The unMiracle of Faith

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ist2_2727787-i-don-t-knowI pity the victims of a miracle.  (Please note the noun, “victim.”)  Their Sundays mornings are now freed from the burden of Sunday worship.  They can jump immediately to the donuts and coffee without the worship.  The rest of us schmucks (good Yiddish word) have to plot and ploy our way through life including our Sunday morning duty.

Because you see, victims of a miracle don’t need faith.  They’ve witnessed a miracle of some sort and now the struggling, exploring, wonderings and wanderings of the rest of us are all behind them now.  They need no faith because faith can only be defined as trusting in the unknown with as much of a knowing heart as we can muster.

Rosary turn to gold in a former Communist country?  I’d sell it on Ebay faster than they can tell their neighbor about the miraculous transformation.  You pray to God for you son’s remission from cancer and he survives so what other conclusion can you reach than you are now a victim unlike the rest of us who continue the pondering the unknown with a knowing heart.

I define “faith” as not what you know but in what you know that you do not know.  There’s a lot of trust built into that statement.  So, you knowingly don’t know.

I wouldn’t pray for a son’s recovery because if he died then I’d still be free from Sunday worship because God did not answer my plea.  If the son lives, then I’ve become a victim of faithlessness.

My prayers are never rooted in things or people but in virtues.  God’s a busy guy so my prayer is always a simple one for those hooks of perseverance, strength, wisdom, guidance, fortitude, patience and trust.

You could call my prayer a safeguard or cop-out because of the lack of praying for things or people.  If the son dies or lives it doesn’t matter to my prayer because my prayer has been about what dealing with whatever happens.

I don’t want to be a victim.  I want to continue wondering the rest of my life with what I don’t know but want to know or what I can’t know but place in God’s providence.  I hope the son doesn’t die, my rosary is fine the color that it is.  I don’t need problems solved or simple answers in my life – those imposed on me or those I’ve imposed on myself – but I do need virtues from an attentive and listening God to see me through this whole journey we call life.

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The Dog Next Door

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

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“Eight hours of servitude lifted from me and I’m now the landowner.  I love it.  The previous owners left me with ‘Oprah’ which was fun at first but drew weak as she drew wearier and weightier.  Speaking of weightier..there it is, bladder/bladder, don’t say the word because it only reminds you more but I can’t help it because it’s bladder/bladder.  They think I’m tranquil and missing them during these business hours but I’m really looking around here for the estate sale value after their gone and it appears pretty slim.  These folks don’t know how to shop.  Ohh, there it is again, bladder/bladder; stop saying that word but it’s filling up and I hear the car just pull in.  Yada, yada, I got it, groceries, laughter/laughter; come on folks let’s think bladder/bladder and get the hell in here.  The back door finally opens and I painfully squeak out and onto the winter’s snow adding a heap of yellow while saying ‘Thanks be to God, thanks be to God.”  What’s wrong with seven hour shifts?”

“Okay, thank goodness.  They’re taking the garbage out now, here’s my chance.  Slip between their legs and feel the fresh air.  Nice day to be outside.  My gold little fury body brightens up to the cool air.  Over there is a mountain of snow with my name on it.  Cue Frank Sinatra, ‘King of the hill., top of the heap.’  I think that was door slamming.  They do that all the time to me.  They forget how much I cost them.  They keep calling me cuddly and cutie-pie.  I guess they never looked underneath me to see that I’m a guy.  Oh well.

My little golden tail is swinging away as I sway around the closed back door wondering what OSHA violation occurred with the doorbell placed up so high.  If I run around in circles then they’ll open the back door or so says my unconscious religious teachings on superstitions becoming dogma.  Well, the circle thing didn’t work, so much for a donation in next week’s collection.  I wonder what Lassie would do in a situation like this?  Hell, Timmy must be 75 years and in a nursing home by now and we know what happens to Old Yeller; so much for models.

I forgot how neat theses folks are.  There’s more garbage to dump and my reentry is clear.  Wow. That was close.  Just in time for ’60 Minutes’ since the football season is over.  It’s funny because they’re never able to find the remote during ’60 Minutes.'”   

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Neck Ties & Fetuses

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

adding-valueVery few things have any value in our society – from neck ties to fetuses.  What is value?  We all knew it when the product was presented to us.  A refrigerator was envied in the department store downtown and our savings were carefully planned.  Soon it arrived, and in those days with a bow around it.  All things have value.  It is the value to create, distribute and sell it.  The markup is proportional to the product.  That’s where our problem creeps in.

