Who Is This Haunting Woman? She’s Anne Bancroft

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Anne_bancroftI’ve seen her but other times I have not. I know who she is but her name escapes me; often many times. She’s everywhere and sometimes I spot her but soon she’s gone again. Hidden yet visible. Is that even possible?

She’s that young girl in grade school that you’ve noticed but hasn’t spotted you yet.  She’s the neighbor’s wife who smiled at your twelve year old self.  She’s the woman in your dreams who leads you to good and questionable places.  She’s the old woman you stop for on the street even when you’re in a hurry.  She sits in the same pew space every Sunday morning, never misses.  She becomes the mother that you remember after you’ve forgotten your mother’s face.  She was with you at your birth and escorts you from this life.  She’s even that girl scout whose cookies you turned away because of your stupid diet.

Well, you may not know it but she has a name. For all of us, she remains nameless but I’ve uncovered who she is.  This is the least I can do for readers since her elusive part is so elusive. But she has a name, it’s Anne Bancroft.

We may recognize her from movies but her face fits perfectly to my (or our) elusive woman/mother that looms over our earth, active within our minds and hovers inside our wanting souls.

In film, she’s the teacher and savior in “The Miracle Worker,” teaching Helen the word water with her gentle hands. When have those hands touched us in our lives? In “The Graduate,” she’s the seducer of youth as Simon and Garfunkel sing with gorgeous legs that lasted her lifetime. She’s the enticing deceiver in “Great Expectations” luring in the young to feel the pain she couldn’t resolve in her own life. The wounded woman she then plays in “An American Guilt” as she smells adultery on her husband as she walks around him. As a ballerina, she ridicules Shirley MacLaine on a windy roof for not achieving what she has. (Classic movie conversation, by the way.) She’s an extra with no credit in “Blazing Saddles” which makes her presence even more evasive and she plays herself (is that even possible?) in “Silent Movie.” Disguised as a nun, she guides fellow sister Jane Fonda through “Agnes of God.” (Jane Fonda as a nun?)

It is not her acting versatility that makes my point but her aging face with more age added to her years of work and labor.

Mothers die, women come and go in all shapes and colors (and shoes!) but within them all lies Anne Bancroft. I’ve never met her but I know her. I have definitely seen her many, many times in my conscious and unconscious life journey.

Is she Anne Bancroft?  I think so, but I’m not sure.

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Tomorrow

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

tomorrow-today-yesterdayThere we go, it’s now all set. I’m going to do it tomorrow.

I’ve given this a great deal of thought. Why, even yesterday I was thinking of tomorrow and now look – it’ll be tomorrow, tomorrow.

There’s nothing impulsive about my decision. This has been going on for a long, long time. Careful planning, the weighing in of options and consequences and what the hopeful outcome will be. No, no, I’m not taking this lightly…this tomorrow thing. It’s going to happen and happen soon; why it’ll be tomorrow, as a matter of fact.

Friends have told me, in a nice way that I was delaying when I told them that it’s happening tomorrow. I guess they just don’t listen that well. I’m sticking to my plan, the one I’ve had since the beginning – it is tomorrow.

You know, for years people have said that I’m a procrastinator but I’ve always believed that I can’t be anything I cannot spell. (Spell check fixed it for me.)  So there.

Tomorrow gives me enough time for the final preparations. I have all of today to prepare for that next day which is called tomorrow.

You know, it’s funny. I could have done all of this last week or even a year ago for that matter but then I wouldn’t be able to do it tomorrow which I’ve already told you is my firm, unchanging plan.

Annie was correct when she sang, “the sun will come up…”

When tomorrow comes, I’ll be awake, fresh, ready and all set to go with my prepared plans. It’ll be a cinch once I begin all this tomorrow. Just you wait. You’ll see.

I don’t like this “just get it done” mentality that some people have. What if there are errors or mistakes. What do you do about them then? Then it’s too late. You can’t go back. Waiting isn’t the worst thing in the world, is it? Diligence is the best practice.
Well, okay, let’s see. Do I have everything for tomorrow? Am I all set? Do I need to reshape or rethink anything more? Let’s see, when is tomorrow? Oh, how silly of me, tomorrow is the next day.
Then tomorrow suddenly becomes today.

