Happy Retirement, Fr. Brian!

I’ve always felt that, as Catholics, we need to have both an inner spiritual life and an outward life of Christian action in the world.  We have to have be prayerful and contemplative, spending time establishing a relationship with God and making the teachings of the Bible part of our lives.  But, we also have to act on those teachings, bringing God’s love to others.  However, I have to admit, my inclination is more toward the action-in-the-world aspect of my religion.

A couple weeks ago my wife, Pat, and I attended a retirement party for a priest friend who is a great example of bringing God’s love to others.  Fr. Brian McCormick lived and worked in the Wilbur section of Trenton, NJ, for 42 years as a living sign of the love of God in this world.  Initially, the home where he lived and welcomed others into was called The Martin House.  Over the time he lived and worked there, it developed into The Martin HouseFoundation: A Community for Justice.  The programs sponsored by MHFCJ include rehabbing and building homes, Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs, an early learning center, a homeless shelter, a used clothing/thrift store, a summer camp program, and more.

A major part of the Martin House Foundation is Better Community Housing of Trenton. Over the past 42 years, BCHT has renovated or built a total of 167 homes.  Its process is similar to Habitat for Humanity, in that it relies on volunteers to help renovate and build the homes, the prospective homeowners have to put sweat equity into the home and homeowners receive a low-cost mortgage that is interest-free.  But it goes beyond that, in that it is a job-training program for young people who live in the neighborhood.  Working alongside skilled craftsmen, they learn marketable skills that will help them improve their lives and their employment prospects.

There were about 300 guests at Fr. Brian’s retirement party.  They included family, friends, BCHT home owners, people from the Wilbur section and employees  and volunteers of The Martin House family of programs.  While there were tributes and declarations from city and state politicians, the most moving words came from individuals who had been helped by the Martin House programs.  There were women who had been involved in the drill team as teenagers, who are now working as social workers.  Homeowners who talked about how home ownership had changed their lives.  And volunteers who talked about how helping renovate and build the homes had made such a big difference in their lives.  But most of all, they talked about Fr. Brian and how much they admired him for all he had done for their community.  More than one person said that he had saved their lives.

Fr. Brian’s ministry at Martin House was different from most parish priests.  Although many parishes have some ministries to focus on the poor and the needy, it frequently seems like a small slice of the pie.  For Fr. Brian, it was most of the pie, if not the whole pie.  Thinking about Fr. Brian’s work in Trenton brings to mind Jesus being criticized for spending so much time with the poor, the sick, the leprous, the sinners.  I think of Him saying that at the end of time he will welcome into his kingdom those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger and cared for the sick.

Now, Fr. Brian is retired.  His ministry to the people of the Wilbur section is done.  But his vision lives on in the organization he founded and nurtured over the last 42 years.  Throughout those years, he created, cultivated and reinforced a culture that will continue to have a very positive influence on the Wilbur section.  And we are all better off because of it.  Thank God for Fr. Brian McCormick!

Here’s a picture of Pat and me with Fr. Brian on the day of the party.

Rituals of Comfort

Here's a picture of my slippers.  You may recall that, in an earlier post, I said that one of the things I was looking forward to in retirement is being able to spend more time wearing my slippers.  The biggest reason that I'm looking forward to that is that my feet really hurt when I'm wearing shoes.  Wearing sneakers isn't so bad, but sometimes they hurt my feet too.  When I wear shoes I get a pain across my feet just at the base of my toes.  More so on my right foot than on my left.  By the end of the day, when I get home, I just want to get out of my shoes and put on my slippers.

I got my current slippers for Christmas this past year.  I actually ordered them on-line without having seen them in person or having tried them on.  I know I was taking a risk but it seems to have worked out.  I'd been looking at slippers for a while in stores and didn't find any that called out to me.  A lot of the slippers I saw in stores seemed too stiff to me.  I like slippers that are soft and flexible.  Not just the top part but also the sole.

