SLOW DOWN AND TAKE A BREATH TO READ THIS

Why we keep certain people in our lives that drive us batty is a mystery.  Perhaps we think there is some advantage.  I don’t know.  Even if you don’t have a friend like this, one of your friends has a friend/co-worker/neighbor like this and you want to say, “I am tired of hearing you complain about this person all of the time!  Either do something about it or stop whining!”

Easier said than done at times.

In my life, this person is Miss Patience (Patty).  She knows I am writing about her.  I think she thinks it’s funny.  

She takes FOREVER to do anything.  I like things done zip, zip, zip.  My mantra for running the parish is, “We start on time and we end on time.”  Not Patty.  After we talk about where we finally want to go and I ask, “Are you ready?” and stand and grab my keys and am ready to walk out the door, she will say, “Just let me (insert just about anything here: iron this shirt, hang this picture up, wash my hair . . . )

ARG!

She is a horrendous driver.  She ALWAYS picks the WRONG line at the grocery store checkout, at the toll road booth, in the confessional line.  I think she catches on to things but likes to play a game of, “I don’t get it,” just to see me loose my cool.  If I say, “Meet me at 3:00,” she’ll be there at 3:15 IF I’m lucky.  I swear, if I’m sitting around he house waiting for a repair man to show up and he’s late, I instinctively KNOW that she somehow has snagged his attention first - baked cookies or something and said, “I just have a quick question,” and then talked his ear off for an hour WHILE I AM SITTING IN MY HOUSE STEAMING.

Oh, oh, oh, and she KNOWS when I am in a rush and so says, “Can I just you an important question?  I will will be quick!  I will only take 2 minutes of your time.”  Have you ever noticed that when people feel they have to quantify how much of your time they will use, you can invariably multiply that by at least a factor of 10!?  (Get to the point, get to the point, get to the point. . . )

So, I talked to my spiritual director about Patty.  Of course he said she was probably far better for me than some of my other friends that I enjoy much more.  “She has much to teach you.  If you can learn to deal with her, you will be a far better friend to others when they need it, you will be far less stressed, and everybody will be much happier.”

And truly, mostly when my schedule is thrown off by her, everything still seems to work out.  There are times, however, that I just find it rude.  If I have to be somewhere at a certain time and I make it very clear, I will leave her behind and take off without her.  I deserve some curtesy too.  But I KNOW she is not going to change.  It is just the way she is.  If I am going to be happy and make the people around me happy, I am the one who has to change.  And if took me 50 years to get the way that I am now, it will take a lot of practice to get used to Patience. 

THIS IS THE GOODEST DARN BLOG POST EVER

I enjoy the English language and though I do not a profess to be an expert in the language, I do enjoy proper English when I hear it and like to make a game of improving my language (though I am FAR from perfect.  Many of you like to point out my foibles and I enjoy that.)  Further, poor speaking habits, in particular, are like sins.  You get rid of one just to discover another.  Or perhaps you had a habit to which you were blind.  Or an old one comes back after you start hanging around someone who led you down the garden path in the first place.

 

“Yeah,” is a word that is a perpetual dandy lion in my garden of words that seems to come back seasonally.  “Are you the one who left the milk out all night?”  (With a certain amount of shame and humility and a heavy sigh,) “Yeah, it was me.”

 

This year’s project was to stop using the word “good” when I mean “well.”  Most people don’t care I realize, but I find the project fun.  I’ve enlisted many of the students in school to help me with this project.  Every once in a while I’ll slip after being asked how I am and upon replying “good” one of them (usually a server in the sacristy just before Mass) will say, “I know you’re good.  God made you good.  I asked you how you are today.”  I’ll admit it is difficult to say thank you when they dish back to me exactly what I dished out to them.

 

The new word I am trying to tame is “actually.”  Actually, “actually” is not a bad word save that it is used a tad too much in my speech.  Actually, I use it a lot.  Actually it is like when my Dad quit smoking and became hypersensitive to others smoking, I notice a lot of people around here use actually a lot.  Actually, Fr. Pfeiffer is joining me in trying to cut back on this drug of a word.

 

Actually, trying to root out words and correcting grammar is a lot like weeding sin out of your life.  The first step is to become aware.  “Oh, I do that?”  That is why to be a Catholic requires some amount of quiet and contemplation, reflection and examination.  It is one of the reasons that a daily examination of conscience is so important.  There needs to be the desire to rid yourself of this thing.  (Contrition.)  And most likely it won’t be instantaneous.  After all, it may be something that has been cultivated in your life for years and still done by the people around you.  So you begin by noticing it.  “I did it again didn’t I?” and then imagining how it could have been done better.

