Advent Blessing: “The Donkey”

Posted on December 6, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

donkeyA donkey, not the most attractive of animals and one we rarely think of.  We think of his distant cousin, the horse – majestic and noble and fast running but our Nativity scene needs the donkey.  I don’t even think they walk that fast but they travel well.  The symmetry the second week of Advent is ready for the Holy Family.  The cow last week and this week, well, the donkey.  The cow is the beginning of our lives – mother’s milk and her nourishment – enough to last a lifetime.

This week it is the donkey – with its loud, noisy cry, a cry we often make in life’s later years.  Something will always to be found “wrong.”  “The soup is salty,” as we return to the same restaurant.  We’ll conjure up a complaint, no matter what.

When the big things of life happen to us, it’s the little things that slow us down and wear us out causing donkey sounds.

A donkey.  The least of our thoughts throughout the year until Advent rolls around and this weird hybrid carries our Mother and with her, our Son.  Two people inside of one and led by her silent, soon-to-be husband.  It is this “weird beast” that carries the Son of God – not a golden stead, not Silver, Trigger, Buttermilk, Scout, Flicka or Piebald (look them up!) with glory and pomp riding to our rescue.  Our faith-carrier is a donkey.  The donkey takes the Holy Family to the place of our salvation’s birth and later rescues them to Egypt.  Could Trigger have done that?

“Whinny,” is a gentle, high-pitched neigh.  Can we pray this Advent that our “whinnies” be gentle and thought about before spoken?

The symmetry of cow and donkey is complete as we continue our Advent adventure.  The cow began and the donkey ends this marvelous and wonderful journey of life.

We are a community of people gathered here until our individual lives ends.

As we age we begin to use props to get us from one point to the next.  It seems weird but it works.  An 80 year old with sneakers with a Velco strap doesn’t make a fashion statement but it makes the traveling easier.  The cane, the walker, the scooter all get us from A to B.  Traveling is slower but these weird additions do the trick.  The weird donkey carries salvation to its beginning and then to its safety and then back again.  Another weird donkey welcomes “the Christ” into Jerusalem with banners made from nature hailing him as “king,” “messiah.”  The weird donkey begins the beginning of redemption and again brings it to its completion.

Who would have imagined that this slowly traveling donkey played as important a role as the Cross, the miracles and the resurrection did.

Are there “weird” things in your life that turned out to be not so “weird.”  Please welcome the slowly traveling donkey to salvation’s stage.

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Second Sunday of Advent: John the Baptist

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

index“One mightier than I is coming after me.  I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.”

Johnny Carson had Ed.  Ed would introduce Johnny and then sit on the couch…for 30 years.

Jack Benny had Don Wilson.  “The Price is Right” had Johnny Olson.  “Jeopardy” had Don Pardow.  Joey Bishop had Regis Philbin and Merv Griffin had Arthur Treacher.

They were the stars’ sidekicks  They were the ones who did not create shadows; it is the star in whose shadow they stood.  After their routine build-up of the star they were out of the picture.

And so enters and exits John the Baptist.  I guess if you wore camel’s hair and ate locust with wild honey (how else could anyone eat locust?!) long enough you wouldn’t, no couldn’t be the star.  It’s “someone else,” John keeps saying building up the suspense until the star arrives.

Who would be our sidekick in this wonderful journey of life?  You’d never guess who I think it is.  It’s our parents.  They are the ones who paved the way for us to enter this world, fed/clothed/admonished/counseled and tons of others duties to help us enter life’s stage to perform the one performance we’re able to make in life.

Advent is about anticipation. We kinda know what’s coming but we’re not sure how or when or the worst of all, why.  No matter how many Christmases you’ve honored through your life, you don’t know what this Christmas will bring, will mean, will prove to be.  A Christmas for many of you may have meant a holiday closer to bringing a solider home from Europe, a child’s first big gift under the tree, a resolve to do better at work or in your relationships, a hope things go as well next year as they did last year or a wish that it has to get better after this awfully long year of whatever occupied your time and attention.

People and situations can all be sidekicks to our one performance in life.  They can introduce us to all sorts of circumstances – some welcomed, others tolerated.