For a number of years, I bought my slippers from Lands End.  But, they don't seem to sell them any more.  The ones from Lands End were very soft and the soles were made from soft leather, not from rubber.  Here's a picture of an old pair of slippers from Lands End.

I still have these and keep them in the stairway that goes from the kitchen to the basement - nice and handy.  If I don't want to go up to our bedroom on the third floor to get my new slippers, I just pull these old faithfuls out and put them on.  Ahhhh!

A number of years ago, I attended a presentation where the speaker talked about rituals of comfort.   He spoke about how we all have these and how they make our lives ... well, more comfortable.  Some people might always start their day by having a cup of coffee and reading the morning newspaper.  Some might go for a run or go to the gym when they get home from work.  Some people like to watch the evening news each evening after finishing dinner.  These can be rituals of comfort.  If you like to start your day off with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, imagine how out-of-sorts you might feel if you discover that you're out of coffee or the newpaper didn't show up on your porch.  It would throw you off.  We all have ways that we organize things and we take comfort that we can find things when we want them.  Imagine if someone had moved everything in your kitchen cabinets and drawers to different locations and you had to search through all the cabinets and drawers to find something you always kept in a certain place.  How disruptive that would be!

Wearing my slippers is a ritual of comfort for me.  It's a ritual that provides comfort not only to my feet but also to my soul.  (Pun intended.)

What are your rituals of comfort?

Thomas Merton

There once was a convert to Catholicism who entered the Gethsemani Trappist Monastery in Kentucky when he was 27 years old.  He died 27 years later, in 1968.  He is one of the best-known Catholic writers of our time.  He wrote books about theology and spirituality, and books about contemporary social issues (e.g., racism, war and nuclear proliferation).  He was also a poet and photographer.  To his brother monks in the monastery, he was known as Father Louis.  But to his readers, he was known by his given name, Thomas Merton.

One of the things that I like about Merton is that he viewed life as a journey and believed that he could always learn more, always improve his understanding of himself and his relationship to God.  As a Trappist monk, he was of course focused on prayer and deepening his understanding of God and his relationship to God.  He studied the lives and writings of saints and spiritual writers who had preceded him.  He learned whatever he could about monastic life.  He was deeply committed to his monastic vocation.  However, he was not constricted by the traditional structure of Catholic monasticism.  He was always open to new ideas.  Toward the end of his life, he became very interested in Eastern religions (e.g., Zen Buddhism, Sufism).  In these religions, he saw monks who were able to achieve transcendence that was similar to the contemplative experience of God that those in the Western religious traditions might achieve.  He believed he could learn from these Eastern monks lessons that would help enrich and complement his Catholic faith.

Contemplation was very important to Merton.  He wrote a number of books that focused on that subject.  But he also understood the need for Christian action in the world.  I admire the way he respected both these important aspects of Christianity.  Merton believed that solitude was very important in people’s lives.  For himself, he advocated for years for the opportunity to live as a hermit.  For the last 3 years of his life he was able to do this, living alone in a hermitage on the grounds of Gethsemani.  For those of us not living in a monastery, Merton believed that contemplation and solitude could help us to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and focus on the important things of life.  This contemplation and solitude help us experience God’s love in a deeper way and then lead us to bring God’s love to the world through social action.

One of the other things that I like about Thomas Merton is how down-to-earth he seemed.  Despite his being a well-known author, whose books were read around the world, the other monks at Gethsemani typically regarded him as just a brother monk.  And that is the way he saw himself.  His journals show that he was anything but perfect.  He struggled with obedience to his superiors throughout his monastic life.  Other monks described how he could be curt and abrupt when he thought a conversation was not worth having.  So, despite his great understanding of the spiritual life and his valuable writings that have guided so many others, we see Merton struggling in his spiritual journey, just as we do.

I admire Merton’s dedication to his faith, his journey to deepen that faith and draw closer to God throughout his life, his recognition of the importance of both contemplation and faith-driven social action, and a recognition of his ongoing struggle to become the best person he could be.  His writings cover a wide range of topics, so there might be something for everyone’s interests.  I’m listing some of them below.

