Funeral Sermon for a Mother

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

mother-inspirational-dailyShe’s the beginning and she is never the end. She starts and then she endures.

She is the wisest of all creatures, carries you where ever she needs to be herself – feeds, clothes and proudly places your distorted drawing of an elephant on the refrigerator door; the “Hall of Fame” in every home.

She’s your mother. No matter her achievements or accomplishments outside the home, whether in a big or small job, her dying thought with be as “mother.” She creates as God creates, she sustains as God sustains, and she is sometimes not at her best, as God has also shown us about Himself.

Bishop Oscar Romero said, “We plant the seeds that one day will grow.  We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.”

What a minute! Are we talking about mother or are we talking about God now? Seeds, planting, future promises, laying foundations and yeast? Isn’t that God’s job? Or is God’s job, mother’s job?

Add an “s” to the “m” in mother and you discover it’s high time you find a place of your own. Take away the “m” and you’re talking about everybody else’s because you only have one mother.

In my young, caustic days as a priest, an elderly woman came into the sacristy and said that she would be my grandmother. I told her that my grandmother died. Not the best thing to say as I think back now but I did not need a second “grand” or “mother.”

The qualities of motherhood are qualities we all wish we owned and practiced. Whether achieved by our individual mothers doesn’t matter; the qualities still stand as important and worth achieving.

Not to bore you with a list of ten (for lists always contain ten items), I give you three qualities – patience, anticipation, and resignation. I did not promise you the easiest of qualities but whatever the other seven are, they follow these three words.

A mother’s patience is envious to me. She knows what needs to be done and yet it may take many minutes or months more before the child gets it. It’s that first step, a referee for bathroom visits whether it’s “number one or two,” the first properly held fork, the kneeling at the right times during Mass and “that” girlfriend” you’re seeing who isn’t right for you. A mother is patient, even if she is wrong. She will patiently wait for you to make her wrong, right even if you were truly right. (Only a son can appreciate that sentence.)

Anticipation is the second and easiest, and resignation, the third, is the hardest. “The world is yours,” she tells you constantly as though oysters grow on trees and her resignation for all the decisions she doesn’t make for you but are uniquely yours whether done in success or error.

For all of us which one is the most difficult for a mom to achieve? If I can guess I’d say “resignation” because of its power to set someone you love free without judgment, evaluation, restriction or consequence. “Patience” is a learned quality that may be achieved or not and “anticipation” is the easiest because it is always an unknown future we can safely imagine. “Resignation” is what our Creator God needed to do for us and what mothers reluctantly give in to us. In the Church, we call it “free will” but in mother’s case she’d say, “I think you’re wrong but what can I say?!”

The Catholic Church calls itself “mother” as though it can replace our birth mothers.  Nature claims “mother” as its adjective as though we need to protect her now as much as she protected us. And we love the phrase “the mother of all inventions” because of the anticipation and hope all mothers have for each of their children.

Bishop Romero also says, “We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it well.” I suspect that being God is a pretty big job. I know that being “mother” is also a pretty big job with lots of successes and failures. But that’s the beauty of any laid foundation – we build upon, revise it, sometimes repeat the same mistakes but we plant, influence and water this great gift of life. And, don’t forget to add plenty of yeast. We do this for ourselves and we provide this to our children and gently coach those around us.

Women have told me they lament that they are not able to have children but I’ve learned that motherly qualities are not restricted to childbearing. Each of us can “give birth” to what the Creator gave the created to create, “patience, anticipation, and resignation.”

But I’m still not sure if I’ve been talking about God or about mothers?

Books by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS. All available on Amazon.com

“Soulful Muse,” inspirational reflections on the Catholic Church and U.S. culture
“Living Faith’s Mysteries,” inspirational reflections on the Christian seasons
of Advent/Christmas & Lent/Easter
“Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings,”
inspirational reflections on the Catholic Church and U.S. culture

Newest books include:
“Letters From My Cats,”
a collection of letters written by my cats over twenty years
“Bowling Through Life’s Stages with a Christian perspective,”
Bowling as a metaphor for religion and growing up

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John 1:35-42, “Second Sunday in Ordinary Catholic Time”

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

john-bapt-435 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” 37 The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon.40 Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and told him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Christ). 42 Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

John was standing with two of his disciples and as he watched Jesus walk by he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” or as we’d say today, “There he is.”  The two disciples heard what John said and followed Jesus.

