Walk with an Atheist

Each year around graduation, I slide into a funk.  While I’m excited with students’ accomplishments launching journeys into their dreams, I’m saddened to let go, to give an embrace goodbye wrapped with best wishes into the future.  With good intentions, we vow to grab a lunch and visit over breaks, and many do, but I know with time the reality is … the busy-ness of our careers and families will distance us.   At this time of year, speakers elevated on stages around the world ask audiences packed with millions to reflect upon who made a difference in their lives.  A second question naturally follows.  What significant contribution are you going to make during your life?

Teetering adrift among a navy blue ocean of mortarboards, I felt a surge of insignificance among the colossal number of graduates not only at Queeny Park, but around the globe!

Thankfully, the conclusion of each school year invites me on a long, reflective stroll.  Faces flash with memories of various events from the previous seasons.  Quickly, they entangle memories of previous years.  Chuckles intermittently burst from the silent path.  Occasionally, a tear forms from a missed opportunity or grace unused.  This year, Carl Sagan, an esteemed astronomer and self-proclaimed atheist joined me.  I’ve often discovered wisdom in Carl’s words.  He’s failed to convince me there is no Creator or Prime Mover.  Though an articulate critic of religious hypocrisy and brutality, Carl was a compassionate advocate for peace.  Upon this night, I recalled his request of NASA and Voyager 1.

Voyager 1, a space probe launched September 5, 1977, flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and the moons of Pluto before crossing the heliopause leaving our solar system and entering interstellar space.  Serendipitously, astronomers continue to receive signal information from the Voyager 1 probe, today.  When Sagan initially requested that engineers turn Voyager’s cameras back toward earth to take pictures of its trail, NASA refused.  Sagan persisted.  NASA eventually obliged, capturing the classic “blue dot” images from deep space.

Carl’s words echoed back to life.  “Consider again that dot.  That’s here.  That’s home.  That’s us.  On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.  The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religious, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”  

I imagine the Creator smiling in agreement with the astronomer encapsulating how the pale blue dot “underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish it.”  At first glance, earth appears inconsequential smaller than a speck of dust in the universe.  For me, Carl’s words invited two perspectives on just how significant people are.   For me at graduation, I engaged his mindset … Sagan’s intended picture to emphasize man’s vulnerability and fragile existence… alone. 

However, during my walk, I shook that perspective.  In terms of significant players in the lives of the graduates, I doubt many graduates, parents, and guests were thinking of famous musicians, politicians, cinema stars, and professional athletes.  Most honored parents, friends, teachers, coaches, mentors, spouses, siblings and hopefully our Lord … and therein lies tremendous significance … relationships nurtured in love, compassion, hope, mystery, and trust giving essence to life! 

“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant’s search for fine pearls.  When he found one really valuable, he went back and put up for sale all that he had and bought it.”  Mt 13: 45-46   Jesus is the merchant.  He purchased … with the entirety of his life’s actions and death … the pearl of the universe, the same pearl Carl also discovered, but failed to recognize the gentle hands of our Lord cradling it.

In gratitude, I reminded Carl before we parted for the evening.  Perhaps, God’s grace nudged the hands in convincing scientists to turn the Voyager around to snap some pictures of the “mustard seed” of the universe.  From that seed, the earth, grows the Kingdom planted and nurtured by the Father, as Carl says, in a sunbeam.  Despite all the ugliness associated with man, with religion … there is also hope, goodness, significance even in the smallest, simplest acts rippling through our universe.   The light shines on in the darkness, a darkness that did not overcome it.  John 1:5

The Fourth Commandment

"Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother,  And You Will Have a Long Life”

Fred L. Vilbig © 2016

I would think that most people would want to live by this commandment more than almost any other. It is the only commandment with a promise. In our society, people are always trying something new so we can live just a little while longer. According to God (our manufacturer), the solution is simple: honor your mother and father, and you will live long.

Yet so many times we fail to do this. People, of course, are imperfect. Many of our parents… no, all of our parents were imperfect to a greater or lesser degree. Some of us have deep wounds from things our parents said or did, and I don’t mean to minimize those.

But God calls us beyond our hurts and our pains. He calls us to healing and forgiveness. God’s medicine is very odd too: it is through forgiveness that we are healed. Resentment about things that were done or said to or about us is like a festering wound that can become a deadly infection. Forgiveness is the cure.

It may be that we are embarrassed by our parents, by where we come from. We feel that we should have been born into a better family, under better circumstances. But since God is the master of the universe in control of everything, we were born right where He wanted us to be.

So how do we honor our mother and father? My dad used to always say, “If you can’t say something nice, just don’t say it.” So don’t run down your parents when talking about them. If they are older, make a real effort to visit them. Human interaction is huge. When they become frail, don’t just warehouse them in a nursing home. If possible, bring them into your own home. See Matthew 25:35-36. If that isn’t possible, take the time to visit them or to stay in touch. And after they’ve died, pray for them every day. Include them in every one of your Mass intentions.

Do these things, and you will have a long life – maybe not in this passing world, but certainly in the world to come, and that is what really matters.

CCC 2197-2257.

The Human Spirit

I attended a prayer service last night for a young girl recently diagnosed with  a potentially deadly disease.  It was a powerful showing of God's grace through community and prayer.  I was struck by the beauty and maturity of the words of a friend of this young girl, no more than 12 years old, who courageously read a letter she had written.  In her words she decided not to focus on the fears and anxiety of the situation, but rather on the things this disease could not take from her - beauty, friendship, family, faith, love.  It was a moving recital that filled the church with tears - tears not wrought of fear, but of hope....

The Human Spirit, fortified in faith, is an amazing and unpredictable thing of beauty.  I am continuously and constantly humbled and awed by the exquisitely powerful light God shines into seemingly hopeless situations the world looks upon as filled with despair...

"Room Four [the “Death Row” hospital ward of the TB sanitarium/Soviet prison at Tirgul-Ocna, Romania] was the scene of great kindness and humanity. Prisoners from other wards often came to spend the night with us, helping the dying and offering comfort.
At Easter, a friend from his hometown brought a gift wrapped in a piece of paper for Gafencu, the former Iron Guard trooper. “It’s been smuggled in,” he said. “Open it.”Gafuncu undid the paper to reveal two lumps of a glittering white substance—sugar. None of us had seen sugar for years. Our wasted bodies craved it. All eyes were on Gafencu, and the prize in his hand. Slowly he wrapped it up again.“I won’t eat it just yet,” he said. “Someone might be worse off than I during the day. But thank you.” He put the present carefully beside his bed, and there it stayed.A few days later, my fever increased and I became very weak. The sugar was passed from bed to bed until it came to rest on mine.“It’s a gift,” said Gafencu. I thanked him, but left the sugar untouched in case the next day someone should need it more. When my crisis passed, I gave it to Soteris, the elder of two Greek Communists, whose condition was grave. For two years the sugar went from man to man in Room Four (and twice it returned to me). Each time the sufferer had the strength to resist it."

--Richard Wurmbrand, Christ in the Communist Prisons