Spirituality

Seven Story Mountain (autobiography from birth to life in the monastery)

New Seeds of Contemplation

No Man Is an Island

Contemplation in a World of Action

The Wisdom of the Desert

Social Action

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Cold War Letters

Raids on the Unspeakable

Spirituality of the East

The Way of Chuang Tzu

Mystics and Zen Masters

Zen and the Birds of Appetite

Also, here’s a link to a webpage about Merton on the Abbey of Gethsemani website.  It includes a picture of Merton.

Be Open to the Truth - Addendum

Just a couple days after I posted my blog Be Open to the Truth, I came across a column on Common Dreams that included some good examples of things that many people believe that are not supported by facts.  I thought the information included supported the point I was making in my blog post.  The piece I'm referring to is "U.S. Running on Myths, Lies, Deceptions and Distractions" by John Atcheson.  I hope it rings true for you as it did for me.  You can get to the column by clicking on the name of the article above.

 

Be Open to the Truth

I have a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy.  Sometimes I feel embarrassed to admit that, since I think a lot of people’s reaction would be “What can you do with a degree in Philosophy?”  But, I’m glad that I studied Philosophy and believe it has benefited me greatly throughout my life.

Philosophy is about the meaning of life, what we know, how we know it and how to live ethically. Having a philosophical perspective on life means being open to new ideas, new experiences, new information.  It means being willing to consider ideas, experiences and information, even if they seem to conflict with our currently-held beliefs.  It means thinking critically about our experiences and not just accepting things as true because we saw it on tv, read it in the paper or heard it from a politician.

During my senior year in college, I wrote a paper about philosophy and ideology.  As opposed to philosophy, which is open to all information, ideas and experiences, ideology is rooted in specific ideas and rejects concepts that don’t fit with them.  Presented with new information, philosophy would evaluate it, try to determine its validity and see how it could fit in with the current belief system.  This process might result in that belief system being modified.  Ideology would reject it if it were not compatible with the current belief system.

Racism is a good example of an ideology.  Many people who grew up in the southern United States before the civil rights movement, held a deeply rooted belief that black people were, by nature, inferior to whites.   That belief made them reject facts that would have required them to accept blacks as equals.  Another example of an ideology is the belief of many Americans that global warming does not exist, despite a consensus among most scientists that it is a reality.

We all have a natural tendency to accept certain information and ideas and shut out others.  It’s easier to do this than to leave ourselves open to information and ideas that challenge our current belief system.  However, I think that conservatives in America have a greater tendency to do this.  For example, currently one of the major tenets of conservatism is that taxes not be increased for any reason.  This belief is practically absolute.  No matter what’s happening in our country, taxes must remain as they are; or, better yet, be decreased.  It’s the solution to everything.  If the economy is doing well, the best way to keep it that way is to decrease taxes.  If the economy is doing poorly, decreasing taxes will help it improve.

Another example of conservative ideology is its opposition to regulations.  The belief is that all regulations stifle American business.  There is no acknowledgement that deregulation of the financial industry resulted in a worldwide economic crisis that we are still suffering through.  Related to this is the concept that millionaires and billionaires need to have their taxes reduced so they can be job creators.  Their taxes have been reduced and it hasn’t led to significant job creation.  It doesn’t work – but conservatives won’t admit it.  The belief of many conservatives that President Obama was not born in the United States is based on ideology.  When his long form birth certificate was released, the reaction of some conservatives was that it must be a fake.

Let’s all work at not becoming ideologues, people who won’t take the risk of considering new information and ideas that don’t fit in with our current beliefs.  Let’s be open to new ideas.  Let’s evaluate them carefully.  Let’s be willing to change our ideas and beliefs if we encounter new ideas that are valid and truthful.  Let’s act like philosophers!

Looking Forward to Retirement

Here are some things I’m looking forward to when I retire:

Not having to drive at least an hour to and from work.

Not having to get up at around 5:45 am to exercise before work.