(John is now minus two disciples.  He needs to buy an ad to replace them and training the new disciples will set him beyond the fiscal year’s budget.)

Jesus turns to his newly stolen-from-John disciples and says, “What are you looking for?”

(They reply, “A strong 401K, with Roth IRA investment and deferred tax benefits while on missionary work, a per diem that includes a rental donkey with AM/FM radio, and a small 4-bedroom loft overlooking the sea of Galilee.)

They said to Jesus, “Rabbi, which translates Teacher, where are you staying?”  Jesus said, “Come, and you shall see.”

(As we all know, Jesus was staying at a manger scene that first block the altar but then was lowered for economic purposes.  He’s now staying with friends because of the “no walking stick or second tunic” line that he mentions later on.)

Andrew was one who abandoned John for Jesus for his better benefits which now includes medical/dental which John promised but never delivered and brings along his brother Peter.  He tells his brother that he’s found the Messiah, which translate into “Christ.”  Why he didn’t say “Christ” in the first place eludes readers of the gospel.  Jesus then looks at Peter, ignoring his newest, first employee Andrew and says “You are Simon the son of John, you will be called Cephas which translates into Peter.

Now let’s see what we have here.

The Baptist loses two committed employees who switch to the their new employer with the promise of advancement which is the same promise that John made to them.  The two new guys then want to know where Jesus lives but also want their own time-share 4-bedroom as well.  They call Jesus “Rabbi” which means teacher, then call him “Messiah” which means Christ, then Simon becomes Cephas for only two seconds before him name is changed to Peter.

___________________
There appears to be lots of promises made in this short gospel passage.  Lots of promises and hopes and dreams.  And, lots of translating when they could have just said, “Teacher,” “Christ” and “Peter” and skip all the translating.

Lots of switching employers during a big economic depression.  Lots of promises, hopes and dream being thrown about.

And all done in the simple statement that could have saved us all this time “translating” with the simplest and most powerful question asked of anyone in life, “What are you looking for?”
And our response to our own question is, “Can Jesus deliver?”  Or has he already.

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“Bucket List?”

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

bucket-list-picCopycats seems the order of every day even though we hold individualism as a higher priority.  We copy haircuts, musical tastes, tattoos, home furnishings…even murder patterns.  For our supposed uniqueness we are mimic people.  Now it’s the “bucket list,” from a movie that most have not seen but heard about and now it’s time to fill yours before time, well, times out as though life is a race to the end with endless choices.  A web site list 10,000 ideas just in case you need to copycat even more.

“Bucket” would not have been my word and “death wish” is too un-American so “bucket” it is.  I’ve never been one for goals, I’m just happy I wake up the next day and know the day of the week.

A list of things to do before you die is one of the rare times we even consider death in our botoxed-anti-aging- culture.  Those who have told me of some “before death” events would make Walt Disney and Las Vegas very happy except I don’t see how seeing the Grand Canyon can compare to reconnecting with a brother you haven’t seen in years.  Imagine the death bed scene when he says how beautiful the Grand Canyon was as his last words, “It’s big and deep!” as his brother hurries from the airport to be with him.

Instead of emptying your “bucket” with bungee jumping or holding Flipper’s tail how about letting other people fill your “bucket” with surprises and unexpected events.  “I want to see the sun set in southern France,” may cost you over $2,500.00 when your neighborhood sun sets upon neighbors full of stories and family adventures.  I have never heard a dying person share with me what Disneyland meant to her.

We keep emptying what is not there while we can fill up daily with what life surrounds us.  For us Christians, death is not the end.  Our faith believes that Walt built an amusement park in heaven just for those who need to fulfill their delusional “bucket list.”

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“Being There”

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

ProjectionA 1979 movie featured Peter Sellers as Chauncey Gardiner who does nothing else but reflect the projections of others including Shirley MacLaine acting out to making love to him as he watches TV on the edge of the bed along with a cast of characters that propels this human thing that only breathes to up-seating the U.S. president.  Chauncey became what ever our minds made of him.  He did it by doing nothing while the projecting arrows from others pierced him with the personality they wanted him to be.  (The last sentence is the only one worth remembering in this blog.)