If you made three handbags you may a difficult time selling them at a local fair or online but if the bag has a prominent name on it then your end cost (value) can be anything that the market can handle.  (That’s the extent of my business knowledge.)

I now wear logo neck ties that cost me $3.00 compared to the same $20.00 version in that department story downtown so I really didn’t need to save for the purchase.  I have a popular name wrist watch from the same Chinese knock-off that knocked off the $2,000.00 price to, yes, $4.00.  Am I cheating?  No Americans would say “no”and want to know the website.  The analogy between neck ties and human life may offend you but it shouldn’t.

I’ve always believed it is the slow redefining of one thing that leads to another.  Sometimes it is good as in slavery, working hours and numerous other things we now take for granted.  We live in a society that’s learned to throw away because the value of everything appears to be up for grabs.  We’ve lost the true value of something and attached another value to it.  I’ve learned from that Chinese website that the value of my neck ties now has a different or truer lesser value.

Abortion has taught us that value is a relative word when faced with a life-changing and an everything-changing-event.  Everyone would agree that human life has no value, for it is priceless yet we do not act in the same way.

I began with my twisted twist from neck ties to fetuses.  You are not allowed to be political in the Catholic Church circles so the argument remains in simplistic voting habits but in real life becomes complicated.  Half of the U.S. pregnancies are unintended.  (Read that sentence again!)  Half.  Simply to be against abortion is to miss that really awful word we’ve taught ourselves to hate unless it applies only to us and our benefits: government.

State and federal governments repeatedly cut the means for single moms or those in doubt about a pregnancy to raise a healthy child.  The same political party against abortion is also the same party against giving a fair chance to raise an “unintended” child, which is by the way, half.

We can spend a long time talking about abstinence and moral behavior but we’d be talking about a different country.  The political party that glibly is against abortion is also the party that conveniently cuts funds that discourages a birth to a freightened mom, discourages nourishment for those important early years and discourages bringing a new healthy member into our society while all the while gathering votes toward a no abortion resolution.

We all know the value of human life – it is priceless. Human life has no value because it was not ours to create but it is ours to recreate, nurture and ensure, as best we can.

The cost of human life as “priceless” is our theology, the “value” of human life does have a cost both emotionally and financially.  Can we not half the half of those unintended pregnancies so they may one day savor the bright blue sky we all enjoy?

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Jesus & Karaoke

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

the_mamas_and_the_papas-monday_mondayAfter supper while on vacation I found a small bar whose sign in front said, “Sunday Karaoke.”  It can a risk to enter a place where notes are missed, yelling doesn’t always equal Barbra and hoping their day job is secured.  (Some sung songs are better heard with alcohol.)

Then there are those surprises when a burly man gets up to sing a ballad that quiets the crowd for three minutes and you wonder if CD’s are available.  The book of selections is passed around and I’m toying with adding my melodic misery to the evening’s amateur night.  I see the Mamas and Papas, “Monday, Monday” from 1966 and think it’s an easy tune to get through.  My name is called, luckily after a mediocre performance (you never want to follow a child or a Kate Smith-type singing “God Bless America.”)

There are the words clearly displayed along with more instruments than the original recording had.  It takes a full verse before I realize I’m doing this followed by a chorus which alerts me that this song is not as easy as it sounded in my Pontiac LeMans when I proudly sang their hit song.  Toward the middle of the song I sense a sympathetic audience meaning all the CD’s I’ve recorded are now coasters. Clapping early is another sign that they’re as happy as I am that the song is coming to an end.

During the song it occurs to me that I just got Sunday’s sermon while on vacation.  The words of Jesus were clearly in front of me along with an angelic orchestra.  Life asks of me to sing His melody as best as I can.  If I miss some notes then I know I need to relearn the song – as old and familiar as it is.  If I’m thinking too far ahead in the song then I’ll miss the beautiful melody that is playing now.  If the audience hems and haws then I don’t mind because each of them will have their chance to mimic the melody He’s given us.

Faith is a wonderful symphony with many movements – full of highs and lows and even silence in between.  We may sing many songs in our lives but I think “Monday, Monday” is a good place to begin, it’s the first day of a new week.

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Bagless For A Night

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Airport-AirStream-Rolling-Camera-Bag-4It happens to someone else until it happens to you and then it takes on your life.  Due to flight circumstances my bag beat me to Milwaukee while I was still in Florida.  (Couldn’t I have traveled in the bag section?!)

An extra night added to my vacation would be the envy of anyone after making three phone calls to alert those tending to my duties back home.  “This will be fun,” I think to myself since the choice was not mine.  I now need to find a “room at the inn” stuck in my Milwaukee clothes in sunny, balmy Florida.  More that I paid before, I found a room that a New York couple would have loved including a living room (which is not necessary for my 20 hours and being single.)

“This will be fun,” as I remember my swim trunks are en route to cold Milwaukee and I’m on a lounger in Milwaukee’s warmests.  (I think I may start a new fashion of wearing pants at the pool.  “Next season they’ll all be doing it.”)  “I need to take my pill” after my shower which is not happening and I’m thinking that dying in Florida sounds better at my funeral than dying in Milwaukee’s February cold.  “I’ll grab my comb…oh, that’s right” as I remind myself of all the stuff that I stuffed in the suitcase.  The resort gave me a toothbrush with the paste already in between the bristles which I thought was ingenuous and invented by a bagless person whose experience was like mine.

After my shower, I wondered what I was to wear that night for supper until my wondering dwindled into the same Milwaukee stuff that I should be now wearing in there.  I smile and wonder how long it takes to smell to infected clothing.  “I’ll recharge my phone and be off,” until another smile appears realizing my phone charger and me are separated.  (Is there a worst scenario?)  The front desk comes to my rescue with my plug-in need.

The next morning arrives with me looking for my bag which I remember is where I am not but hope to return to soon.  (That’s an awkward sentence for anyone who hasn’t travel.)  It is just me in my sweaty Milwaukee clothes waiting to arrive in that cold climate prepared with the only clothes I have.

Checking out I thank the good folks for giving me one of their last rooms and remember Lent’s desert experience for Jesus, 40 days of it.  Granted Florida and loaded with credit cards does not make me a martyr but a slight taste of Lent in this contemporary day may be the best I can hope for.

Bag and me were reunited the next day.  I guess, at a stretch, that could be considered Easter?

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Modeling & Our Models

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

haxpv7kfA passing thought of mine with a particular cadence to it caused me to wonder where I got it.  I remembered Tommy Lee Jones saying it in a movie that I recently saw.  I used his inflection in a thought about something.

Wow.  That’s weird because you see I live in the United States where every person creates his/her own destiny and becomes the person that he/she personally designs without help or assistance from anyone.

We mimic and duplicate others whether we are conscious of it or not.  If it’s a John Wayne phrase for oldsters or a Bruce Willis comment for mid-oldsters or a guy I’ve never heard of for those under 30; we simply like to copy.  It may be their confidence that we’re after or the caution in their voice or someone’s behavioral mannerisms that stays with us at the end of the film and into some unknown tomorrow.

For priests of my generation it was Fr. Bing who solved personal problems in the person’s house and only if the person had a handy piano for Fr. Bing to sing the person’s problem away.  For even older priests it was Fr. Barry Fitzgerald who dotingly ran his parish church – safe and unchallenging and dying.

Young parents swear that they’ll never say something to their children that their parents said to them as they blurt it out one morning and then recall its origin.  “It was just so easy, it just came out,” the parent thinks, “I don’t know where it came from!”

Talk about modeling.  My mother was all enveloping and my father was a sealed envelope.  One couldn’t say enough and the other keep his postage due but their phrases and mannerisms creep up on me at different times.  My remembrance of them through words and gestures is heartening for me.  It’s the Fr. Bing’s lines that make me pause and wonder who I’ve become.

 

 

 

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My Funeral Music

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

oak_harp03I’d like a single harpist, preferably a woman wearing a white dress playing “Show Me The Way To Go Home” (Oldie) or “How Can I Be Sure” (The Young Rascals.)

I know she needs to lug that thing into the church but I could have asked a tuba player.  A diminutive friend of mine wanted the title song from “Rocky” played at his funeral as though eternal life can buff you up for that rousing song.

Something about a harp.  Soothing, mellow and alluring.  Why not have those things at my death when I did not exhibit them during my life?  Harpo Marx balanced his comedic antics by playing the harp and everyone watching sighed as the harp’s beauty melded with his comedy.

She could play other songs to justify her carrying that thing and her stipend but as an Opening Song for me, I’m all for it.

Funerals are unusual times for the all the years I’ve had them.  Too many flowers means it’s too late to show affection.  Long-winded eulogies tend to shut down listeners because that spaghetti story from 1957 is only enjoyed by eight of the sixty folks present.  (40 minutes is my eulogy record; she showed me her single-spaced 10 pages and I thought an intermission was in order for a quick smoke.)

Grandchildren crying at your funeral is real plus.  It will always amaze me that two generations down are so moved by this person’s passing.  I guess that is until they realize what her exaggerated worth was truly worth.  I joke here but it is heartening to hear a grandchild talk about what a witness her grandmother was to her in strength, perseverance and affection.  Even when a 58 year old son can’t get through his dad’s eulogy make my eyes water up.

Sometimes we wait too long to express our deep feelings for another person.  I’m told  often that women do it better than their opposites.  The opposites feel it but show it more often in their eyes, humor or a tender smile.

Sons about their dads is the most moving when I hear them.  Daughters about their strong moms is ditto but even stronger considering the multiple cultures their moms had to live through.

The quiet children are of course the most difficult to read.  Their mom is 93 with Alzheimer’s disease and the shock of her death surprises them.  So, I’m surprised by their surprised.  If they’re Catholic their input for readings from The Book meant to influence all of our lives is nil.  (The Catholic Church taught them subtly not to read the Bible and it’s probably one of the few rules they’ve faithfully followed, “I’ll choose the reading for you,” I chime in to their saved-looking smiles.)

A funeral is cultural and it’s mimicking – “Why don’t we have a DVD of our dad?”  “I was at a funeral where they….” (fill in the blank).  A polka Mass funeral was the most fun.  Why not?  He loved polka music and the Mass was filled with 3/4 tunes that lifted us all up.  “You Are My Sunshine” was sung a copula at the beginning of one funeral and it set the tone for the entire service.  I was told that she just loved that song.

One harp.  Let someone help her carry it to the church to play one of the two suggested songs for my funeral.  I can only hope that I’ve carried someone through something toward something new in my priestly service.

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“A Spatula for Jesus”

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

thIt was kept in her kitchen drawer so I could easily grab my wooden prop when visiting my grandmother on the many days my mother would say to me, “Go do something!”

She’d begin her nap and hoping not to be nabbed, my pretend quiz show would begin in her back bedroom.  I wonder now if she wondered while falling to sleep if psychiatric help was available for me in our small town.

This was my time facing her two empty walls but my imaginary full audience.  Holding the spatula firmly in my 11 year old hand I was all those I tried to imitate – Don Pardo, Jack Kennedy, Gene Rayburn, Johnny Olsen how many others a young mind absorbs.  It was my glorious sixty minutes while snoring was faintly heard down the hall and a promised braunschweiger sandwich when she awoke.

My stuttering stopped, my poise increased, my delivery was clear and clever as I delivered a message of hope and joy in front of the congregation surrounded by stained glass windows where my grandmother’s one window once was.  I think she’s still napping down the hall while I’m still holding a wooden spatula provided to me by my grandmother.

Often after Mass I still wait for the braunschweiger sandwich.  It was pretending to be all those people in my grandmother’s home and now it’s providential pretending to be who I’m called to be in front of you.

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First Sunday of Lent

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

thAn older adult will never, ever begin a sentence with, “if memory serves me correctly.”  Just don’t hear it.  Because they know better.

What I hear is, “It happened in 1946 or was it 1947?  It was either 1:00 a.m. or 1:00 p.m.”  And then in the middle of this unfolding story, I’ll hear, “Wait!  It was 1946 because that was the year that…” and a completely new story is told while the first story dangles waiting for a conclusion.  We finally reach the end of the second story and there’s silence looking at me as though I’m the problem until I say, “But what about the first story?”  “Oh, yeah,” you’ll say, “it was 1946.”

And so it goes.  “If memory serves me correctly…”

God has a memory we learn today.  He’s decided to destroy the world and start all over again.  He’s decided to flood those living and replace them with new blood.  His memory has reached its limit and it was time to create a new memory.

God REacted.  God did not act.  God overreacts and destroys the world much like the United States REacted after September 11 with our invasion of Iraq.  We REacted instead of acting.  Both us and God were impulsive and we’ve both paid the price.

God apologizes to us.  (Did you ever think you’d hear a sentence like that?  God apologizing?)

Instead of telephoning us or sending us a $2.25 Hallmark card to make amends, God paints us a rainbow in the sky; a clear, visible sign to show us that hope is worth hoping for, that trust is earned and then utilized and that strength comes from our inner beings – not through any outside REactive force.  A rainbow.  A simple rainbow to illustrate the binding covenant provided to us by God.

He tells us, “When I bring clouds over the earth, and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all moral beings.”

It seems that even God’s memory has played tricks on him.  Were those living beings as bad as God thought or did God exaggerate their misdeeds and misplaced values.  God gives us a rainbow so that He doesn’t forget and He gives us a rainbow so that we and He will always remember.

God REacts in the flood but then ACTS in the birth of His Son.  God paused for quite a long period of time by remembering the past and then thinking of the future by sending His only Son.

God’s covenant is now the bedrock of our Christian faith, the cornerstone from which all religious beliefs flow.  It is a rainbow of trust, an apology with an eye toward a future filled with hope, joy and peace.

Can we do any less?  Lent is a wonderful time for forgetting the misdeeds of the past and looking forward to God’s promised Kingdom.  In Confession, after offering up their sins, many people say that old phrase that concludes a confession, “and forgiveness for all the sins of my past life.”  It is said as though those sins were never forgiven, those sins are not forgotten, those sins continuing to live and breath within you.

It’s over.  Your past sins are forgiven, the beauty of the sacrament propels to today and to tomorrow. We are forgiven people.

God’s given us a covenant of love, His Son.  God’s given us a commitment to be with us through all times of life.  God may have forgotten about the flood episode but he still remembers it and possibly even regrets it.

What can we forget about but still remember?  What covenant can we hold onto in a faithful trust represented by a simple rainbow after a rain?  There is only one covenant that I know of.

I can remember it as best I can…because “if memory serves me correctly…”

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“How To Tie A Bow Tie”

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

thI found a cheap bow tie online and thought it’d be cool to wear one.  They seem to be coming back into style so why should I be left behind wearing those hanging things.

I remember bow tie wearers from the past including John Daly, host of “What’s My Line,” and Bud Collier, host of “The Price is Right,” also but not trying to imitate Louis Farrakhan and Pee Wee Herman.

The long piece arrived and I thought I’d arrived.  “Distinctive, elegant, the talk of the town” was my destiny until that long thing just laid on the kitchen counter.  “Can’t be that difficult,” I say to myself remembering Louis and Pee Wee.  My neck size is shown on the back with a hook presumably to tighten it into place.  Wrong.

Being savvy in my search to retrieve the olden days I go to the new avenue for all solutions including the meaning of life: YouTube.

You cannot imagine how many videos are available for those who wish to create something pretty from a long string.  I watched several, including how to make a bow tie but since I’m already a proud owner I ignored them.  I find one where the guy exhibits slowly and clearly how this is done which I appreciated from my older age and attempts to redeem a past treasure.  “It’s easy,” he begins which makes me weary since I couldn’t even tighten up my neck size.

This calls for a bathroom visit to fully appreciate and absorb this lost craft.  I’m standing in my bathroom with my iPad showing the YouTube’s “easy bow tie making” video and duplicating his moves in my mirror realizing all the time that the mirror is the opposite of what I’m feeling around my neck.

“This is the hard part,” he says four steps further than I am watching myself in the mirror and thankful that I have a cocktail nearby.

It was a very attractive piece of string that I hoped to wear tomorrow.  It lays back now on the kitchen counter wondering to myself if a Goodwill recipient will have better luck at assembly.

I resign my bow-less tie-tieing to the resignation that I am able to write a beautiful funeral sermon for someone I’ve never met in 20 minutes, a Sunday sermon that leaves folks thinking about in 25 minutes.  (One extra cigarette for the Sunday sermons.)  I can listen and enjoy a story from an 80 year old that I’ve heard before and sincerely welcome a new employee wondering if this job is right for her or not.  I am able to small talk and banter about sports which I care nothing about and feel the joy when someone decides that it’s time for a change or celebrate a long time employee who enjoys his work.

My string will hang again tomorrow because I just can’t get the mystery of the string with multiple winds around a neck size that does not tighten.  John and Bud got it and I remember them for that.

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