Of all the things I’ve ever had to do, this walk is the
hardest.I have to watch my son be
beaten and tortured beyond belief and be rejected by the people who watched him
grow from a young child to a man, the same people who had patted him on the head
and slipped him sweet breads when he was younger.I am helpless to help him, and I can only
watch in frustration and grief as he struggles with his last tasks…
I have been watching, and it is my time.This Jesus, my enemy, has put himself in my
path and made himself available to me.Fool!His pride will be his
downfall and my victory!He is weak,
tired, and lonely, and my minions have spent the last forty days tweaking his
emotions and taunting him.I have watched
him walk the desert, the stones cutting his feet and the sun burning his
skin.He may be divine, but he is also
human.His humanity will be the crack in his armor that I
need to bring him down.FOOL!He thinks that I have no power, but I
do!And since he shares the essence of
humanity, when I bring him down I can take down the whole human race as well!I am sure I can turn him to me in this
condition.I can barely contain my glee!
Today is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Again, my muse has called to me. Unfortunately, I feel this work has been rushed due to my work schedule. I don't know when I will be able to get back to it, so I am going to publish what I have and hope I can refine it later. I don't want to leave this day with the image of the millions of babies, trying to make their way to Heaven after being rejected by their mothers. The image of choirs of angels, swooping down to pick up the crying babies and carrying them to Heaven, was the image that came to my mind this morning.
Unless you have been living under a rock lately, you have heard the
brouhaha over a comment by Harry Reid, currently the ranking Democrat in the Senate.In a recent booktitled Game Change authored by John
Heilemann and Mark Halprin, he was quoted as saying that voters would vote for
Obama because he was "light skinned," and because he exhibited no
"Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."Most of the right-wing media has played this
up as a racist, offending comment, while the liberal media has said it is of no
consequence. I suppose racism is in the
eye of the beholder. Obama has accepted Reid’s apology, and Reid is – as the
liberals always do when they want to sweep something distasteful under the rug –
“trying to move forward”.
Why am I upset?I’m not upset at
the hypocrisy of the Democrats in how they treat their favored minorities.I’m not upset at the “racism” of the comment.I’m just more than a tad upset at the double
standard of the liberal media, for this case demonstrates most emphatically how
differently they treat a Republican vs. a Democrat when it comes to comments
such as these.No, that’s not why I am
so upset.
I have made it a practice to pray a rosary every day.For those non-Catholics out there, the rosary
is a series of prayers, for which we use a string of beads to keep our place in
the process.While praying these
prayers, we meditate upon a string of events in the life of Mary and
Jesus.As we meditate, we come to more
full spiritual life.Lately as I have
been praying the rosary, especially the sorrowful mysteries, a series of images
has been intruding during my prayers.As
the words I write to illustrate these images and thoughts are not found
anywhere in the Bible, this is totally a work of fiction.It is my verbal illustration of what might
have happened…
It’s been one week – one long, rancorous week.I was out getting food for our little cast of
outcasts, and upon my return I was greeted with great excitement.The excitement wasn’t for the food and
supplies I brought, or for the fact that I returned safely.No, the excitement, so the others said, was
because they had seen Jesus!After they
calmed down enough to tell me, all I could think was “This is a cruel joke to
play on me!” They assured me it was no joke; Jesus had appeared to them, in the very room
in which we were standing!And not only
had he breathed on them, but he had given them the power to bind and release
sin!This was blasphemy!Only God could forgive sins!And they claimed that Jesus had breathed on
them, likening themselves to the creation of Adam and Eve, who received God’s
breath!This arrogance was beyond
understanding!
My name is Simon.Or
rather, it WAS Simon.I was Simon back
when life was simpler and all I had to worry about was getting enough fish in
my net and avoiding the Romans whenever possible.I love to feel the sunshine on my face and
the feel of the net in my hands.There
is nothing like the feel of the lines as I cast the net over, hearing the
lapping of the waves against the boat, and the flexing of my muscles as I
pulled in a full net of fish.But all
those things have changed.
The students in our religious education program are required to attend
a certain number of retreats before receiving the sacrament of confirmation in
our faith.A retreat is a removal of one’s
self from the world to focus on a relationship with God.While we confiscated a total of six cell
phones over the weekend (and no telling what other devices were smuggled in),
for the most part the kids cooperated and participated.
I’m having a hard time returning to the “real world,” as this
experience was one of the most intense I’ve had.Some retreats I feel like I’m more of an
observer and a helper.This was one of
those retreats that I put together and executed, and I was intensely involved
in the student’s journey.
We started out with my essay on “The Lesson of the Five Thousand,” then
watched a YouTube video called “Cardboard Testimonies”.It was all about having a hunger for the
message of Jesus and what happens when you let God enter your heart.We played some games (they ARE teenagers,
after all), and the real work began on Saturday morning.
While the praise and worship was flat – our church has never done
P&W and the kids were not used to it – we spent a good part of the day with
a series of Scripture, reflection/journaling, and discussion, with each session
building on the last.I took them from “where
are you now” to “what do you think is good for you” to “what does God want for
you” and finally to “what is God offering you”.We had some truly insightful comments from the teenagers in small
group.We played a blindfolded obstacle
course game, where their teammates had to yell directions to their “runner” to
get them to maneuver the course correctly.Of course, the other team could play dirty pool and yell out wrong
directions.We then had a discussion on
how to hear God in our lives, and how do we know which voice to listen to, and
how do we block out the noise to find our “true direction”?
But the icing on the cake was Saturday night prayer.I hadn’t actually figured out exactly what to
do that evening, but after some of the revelations (particularly from my
troublemakers), I decided to do a candlelight prayer service.The teens did prayer with a partner, and then
each one came to me individually for some personal prayer.“J” is a teen that has always acted out in
class, and he shared with us some very significant family problems, which
caused him much anger.“C” admitted to
carrying a lot of anger, also.So when “J”
came up to me and asked me to pray for his family, I did so and then added some
very personal prayers for him.While the
girls were eager to hug me after prayer, “J” tried to leave quickly.I reach over and, grabbing his neck, pulled
his head next to mine for a quick “head hug” and whispered in his ear “I really
care about you, J”.This tall guy, who
always tried to act tough and act out and always sought attention (which disrupted my
class), had to wipe his eyes as he left his chair.
Forget the games.Forget the praise
and worship.Forget all the other stuff.It is for those personal moments when I may
have changed a life for the better that I stay up until 2:00 am preparing my
schedule.It is for those moments, where
I can touch a heart, that I work myself to a frazzle.It is for those moments, when God works
through me, that I feel His grace.