Ascension: “Best Foot Forward”

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

jesus-ascension-091It’s the last thing the land locked apostles saw as He left them to their own wits.  (Don’t worry, the Holy Spirit is en route right on cue:  (“Jesus leaves first, then Spirit enters the stage but not before,” says the director’s notes.)

It can be considered to be the worst part of us.  It’s the pair of us that we hide, at great expense and for women the price can be higher than men but that may be changing these days.  3,000 pairs of them to hide hers was claimed by Imelda Marcos.  (What?  Hammer toes?)  Observers say of ours that they are sometimes unsightly, somewhat smelly – the leftovers of our bodies yet nothing beats walking in the sand without any of her 3,000 pairs.

It’s been said this pair at the bottom of us is the first thing people notice so I guess during your first important interview make sure to hoist those suckers on the table to make the best impression.     

What third grader says, “I want to be a podiatrist when I grow up?”  How does one stumble or walk into that field?  There’s probably ten good reasons but spiritually I’ll give you one.

The last thing the apostles see of Jesus is his feet.  They’ve misread, misunderstood, underestimated, underrated, questioned and wondered about this guy from the very beginning while all the time…

His feet were on the ground, he stood firmly, his steps never faltered, she washed his feet and then dried them with her hair, his foot did not slip, his steps did not deviate from His way, he guided our feet in the way of peace, he did not stand in the path of sinners, he would shake the dust off of his sole, all who were ill were placed at his feet and he healed them, the synagogue official fell at his feet and implored him to come to his house, Mary fell at his feet and said her brother would not have died, Mary again seated at the Lord’s feet listened to his word, he walked blamelessly, he did not need to cut one foot off to save the other, water could not stop his movements, his pair were nailed together and now it’s the last thing we see of him.  His feet.

Wash the feet of others He tells us before his arrest.  Peter goes nuts and wants a complete body wash but Jesus calmly tells him, “It’s the feet, dummy, just the feet.”  Jesus asks us to touch a vulnerable spot in someone or ourselves and wash it with his sincere mercy and in his genuine love.

They all had dirty feet in those days so before entering a guest’s house or their own would naturally wash off the street’s dirt.  (If only Imelda could have parted with only twelve pairs then the apostles might have gotten the message.  Alas.)

We need the pair of them to get us from the kitchen to the living room.  We need this pair of them to get us to work and safely back home again.  As we age we may find we need a third prop to aid our aging feet, maybe even a fourth prop (with tennis balls at the ends.)  We need the pair of them to remind us of those vulnerable parts of our own lives before we judge the feet of others.  Let’s not be afraid to touch and soothe aching arches and tired soles.  Let’s not be afraid to look for the hidden lint between ten things that can keep us from getting closer together.

Is the real event and meaning Jesus being raised to heaven or is it the last thing we see of him?

PS.  Let’s pray that he was wearing pants.

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The Streets of Life, Traveling “Blah or Joyful?”

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
Palm Desert, California, United States, Coachella Valley, east of Palm Springs,

Palm Desert, California, United States, Coachella Valley, east of Palm Springs,

We’re very comfortable and even encouraged to tell tales of anger, disappointments, frustrations; even bitterness in generalizing or personal statements about religion or a
specific church.  We even attempt to one up the preceding story told by a friend with our tale of woe.  (“Oh, so you thought your story was sad, just listen to mine!”)

It is the unspoken permissions that bring out stories about that priest who said or did the wrong thing, the church situation that wasn’t to your liking, the promising church change that never happened, the songs you couldn’t include in your wedding, that unhappy nun in second grade, rules and regulations that are torn apart because either they didn’t suit you or you don’t understand; they are all dished out, laughed about or ridiculed while all the time providing us a personal catharsis to be both judge and jury. The conversation ends and you walk away feeling the same frustration that your storytelling about frustration was meant to eliminate.

That was a pretty blah and bland experience between friends over drinks and about this great gift of faith whose practice doesn’t always match its promise.

Bland is Milwaukee streets with these directions, “All right, you take North Avenue over to Center Street and continue on until 37 Street and it’ll be on the corner.” Wow, was that an exciting trip or what?  Now ask for street directions in Palm Springs, CA. and you’ll hear, “All right, you take Bob Hope Drive until Dinah Shore Street, if you pass Gene Autry Trail you’ve gone too far so just head back slowly on Gerald Ford Drive.” (Ford wasn’t sure about his presidency either.) That’s the fun route to follow because it’s full of memories, past successes of famous people and an enjoyable journey toward your final destination.