 

The next step is keep narrowing that gap between performing the action and the catching of yourself in the act until the actions happen almost simultaneously.  At some point they switch places, almost tripping you up as the new way of doing things is being worked out in the moment, and then, finally, with grace a perseverance, the good becomes habit.

 

Yeah, this actually is the method that I recommend to people for most things.  It works pretty good actually.

WHAT'S MY LINE?

Here is an interesting almost quote:

“It is time for a cultural change. We can no longer operate under the idea that everyone makes money and why shouldn’t I? This mentality is a very easy slope to slide down one day finding yourself breaking the law. There is no acceptable level of corruption. Our role in this is not a job it is a calling and together we can make a difference.”

This is not from a papal encyclical or a statement by the USCCB. This call for cultural change stemming from this calling is not even a homily. It is from a presentation by an FBI agent speaking on how we can save ourselves from financial ruin in this country. But in every way it sounds like the Christian message. It is the call we have as baptized Catholics anointed as priests, prophets, and kings, imbued with the responsibility of infusing our homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and nations with Divine moral imperatives of virtue, duty, honesty, and integrity. In our role there is no acceptable level of corruption. Our role in this is not a job but a vocation and together we can make a difference.

GUEST BLOGGER - PRESENT AS PRESENT

Just in TIME for Easter CK, a regular contributor to AA, sent this guest blog in so that I could have this day away. Thank you CK - and well said!

Just about every close friend I’ve ever had has eventually said to me that they thought they were born at the wrong time. If only they had lived in a different era, they would be happy. We live in a time unprecedented in prosperity, scientific advancement, entertainment, communication, transportation, and care for disease and yet we are one of the most unhappy generations of humans that the world has ever known. More people than ever are suffering from depression and record numbers of people are trying to escape this life through suicide. We have so many things that happier generations could only dream of. What is it that makes our time in history, a time that should be utopia, so unbearable.

Recently my car’s GPS system (my most beloved modern convenience) took me through a very bad neighborhood to get me to my destination. I was relatively safe because it was still daylight, and at every traffic light I took the time to study the stores and houses and apartments. Most buildings were just boring cubes of brick with barred windows, but I was surprised to find some beautiful, stately architecture despite the shattered windows and boarded up doorways. Saddest of all were the stunning churches, their steeples piercing a lovely blue sky, abandoned and neglected in the surrounding chaos. I thought to myself how tragic that this priceless piece of sacred art stands scarred and useless where no one wishes to linger too long. Why? It is not the trees, or the streets, or the blue sky that have ruined this church’s vocation. It is theft, and obscenity, and violence, and sloth, and intemperance that surround this church and make it unapproachable - in a word, sin.

My friends and I were not born at the wrong time. We rise to the same sun, breath the same air, and tread the same earth as our predecessors. But every one of us is like a church in a bad neighborhood. We can’t find lasting love, and we feel so anxious and unsafe, and we don’t feel like we belong anywhere. It’s not the times that are wrong – WE are wrong. It is sin that makes this “the wrong time”.

If we all obeyed God’s laws of chastity no one would feel used or be abandoned and we would find true love. If we respected that life of the unborn, perhaps we would respect the lives of the born and not always be on the edge of war. If we sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, we wouldn’t put our trust in kings and princes, or money, or drugs, or any other false gods. We would point our hearts toward our true heavenly home and not this life and its passing anxieties. We would realize that the reason we feel like a fish out of water is because this world is not our true home.

It is we who form the times, and it is we who can transform them. Our dark times mean that every faithful Christian is a beacon that makes so many heads turn to see where they can find the light they so crave. We can do nothing, but God can do everything, and He can change the world with one person who cooperates with His grace. His will for you today is right where you are with the people you meet today. You were not born at the wrong time - this is the time He chose for you before the beginning of the world. God has to scrape the bottom of the barrel today to find the few who are willing to conform themselves to His will. That means that we who are weak, afraid, and inadequate were born for greatness. If we cancel out our own wills and embrace God’s, perhaps at the end of our lives we will find that we were noble soldiers in a great spiritual battle. Perhaps we can make the times “right” not only for ourselves, but for the generation to come.