To be given all this -
My incredible life
Day after day of secret blessings
To be held from the beginning
In such loving, holy hands.
How can I not be lucky?
How can I not trust love?
- Sheila O'Connor
Good Morning Fellow Sojourners! We bury Dave today. It has been such a joy to know Dave and see his return to faith and friendship. While I am deeply saddened by his unexpected passing, I am so thankful I had the opportunity to know him. I am thankful for the gift he brought into my life and the gift I was able to share with him. He made so many new friends at our parish family, communion, community, it all melds together when people are brought together in love. Faith opened the door to Dave's growing hope and experience of love. It expanded the goodness in his heart and perhaps brought about a little more illumination to his thoughts.
FROM HIS OBIT: David was a proud American and was always sporting patriotic and veteran apparel. He was a devoted Catholic and when not at the range or with his family, he could be found doing something within the parish or Knights of Columbus. David was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting and fishing, especially if it was with family or friends. David was a huge hockey fan! He not only followed the Saint Louis Blues, but every minor league team in the area. Not content to be a fan, he was an off-ice official for both UHL teams, the River Otters and Chill. He shared this love with family and welcomed the opportunity to teach the younger family members all about the sport. Continuing the sports theme, David attended every sporting event his children and grandchildren participated in for the past 50 years, even coaching at times.
Dave had a wide circle of friends and was loved by so many. He was not without his challanges. I have seen it so many times in ministry when one can have wonderful relationships outside of the family and have strained and constrained ones within the family. Family relationships can be so complicated and our history with them can often make it all the more difficult. I was hoping with more time I may have helped Dave with some of to complicartions in those relationships. His children are very gracious in his passing, but I knew from Dave's comments over the years that it was more of a peace treaty with some of them rather than familial reconciliation.
Authority jockeying seems to be one of the real banes of family relationships, relations trying to exercise it over other adults without any respect for the fact they are dealing with another adult. It can be parents unwilling to treat adult children as adults, older siblings convinced that more time on the clock gives them greater or unquestioned authority, sometimes even adult children towards aging parents believeing that that they "know better." It makes for such a mess that it not easily addressed.
I am not saying that Dave had issues with that, but he was a commanding personality with strong convictions. He never staopped being an Army Captain. I suspect like many, he thought any softening of the edges was a sign of weakness or a concession. I am not sure he thought that there were other paths one could walk in life and still be headed in a good direction. I think there was a dawning to that reality, but it was held in question and with a raised eyebrow. There was a gradual mellowing, the prescence of new friends, the daily polishing of edges and nudges of faith to reexamine life.
Dave knew THIS - as mentioned above in the poem. I knew THIS from my friendship with him. I will miss his hearty laugh, his love of the ideal of our Nation even if we have drifted far from that in the current chapter. I appreciated his skepticism about careerists in the government or even the church. He had great respect for people in the field, and almost none for those serving the bureaucracy, be it the army, government or church. He was proud of his involvement with the NRA, Missouri Conservation and various guns stores in the local area. In these last few years post retirement, he was a daily Mass celebrator and was part of the old man's gathering before Mass. I was a junior member. 😉 We had many laughs and much head shaking before Mass as we shared our "highly treasured opinions" and "insightful observations" about the current state of things. Poker won't be the same in his abscence and Wednesday Kuene Time will be a litttle more quiet without his booming voice and noticable laugh. BUT, and it is a big but, I am so thankful for the opportunity to know that I will miss in him rather than to have never known him at all. Peace and thanks for sticking this one out if you made it to the end. - Frair Tom
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
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Other chats as posted in the community.
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
