Good Morning ADD Irregulars and all you visitors to the WSN! I hope the week is going well, I do miss our Coffee Talks and visiting Locals on and off throughout the day. I tend to be a creature of habit with the bookends of my day and then embrace the randomness of each day as it unfolds. It makes for a good balance of habit and spontaneity for me. The Convocation is going really well, I have gained a deeper appreciation of our Archbishop. He seems like a very down to earth person with a good grasp of the changes that need to be done to promote stability and viability. That he is unafraid of that is real sign of hope because the shit storm is on the horizon when you close parishes.

The typical quote I hear - "I have been a Catholic all my life." "You're closing my parish, I quit." The real laughable one is when you change Mass time, speak about the Faithful losing their proverbial shit??? Again, not many, but enough to be memorable. Who would have thought that the thread connecting someone was so fragile? It really is difficult to frame it in a empathic light from my point of view. How can anyone profess to be really committed to something or someone and then ditch it when it is no longer convenient for them? I can understand feelings of sorrow and anger that arise in such situations, but cutting out the source of your sorrow, anger, disappointment seems to be the path the reductionist living in my mind. If the thing, community or relationship was never enriching, never life-giving, I can understand losing it. But if there was something worthwhile, life giving or fundamentally good it is worth wrestling to maintain. Of course, in a relationship that means all invested parties needs to be willing to commit to finding some solution that is workable for all.

I hope my fellow priests are willing to work with the Archbishop in trying to help our people process the sorrow, the anger, the loss at the changes that are coming. (The vibe I get is that many, if not nearly all, are willing to do that.) Better for us to sit in dozens of sessions listening with people share their thoughts and feelings (sadly you cannot always agree with or validate them) than telling them to accept the change and pray about it. While all interested and invested parties should pray about it, the listening and being with people in their moments of loss/change is irreplaceable.

I am never not hopeful about the future. Since I have faith in the ENDING I try to keep better perspective on these unfolding chapters of life. I do worry about the things that can become unglued in the interim, humanity is far less loving than the 1960's predicted it would be. I may have an opportunity to host a ZOOM chat this evening, so check back here for potential notifications.

On a completely different note, in my roaming's about the internet for future coffee memes I found this SEPT meme. May she rest in peace, I pray for her daily.