The film was meant as a TV satire which was accomplished but more importantly points to the arrows that we all point.  We are rarely if ever the person others see us to be.  The goodness we reject within ourselves is pierced into someone else in the hope that goodness does prevail because it seems to be lax within us.  The converse works as well especially in these days when the evil we refuse to acknowledge within ourselves lives within another religion, another person’s color or just that other person over there that I don’t know but I’ll still place a strong opinion upon him or her.

The film is frustrating to watch because you either wish him to wake up or just die because of all the stuff others place upon him.  He is just “being there.”

Another twist of this “being there” is the priesthood.  I stand before all as the goodness you all lack to acknowledge within yourselves because of some silly reason, somewhere.  The priest abuse cases of children has softened this projection but it slowly will revive itself, just watch.  Why?  Because it is easier to place solutions upon someone else instead of our own supposed weary selves.  We project unto others what we deny lives and breathes within us.

I was with someone dying today along with another chaplain.  I gave her communion and touched her shoulder.  The other chaplain asked if she had stomach pains because she wasn’t eating and was she feeling alright?  (I thought doctors and nurses asked those questions but not chaplains.)  I remembering when I started as a chaplain asking questions about the quality of food and the type of room as though I was a concierge in a fancy hotel performing a quality assessment survey.

The patient projected unto us to be the gateways to something more than none of us know anything about but hope for.  “Wordless” is the best and most difficult challenge for a chaplain.  Just try standing in silence for 30 seconds with someone instead of saying, “It’ll be all right,” or “There’s jello tonight for supper, honey!”

Chauncey didn’t act or react, he just received those pierced arrows from unthinking minds and becomes a U.S. president.  A wordless chaplain has nothing in his/her arsenal except those uncomfortable and very long 30 seconds, a smile and an accepted perception and projection that something greater is about to occur.

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January One

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

january-1-calendarI woke up this morning with the same urge for a deep, dark cup of coffee that woke me up December 31.  I went to work (priests and holidays don’t mix should be a bumper sticker) and everyone seemed beaming while everything was the same.

There’s something about holidays that puts the “Scrooge” within us aside and suddenly we become the person our parents always hoped we’d be.  But like most toys carefully wrapped under the Christmas tree, torn open and played with for a while, we slowly return to the familiar, the practiced, the patterns of our lives that brought us to this new year.  “It’s worked this long so why tinker?” says me who has no January resolutions to break in February.

“Change.”  We hate it in our lives but welcome it when any politician spews it toward victory.  “That’s right, we need a change,” says faithful voter and the warm seat is replaced with somewhat the same tush.  Change is fueled by need.  When my favorite slacks no longer fit then change takes on a dynamic meaning.

I think most of us take a sailor’s notion of living life, “steady as she goes.”  Stay steady and what you thought was a problem will magically disappear.  It’s the power of the mind.  “If you think it’s real then it’s real” can get a lot of real time airing in our heads as long as perception doesn’t enter our mindless equation.

Left to our own wits we can easily outwit ourselves.  Even Scrooge believed himself to be doing the best he could under his circumstances of an unhealed past that haunted his present and stifled his future.  “I’m happy,” he says to himself as he slurps his evening porridge alone with a minimal glow from his fireplace.

Perhaps the metaphor for any new, beginning year.  We ask ourselves, “How’s the glow from our fireplace?”  “Can our profession retrieve that young person’s anxiety to open the carefully wrapped gift under the tree?”  “Can we uncover the unpredictable in the predictable especially in family where we think we have everyone figured out?”

The calendar says a “new year” whether we’re new or not.  The calendar says, “again” when we sometimes fight the repetition.  The calendar says, “another chance for change” and may we always choose to vote for change even if our tush is the same.

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2014 in review

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

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New Year’s Eve: “Knowing ‘The End'”

Posted on December 29, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

August-Osage-County1Two nights ago I watched the 20 minute end to a movie.  I heard that movie was good and watched it, well, at the end.  You can do that kind of stuff with cable these days.

Tonight I got to watch the whole movie and when I got to the part that I had already seen I continued watching.  When the credits started to roll I understood the partial ending I saw earlier.

It’s like a hidden curtain that we’d all like to peek through.  We want to know but we don’t want to know.  I guess it’s a control thing or perhaps how much money we should save for our final ending.  A book on her lap in bed was how one person was found.  A nap that lasted forever is another.  A random gun shot is another.  Death scenes are endless in their configurations.