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Our Aging Music: Embodied

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Image“Monday Monday” was having a crisis about life and her work.  Having turned 48 recently, it just seemed too much for her.  For 48 years she said, “Can’t trust that day” and that day seems to have finally caught up with her.  “Sunday Will Never Be The Same” came over to comfort her.  She turned 47 years old and remembers how difficult it was for her to see the number 50 approaching, “I’ve lost my Sunday song, he’ll not be back again.”  “Happy Together” (49 years) heard the crying and thought that his title could brighten them up.   “You for me and me for you, no matter how they toss the dice it had to be…” always helped him work things out between he and his wife, “Elenore,” a few years younger than “Happy Together.”  She’s quirky in her own way.  She’s the only song I know of where “et cetera” is sung.

Ever since “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” passed away at 82, “Elenore’s” aunt, she spends more time alone.  She tried to reconnect with “Downtown” who at 48 years is still active, “just listen to the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova
you’ll be dancing with ’em too before the night is over…happy again,” but “Elenore” just never got into those “rhythms of the traffic in the city.”

All of the gang was supposed to team up with “Groovin” who at 47 is feeling the aging thing a bit harder than the others.  “Song Sung Blues” at 41 was planning to host the party serving her favorite 44 year old wine, “Cracklin’ Rosie.”  They hope to have a good time looking back over the years.

Unfortunately, “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me,” “Wedding Bell Blues”, “Hello Mary Lou” and many of their other contemporaries will not be at the party because of early deaths. But happily, the music continues to gracefully age along with the rest of us.

I guess the Righteous Brothers were right after all, there is a rock ‘n roll heaven.

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“The Body of Christ,” Reward or Grace

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageThe Church loves lists.  We had the movie list and its ratings of what movies our parents would approve of and those we’d see anyway, someday; I wonder if anyone bothers to refer to that list before seeing a film.  Now we have lists of priest abusers.  Each diocese is supposed to post it online, most don’t.  Is the list on an Excel spreadsheet?  Now we need a list of politicians who cannot receive communion because of their pro abortion stance.

June’s special Sunday is Corpus Christi Sunday, honoring the body and blood of Christ.  Reward or grace?  Is communion intended to be a type of dog treat for those who are doing a good job or is it intended to be a source of efficacious grace.  (I love the word efficacious although there are not many opportunities to use in a typical conversation.)  Actually, “efficacious grace” is redundant.  Grace can only produce the desired result that defines efficacious.  Sinners and those slightly off the path need the Eucharist more than anyone.  Instead of denying politicians communion, the bishops should be saying “You need to receive communion much more frequently than you presently are.  You need the grace of the sacrament to help you in your discernment and judgments.”
Is it our attitude and preparation toward the Eucharist that makes it grace filled or is it the reception that prompts better behavior and links us closer to Jesus?
People still ask me that immortal question, “Father I received communion this morning, can I go to again this afternoon?”  “No,” I say, “you’ve already had your treat.”  (See the tongue in my cheek!…)

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Gracefully Graceful

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageYou wonder where it comes from during trying times but it arrives, just in the nick of time.  Reflecting upon it later, you consider whether it might have been God’s grace.  What a great help to help us explain the good deeds done by us sinful people.

And it’s not only a noun but a proper noun.  It’s also an adjective and even more it’s a verb and an adverb.  What a flexible word, this grace stuff.  “Grace Kelly graced us with her effortless grace and graceful presence as she gracefully walked into the room to say Grace.”  (Wow.  There’s grace all over the place.  It’s active and moving.  No, it’s that person’s name.  No, it’s how she’s doing it.  No, it’s over there, somewhere.)  It is rich in worth, effortless in its attempts and limitless in its quantity.

Alas, the Catholic Church needs to rein in this wild grace stuff and present it as a commodity.  There are actually two form of grace, (in my Churchy voice) according to the one, true Church.  Sanctifying and actual.  Most Catholics can name those two graces, even on their deathbeds.  What they may not know is that sanctifying grace is that which is derived by the sacraments.  When you participate in a sacrament you receive this elusive, rewarding, beautiful proper noun, noun, adverb and verb.  Actual grace appears to appear when you need it the most.  We cannot determine graces travel time to us but we know that it is within us within nick’s time.