In case you didn’t notice, I made all of us the stars of the this earthly show.  What if we are the sidekick to someone else.  What if it is us wearing the dreadful camel’s hair and eating locust with the obligatory wild honey?  You were a sidekick to your own children – propelling them into a world that was foreign to you but trusting that they’d succeed, counseling a grandchild with advice you’re not sure of but you believe in.  (Believe me, grandchildren listen as they announce during your funeral what an influence you’ve had on their lives.)

I guess we can be and are both the sidekick and the star of our one life’s performance.  Sometimes we get to sit behind the desk with the hot lights and the microphone and other times we get to sit on the couch.

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“Anticipatory” Advent

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

2ele3apWhat a great word.  It’s an adjective but unfortunately we use it as a verb as though we can propel forward and predict outcomes that haven’t happened.

In our minds we have the ability to end what hasn’t begun.  We create the situation in our minds complete with sounds and colors, the conversation and the outcome.  It becomes clear to our mindful minds how an unknown situation will become known.

“It’s the flowers,” we say to ourselves as we approach her door and ask forgiveness for that impulsive fling last week.  We’re baffled because the conversation has already been settled in our minds while she doesn’t open the door but still grabs the flowers.  “How did that happen?” we say to ourselves as we leave after knowing what the anticipatory scene ought to have been.  We walk away with the question always asked of those who anticipate, “But I thought that…”

It’s both gift and curse of us thinking humans who have the ability to think forward and backwards and both times think we can assuredly predict outcomes.  “I’ll act this way to her,” we rehearse to ourselves and end up yelling at each other about yesterday’s problems.   “If I hold her hand she’ll die in peace” we say to ourselves as we return with a cup of coffee and she’s gone.

“Anticipatory” is a drama play in our minds.  We have the stage set, characters in place and the music is ready to begin as the curtain opens to our imagined act but now played in real time, only without the audience.  (Oh, wait!  There is an audience.)  The audience is in our minds.  “We’ve (I mean, ‘I’) rehearsed this and practiced it again and again.”  “This is not the way it was supposed to turn out,” “You’re not hearing what I’ve said to myself for days now.”

Lucky us humans.  We can look back and change nothing and we can look ahead and predict.  How’s that working for us?

Do we need a new cast of characters or do we need a simpler version of this mystery of life, which is not anticipated but mysteriously lived.

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Christmas Tradition: “The Iron Curtain”

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

i2christmas_treeRaised in the 50’s when the Iron Curtain was an imaginary and exaggerated fear, our home had its own iron curtain on Christmas Eve.  Although only made of cotton, it still kept from us from one place to another.  The “another,” in this case, was the decorated Christmas tree in our living room.

To this day, I have never decorated a Christmas tree.  I’ve always had “people” to do it for me.  “People” in those days were my older brother and two sisters.  Along with my parents, it was their job to prepare the tree while my younger sister and I were forced into Russia, aka. grandmother’s house.  The forever few hours tortured us wondering what would be under the Christmas tree and if it would shine and glimmer the way it did last year.

The telephone call from the free world finally comes to Russia and we are permitted to return to our homeland.  Darkness and cold descends upon Manitowoc, Wisconsin.  My grandmother has my sister and I carry her wicker laundry basket full of gifts to the waiting car.  The drive home finally arrives.  (About ten minutes in real time but to a child, an infinity.)

Now the real ritual begins.  Ritual, by the way, is the repetition of something to ingrain within you something important.  It is different than a rite or a ceremony.  Ours was a ritual.  Repeated in real time but recreated in our minds ever since.  We need to change into our pajamas but in order to do that we need to get upstairs which is through the living room now blocked by the cotton iron curtain.  We promise to close our eyes while running through the living room upstairs.  What trust we placed in young people?   (I only peeked once and have done self imposed penance ever since.)  After changing, we need to return once more through this sacred and secretly decorated room.  How much time has passed?  Way too much for a a youngster.

The ritual has only begun.  (If you thought that Advent’s four weeks was over, you haven’t been to our home on Christmas Eve.)  We kneel down (right next to the iron curtain) to say the rosary.  All five decades.  All said supremely solemn as though to punish two young people even more.  The third decade brings the relief of something different.  My younger sister gets to place the child Jesus in the manger crib.  It was the gift of the youngest to do this.  (Oh, the perils of being the middle child!)

The rosary is finally completed and none too soon.  With proud fanfare on all their faces, the iron cotton curtain is removed and the majestic Christmas tree is revealed.  Smiles abound.  Another Christmas ritual has been methodically and religiously carried out.  Not a detail missed.  Not a feeling ignored.  The mounting momentum, the racing child’s pulse, the anticipation of another Christmas surprise that was really no different from the previous year is successfully carried out.

