BEING MORE INTENTIONAL ABOUT VERY ORDINARY THINGS - THIRTY-FIVE

This is the thirty-fifth in a series of periodic reflections on the "ordinary things" that many people do on a regular basis without much thought. During this pandemic, I am developing a need to "rage, rage" against haste and laziness and replace it with care and attention. My hope is to become personally more intentional about doing ordinary things with care and focused attention, while inspiring others to maybe do the same.

THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE OUR ATTITUDE

"Metenoiete! Change the way you think about things! 

Jesus

I can't emphasize enough how important the two quotes above have been in my life. 

I was raised to believe that life is something that happens to you and all you can do is accept it. In other words, I was taught to be a victim of the things that were happening around me.

Later, I came to believe that working for structural changes would result in making me happy. In other words, if I could get enough other people to change, I would end up happy. 

One event in particular caused me to understand the real secret of life and that is to change myself from the inside out. A changed mind was the secret to happiness. 

All through seminary, I was told that if you "messed up" they would send you to Somerset. Somerset was as far from Louisville you could get in the diocese in those days. 

By the time I was ordained, I had my heart set on an urban assignment or maybe a small city assignment. When the priest personnel board called to give me my assignment, I was told that I was being sent to Somerset! I was distraught!

Instead of accepting it as inevitable, something that just happened to me, I fought with the personnel board to change its mind. When I failed, I presumed that I was doomed to ten years of unhappiness. 

Half way down there, I had a conversion experience. I decided to change my mind. I decided to take back my power and decided that I was going to like it. I decided that it was going to be the best assignment ever! Since I did not get what I wanted, I decided to want what I got. I chose my reaction rather than allowing my reaction make me a victim. 

It worked! It turned out to be a great assignment. It opened many doors that led me to places and opportunities I had never imagined for myself.  Changing my own mind saved my life! It had to be a moment of pure grace! Grace, of course, is God's gratuitous help, but it requires that we respond positively to that invitation to trust that God has a wonderful gift for you, life to the full! That lesson, changing my mind to change my experience,  I have been able to apply many times in the last fifty years of priestly ministry. It has given me power so many times when I didn't think I had any. 

We need not be total victims of this pandemic. We can choose how we want to respond to it. We can see only disasters or we can change our minds and see the opportunities even in this situation. This can be a time laced with fear, anger and foolish behavior or it can be a time laced with faith, trust and heroism. We can choose how we want this time to be for us! Yes, we have the freedom to choose our response to this pandemic and thereby choose our experience of it! 

 

NO NEED TO BE ANXIOUS

Have no anxiety at all. 

Let the peace that God gives guard your hearts and minds.

Philippians 4

Saint Paul must be kidding! No anxiety at all? With an international pandemic, street demonstrations, toxic political unrest, rampant unemployment, a worrisome national debt, election intrusions, cancer and the funerals of fellow citizens, relatives and friends, how can Saint Paul’s words possibly fit those of us living in today’s Church and world? How can we possibly remain anxiety-free in the middle of all these situations? 

“Anxiety” is a state of intense, often disabling apprehension, uncertainty, and fear caused by the anticipation of something threatening. It is often not so much about what is happening or even what has happened, but about what might happen next.

Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God gives, guard your hearts and mind.

My dear mother comes to mind when I think of anxiety. It seems that she always had a thin stream of anxiety trickling through her veins. Even though she has been dead for forty-five years now, I can still see her in my mind’s eye picking at her lower lip, a nervous habit that always accompanied intense moments of anxiety. I can still remember one time when we laughed at her for being so anxious. She snapped back, “Well, somebody around here needs to worry!” Looking back, she had a lot to be anxious about: seven kids, a demanding husband and breast cancer, to name a few! 

When I was about to be ordained, anxiety was very much on my mind. The church was undergoing a great upheaval and priests were beginning to leave in significant numbers, Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy had been killed a couple of years earlier, the Vietnam War was raging along with street riots. I asked myself many times, in that year leading up to ordination, “How am I going to keep my cool in a fast-changing church and in a world coming unglued? How will I be able to stay focused when one problem after another is going to be hurled into my face from both inside and outside the church? How will I be able to calm others when I seem to be torn up all the time myself?”

I have spent my life as a priest searching for an inmost calm that no storm can shake. When I discovered and admitted to myself that I cannot control what happens “out there,” I knew I had to find a way to control my reaction to what happens “out there.” As one spiritual teacher said, “It is easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world.” I knew I was going to need, and certainly wanted to have, the peace that only a close relationship with Jesus could give me, that peace that Saint Paul invites us to embrace in our second reading today.

Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God gives, guard your hearts and minds.

I spent most of my young adult life looking for an inmost calm that no storm could shake, an inner peace that would remain rock solid no matter what! I am happy to say that I have found it, but now I have to work to keep it. Sometimes I panic and forget, but I always come back to it sooner or later. Once I discovered that a peaceful center is always available to me, even in the midst of storms, I know I can always come back to it.

How can one have that peace? It comes from a close relationship with Jesus. If you truly believe that you are loved without condition, that God is on your side and holds no grudges, that in the end things are going to turn out OK because God has promised us so, then a great peace will come over you. With that knowledge, you will know that no matter how bad things get sometimes, no matter how much you have to handle, no matter how great your losses, you will know in your heart of hearts that you are in good hands because you are in God’s hands. When you know these things to be true, a great peace begins to stand guard over your heart and mind! That is what St. Paul is talking about today when he tells us to “let the peace that God gives stand guard over your hearts and minds.”