Just when you were about to say something questionable, grace zooms in from some unknown place and softens the tongue.  (I have yet to receive grace’s reward during those occasions.)  Another sibling has past away and you discover a peace that even amazes and baffles you.  A serious discussion wears you out.  You’ve said your peace and now quietly listen.  A story is told to you for the third time and your newly found grace enables you to listen again knowing there will someday be a fourth time.  A serious diagnosis strips you of hope but slowly and surely that noun/verb creeps into every part of your being.  A smile replaces a frown.  The handshake is forgotten and a hug is provided.  “If there’s anything I can do for you,” comes out of your mouth when there is nothing you can do.

Grace.  It’s a beautiful name.  It’s an even better verb when it travels by light speed to become, within us, a noun.  Our lives are truly graced.  We can be grace to each other.  Mary was full of it, so why can’t we be?  There is grace, in plentiful supply, thanks be to God.

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A List of Ten Pet Peeves

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

5476983_f260Little Annoyances

“A cause of annoyance.” I dropped a cigarette butt on the sidewalk today and a guy told me that that was a “pet peeve” of his. I smiled. Then I thought to myself later, do I have any peeves in my life? I decided I didn’t have any but then came up with ten of them.

1.) Putting gum on your dinner plate, as though you’ll finish chewing it later. (Is gum that expensive?)

2) Wearing a baseball cap while eating, especially if you’re over thirty. (Really? Are you that bald?)

3) Leaving church before it’s ended. (Does three more minutes truly wreck your busy schedule and stress-ridden little life?)

4) Crossing two lanes at the last minute to make a turn. This is a problem in Milwaukee, I don’t know about your city.  Added to this is my deciding to drive through a yellow light and the person behind me follows me closely through the light.  Had I decided not to proceed through that yellow light………

5) You hear one thing on the radio or television and hold on to it and repeat it as though a burning bush spoke to you. (Very common these days.)

6.) Having dinner with someone and she/he answers the cell phone and now you need to sit there and listen to his/her (one-sided) conversation complete with laughter of which is never shared with you.

7.) You’re telling a story about yourself and you are interrupted by your friend whose story may be more interesting; but that’s beside the point.

8.) You’re holding a door for someone and he/she then holds the door as though I was going to let go of it.

9.) Being forced to listen to loud music from the car next to me at the stop light while I’m trying to listen to Rosemary Clooney.

10.) Having to think of ten things to write, just to make it a complete ten, instead of the nine things that I really wanted to say.

The next time you want to leave church before the service is over, try to come up with your own list of nine (or ten) peeves. God will like you more and the presider will appreciate your continuing attendance.

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Mother’s Day Blessing

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

Mother.
There is only One God and there is only one mother.

God knew you before you were born and so did she. She carries you through the grocery store waddling down aisle after aisle looking for food that you need. She carefully gets into the car and fastens a seat belt around the two of you.

She eats for both of you during those enlarging months. (The ice cream is for her, the yogurt is for you.) Mother. Now one, united but soon to be two. Now, as an undefined unity but soon to be separated but forever one.

Then that day, on that one day, which you think is completely dedicated to you is celebrated with friends but rarely with her, she released you to this waiting world where she waits for you more times than you can imagine.

She teaches you patiently how to hold it until the right time. One day or someday you may teach her how to let go.

She reviews your crayon sketches not knowing what you were attempting to convey but smilingly tells you that it is truly a work of art and worthy of the refrigerator door. (Your first public showing!)

Before her eyes close at night she thinks of you and your safety – and when her eyes open in the morning and the oatmeal needs to be made, she thinks of you once again.

She will drive you where ever you wish to go and sometimes wish not – soccer, football, glee club, drama club, orthodontist, barber and perhaps even a psychologist to help explain your sudden emotional outbursts. You find her to be as demanding as a German commandant and as patient as one who watches paint dry.

She will tickle you, read to you, bathe you, scold and reprimand you for as long as it takes. She will act as president when a decision is to be made, counselor when your first friend abandons you, priest to help bury the gerbil that she never liked anyway, and most importantly she will be the observer – not to haunt but to guide you skillfully and carefully through misguided choices, impulsive decisions and that wrong friend from that neighborhood.

She will judge and weigh you for the rest of her life but she will never condemn you. She will evaluate you and like a good Chess player always stay at least three moves ahead of you. She may not even play Chess but she will win…every time.