The curtain separating us from wonder, hope and joy has been removed and is now ours to savor and enjoy.  Forever.  Or at least, for another year.

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“The Circle Game”

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

5740446_f260Round & Round She Goes…

Perry Como sang, “it goes round and round…” and probably no one remembers the song except me. Anyway, I bought a cylinder toy for my cats. It sits on the floor and casts a small red light that randomly circles the floor. It drives the cats nuts. They scurry after the passing light. Sometimes they’ll just sit and stare at the passing light. Other times they will just lay there and look over their shoulders, as though a different view will help.

All in all, before they’re get bored – they have neither caught, grabbed, touched or even gazed at the little circling red light.

Stopping the Circles

The circles that we create in and for our lives and keep in motion only perpetuates our doing nothing and chalking it up to “fate.” We say to ourselves, “It will be the next circling around that I’ll finally grab it,” “After all, everything in life is about luck and I’m presently merely unlucky,” “I know that I can capture it if only the circling would stop for a moment.”

I hear more stories from people confidently tell me about how if A lands on B before C happens then D will occur.  D did not appear because A was the wrong beginning (so much for the wishful B and C) and now they’re frustrated and don’t know what to do except try A all over again and hope that D finally appears. Alas, there is no D because there was no A.

Illusions can keep us going for quite awhile (or a lifetime) but they slowly wear us out. My little cat toy runs on three AA batteries. What power do our little circles run on? I often find listening to people that when they correct their A then getting to D is no longer a circle but a successful and fruitful journey.

If not Perry Como’s song then how about one from Joni Mitchell?

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when you’re older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won’t be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

“The Circle Game,” Joni Mitchell

 

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The Banquet of the Resurrection

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

eucharistThis resurrection business must be tiring work, Jesus is always eating.  Each time he’s with his followers and after wishing them “Peace” is “What’s in the refrigerator?”  This guy just can’t get enough nutrition in him.  (I wonder if this made the ascension difficult.  It may have taken two or three attempts before Jesus was lifted up!)

We don’t really use the word “banquet” anymore.  We’d say a “buffet.”  It’s more popular and offers a wider assortment of foods for hungry souls.  Jesus’ followers are never sure who this guy is until some food is shared.  Then, suddenly, it occurs to them that this is the Christ (not his last name) but the Son of God.  Who he is now is the reason for everything that happened before this resurrection.  (The light finally clicks on.)

This revelation and awareness must have been exhilarating to his followers.  It freed them to finally admit and finally know.  Struggling with the meaning and purpose of this guy, they simply break some bread with him and it all becomes clear.  (“Oh, that’s what he meant!”)  We sometimes think of the apostles as slow learners but look who’s coloring the kettle black!  We’re pretty slow learners as well.  It may take us years to learn a simple truth about ourselves or someone close to us.  A simple truth that we’ve denied for years, a simple awareness that was in front of us all the time; a simple revelation of a greater and deeper meaning to our lives.

All accomplished after “Peace be with you” is said and a piece of bread shared; in the early morning quiet, gathered around a fireplace with the wind dying down and truths making themselves known.

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Glue & Faith

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

glueWe don’t think of glue as a theological word but is there a more significant word for our lives of faith?  Glue binds broken pieces, reconnects pieces that fit together and is, well, sticky.

We often hear that “mom was the glue of our family,”  We immediately know what that  means.  We can imagine the situations where she was called upon a word of advise, a leaning shoulder, or carefully chosen words of caution.  We can imagine the situations where she felt it better not to say anything in spite of her feelings or the times when she did speak because she felt it important.

Glue.  Every home has it.  We hope we never have to use it.  Everybody knows how to use it but few of us can do it without making a bigger mess.  Glue is only used when something is broken.  I’ve thrown glue away because it was no longer useful.  (It wasn’t used and it glued to itself.  That’s a good thing, isn’t it?)  Nothing broken during the glue’s lifespan.  There are other times when something breaks and I reach for the only thing that can possibly piece together what I don’t want to lose.