Once I begin to live in the knowledge that, in spite of it all, things will ultimately be OK, I begin to realize that many of my life’s greatest blessings have come out of what long ago seemed like an unbearable disaster.  Looking back at the times in my life when God seemed absent, at the times when I was overwhelmed with anxiety, worry and panic, in hindsight I can see that the hand of God was actually bringing me to where I needed to go and teaching me what I needed to learn. Most of the things I have most worried about never happened! Most of my imagined tragedies have actually contained great blessings! For me, it has happened too many times to dismiss as a fluke. 

Peace, however, is not a time when there are no problems. Peace is a calm state of mind in the midst of problems and in spite of problems. Peace is a trusting state of mind that comes from a close relationship with Jesus whose name is Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us. 

My fellow believers, we cannot control most of what is going to happen, so let us finish each day and be done with it. Let us do our best and let go of it. Let us not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen.  Our fretting anxiety has no power to affect tomorrow, but it can certainly ruin today.  Let us thank God for how far we have come and trust God with how far we can go.  This peace of mind is Jesus’ last gift to us. No matter what we are going through, let us lean on His everlasting arm, accepting his gift of peace and learning to live out of it. “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.” (Tyron Edwards) As soon as true trust in God begins, our anxiety begins to fade. We will never be problem free, but we can be free of anxiety and needless worry! 

On this Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, it is appropriate to end with his famous prayer!

 

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

 

 

OUR THIRD 40 ' SHIPPING CONTAINER IS HEADED TO THE ISLANDS!

 AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF OF FRUSTRATION

CONTAINER THREE HAS FINALLY LEFT LOUISVILLE 

THIS ONE WAS THE TOUGHEST TO ORGANIZE! 

I WAS NEVER SO GLAD TO SEE THE BACK END OF A TRUCK!

There is so much waste in this country, especially when it comes to "still good" medical supplies. Our wonderful local Supplies Over Seas collects surplus medical supplies from area hospitals, clinics and nursing facilities and, with the help of a team of volunteers, sorts it and helps prepare it to be shipped to needed areas in this country and around the world. This is the third 40 ' shipping container to be sent from Louisville to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines where I have been volunteering. 

My organization, the Catholic Second Wind Guild, paid the fees for the first two containers, but asked the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to sponsor this one.  It was a long process with several glitches along the way, but it finally came together. 

The SVG government, because of our help in this process, allows us to put free-of-charge needed school supplies, children's books, household furnishings and liturgical articles for the institutions of the Diocese of Kingstown, SVG into the container. We thank our partner charity in Tulsa (Oklahoma), Blessings International: Medicines of Missions, for helping us source needed medicinal supplies for the orphans of Saint Benedict Home for Children. Three large boxes of medicines will be going down with this shipping container. 

We thank Frank Hulsman of the now closed Saint Barnabas Parish for some of their surplus stacking chairs, school desks and chairs, sports equipment and liturgical items. 

The Boys Scout Troop of St. John Paul II load desks and chairs for their trip to the island missions. 

We thank all who donated school supplies and other useful items. All of those things are very much needed down in the island missions. We thank the staff and volunteers of Supplies Over Seas for their help and patience. We thank our friend, recent island volunteer and former S.O.S. employee, Tim Tomes, for his help as well. 

We thank Ms. Sandra Davis of the Diocese of Kingstown, SVG, for being the intermediary between us and the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Ms. Davis is an active Catholic and a former government minister. 

Classmate, Paul Bleuel, and I stood beside our first container in the spring of 2017 as it was about to depart for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.  

I said goodbye to the second container in the spring of 2019 as it left S.O.S. in Louisville for the islands. 

OUR THIRD CONTAINER

September 30, 2020

We loaded this third container on Wednesday, September 30th. Below are some photographs from the loading process. First pallet goes in! 

 

The super-helpful S.O.S. team posing for a photo-op before the doors are closed on another successful container load. 

 

NOW AVAILABLE

 My latest book is now in print ...

You may order it on Amazon.com (click HERE) 

or pick up a copy at Tonini Church Supply, 966 Breckenridge Ln., Louisville KY 40207 

1-502-897-7100

(shipping available) 

SIXTY-TWO YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

MY FIRST DAY OF TWELVE YEARS OF SEMINARY

Staring into a blazing sun, this photo was taken in September of 1958 a few minutes before I left home to go to Saint Thomas Seminary on old Brownsboro Road in Louisville. I had just turned fourteen. I remember buying this first black suit in Louisville at Robert Hall Clothes. 

Robert Hall Clothes Company lasted nationally from 1938-1977

Looking back, I realize now that I had no idea what I was getting into. All I knew was that nobody was pressuring me, but I felt "compelled" to go see if I could be a priest. In fact, almost everyone I knew, from my parish priest to many in my hometown, either laughed at the idea, humored me thinking I'd be back home soon or could care less. I had very little support. In fact, my self-perception was so distorted that it has taken me until recently to get this old photo out and have it restored so I can really look at it. What I see in that photo now is certainly not what I saw then! 

Looking back, sixty-two years later, it feels like I imagine I would feel if I had crossed a mine-field loaded with land-mines during a war and survived the crossing. All I can say now is that I am "simply amazed - forever grateful." I have been very happy as a priest, but I would not want to go through those first six years of seminary again! 

This is what it looked like when I first arrived. After sixty-two years, I can still remember arriving at the front door one Sunday afternoon in September.

Saint Thomas Seminary was closed fifty years ago this year. There is no trace of it left. It was demolished and replaced by a high-end subdivision called the Woods of Saint Thomas. 

I still dream about it. In my dreams I am always walking through an abandoned building with vines growing all over it. As I am walking through it, I am imagining how it would look "restored." I guess my mind is still trying to "redeem" those stressful years. 

ONE SUNNY DAY IN 2020 - A Little Pandemic Humor