Now back to the bar, drinks and the unsatisfying conclusions from the previous visit and change those church stories of isolated situations into faith stories full of surprises and joys, setbacks and recoveries, peaceful feelings and perhaps even a little ecstasy thrown in. We are so comfortable sharing church stories of woes which always stars us as the victims.  What happens when the shared stories become ones of faith and transformation that features God as the star and us as the co-stars?  (Co-starring can lead to bigger roles, by the way.)

When you arrive home after drinks with friends that night your feelings have now been revived, nourished and confirmed through sharing and reinforced in your mind and soul. You’ve now experienced the fun and joy of religion and the rest is thrown aside as much as the dullness of North Avenue is replaced with the exciting journey along Bob Hope Drive.

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I Was “In My Own”

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

acorn-06-535x535Sounds like a selfish title unless it represents your life both forward and backwards.  The month of May is graduation time and all the caps are thrown up in the air as are their many undecided futures.  “The future is yours,” says the school’s president as though it’s a blank sheet of paper waiting for your own, personal words.  (All that “cut and paste” during those college years has its consequences.)

James Hillman, psychologist, talks about our “acorn” or “diamon” which we commonly call the soul.  An acorn becomes an oak and a diamon will find its way within you.  Hillman suggests parents are chosen for your life’s task, even parents who get in the acorn’s way is part of its plan.  His thoughts are inspiring yet ring of a predetermined destiny that’s more Calvin than Catholic.

He uses famous people to make his point while I reflect back to 1964 in my bedroom alone holding a stick with a golf ball nailed to the top and a string running to nowhere.  All four walls are covered with TV Guide pictures of celebrities and their TV programs.  My 60 minute weekly task was to entertain my imaginary audience in front of me with wit, music and more wit.  It’s not easy filling 60 minutes alone holding a stick but I did it faithfully for two years.  My dad bought me a small Sony reel to reel recorder which I can perfectly describe today.  I thought he bought it for me because it was cheaper than child therapy.

Jump ahead two years and four of us seminary guys escape at night and hitch hike to my hometown to visit the local radio station and visited Big Boy, the big restaurant in Manitowoc, WI.  The announcer begrudgingly runs down the stairs to see teenagers who request “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” by The Animals which he dutifully plays for us.

One more year forward and I’m milling around that same local radio station.  (How does one “mill” anyway?)  Bothersome may be a better word but I got to know the announcers and learned that a weekend opening was available from an announcer who’s off to UW-Maidson.  I meet with him and he’s the announcer who played “The Animals” song for four refugees from a seminary.  With his final instructions on a Saturday night in September 1969 and giving me the station’s key, he’s off to college and I have “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan rotating on one or two turntables with the other one empty.  2:00 minutes until my first words are sprouted in an empty building to an unknown (imaginary?) audience somewhere in the radio signal’s listening area.  My remaining two years of high school is on the radio, Saturdays, 6:30 p.m.-Midnight and Sundays, 7:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.  (Sunday morning meant a taxi stop first at the police department for any overnight Manitowoc action, often a fruitless trip.)  I was a rock-jock on Saturday nights and a mellifluous beautiful-music-provider on Sundays until the live Lutheran church service.  With the church service complete, I became the Polish Polka Prince.  I was in my own.  What prompted, promoted or propelled me to this eluded me then but intrigues me now.

Now it’s 1965 and the empty bedroom in the back of the house becomes a sacred space for my sacred, private Sunday Mass held after the real one.  Wearing plastic vestments gotten from a magazine, a dictionary for my priest’s prayers and the parish bulletin for my sermon, I was in my own along with paper hosts and my mother’s vases for the vessels.  I mumbled softly what was hardly Latin but it didn’t matter, what only mattered was that I was doing it, it counted, I looked forward to it and I repeated it faithfully every week.

The acorn somehow found its powerful way to make this all happen.  60 seminarians in my high school class and one becomes a priest.  People today stop me and say, “You should be in radio, you have that voice.”  I thought I was doing this on my own with my own will and persistence but thanks to Hillman I wonder about an ancient word like “diamon” (Plato), or a natural one like acorn (earth), or the spiritual one like guardian angel (Catholic).

I tossed my college cap into the air and I knew where it would land and if I didn’t know than perhaps something or someone else did.

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They’re My Age

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

anti-aging-creams-1It took many of my years to catch up to them but most of them are gone and now I find myself among the “them.”  Does age do that?