It is the broken times of life when we reach out an open hand to our faith.  We can take our faith for granted for years until something or someone breaks some thing or someone.  We want to be whole again; we want to regain what we felt was lost; we want to heal and mend the factions and broken pieces of our lives.  We reach for the glue of faith.  The application is simple even if some spills.  It’s only the first step.  Then time is needed to dry.  The item, just glued, cannot be moved for fear that it might break apart once again.  After a time we are able to place it where we can see it; now mended and glued.

There are also the heavy duty glue jobs in our lives.  This calls for something extra special.  It’s not just glue that we reach for, it’s “crazy glue.”  Only a glue called crazy can heal and mend this broken relationship or important piece in our lives when everyone around us says to “move on” or “just forget about it.”  It’s the crazy love that forgives even when forgiveness is the most difficult feeling to express.  It is the crazy love that easily sees imperfections but loves still.  It is the crazy love that we know deep inside does not originate with ourselves but is greater than us and gives the strength and the craziness to be loving, forgiving and hopeful.

With all the political divisiveness in our country these days, a friend of mine defined the two political parties for me.  He said that republicans see reality as it really is and democrats only see what is possible and hopeful.  Interesting.  Perhaps the glue needed for our lives calls for a little dab of each on each other.  Faith shows us in stark clarity who we are if we are willing to look and examine ourselves.  Faith also gives us a dab of a hopeful future.  We hope that both stick with us.

All of us can mend, heal and fix as best we can those broken parts of our lives.  We only need a ready tub of glue at our disposal.  Jesus is the glue bonding this life to his Father.  But remember, don’t get any on your fingers.

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Advent: Mark 13:33-37, First Sunday of Advent

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

indexI could be making a million dollars a years.  Instead I’m here with you today.  All the money I could be making from my television show, books and DVDs to ease me easily into retirement.

And it’d be all based on fear.  I would scare you into submission in the name of the Lord.  I would raise my voice at the right times, slow my tempo to let it sink into your heart and also yell when I thought I’ve lost you.  I’d quote selected bible passages using a teleprompter since I’m a good Catholic and can’t quote scripture.  I’d tell you about the gospel about “being alert,” “you do not know when the lord of the house is coming,” and “may he not…find you sleeping.”  I’d have your attention because I would make you scared of yourself and of God’s surprising, unannounced visit.

It works for the government, we needed to invade Iraq for our country’s security and we know how that turned out.  I’d stand up here in my $1,000.00 suit and fancy car outside all paid for from your unknowing the time of Jesus’ return and the wrath that will follow it.  Fear.  I can’t miss and you cannot win.

Well, I don’t have the fancy suit but I do have the nice car and I offer you this season of Advent.  Advent is a four week preparation preparing us with what we end up with faithfully every year.   It’s preparation for… who-knows-what?  Will this Christmas be any different than the last one?  Will we slowly become someone else in four weeks time?  During these four weeks we are asked to be attentive, a little more sensitive, a few less naps (just in case the big guy decides to descend upon us), and act like people in waiting.

Gee, I wonder what Advent reminds me of?  Oh, I got it.  Life!  Life is being attentive, sensitive, less naps and people lying in wait.  Short lives or long ones, Advent is a big waiting game.  I see these guys on TV and laugh to myself because fear is such a simple sell.  Anyone and any group can promote fear and scare you into their silly agenda.

Today we put out the single cow to indicate the beginning of Advent.  The other Nativity characters will appear as the four weeks progress because that’s the way life unfolds for us.  One day and one week at a time.

In the fable “Jake and Beanstalk,” Jack needs to sell what?  Like a biblical parable full of metaphors, in the fable the cow is a metaphor for “mother.”  Jack needs to sell mother, giver of meat and necessary milk for magic beans.  Magic beans that are then transformed through his life into what he becomes and who he is be.

We bargain with life when the mother’s work is complete.  We need to find our own wits in order to outwit what perils lay before us.  Advent is about waiting and during this wait is encounters, episodes, situation comedies, tragic love stories, romantic escapades and a list of unlimited experiences.  It is Advent, it is life.

I don’t make a million dollars a year but each day I feel like a million bucks in my encounters, experiences and in life itself.  I don’t need TV’s fear mongers.  Each Advent day, I mean everyday of life, I need God’s mercy, God’s palm and somebody to buy this cow I need to sell.

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“We Lose A Library”

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

index“When an old person dies, we lose a library,” is a loosely stated African proverb.  How true.  How much that person has read throughout life and digested from fun fiction to telling biographies to shocking newspaper headlines.