One scene, in the completed movie I watched, had a mother at her wits end tell her 14 year old daughter something like, “Just die after me.  I don’t care how screwed up your life becomes.”  Now there’s a mother’s wish for the final third of her life.  Just wait for me first.

As we age we know the ending began with our beginning.  It’s a bargain we never made but one we live with.  “Live with.”  What an interesting phrase for what we call a gift, “life.”

There are only three acts in life – me, myself and I.  Sound selfish?  Not quite.

The first act of “me” is completely about being nourished and cared for because we are not able, capable ourselves.  We buy that.  Life’s second act is the main event of “myself” incorporated and a part of what can become “our” added to “selves.”  It is our engagements, commitments, investments and risks all taken for the sake of anyone other than “myself.”  What a grand act the second one can be.

Life’s third act is the personal appropriation of our efforts.  It’s not the laurel or the wreath placed upon us but a satisfying smile upon our second act and a renewal that it was worth the effort even if the efforts proved fruitless, as least in our estimation.  Perhaps smile is to mild a word.  Peace and contentment may be more fitting for those who made the worthy effort to make the second act of life, well, worthy.

My finally watched, completed movie has all the characters gather for a large meal and then drive off, one at a time, leaving the obnoxious mother to herself.  It was a sad ending.  It was good I saw the ending first because it made acts one and two make sense.

I don’t want to harbor on my third act of life.  I know it’s going to happen but I hope to concentrate on act two, while it lasts.  Standing ovation?  I doubt it, but a small hand clap would be appreciated while my final credits roll.

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Walter, My Dad

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Dutifully went to work at the newly formed credit union for over 40 years.  The adverb cannot be emphasized enough.  8-5 and Fridays until 8 pm were the hours he kept while continually warning clients that a credit union is not a bank but a safe place to invest your money.  He was its manager begun with a small group of investors who all gave $1.00 except my dad, because as he said later, “I wasn’t sure it would make it.”

At 46 years old he had me which made my friends ask, “How’s your grandfather?” not knowing there’s three siblings before me and one after.

He wanted to take the car to work but my mother insisted that he should walk for the exercise, a simple 30 minute walk.  I long to hear his thoughts as he made his way to work.

A secretary and my dad comprised the early days of credit unions.  A simple call from home with the extension “395 please” connected us with this silent, tall man with a gentle smile.  “Mom wanted us to call if you’d be home for supper,” asked the grandson/son and he’d say, “You kids go ahead without me.”

Today’s TV version of my dad’s late nights would have him cooped up in the local motel with his secretary or the Warren’s Restaurant waitress or selling drugs on Washington Street in Manitowoc, Wisconsin to help pay the bills or worse yet in a van in a hit series making drugs for the already drugged-from-the-small-ghetto-town kids that Manitowoc produced.

The fireplace was his “man cave” as we call it today except it was built to extend the kitchen.  There he’d sit with his cigar and glowing fireplace flame, one less than the other.  I wonder today what thoughts he had as he exhaled the cigar smoke with his stolid stare outside the kitchen window.  To interrupt him during those hours was always surprising to him.  He’d answer the kid’s question and then return to the stare.  (As years wore on he’d sometimes mistaken my name for our dead cat but that’s beside the point.)

Born in 1906 and a child  along side the number of a small day care center today, Walter finished high school and enrolled in a seminary in the big city in the 1920’s only to leave the seminary and return to begin this new business.

No one knows today why he left.  He loved his retirement as much as he loved his work, over 30 years of retirement.  My mother, the outgoing parent, passed away first and my dad’s final 8 years were spent with the five of us kids.

He stilled smoked the cheap cigar and still stared out the new window from his new home.  Our neighboring hospital wished to expand its parking lot (small town, remember? parking problem?) and 13 homes were relocated through Habitat for Humanity.  My dad was the last to sell his house in this growing non-metropolis.  The hospital’s finance director visits him along with my sister and me.

His cigars and staring may have paid off.  The hospital guy offers top dollar for Walter’s house.  He likes that but asks for another home, rent free for the rest of his life.  The hospital guy smiles and says, “yes.”  My dad adds, “snow, grass removal included.”  Hospital guy smirks and says, “yes.”   I told my dad, “What about cable?” and he looked at me to keep my mouth shut.  “Washer and dryer,” my dad returns with and the hospital guy again gives in.  The papers are placed before him, he signs them and says, “I like that pen.”  Hospital guy then did, well you know what he did.