I’m older than the president of the United States, 10 years closer to the pope and 20 years older than that Florida upstart who hopes to govern the country.  (Not the real “Mario” from New York whom I miss, bless his soul, but the other Mario.)

It was so easy growing up and blaming all those “oldsters” who either didn’t understand or were just old.  “Just wait until I grow up!” we said solving all the world’s problems in our slowly growing brains.  (Did you know the brain is still growing at 20 years?)

I was with a Catholic bishop today who’s twelve years below me but way higher than I job I would want.  That surprised me.  He’s supposed to be that old guy with little hair and wearing a belt he hasn’t seen in years with a young priest accompanying him.  If I was telling him a story and used a song as an example, like the “Five Staircase” singing, “Ooh, Child,” I fear he would give me that bishopric smile suggesting it’s time I find a nice home in the second Mario’s state and call it quits.

This short flirt is not about that bishop but my awareness that age does make a difference now that I continue this aging thing.  Age uses experience to teach along with lots of anecdotes and cute, often long stories that few care about.  Wise aging (adjective carefully chosen) is always accomplished in the assimilation, discernment and reflection of life and its deeds.

Assimilation: like a puzzle taking history’s pieces and assembling and reassembling them that forms a formula for the future.  To miss one piece can be hazardous. (Jeb: “Let’s do Iraq one more time since my dad’s still alive!”)

Discernment:  a word rarely used but often in religious life.  Thinking of your past, your present and then projecting.  Weaving through your life to uncover your life.

Reflection: after any event or person has occurred this is the most difficult, to be able to look back as objectively as possible and see the mistakes and the successes and to identify the gaping holes that need to be filled the next time around.  (And to always begin reflection’s reflective sentences with “I”.  That “him/her” or “it” are far gone by now.)

My brain is no longer developing, most days I suspect it’s starting to shrink but then I realize that “they” are no longer “they” but they are me.  I may not enjoy their authority and prestige of the younger “they” but all this aging stuff I truly enjoy.  After all, I just came up with three good “three’s.”

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Who Are You?

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Who Are You?.

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Wisconsin: “It’s Home”

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
"Oh well, it's home."

“Oh well, it’s home.”

February
You’ve felt a sore throat for a couple of days now but dismiss it saying to yourself, “It’s nothing.”  (Funny how we all become doctors when it comes to our health.)  The next day arrives and you know you’ll not make it through the day as the congestion is in full swing.  For the good of fellow employees and yourself you make the phone call that puts all your duties on hold for at least one day.
“Now what?” you say.  It’s 6:00 a.m., work has been alerted and the entire day lays before you.  “Too early for the ‘Price is Right’ and ‘As the World Turns” hasn’t been on the air since your grandmother died.  Bundled up in your bathrobe you make some tea and add honey, the brandy is saved for after 5 p.m.  The living room corner is a good spot where you spot snowflakes that grow in number.  The mystery book you’ve half read is on the ottoman.  “Ummm,” you murmur.  You easily get back into the book’s seedy and heroic characters and the snows continues to fall.  Three hours passes including the nap just when the book’s action was getting good and the snow falls faster.
You repeat taking your over-the-counter stuff that’s supposed help the stuff in your head and nose and it’s time for lunch with the afternoon holding what ever is ahead.

July
It’s your turn to host the neighborhood party.  Fifteen people responded and you’ve been looking forward to this since summer began.  The backyard’s been mowed and the grill is warming up as the warm air offers a periodic breeze to balance the day.  Evenings are always the best when the sun sets and another kind of the day begins.  The neighbors are full of neighborly happenings and the punch is slightly spiked to give a slight zing without all the expensive bottles.  The smoke and smells remind you of a Catholic Church on a happy feast day but this time the sights and scents are brats and burgers.  7:00 p.m. the neighbors are jovial and strengthening connections keeping the neighborhood safe and strong.  It’s a full moon but that was not planned nor was it planned that the last group would leave at 2:00 a.m.  That’s okay, you had enough punch to see you through night.

or

February
You have an important meeting at 7:00 a.m. and corporate is expected to be there awaiting PowerPoint and Excel explanations of everything that needs explaining.  It’s been snowing all night with eight inches already on the group and you don’t have time to shovel and hope the mail carrier doesn’t curse your mother.  You plow your car backwards through the snow and out of the driveway and make it to work on time but you forget a second pair of shoes might have helped.

