USEFUL WISDOM FOR 2024 #29

FROM A NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE  

 

LIVING WITH THE RESULTS OF YOUR CHOICES

A Bellarmine University Baccalaureate Homily 

May 8, 2004

I have set before you life and death, the blessing

and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and

your descendants may live, by loving the Lord

your God, heeding his voice and holding fast to him.

Deuteronomy 30: 19,20

Do you want what’s behind door number one, door number two or door number three? Do you want to keep the new kitchen appliances that you have already won or would you like to trade them for what’s behind the curtain on stage? Some of you may remember the long-running TV show, “Let’s Make a Deal.” Contestants in ridiculous costumes were offered choices between “a bird in the hand or two in the bush,” between what was certain and what was possible. Sometimes people would trade something like a plastic comb for a choice of doors. Sometimes they would end up with a Hawaiian vacation, a room full of furniture or a booby prize. The biggest winners were confronted with a second, more difficult choice. They were asked whether they wanted to trade their Hawaiian vacation for what was behind a curtain. They could win a shiny new car or they could end up with a live jackass.

The program was popular, I believe, because it was symbolic of the human predicament. We, especially you graduates, are faced with a world of choices and sometimes those choices produce great blessings and sometimes they bring disasters. Sometimes we will be better off because of our good choices and sometimes we will have to live in a hell of regret because of our bad choices, knowing that we brought ruin on ourselves because of those bad choices.

In the first reading chosen for this Mass, the Israelites are about to enter the “promised land” after an arduous trip across the Sinai desert. Before they start their exciting new lives in the land of plenty, Moses lectures them about the necessity of make good choices in a land filled with blessings and curses as well. Their happiness will depend, in a great measure, on how they choose to choose.

In many ways you graduates are entering a “promised land flowing with milk and honey” after having survived the arduous journey of college and you, too, have choices to make. Your choices will affect you for good or for bad. You need to know that your freedom to choose does not guarantee that you will make good choices. Making good choices requires, not just knowledge and freedom, but wisdom. You live in a world of unprecedented knowledge on one hand and unprecedented lack of wisdom on the other. The ability to choose from many choices does not guarantee that you will choose wisely. The world you are entering is full of smart people doing a whole lot of dumb things. You know a lot of facts and you have been pumped full of information, but at the same time you are entering a world knee-deep in the fall-out of people’s bad choices. The freedom to choose from a smorgasbord of choices does not guarantee that you will choose wisely.

It is important that you are not just smart, but wise. It is important that you choose wisely because your choices will bring blessing on you and those around you or they can bring ruin on you and the rest of us as well.

This brings me to another point. You were not created nor have you been educated merely for your own good. As Jesus says to his followers in the gospel reading today, “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel basket or under a bed; he puts it on a lampstand so that whoever comes in can see it,” and in another place, “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Your light must shine.”

I would like to end this short homily by quoting Nelson Mandela, who quoted Marriane Williamson, in his first inaugural speech. I can think of nothing better to leave you with than these challenging words.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel secure around you. You were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us. It’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Graduates, make good choices and let your light shine - for your own good and the good of the world in which you will live, work and raise your children, and, yes, the world the rest of us will be living in as well! We need you to be good and good at what you do. God is there to help you and we are here to support you. Congratulations, good luck and may God be with you!

   

PLANTED WELL - DESTINED FOR GREATNESS

Some seeds were eaten by birds, some withered under the sun, some were chocked by weeds, but some grew into a huge harvest 

mARK 4 1-9

One of the things about being a priest of my age is that you are always running into people you have baptized or united in marriage several years back. Often you are amazed at how far they have come. Sometimes, however, you are shocked by how far some beautiful young couples have let themselves go! Sometimes it’s all you can do to hold back a gasp. The same can be said about priests. The years have not been kind to them. They are like sprouted seedlings scalded by the sun or growing plants crowded by weeds. They squandered their potential. It hurts too much to watch.

What got them into trouble in the first place, I believe, is their belief that things like graduations, weddings and ordinations mark the end of school, the end of dating and the end of seminary instead of a beginning – a beginning of a lifetime of fighting one’s lazy streak and one’s temptation to rest on one’s laurels.  