Not having to get out early to shovel 6 inches of snow before going to work.

Being able to choose how I will spend my day.

Being able to have lunch with my lovely wife.

Having time to read more (serious things and entertaining mysteries).

Having time to use the woodshop tools I’ve been collecting.

Having time to ride my bicycle during the week (for exercise and leisure).

Not having to wear a tie to work.

Being able to dress casually every day.

Being able to wear my slippers for more than a couple hours a day.

Saving money on gas and servicing for my car.

Not having to worry about how bad the traffic will be on Route 80 at the end of the day, when I’m driving back from Paterson.

Being able to sleep in if I haven’t slept well during the night.

Not having to worry about requests for reports, lists, etc., by the end of the day.

Having more time to get repairs done around the house.

Less stress and having my blood pressure be lower than it’s been in the past few years.  Now there’s one I’m really looking forward to.

Giving people the opportunity to say “Boy, Emil looks really good since he retired.”  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say that about other retirees.  I’m not sure why that is.  But, I’m looking forward to seeing whether it works for me.  I’ll let you know a year from now.

The Face of Poverty

January 15 is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.  He is honored as an icon of the Civil Rights movement and his speeches and leadership helped guide that movement.  However, his involvement in working for economic justice is not as well remembered.  Before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he had begun to focus his efforts on the Poor People’s Campaign.  He recognized the importance of economic justice in the fight for equality between the races but also as a basic human right.

Now, more than 40 years later, there are still too many poor among us.  Take a look at these statistics:

¨ In 2010, the Census Bureau reported 46.2 million Americans living below the poverty line.

¨ In that same year, there were almost 50 million Americans without health insurance. 

¨ In December 2011, 13.1 million Americans were unemployed, with 5.6 million of those being long-term unemployed, meaning they had been unemployed 27 weeks or more.  In addition, there were 8.1 million categorized as involuntary part-time workers (who had their hours cut back to part time or were unable to find full-time jobs). 

¨ According to the USDA, in 2007, 3.3 million households were food insecure for the children living there, meaning that those households lacked consistent access to food for the children in the household.  Of those 3.3 million households, 85% had one or more adults who were working; 70% had one or more adults working full-time.

I remember seeing a video clip of George W. Bush at a campaign rally, where he was praising one of his supporters who was on the stage with him because that person was working three jobs to support her family.  Come on!  No one should have to work three jobs to support their family.

America is the richest country in the world.  And yet, we have many people who do not have adequate food, housing, employment or health care.  There are many people and politicians who would say that those Americans who are living in poverty could lift themselves out of poverty if they wanted to.  But, with a minimum wage that is not a living wage, that’s not easy to do.  The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.  A person who works full-time for that wage will earn just $14,500 per year.

When he was president, Ronald Reagan told a story about a Welfare Queen who was able to acquire so much money through the welfare system that she was able to purchase a Cadillac with the money.  The story created a lot of outrage against the welfare system among Americans.  It turned out the story wasn’t true.  However, it helped develop a mindset among many Americans that people on welfare and poor working people don’t deserve the aid that our social safety net programs provide.

It seems to me that one of the reasons we don’t provide adequate help to other Americans in need is that many of us focus on policies and politics instead of people.  I remember reading that, when respondents to a survey were asked whether they favored specific social programs (e.g., welfare, food stamps), a majority were not in favor of them.  However, if they were asked whether they thought we should help others who were in need, a majority were in favoring of helping them.

Today, with so much unemployment and so many home mortgage foreclosures, perhaps each of us knows a relative or friend or neighbor who has fallen on hard times.  Perhaps we know someone who wants to work but can’t find a job; someone who was talked into a mortgage they couldn’t afford and has now lost their home; someone who is homeless because of not being able to find work; someone who is physically or mentally disabled and is unable to work; a vet returning from war who has PTSD and is unable to work.  Perhaps putting a human face on the issue of poverty will make a difference in the way we approach the issue of poverty and the social safety net programs that help those people.