July
After the long wintry snow-filled months you are anticipating that all fifteen of your neighbors will arrive, each bringing something to share from their specialties or a favorite family recipe.  The weatherman said the high would be 95 today but they’ve been wrong how many times before.  The neighbors arrive and you finally admit that if it’s not the temperature, it’s the humidity.  Discussion about the weather goes on for much longer than necessary because everyone feels the hot weather through their sweaty shirts and shorts.  “The dining room will work!” you say after mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges for nothing.  The fifteen plus your family huddle together surrounded by the wonders of AC and enjoy the punch meant for the outside.  You sweat your way through the brats and burgers all by yourself.  The evening proceeds well in the confines of your otherwise winter confines and the neighborhood-jokester suggests, “How about a fire tonight?”  The next day is sunny, pleasant with a high of 75 degrees with low humidity. 

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It Takes “Two”

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

57144There’s something about combining 1 and 1.  Three Dog Night told us over forty years ago that “One is the loneliest number that you’ll every do.”  They are only “terrible” when your teeth are growing otherwise it is the combination of ones we cannot resist.

No, this isn’t about marriage and that one and one are madly in love.  Two marriages is common these days with even three creeping in as in, “ready, set, go.”  The “go” seems to be the final one although I got to know and like one and two.

“One” just doesn’t seem enough.  “Let’s have one for the road,” doesn’t mean one but means the one added to the previous numbers.  I have two cats.  Seems right just in case one, you know, experiences that ninth live.   For vacation I pack at least two of almost everything in case one proves to be not enough.  I began to watch the current “Noah” movie but stopped when hoards of animals are let on the ark when only two were permitted.  (The only biblical part of that film was its title.)

I keep a cloak in my car trunk in case someone asks me for my cloak as Jesus demands of me, “Sure, here you go” as I walk back to my car.  Insincere or wise planning?

We have two arms and legs which suits us well in life’s travels.  You cannot have a war with yourself, even the Civil War was clearly divided into, twos.  Forget the distractions of sports when one team shows up for the match and you’re left with your second cup of beer with your second wife, your two children (one hers, the other yours), remembering that second mortgage on your home which explains the second job you have and your in-laws (two) visiting for the weekend (three).

There’s two sides to every story which we all refuse to believe in our rigid, single-minded views (Three Dog Night anyone?)  We should all have two friends when one takes a second look at us.  (Women seem to be much better at increasing friend size than guys are.)

All of our simplified-making life is based on that magic number: sin/grace, heaven/hell, God/devil, plaid/solid, up/down, inside and you already know, democrat and we don’t wish the second on anyone, Ecclesiastes and its solemn list of twos that most funerals seem to include and I’ve heard more than twice.

Stephen Sondheim gets his two cents worth with “Into The Woods” and the song, “It Takes Two”
“I thought one was enough, It’s not true: It take two of us You came through When the journey was rough.  It took you.  It took two of us.”

Your crisis needs to be shared and you call your first friend who has the message waiting for you.  You instantly call your second friend who answers never saying that it’s your second call.  The second friend listens and you smile at the caring advice.  Friend One calls back and you say, “It’s alright, I have it taken care of.”

Before this gets to be too (couldn’t resist) much, I end my tribute to twos.  Although I need to add for a second time the importance of twos in our lives.  I found a sale online and bought two shirts.  They arrive in…guess? – two weeks.

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“Walking With Jesus”

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

goChristWithChild 001That is what a church sign shows me driving to work each morning.  I thought how difficult that is for us.  I don’t mean the usual stuff of sacrifice or dedication.  I mean it’s difficult because we know how his story ends.  It’s not fair walking with someone when you know how the someone and something turns out.

I’m at an age where the first few words of hearing the gospel, I say to myself, “Oh, it’s that one again” and my mind wanders toward lunch.  I’m able to do the same thing with songs of my era, four notes into it is my best and I can tell you the artist, title and sometimes the record label. (Church repetition and radio days do have some things in common.)

Traditional piety is in knowing the end of Jesus’ story in order for us to copy it as best as possible.  Isn’t it more enriching and rewarding to question Jesus along side with those doubting apostles we hear about on Sunday?  If you notice, after the resurrection Jesus tells his disciples the good stuff when no one else is around.  (Ohhh, I just wrecked it for many of you…now you know that he resurrects.  Darn it.)  Can we identify with any of those biblical needy folks who approach Jesus looking for something but not knowing if he’s able to help?  My favorite biblical story is the blind guy who approaches Jesus for a cure and Jesus asks the most profound question to him: “What do you want?”   Isn’t it obvious?  But it is not until the seeker knows what to seek.

