s look that doesn’t look good …

it’s our unfolding gifts in the job we’ve prepared for or the job that seemed to prepare itself for us, it’s learning and relearning teamwork when you prefer independence, it’s an unfolding gift that your boss sees in you that you didn’t see for yourself, it’s the “this and that” of any day that sparks encounters, conversation, laughter, and even at times tears.

Lord God, thank You for making “gift” a verb and not a dead noun that lays there until it’s ripped opened and then possibly returned the next day. Your verb-gift is either returned to us in friendship or offered and dismissed. Either way, it is still your verb-gift. We know that “re-gifting” is tacky in our culture but in Your eyes it is a parent’s example to a quarreling young boy that, years later as a man, he remembers when another quarrel begins. This modeling is rarely named but somewhere and somewhere retained in the young person’s soul. That’s the “re-gifting” You want from us.

Verbs move and have actions. A printed diagram would have arrows pointing back and forth showing both words and silences of care, concern, sympathy or encouragement.

Thank You God for giving us a verb-word that’s able to uncover, unwrap and share with all those we meet.

Sorry, grandma, there’s nothing to save when the word “gift” becomes a verb.

books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS, available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon:
“Soulful Musings”
“Living Faith’s Mysteries”
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings”

“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” she told her daughter.

She came to visit her mom yesterday as she about to take her fourth pill with three more to follow. “Religiously” follow pill-taking doesn’t begin to explain her morning regimen. “Why are you taking this pill Mom?” she asks her. She tells her that it’s been years and doesn’t know any longer but it’s clearly apparent that she would surely die if the first three were not taken before the fourth; making the fourth pill futile and her remaining three even more, futile.” (As though “futile” needs a modifier!)

“You should talk to your doctor, then,” says concerned daughter as any of us would reply. “I don’t want to bother him,” says Mom as any eighty-year-old would say. “It must be good for me, after all, it’s blue.”

The pill is the largest of her seven and being colored blue doesn’t seem to make the “going down” any easier. “Why not place it in some apple sauce?” says daughter who stumbled on an internet article when searching for another site. “The doctor told me…” says Mom who just wants to down the damn thing to ingest the remaining three.

It’s a hard pill…

when your husband dies a lingering death as you pray, you watch and you remember
when your son elopes, no messages even with all these available technologies
when that stupid spill in the kitchen leads you to six weeks of therapy
when the star in a movie you rooted for dies at the end and tears begin to flow
when that “other” person got the promotion, even with all your experience
when the Packers get so close and then pack it in
when the outdoor party gets rained on but everyone except you laughs about it
when he promised he’d call tonight…
when she promised she would…

Mom puts the blue pill into the apple sauce only because her daughter is standing over her. It will not happen again because the doctor didn’t tell her to put the blue pill into apple sauce. All seven pills are digested for whatever effect or non-effect they may have in her life.

Her morning routine has been completed and now she will live forever except for those other pills that just seem to be lodged in her throat.

books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS, available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon:
“Soulful Musings”
“Living Life’s Mysteries”
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings”