The “Walking Dead”

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

LPTitleThey are the ones breathing and moving about but their breath is old oxygen and their movements are circular.

Their appearance to us seems normal or expected but inside them only lives the regrets, remorse or rehashed failures or losses.  A simple word from us about the future lowers their heads and droops their shoulders as they submit to our comment knowing it does not apply to them.

Consuming used air keeps them going while their daily motions look to be similar to ours.  Their behavior exhibited whether at work or home can have numerous aberrations – stern without compromise, compliant with no self regard, passively acting behind aggressive actions, sluggishly pleasant – the mingling of opposites they can display is countless.

The image we all have of an 80 year old plagued by the worst of her past is crystallized in their lives.  Words of “hope, forgiveness or peace” are as lost to them as the Christmas cards we throw away without reading because we already know the sentiment they contain.  If those three words escape these mournful walkers suppose what the words “bliss or joy” would do to their beating but lifeless hearts?

If their future is considered it has already been decided, judged and weighed down heavily by their past.  Tomorrow is truly a repeat of yesterday that is dreadfully endured today.  For them, life’s balanced division of three segments is summarized and controlled by one.

Meaning-well-do-gooders attempt their imposition of good upon those anguishing.  The sorrowful walkers may perform the asked for motions but inside are laughing at its futility.  “Less” is the added letters to words like hope or joy.  The hole in which they daily circle leads back to the place where they began; without resolution, understanding or a simple yielding.

What easily moves us from bed to work and back to a restful sleeps not only escapes but scares the misery walkers.

A happy ending to my sad description would only make me one of those do-gooders.  I don’t judge the sad walkers but are joyful (and hopeful) that I can write about them without being in their circular, lifeless hole.

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Empty Yourself

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Empty Yourself.

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“Sometimes”

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

SITEsometimesemail01Sometimes I’m happy and other sometimes I’m irritable and quick with the quip.  What a wonderful word for those in-between times of life.  By “in-between” I mean we faithful  Church folk have a stern doctrine and beliefs to follow with no questions asked when I could also end this end after “follow” with “to the best of our abilities.”

If you want to make mainline Christian leaders wince at you just try beginning a sentence with, “Sometimes…”  They’re eyes will look down in their totally-academic-training-of-why-is-she-doing-this-to-me-before-I-even-have-lunch-and-make-an-appointment-like-everyone-else-does-who-wishes-to-see-me…in my office.  (Smoke emitting from their eyes is reserved for the real fundamentalists.)

The Church says “always” and we believe that to be important, prayed about and reflected upon but sometimes in life “sometimes” creeps in and needs a “sometime” response against an “always” Church belief or policy.

Is “sometimes” sinful?  If a selfish end is the end then its pretty clear.  Does “always” always means “always?”

This reflection on this beautiful word of “sometimes”  resides within our consciences.  The Catholic Church, if not all mainline Christian churches hold dearly to the personal conscience which can be (“sometimes”) in contradiction to the objective truths of a Church.  Even our last two legalistic popes (J2P2 & Benedict) have held the “indissolubility” of the conscience although their behavior hid it.

I contend that, at least, the Catholic Church still doesn’t trust the “keys to the kingdom” in the hands of those not ordained, let’s call them – what do we call them – how about “laity,” a word that I never cared for.  The definition states, “as ordinary people distinct from experts and professionals.”  (This is where I enter the room as the expert.)

Besides honoring the word “sometimes” we need a new word for those who faithfully sit in the pews who have far more experience in parenting, friendships, life’s ups and downs and the “sometimes” of life that happen and give them a more fitting name for their baptismal place in the Catholic Church.

A quick example of “sometimes.”  A family of four children, all in Catholic schools with a stay-at-home-mom uses contraception.  “Sin?”  Easy when you sit in the sanctuary’s prominent chair and stare at issues you know nothing about.  “Sometimes?”  Well, sometimes, it is the time to weigh the sums and decide that the some of the time is not now.

Funny because sometimes I’m not happy and shouldn’t I always be happy?

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“What Happens When…”

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

746223It was a card table covered with a white cloth in the back bedroom of our Manitowoc, Wisconsin home that served as my sacred altar.  10 years old with no audience (I mean congregation) allowed to participate.  11:00 a.m. every Sunday until high school I honored the obligation to praise God on Sunday.

A tablecloth over the table along with a dictionary (Sacramentary), my oldest sister’s graduation ribbon to mark the pages, paper hosts carefully cut out and used every Sunday, my mother’s milk vase that served as a Chalice.

The piece de resistance for this third grader was the plastic vestment my parents bought for me from Columbia Magazine.  It was a chasuble, stole and manipule (no longer worn) and for me it completed my imitation but mindfully authentic reenactment of what I was forced to attend each day through school and Sundays with my parents.

I mumbled through most of my solitary Mass which the priests did in Latin but I said in gibberish hoping that God would either forgive or accept my lone yet aspiring offering reenacting what I saw enacted by the real priests each week.

Being an altar boy I carefully weighed the priest’s every movement because during those days one move amiss would miss the action and the presence of Christ would not arrive.  One arm lifted higher might have caused a crisis for the real congregation and a sudden pause in this youngster’s mind in his sister’s bedroom.  The sacrifice needed to be done right and you only had this one opportunity to do it.  (It was my sister’s bedroom and she needed to use it soon, of course….ohhh, those laity always getting in the way?!)

My sermon was reading the Sunday bulletin I had received from the real Mass.  Since I was unable to unravel the beauties of the Scriptures with my thoughts geared toward 4th grade looming largely, the Sunday bulletin was a wise solution.

I’m not bragging but I was truly faithful.  I allowed my sister to be an altar boy (acolyte was not invented yet) but only perhaps on High Holy Days.  She knelt dutifully but I’m sure she wondered what I was doing in my sister’s bedroom and how long this would take.

To add to my imaginary imaginings, we had a dead light switch in the hallway that I would turn on as if to alarm the bells and the world that I was about to preside at this sacred reenactment where you take the “re” out and have a 10 year old wearing plastic in front of no one yet imagining everyone.

35 years later, the marvel and wonder has only sometimes left me.  I smile now at the acolyte (now a Catholic word) carrying her cross at the entrance of Mass knowing that she has no idea who’s walking behind her.  She will have dreams of her own that hopefully will be honored and fulfilled.

Plastic has been replaced with cloth and the feelings are same for me – people listen, people watch (I can talk and preach to them as best as I can), the hosts are not made of paper and that young dedication and enthusiasm of a 10 year old continues.

How could it not continue?  It was never about me in the first place?

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“Bits & Pieces” of Our Lives

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

th“It happened this way…I remember her saying to me…It was rainy the night that we…I wanted to say more but thought that…”

It’s the bits and pieces of life that gathers so many memories and then holds on to them, as best it can, especially to those that are significant.  The problem with memory is the remembering part.  The beauty of remembering is what touched you the most.  You may not known it at the time but the remembrance found a permanent place and actively lives in your mind.  No, that’s not right, it’s not your mind that holds the memory, it’s your heart that keeps yelling to your mind to never forget your life’s important moments.

Is the remembering accurate?  More than likely, it is not.  Time has a way of hits and misses when it comes to details.  A movie I love begins with the warning message, “This may not have been how it happened but it is how I remember it.”  It’s just the bits and pieces.

I was looking for a piece of paper tonight that I wrote a long time ago to use in a sermon on Sunday.  While looking for that piece, I found more paper pieces than I wanted to see.  “Just one piece to do my bit on Sunday,” I thought to myself.  One bit of a piece of my life is want I wanted and strewn around me were bits and pieces of a lot of my life.

I thought, “Someday I’ll have to read all this stuff from my past,” knowing that I probably will not because the piece I wanted to find was not to be found so why bother with the rest.

I can look through other places for the piece but I doubt I’ll find it.  Finding a piece in a whole lot of stuff is like that hidden needle.

The funny part is that I know what’s on that small piece of paper containing a sliver’s piece of my life.  I can easily recall it but I wanted to see it for myself to fully remind me of what happened when I wrote that piece of paper.

Alas, I am left to my memory which I’m beginning to mistrust as the years continue to add up.  Driving to work this week it took my half the trip to remember what movie I watched the night before.  I remembered it and remembered that I loved the movie that I couldn’t remember 9 hours later.

I don’t mind all of this because the details never mattered to me even if they appear to do in my aging mind.  It’s the feelings, the weather that night, the food eaten, the conversation as I best as I can recall that linger and that now form the bits and pieces of that time, that place and the person I spent that time with.

After a long while of life we only have bits and pieces to retrieve.  We often lose the full and complete story but we don’t need that now, years later and in this present time and space.  We only have bits and pieces of what we hope adds up to a meaningful and full life.  The full and unabridged episodes in our lives if left to the TV miniseries that follows our death.  The actually doesn’t matter but it’s how we remember it that does.

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22 Seconds

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

thHe sits underneath the traffic light at 76 and Capitol (Milwaukee) on my drive home.  He’s been there six or seven times over the past two years.  The cardboard sign he holds says, “Homeless, will work” or something like that, I don’t remember.  The same spot as he squats in front of the 22 second red traffic light.  (Squatters rights?)

He looks at me as I look at him but then I look away but I see he’s between 18-22 years old and I wonder what his story is.  Is he truly homeless or a millionaire seeking to past the time or a college student writing a paper on “real life”?  People must respond to his sad sitting posture or why would he continue to return?  But it’s not everyday or week so someone must be assisting him.  (I’m sure colder weather brings better results.  He’s praying for a cold front and I’m praying for a miraculous Wisconsin heat wave.)

Would throwing $20.00 out my car window help him?  (I’d need a receipt.)  Calling the police would mean my really getting involved and who’s to say he’d stay for interrogation and interview, or me for that matter.  (I watch TV, I know how this is done with the one way window and the good/bad cop routine.)  It’s a sad look he gives me as I pretend not to see it but I do see it clearly.  “He could add a few pounds,” I think to myself as I light a cigarette pretending not seeing him.

Thankfully the red traffic light is only 22 seconds so my life has only been interrupted by less than 30 seconds.  22 of them.  22 of wondering if Obama is the culprit.  He lowered gas prices, why can’t he get this kid away from this traffic light and into some warmth?  Awful president.

“Ohhhhhh, that’s it, he’s a free loader who does this for a living!”  While in the sixth grade he dreamed this up and decided it would be a life’s career.  He’d beg with a cardboard sign whose message I can’t recall but one that clearly seeks shelter, help, job or two Packer tickets (50 yard line) for next season’s games.  I truly cannot remember what his cardboard message read.

“He’ll drink the money I give him,” I conclude during the red light’s 22 which seems longer than waiting for paint to dry. “Or, gamble” is my other choice when I’m considering scenarios wonderfully seated in a comfortably heated car and in 22 of those seconds have weighed/judged/evaluated someone.  Since I’ve seen him more than once I have the added advantage of heaping even more judgments upon my red-traffic-light-cold-sitting friend.

I could take him home with me which years ago would have been welcomed by a priest but now with the priest abuse policies I can barely have my 72 year old sister with me alone without her suing me for brushing her shoulder.  (“The policy is to protect the individual,” we are told when we all know it’s too protect the institution.)

“Lazy, that’s it,” I conclude after 19 of my 22 second passes.   “He must be a student who couldn’t cut it and now he comes here to bother my 22 second wait.”  Monies dried up?  Parents said, “No more!”  “Girlfriend rejection.”  (You’d be surprised how much thinking can go on in 22 seconds.)

If you want two evil words these days, just thing “government programs.”  We’ve grown or been inducted to reject and despise those two words most often because we don’t benefit from them and we know few, if any, who do?  So why have them?

Just think.  My $20.00 thrown out of my warm window to salve my 22 second guilt or a system to aid and assist someone with a cardboard sign I can’t remember because I don’t know him.

But there he is couched down in front of my traffic light at 76th and Capitol in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on cold winter night.  He did not ask me for anything.  He looked at me and I looked back.  I had 22 seconds to read his cardboard sign but I don’t remember what it said but I think it was something about helping him.

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“Is There Salvation for the Old?”

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

happy-old-people1Our U.S. culture was right all along.  It’s all for the youth preferably under 30.  Baby Boomers and those older may spend all the healthcare but there’s a reward for the young in heaven.  Heaven is reserved for the young.  Running, walking straight, perfect vision and hearing, limbs all in tact, always awake and alert with a crisp mind…who does Jesus think he is?  (Didn’t he live just 33 years?)

Just listen to your Bible and decide for yourself.  St. Paul says “he’s run toward the goal and he’s run a good race.”  (I don’t like walking to my car!)  St. Matthew says, “If you have ears to hear.”  (What’s all this about “years.”  I don’t get it!)  He also says, “God has blessed you, because your eyes can see and your ears can hear!”  (Thirty years ago that passage might have meant something to me.)  “If you have ears, pay attention!”  ( I have ears but that’s not the problem!)  St. Mark wisely asks, “Are your eyes blind and your ears deaf?”  (Yes!  That’s what I’m trying to tell you.)

Back to Matthew, “If your hand or foot causes you to sin, chop it off and throw it away!”  (If I could feel it, I would.  Or, if I could reach it, I would.)  Matthew again, “And don’t carry a traveling bag or an extra shirt or sandals or a walking stick. Workers deserve their food.”  (Then let me starve because my cane is my new-found friend and I don’t want my “foot to slip” as the Bible says.)  Matthew once more, “A little while before morning, Jesus came walking on the water toward his disciples.”  (Water’s easy.  Try walking  down the hallway toward the dining room without stopping!)

“Stay awake for you know not the hour!” the Bible says.  (Good luck with that.  That’s the best part of my day is the slow slumber with a book in my lap. Most days I think it’s afternoon when it’s still morning.)

Cut out your eye?  Life’s already done that for me regardless of my past sins.  Cut off your hand?  I knew I shouldn’t have had all those Florida vacations.  There’s no need to cut it off.

Thankfully there’s little mention of a dwindling mind since mine is frozen in the 60’s.  (Peter’s three-time denial of Jesus would have me say, “What did I say the first time?”)

Hearing can be relative when I announce that Confessions are Friday at 4:00 p.m. and there’s not a peep.  I say Friday’s Cocktail Party is cancelled and suddenly a hearing miracle occurred.  “Praise the Lord!”

Faith tells us when there’s less of you then there’s more room for God to enter our lives.  Boomers and those even far older have a lot of room for the saving and loving presence of God to fill in emptying eyes, selective hearing, wobbling legs, a slow, staggered walk but also have strong hearts for a body that is growing old but is always ready to receive the Body of Christ.

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Fourth Sunday in Catholic Ordinary Time: “Evil, Me?”

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

Good_vs_Evil_by_umerr2000It’s great to be a sinner. I’m glad to be a sinner.

How much of our lives are in search of a sinless existence?  “Someday!”  “Just one more rosary!”  “Just one more indulgence fulfilled!”  “Just two more good deeds and I’m sinless forever!”  There’s only two recorded cases of sinless people as far as I know (and only Catholics believe one of them is Mary, although the majority don’t really think about it much.)

But we are sinners.  And throughout our lives we lament, remorse, guilt-ridden, harbor and fight with ourselves over what, our nature?  We do not have a sinless nature, otherwise we were not born from the loins of Adam and Eve.  But we were.

I wouldn’t want to be sinless.  Know why?  Because then I wouldn’t know what evil or wrongdoing is like.  I’d be immune and oblivious to it because I would only know good.  (Are my wings and halo showing?)

We ought to be celebrating our sins because it leads us daily to God.

Sinless folks don’t worry about a union with God since it is already present.  We, however, in our sinful, nefarious ways and behavior know all about sin, transgressions and other sordid selfish acts that cause us to discover and rediscover a forgiving and loving God.

Does a sinless person rely on a forgiving God?  Of course not. Why would he/she?

Today’s gospel (Mark 1:21-28) presents a problem that has always puzzled me.  It is always the demons and unclean spirits that recognize who Jesus is and what he’s about.  “Get away from me, Jesus of Nazareth!” and “What do you want from me?” are strewn throughout the gospels.  It is because of their evil that they know and question the good. It is because of the evil they have chosen.  You can only choose if you have a choice.  Sinless people have no choice. Evil people choose not to do good, to be good.  It is because of their evil that they’ve become uncomfortable, unsettling roaming spirits with no place to call home.

When I visited the Dachau concentration camp it was a haunting experience.  I knew what to expect but I couldn’t help but wonder with Munich, a major metropolitan city, only a short 30 minute train ride away what it meant to those German citizens during those dark, evil years.  As Christians, they knew about the goodness and love of God…most of our famous Christian theologians are German.  Yet…yet… and I don’t have an answer, only the question.

Why?  Because I’m a sinner too!  How else could I know what warped and skewed thinking they were thinking when Christian tolerance condoned and even encouraged outrageous acts.

The prayer between the “Our Father” and the concluding doxology still bothers me in the new translation of the Mass.  It says, “free us from all sin.”  I don’t want to be free from all sin.  I don’t want to be sinless.  I want to keep sinning in order to know about the good or evil that I can choose to discard and when good is forgotten to feel the forgiveness of God.  I want to keep sinning so I can recognize evil when I see it and then call it by its proper name.

I want to keep sinning so that I can tell the difference between good and bad.

The beginning of the Easter Vigil has that beautiful, sung prayer when the priests sings, “Oh, happy fault of Adam’s sin.”  How happy we can be in the forgiving and powerful peace that God offers us each and every day.

I don’t know about you but I know about me.  Right after Mass I most likely will commit a sin between 11:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.  Why?  Because I’m a sinner and I like that.

I sin, God forgives.  It’s not an endless cycle unless you want it to be.  It is called moving from an unclean spirit to one that is trying his best to know the difference between evil and good.  And then choosing the good.

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How Long Is A “Moment?”

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

TheMomentHorizon2The Easter season is full of joy except it’s never a season but a belief, a hope, a promise. Easter joy is a moment because I believe a moment is the only timed word without a time or limit. Ask anyone how long a moment lasts and they’ll give you that weird look like asking how fish breath.

It’s got to be in the top three of my favorite words. It is timeless but controlled.  Limitless but has an end. It has a specific beginning but you never know the end.

The worst of all “moments” is the nurse’s departing comment, “The doctor will be with you in a moment.” “Oh good,” I say to myself as that good feeling melts into wondering if he’s reading a medical journal to hone up on my medical procedure. I’ve already read the Pain Barometer poster and the other poster of what a wonderful hospital this is and that cheesy, tranquil picture I’d never hang in my home. I’ve seen the stuff that he’s about to use on me but refuse to examine it for fear of knowing too much.

So, what’s left while lying on my back, half naked and staring up at the ceiling tiles and refusing to count them for fear of being labeled obsessive compulsive. How many moments have passed since I was told it would only be one of them by the kind nurse who is now telling the next victim (I mean “patient”) that “it’ll be a moment before the doctor arrives.”

Ceiling tiles provide a wonderful opportunity to examine my life. I wonder now if the spinach my mother encouraged but I ignored could have avoided this visit. “When did this all begin,” I ponder to myself since that word moment now becomes plural. Lying there, I become the waiting-for-the-doctor in diagnosing my own problem. “I looked this up,” I say to myself after reading one online article instead of the six extra years after college that the waiting-for-doctor has invested.

My moment feels like forever when forever is something in an unknown future. A moment with a good friend feels like one second while wishing for a second or third moment more. A moment playing with a six-year old lives eternally in your mind even when he asks for the car keys at seventeen.  The moment a 65 year marriage ends is one that continues counting for the rest of her life.

You can elude, avoid or put off whatever you like and you can also savor, never forget and hold deeply and tightly within yourself that once fleeting but eternal yet temporal word, “moment.”

My dad, self-employed, cleverly put a sign on his door at lunchtime, “Back in moment.”  He had nice, long lunches.

The doctor enters the room and says, “I bet you’d rather be 100 places other than here right now.”  I respond, “I bet you say that to every patient.” He replies, “Yeah.” Afterwards, he leaves the room by saying, “Your day can only get better now, and yes I say that one every time too.”

I’m okay, but I had a moment with those ceiling tiles. If I died St. Peter would ask me, “Did you see the light?” I’d say, “No, I saw ceiling tiles and they weren’t all straight!” I saw my life’s recollections about my life, my extensive medical experience (one or two articles), my regrets (few, but still!) and happiness’s (more moments than there are moments) and my half-clothed body waiting for the moment when this moment would finally end.

What is Easter joy and how long does it last? Please give me a moment to think about that one. Thank you.

 

book_list

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“Body, Mind & Spirit?” Good Luck

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Spirit Mind Body 1Three new buzz words put together to “wow” you into whatever program or purchased service is offered to you, usually when you’re older.

What better unity than one between “body, mind and spirit.”  However reading St. Paul you’d think the body is the least of the three with “spirit” winning our attention.  Never mind that mind is not mentioned much by Paul, it was the division between body and spirit that captures his words.  (Is that his problem or ours?)

The Catholic Church encourages a diminished body making way for the spirit that needs development and then finding a oneness with God.   I recall many seminary classes when St. Paul is discussed and how the lowering of the body is replaced by an emphasis on the spirit.  (I always thought it was an awkward division but I needed at least a “B,” so I bought into it.)

We’ve all seen movies where, in the name of God, the body is mortified to the glory of the spirit as though there’s a division and constant struggle between the two.

As often happens in theology, the thinking is great but the application very often fails.  Creating a division between body and spirit is our first problem.

When you’re young, your body is a physical object to be tested and tested again in both sports and alcohol.  “How much?” is the unconscious question repeatedly asked by a youthful 18 year old.  The tested body of an 80 year old seeks a spirit to make sense of the body’s aches and pains that match her age.  (“If God wanted me to live this long, then why didn’t He…” is often said but never answered.)

The referee to all of this is the mind.  The body may yell and we may yearn for the spirit but the mind is the middle piece that somehow unites the three.

I don’t wish the mind to be in control because it never is, it’s too influenced by all kinds of stuff out there and has a difficult time processing it all.  That’s where the body steps in to help inform the overwhelmed mind.  That’s where the spirit haunts the mind until it is reckoned with.

Save your money.  There is no program or service that can unite three totally different pieces of life.  Trying to combine them makes for a great looking ad campaign or a healthcare slogan but the work is done through our own personal prayer life, and it’s free.  In youth we have a growing mind controlled by the body with little regard to the spirit.  In later life we have a failing body and a history-ladened mind that is searching for fulfillment through the spirit.  Who’s right?

Well, I guess it depends what age you are.

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