I was never into sports but playing with my aging dad would have meant disaster if I’d hit him in the head with his arms folded in front of me wondering what the two of us were doing.  Didn’t happen.  But he did listen.

Rarely, if ever, responded but he listened to all the stories we kids were willing to tell him.  Some sordid and others just about growing up.  He sat there and listened; absorbed and absorbed all the information.  The squeeze?  It never happened.  He absorbed.

My dad.  He worked very well, he wanted to be priest for some reason, marries giving five children not knowing what to do with them nor always knowing their names, retires well and dies peacefully at 93.  The squeeze?  The five of us are still waiting.

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Ten Words I Hope To Never Use

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Words-Have-Power“Basically,” is the beginning of her sentence to tell me what my many years of education cannot fully fathom.

“Awesome,” is when the sun hits the earth.  Every other use is forbidden.

“So unique,” is impossible to say since unique is uniquely unique.

“To be honest with you,” begins a sentence that suggests I need to review all the stories you’ve previously told me.

“I wasn’t there but I heard that,” I wasn’t there either so we’re even now in both of us not knowing what happened so let’s forget the whole thing.

“Your sermon on the ‘end time’ was…,” my sermon had nothing to do with the “end time” and I never even used those two words in it.

“It was like,” similes and analogies are not your strength when searching for a simple noun.

“You know,” if I knew I would not be listening to you now.

“Actually,” unless we’re talking about science fiction, I suspect most of what you’re saying to me “actually” happened.

“It’s not rocket science,” when did that become the most profound and educated profession?

“At the end of the day,” I will happily not be listening nor standing in front of you.

“Never,” Actually, I know the number 10 is in my title but you never say never and basically and honestly don’t say ten when you have more.

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Walter: “That’s The Way It Is”

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

A High Bar

I hope we all have people we can admire for their professional and honest approach to their work. For newscasters, a bar was set high with the work of Walter Cronkite. The weight of this man’s integrity and career continues to marvels viewers and fellow journalists. Even saying his name with his throaty baritone voice carried a trusted believability.

CBS News

For nineteen years, during the evening meal, he summarized the day’s events for us in as much an objective way as possible. Gimmicky graphics, moving cameras, split screens, arguing consultants and scrolling gibberish was not his presentation of the news.

The trusted honesty that he instilled in us was not because he was a personality. (He seemed to not have one, actually.)  He didn’t want or intend for that to happen. It was simply (and I emphasize that word) to deliver the news from around the world in a clear, concise fashion. As he spoke, you had time to absorb and make sense, or no sense, of what was occurring from the Vietnam War, to JFK’s assassination to the thrilling excitement of the first space shuttle.

It’s been said that President Johnson remarked, “If we lose Cronkite on the (Vietnam) war, we’ve lost the country.” He even reported as a corespondent during the Nuremberg Trials, following World War II.

He Had the Look of Trust & Authority

Integrity

Always a favorite word of mine, Cronkite believed in what he was doing and felt that he made a difference by doing it. (What more can anyone ask of life?) That is not only integrity, it is passion; the kind that gets you out of bed after only a few hours of sleep to return again to the work you just left.

Fellow newscaster, Robert MacNeil said after Cronkite’s death that, “He didn’t have to pretend to be anything that he wasn’t. He loved being Walter Cronkite, doing something valuable. People deserved the truth.” What a marvelous epithet for all of us to reach toward.

Too Much Stuff Moving & Yelling

Too Many Channels

With all the television news programs these days, I guess the devolution of news was bound to happen. The more “objective” reporting of yesterdays are now replaced with snipes, smug dismissal of public servants and self-serving newscasters who are more celebrities than journalists.

The only subjective view in Cronkite’s newscast was from a equally “non personality.” For years it was Eric Sevareid who in sixty seconds delivered a piercing, crisp and articulate analysis on a particular subject that left your ears speechless when he was finished.  He talked to us flatly while looking at the camera, talking into a huge microphone with nothing behind or beside him.

One camera, one man, one day’s news. I felt that Cronkite was objective and I hope I was right.  At least there is a hint of doubt in my mind about him but I’m very sure of the current cable breed.

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