Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Thursday ADD Irregulars, WSN Purveyors, Friends & Refugees, Phamily & Misfits, Conversants, Lurkers, Seekers, Wanderers and Lost. The week rolls on and the very slow process of unpacking is taking place, maybe by the end of September I will have it looking like a home rather than a jumbled mess of boxes and unorganized unpacking. Moving is such a strange thing, it makes you question what you really need in life, which is fairly minimal, and all the comfort things you keep as part of your pharaoh's crypt collection. Beloved junk as I often call it, not necessary or needed for daily living, but wonderful accents and mementos of life and relationships. It is an odd and eclectic collection of numerous testimonies of engagement and involvement with life
I am very fortunate that Queen of Peace also affords me a home to live in rather than just some rooms above the shop as is often the case in many parishes. I loved my little house by the side of the road in New Melle and I look forward to loving this long house on the hill. While I am no longer beside a highway (life is much more quiet in this long house) I am still fond of the sentiments of that poem by Sam Walter Foss. It was my final words to my parish family of Immaculate Heart of Mary and I will always think fondly of my time there as some of the best moments in my ministry.
I strive to be a good spiritual father to the people entrusted to my care. If we are going to be called "Father" we ought to strive to understand that most common of titles and try our best to live by it. It is not easy, many people experience less than ideal relationships with their birth or adoptive fathers and such fractured relationships can make relating to God as a Father very difficult and calling another man father even less appealing. Father carries freighted expectation with it, we all have ideas of how a father ought to be or should have been once we are out from under their care & guidance. Any whose it, shepherds of souls wear many hats and titles that try to lead to a deeper understanding of their calling and charisms.
To those outside the flock, parish or universal in Cath-O-Land, I have no pretenses about being a spiritual father even if I am always of that heart-imprint. I strive to a good neighbor and future friend. No one need ever earn my respect, you have it for being alive and it can grow deeper as I get to know you or it can fade as your inner a-hole makes itself too known. We all have that inner a-hole, learning to use it well is part of adult happiness. Mine mainly manifest in being a smart-ass, much more refined and clever than just being an unfiltered a-hole. Good smart-assery it witty, plays with words, tries to gently poke others without bruising (Fragiles are forever bruised and waiting to be perpetually offended, it is now a secondary major for 99% of college degrees), and helps us laugh at life and self. Take life serious, but yourself much less so. Anyway, being a good neighbor and future friend is my overall posture towards others. On to Sam Walter Foss and his poem once more. I have shared it often here, but it is worth repeating and tumbling over in our hearts. Have a good day my friends and neighbors!
The House By The Side Of The Road
There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat
Nor hurl the cynic's ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.
Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
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 ...
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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.”