You will finally be on your own and think that you are free of her but (and here’s the haunting part), her messages, mantras, platitudes, absolutes, aphorisms, family secrets that no one can ever know about (but everybody does), all her hopes and dreams for you will continue to filter through and live in your mind and soul and heart.

We are in God’s house this day but mother lives more intimately and personally than any deity. No wonder our Christian God is a jealous God, He has mother to compete with Him.

When she dies her legacy will then live within you…whether you like it or not. What started at the grocery store continues now through you. Mother’s continuing life now lives within you. Don’t ignore it. Don’t heed her enduring messages each time but do not ever forget them. (You may try to forget them but those messages have not forgotten you.)

Mother. God bless them. God has to bless them. What choice does He have? What could He, in His creative and omnipotent powers, do without them?

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The Commencement Speech I’ll Never Give

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

CU-Cap-and-Gown.jpgThe month of May rolls around and the roles of college students changes from those who’s absorbed to now those who will share.  Many will look for jobs, others may have secured theirs and still others may be prone to further their education or just wonder about it at a nearby Starbucks.  This is the speech I’ll never be invited to give.

“Graduates, faculty, trustees, family and most importantly parents.  Thomas Wolfe was right, you can’t go home again.  You’ve lived in a home created just for you for some 22 years but now it is time to create your own home which is not always a brick structure but it is truly a place.

That most of us here have shoes older than you are is not to put you down but to invite you into a perspective that is always broader than yourself.  1992 you were born.  Bill Clinton was president and your fist dose of leadership was a sexual foray of entitlement.  Since then he’s turned out to be a pretty decent guy as is the hope for all of you gathered here today.

More than likely, your parents did not take you to church often because they wanted you to find your own faith which is pretty difficult when there is no foundation to build upon.  In that regard I blame them for their oversight which says more about them then it does their parenting skills.  But not to worry, newly graduated folks, that yearning and emptiness that you will sometimes feel as an adult is a trigger that is requesting your undivided attention.  That trigger is the alert telling you that life is more than only you.

All the helmets and backpacks, seat belts, child seats, strollers (with AM/FM radio) and safety precautions your parents have inflicted upon you are now removed as you venture toward risk, challenges, and dreams with many of them full of failures and rejections.

You’ve successfully clicked your way through high school and college, sometimes using only two fingers.  I envy you but I would never want to copy you.  Remember please that nothing will nor can replace looking someone in the eye while relaying a story instead of using those two fingers of yours.  Nothing can replace a personally written note of sympathy to a friend instead of some Internet card with butterflies roaming the edges.  Nothing can replace the maturity of sincerely telling a lover that you are moving on instead of telling another friend on Facebook.

Never can mistaken communication with intimacy.  Never mistaken the easy road for the one that is honest.  Because, so often now, personal honesty is the only honesty we can trust.

Technology keeps telling us “we are in control” as though we are in control.  Illusions abound.  You’ve all grown up with Harry Potter so I hope you know how the power of illusion can illusion a lazy mind.

You and I are not in control except when it comes to our telling comments, statements and reflections that are shared with close friends.  And they are done in person, one to one.  You’ve watched more television than any generation before you and are apt to be more sarcastic than anyone your age has been.  Sarcasm only rises with experience and yours is just beginning.  If you’ve watching too much “Glee” then you’ve missed out on “Breaking Bad.”

Watch them both and allow a synthesis to occur.  Synthesis.  I fear it is a lost word in our U.S. culture.  We hear, digest and repeat but I fear that we rarely, if ever, synthesize.  That word provides the end of two previous words.  The first is a gathering of thoughts, the second is an opposition to those thoughts and the third, the synthesis, is what lives within you and then becomes future comments or commitments or promises or pledges or allegiances or obligations or even passing whims.

The home that you will now create is within you.  Create it carefully; fill it with worthwhile memories, potentials and dreams.  Guard it with your life because it is your life that will unfold because of what you’ve created.

I’ve haven’t mentioned Jesus Christ, God or His mom.  Figure that out for yourself but know that your home can house many rooms, many chambers, many nooks that contain gems yet to be unfolded or known but are still precious and worthy of your attention.

Be glad that you cannot be home because now you’re able to create a home of your own – person hood, authentic, sincere and worthy of the life you acknowledge this happy day.”