Understanding Jesus is to look back at his whole story including the ending.  We can only look back at our lives without sugar coating our parts and then look forward without knowing the ending.

All the Jesus movies are viewed with its sensational ending in mind.   Scourging, thorns or the final spear, we know what happens next.  He comes back to life, scares the guys with his “peace to you” statements, eats a lot of fish, ascends up and away and sends the Holy Spirit while he assumes his position at the right hand of his rightful position.

I want to walk with Jesus.  I’d love to have him beside me, above me, behind and within me.  Sometimes I wish that I did not know his ending so that my walk with him might be truly a mutual walk toward a surprising and unknown end.

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Body, Mind & Spirt?

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
The Missing Link?

The Missing Link?

Ahhhhh. That’s finished.  Those conflicting and independent concepts are now united as in blissful marriage.  (Is there such a thing?)

We’ve achieved it or at least attempted to.  Makes a wonderful slogan for a company to place on the jacket’s heart, key ring or pens or mugs or bumper stickers.  Waiting for the light to turn green you can find comfort that the car in front of you has achieved what has eluded you, and you wonder why did a Taurus get that elusive union before your BMW?

Independent is an understatement in these strong, self-relying models in our lives.  The mind is the one we rely upon the most and he loves the ongoing attention.  He seems the strongest since he talks to us the most.  Does the body respond to the mind or does the mind give the body a cold when a job evaluation is the next day?  The Spirit?  Spirit cleverly tries to bring together body and mind as though they are doing their own work when Spirit has an agenda of her own.  Wild and wily in theory but organizing all the loose stuff of her two competitors.

My company places high value on the union of these three words as though union can be reached.  A “Core Value” they call it complementing our culture’s present preoccupation with these three words.  Achieved?  Easily through Yoga, prayer, meditation, daily exercise, vitamin pills, retreats, sabbaticals, eating the right vegetables, quitting smoking or swinging a dead chicken in a plastic bag over your head three times a day.

Quick, magic solutions to the complex, magic we call life.  As one author says it, “The cooking vessel of the soul takes in everything, everything can become soul and by taken into its imagination any and all events, the psychic grows.”

Ahhhhh, in our culture we have it all figured out if we only condense what is dense, if we only make real what is imagined, if we only make folly fact, if we only digest what can never be totally eaten; if only our lives were as simple as we think they are.  (Think.  See our minds at play?)

Body, mind and spirit.  Do you think we’re missing another important one or does the Yoga do it for us?

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Scrooge & Our Lives

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
Frozen in the Past

Frozen in the Past

It was another lonely meal beside the fireplace as he’s done night after night after a twelve hour day of balancing the books in unbalancing ways.  Crackling sounds growing louder pauses his meal as his dead partner visits with a warning of three more visitors after the old clock crackles midnight.  He gives a favorite sentence of mine to his dead friend, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”  

Denial always goes a long way instead of admitting what or who is before you.  Charles Dickens presents a timeless story which is more about time that any good or bad characters.  It is the only times that we have in life that embody his early morning visitors: past, present and future.  Each one contains a story.  To separate one time from another is to fragment life which only fragments our minds.  Instead of fragment, to live only in one time is to freeze yourself.  Scrooge’s frozen time is his past and that is the Christmas story which can be told and retold in any season.

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”  In spiritual terms, his statement can easily be called healing, in whatever form it takes within our fragmented or frozen lives.

The Ghost told Scrooge, “If man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?”  Whichever “f” you find yourself in the natural reaction is to block everything and everyone from your sights.  You are in this life by yourself , just like the meal you eat each night.

The frozen Scrooge gives another classic sentence, “If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”  In your imagination your problem is projected upon the world and that somehow validates your continuing to live in one of the “f’s.”

Dead partner visiting Scrooge at the beginning of the story provides for us with the story’s end and the ending of one of our “f’s,” “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

A Common Humanity

A Common Humanity

The business of a “comprehensive ocean of my business” is rooted in a union with those around us as awkward, divisive, argumentative, harmonious or joyous as it will surely be.  Fragmented or frozen is healed through a unity of our life’s times: past, present and future.  The “f’s” are unleashed when a link (a new chain of connections breaks the chain that held us down) to our common humanity.  A humanity made strong whether with one person, a congregation, a family, a neighborhood or the nearby tavern on Friday nights for dice.

Then those around you will happily say to you, “Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!”  

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