Digested but remembered?  Who knows what we retain that is important to us as best we can and hope to never forget.  I’ll spend days trying to recall a star’s name from a movie even if I could easily “Google” it.  (It’s not a verb, by the way.)

The lost library is the memories that go inside the casket along with the person.  Family names and episodes that helped form that person, that personality; the context of that person’s life.  We can look at charts of our genealogy along with arrows stretching up and down but it’s worthless without the narratives that embodied those faceless names.  It is the stories – funny, tragic, circumstantial that create a personality, a person.

The library may have been years of reading Reader’s Digest because time was precious or it may have contained philosophy, theology even if the reader didn’t understand it all.  Periodicals may have been what the pastor recommended and may have also included ones he didn’t recommend.  Those were the fun ones.  A movie line I like has Sean Connery as the mentor with his student nearby.  He’s reading the “National Enquirer” and the student asks, “You’re such a brilliant writer, why do you bother that rag?”  Sean quietly says, “The New York Times is for dinner, the Enquirer is for dessert.”

Losing a life, especially one that has aged, loses so much of what was experienced, read, said and unsaid.  I smile to myself at funerals wishing that during the vigil someone could place a cup under the deceased ears.  From the ears would flow forth all that that person heard through his/her many living years.  This information is to be shared with all the survivors – no matter the content, it is the library of life that is being preserved.

To me that sure beats a family chart with arrows pointing in different directions.

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One, Tiny Flame

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

47281805There it is, now lit.  It took longer to light this time because the wick is lower and I just can’t seem to reach deep enough inside to relight it.  But I did.

The house is still heated, I can’t rely on that little flame to flame forth a comfortable, warm winter home.  Heck, if I quickly stood up right now I think it’d go out.  Oh wait.  Forget that.  I just tried it and it didn’t go out; this little, small flame on my kitchen table with a supposed spruce scent that “fills the room” as the box falsely described.  I didn’t buy the candle for the scent but for the small flame although a nice scent would be nice.

It flickers, ever so slowly as it tries to keep itself alive.  The heating wax surrounding it allows the tiny flame to stay lit.  Is it enough to turn off the kitchen light?  I’m not even trying because it’s a silly question.  If it can’t heat, it certainly can’t illuminate.

I like the teeny flame because it seems to show everything when its barely shows anything.  If folks walked into my kitchen now they would not say, “Oh, what a beautiful flame you have going here.”  It wouldn’t be noticed.  It would remain an unsaid piece in the room.  None would smell the scent as the box described and our conversation would move to topics that interest them.

But they are not here.  It is just me and a single, miniature version of those real flames that surround a veterans memorial or a park’s statue.  My tiny flame doesn’t mark great and grand events but only the passing thoughts that pass my mind as quickly as they enter.  Random, varied; none solved or resolved.  Perhaps a few reenactments of a personal play that cannot be re-acted run through my mind but it seems productive to try even if the reproduction turns out the same way.  It’s my single flame.  I can have an opening and closing night in one hour if I want to.

I considered a larger candle, hence a larger flame but thought, “Why?” as I stare at  my small version.

Wax builds up as the flame continues which can pose problems for the tiny thing that neither brightens or scents as the box described.  The surrounding wax can keep the tiny flame vibrant and alive but the same wax can also drown it. Without careful observation on my part the wax may extinguish my undersized flame.  Interesting how the needed wax can also become the drowning wax.  I need to keep the minute flame lit every minute I observe it.

One flame.  No scent in spite of the box description.  No one around to comment, criticize, weigh or measure my kitchen flame or my momentary thoughts.  Watching the heat-filled wax build up now so it doesn’t triumph.

It’s my night.  It is my single flame.  I don’t mind that I miss the scent which the box promised.  It’s my flame.  And I enjoy it every single night.

______________________Key_____________________

single flame:  the pilot light of our lives that keeps burning through all times of life.
scent:  the promises of life are not always realized, real or imagined.
wax: those who support and encourage you keep the flame alive and those who intrude and make you like them overwhelms the single flame.
re-enactments: upon reflection we try to reshape made decisions, unmade decisions, missed opportunities and opportunities that went sour as though enacting them again will change the result.
single flame:  what gets us out of bed in the morning and lights the day ahead, allows a good night sleep to prepare us for the next day.

 

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