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Verbal Habits

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

ImageWe throw them out there in conversations.  More than likely we are not even conscious that we are saying them because we’ve used the word or phrase so many times.  I suspect the word or phrase is used to fill “dead air,” as we say in radio until the conversation either changes or continues.  It is annoying to hear them but hear them we do.  A sampling…

“Truthfully,”  is an alarm clock for you to replay all your conversations with this person because now you’re finally about to hear the “truth.”

“The thing of the matter is,” both “thing” and “matter” don’t matter much.  Just tell me what you’re thinking.

“Basically,” I have a graduate degree.  I am capable in handling complex thought patterns, including yours.

“At the end of the day,” At the end of this day I’ll not be standing before you but enjoying soft music and a cocktail.

“You hear what I’m saying?” Often thrown into conversations throughout the conversations.  My eyes tell you that I’m listening to what you’re saying.  My hearing may not be great but you’re talking loud enough that that statement need not be sprinkled throughout your long-winded statements.

“When I was your age,” I know, I know.  There was no air, roads or food.  When I am your age, I hope I never make the listener feel less than human.

“It goes without saying,” Boy, this is a waste of my listening time.

“As a believer,” (church folks)  Okay.  I already know that I’m going to hell.  Can we get lunch now?

“It Is What It Is,” (see same blog)

“Actually,” I thought everything we’ve been talking about has been “actual.”  Now we’re finally getting “actual?”

“You’re a priest, so,” Yeah, I know what I am.  I’ve never committed suicide but I do have some thoughts on the matter.

“You haven’t met my wife,” Yeah, but after meeting you I bet I’d like her a lot.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,”  Now you’re talking.

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“Doubting Thomas”

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

ImageThomas was the one who held out his belief in Him until Jesus appears to him after the resurrection.  He’s supposed to represent the rest of us believers who doubt, sometimes or a lot of the times.  Yet Thomas does not represent us because he got to touch and feel and to see for himself.  

Centuries later we are hear still doubting and wondering (as well we should) but still looking for that touch, that quick feeling of assurance.  If that were to occur in our lives then it would no longer be faith.  It would be fact.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed,” is how the Thomas story ends.  It is the unseen that weighs faith’s strength.  It is the unknown that measures faith’s depth.

A fellow employee was talking to me about beginning a new relationship after an eleven year marriage.  He said that one night he prayed to God to give him a sign that something was possible for me and the next day he met the woman he’s been dating the past three years.  So now, he believes.  I guess he touched and felt faith.  Now he’s a lifelong faithful follower of Christ?  Time will tell but keep the oxygen flowing through your lungs.

It reminds me of Frank Morgan, the Wizard in “The Wizard of Oz” – with smoke blowing, levers moving up and down, left and right as he maneuvers his omnipotent ways to match our temporal and fleeting requested ways.  “Ahhh, I guess there is a God,” says my confident friend after his supposedly divine association.

St. Augustine, writing in 300 or sometime earlier than most of us have lived, summarizes how little time has past between us and how still we forget that we who have not seen are truly blessed, even in our doubt.

Don’t you go drawing back from your God, love your God.  You are always saying to him”give me this and give me that”…say to him sometimes…”give me yourself.”
if you love him, love him for nothing…
don’t be a shameless fool.  you would not be pleased with your wife if she loved your gold…if the reason she loved you was that you had given her gold or given her a fine dress or given her a splendid Villa or given her a special slave or given her a handsome eunuch because if these were the things she loved about you, she would be loving you.
Don’t rejoice in such love as that, the adulterer very often can give more.
You want your wife to love you for nothing…and you in turn want to sell your faith to God?  “Because I believe in you” say to your God, give me gold.
Are you not ashamed? “Because I believe, give me gold.

You have put your faith up for auction.  Notice its price. that is not what it is worth…it is not to be valued in gold or silver…that is not what your faith is worth.
It has a huge price tag; God himself is its price…love him and love him freely for nothing.  You see,  if you love him on account of something else you aren’t loving him at all.
You must not want him for the sake of anything else but whatever else you want you must love for his sake, so that everything else may be referred to love of him, not so that he may be referred to other loves, but that he may be preferred to other loves. 

Love him, love him freely… for nothing. 

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