A graduation is called “a commencement” for a reason. Rather than being a celebration of the end of your studies, it was a celebration of the beginning of your careers and lives as independent people. What happens after you leave school is more important than what happened while you were there. At a graduation, we do not celebrate a harvest. We celebrate the fact that the seeds of your future have finally been planted. What happens next is what really matters. 

Jesus makes a very important point in today’s gospel: planted seeds, no matter how good they are, must be tended: watered, protected, encouraged with fertilizer and sometimes, even pruned. Otherwise, their potential for reaching their goals will be wasted, stunted or overpowered.

Of course, Jesus was originally talking about the reception his teaching was getting. Some, he said, heard what he said, but evil came and grabbed it like hungry birds gobbling up seeds on top of the ground. Some heard what he said and got all excited at first, but they soon fell away because it required too much. Some heard what he said and listened with enthusiasm, but other things grabbled their attention and soon they lost interest. A few heard what he said, took it in and watched it change their lives forever.

These words can also be applied to you. Some of you took what you were taught, religiously and academically, and wasted it like seeds sprinkled on concrete. They went nowhere. The investment in you was wasted. Some of you took what you were taught and left school all excited about what you could become, but you gave into your lazy side and did little with what was invested in you. Some of you took what you were taught and made a great start only to get distracted and side-lined, losing sight of your goals until it was too late to get back on track. Some of you shocked and surprised yourselves and others by taking what you were taught and parlayed it into a future rich in spiritual/personal development and worldly accomplishments.

“Good seeds” have been planted in each of you, but no matter how good these seeds are, much depends on you, the ground that received them. Yesterday’s “most likely to succeed” could be today's biggest failures in life, while yesterday’s “least likely to succeed” could actually be the biggest successes. Nothing was guaranteed. A lot depended on your attitude and willingness to water, protect, encourage and prune what had been planted in you.

Anybody can plant a garden, but what happens after you plant it determines whether you will have delicious vegetables to eat in the future. Just so, many manage to graduate from college, but what happens after graduation determined whether they turned what they had learned into a satisfying life in the years that followed.  

Many of our heroes have said as much. Jesse Owens said, “We all have dreams, but in order to make dreams into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.” Johann von Goethe said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Henry Ward Beecher said, “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself – and be lenient to everybody else.” John Atkinson said, “If you don’t run your own life, somebody else will.” Orison Swett Marden said, “The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.” And my favorite of all are the words of George Bernard Shaw, “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them. ... This is the true joy in life … the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

Friends! God still uses many people to plant the seeds of your future in you. These seeds are God’s gift to you. They are God’s stake in your future. Seeds represent potential, but potential is nothing unless it is developed. “Knowing is not enough, you must apply. Willing is not enough, you must do.” Do not let these precious seeds fall on hard ground, thin ground or weedy ground. Give them a rich, loose soil. Give them plenty of sunshine and water. Bring them to harvest so that you too can take your turn in planting good seeds in those who follow you: your children, your spouse, your community, your church and your world. Then, one day, you can stand in front of your Maker and hear this: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DON'T JOIN THE STAMPEDE OVER THE CLIFF! MAKE A TURN NOW!

Put away the old self of your former way of life and put

on the new self of righteousness and holiness of truth.

Ephesians 4:17, 2—24 

I have been an optimist most of my adult life, but I would not call myself naïve. No matter how bad things may have been seen by others, I have always tried to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. Lately, however, I am beginning to lose confidence in my own optimism. It seems that the world I have known seems to be sinking into a morass of confusion, chaos and anger in the last ten years. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it no matter how much preaching I do, no matter how much writing I do, no matter how many social change organizations I join or how much positivity I try to project!

I have been praying about what I can do personally to survive without giving into that pull of negativity or being corrupted by it! That’s why my eyes landed on our second reading today and its message about the importance of personal change, rather than organizational change.

Put away the old self of your former way of life and put

on the new self of righteousness and holiness of truth.

Ephesians 4:17, 2—24

Wow! As I reflected on those words, I kept coming back to an old expression that I came across several years back. It goes like this! “It is easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world!”  The more I thought about these words, the more I understood that it might not only be easier to put on slippers than it would be to carpet the world, but it might even be a more effective way to survive what I cannot control.

For the first time, I finally understand clearly my path forward in the years I have left. I understand that I need to change myself and resist the pull into the mess developing around me. You might say, I finally realized clearly that “if I can’t beat them, at least I don’t have to join them!” Yes, I have come to the conclusion that it is not only “easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world,” it is a more effective way to survive in a world that I am powerless to change!” I will, no doubt, continue to teach and preach and do what I can to inspire others, but I have learned at 80 years of age that I can be more effective in helping others if my main focus is on changing myself and teaching others by modeling good behaviors rather than trying to become a rabid crusader in yet another “cause!”

In a world that had strayed from the way of Jesus, Paul identifies three things that a Christian needed to turn way from: perosis (the normalization of wrong doing), aselgia (a lust for pleasure) and pleonexia (insatiable greed). Paul saw three patterns of his day that Christians needed to assiduously avoid: (a) the normalization of wrong doing, (b) a lust for pleasure and (c) being driven by a desire to accumulate more and more to the point that they no longer cared who they hurt to get it.  

These behaviors are exactly the sins of our world today as more people lose their close connection to “the way of Christ” and take on “the way of the world!” These are the old behaviors that Paul tells the people of Ephesus to “put away” so as to “put on” new behaviors as followers of Jesus! These behaviors are exactly the sins of our world today! Let me point out some pertinent examples of the old behaviors we need to “put away” and why they can only be corrected by personal individual change rather than institutional changes – by “putting on slippers, rather than trying to carpet the world!”

Perosis: The Normalization of Doing Wrong.  “Following the herd” and “doing what everybody else is doing” is the most obvious way I can think of to “normalize wrong doing!” The normalization of wrong doing is insidiously subtle since once you start down that path, it gets easier and easier to “up your game” and “feel better about” more and more wrong doing! It can be as small as acquiring and misusing handicapped parking stickers to something as dangerous as regularly speeding, running redlights and cutting corners on everything one sets out to do; from something as small as “taking a little something from work” and petty theft to something as serious as engaging in marital infidelity; something as small as gossiping on Facebook to something as serious as accusing someone falsely of sexual abuse as personal revenge. Since it is so subtle at its beginning, normalizing wrong doing is on an insidious down-hill slide with no end in sight!  God knows that fewer and fewer people are stopped simply because Scripture says that it is a sin!

Aselgeia: The Lust for More and More Pleasure. This drive to experience more and more pleasure and avoid as much ordinary pain as possible is obvious in the ever-expanding use of recreational drugs, a national overeating problem and a constant obsession with recreation. Without self- discipline, and the ability to stand up to these trends, all decency and shame evaporates and people end up not caring what they do or who sees them doing it.

Pleonexia: An Insatiable Greediness.  I have noticed a steady decline in service professions and a growth in a cut-throat love of possessing in particular and hoarding in general. If you don’t believe me. Count the TV shows that glorify extravagant homes and antique collections among the rich, as well as shows about hoarding among the poor. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. There are now 735 billionaires in the United States, there are beggars in more and more intersections while credit card debt and scamming are out of control. There is even a whole TV show called “American Greed.”

St. Paul wrote about these temptations facing new Christians in the first century in Ephesus. These are the behaviors that Paul addresses when he tells the people of Ephesus to “put way their old self” and “put on the new self” as followers of Jesus! These behaviors are exactly the same behaviors in our world today that he wants us to “put away!”

The solution, I believe, begins with an intense resistance to giving into “what everybody else is doing.” Let me repeat that for emphasis. The solution begins with an intense resistance to giving into “what everybody else is doing.” These behaviors can only be eradicated one person at a time! They cannot be eradicated by legislation from church or state. So, I challenge you today to join the minority! Do not be guided by “what everybody else is doing” Choose righteousness and truth no matter who around you may think you are stupid, crazy and out-of-touch with reality for doing so! These behaviors that are infecting the world can only be eradicated one person at a time! Be that next person to resist! Be that next person to choose differently! No matter what everybody else is doing, put away your “old self” and choose to become a “new self.” If you do, you will be helping change the world for the better – one person at a time!