All Saints and All Souls

“This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life.”  John 6:40

In 2007, world renowned classical violinist, Joshua Bell, secured a prime location inside a Washington, DC subway entrance.  Dressed in casual street attire without fanfare, he opened his violin case at his feet for passers-by to toss in a bit of appreciation, not unlike other street musicians.   During the hour, hundreds of people, many passed by and few paused to listen as Bell played his $3.5 million violin.  When Joshua Bell performs, he draws a $1000 a minute.  On this day in the subway, he collected $32.

Joshua Bell pictured at left

What a disguise? Being yourself?  Think of the risks; guards down, vulnerabilities exposed, perhaps childlike exuberance abounds.  Maybe we’ll find a miracle in the “ordinary.” Though I enjoy the kids, costumes, yard parties and Halloween cheer, the skeletons and graveyard displays bring the reality of death uncomfortably close.  During the late fall, nature reluctantly slides into a cloak of death.  Winter wheat often referred to in scripture begins to die.

Loss has a way of bringing Reality our direction.  Halloween quickly recedes into the shadows of Saints and Souls.  I appreciate the Masses of All Saints and particularly that of All Souls.  In the craziness, the distractions of daily life, I lose focus of those who have touched my life and gone before me.  Fortunately, for me, I’ve made a personal commitment, an intentional remembrance in time spent with them.  I find welcome, comfort in our spacious church dimly lit with candles aglow.

I find saints hidden in the “ordinary,” those special individuals in my life, not to be taken for granted, not to be overlooked, not to be forgotten, honored for having been precious gifts in my life.  I sit in the silence and the light of their designated candles.  I’m always in awe of the Holy Spirit restoring visions of those who’ve escaped my recent memory.  One soul, an elder I’d met in a nursing home from decades ago emerged in memory.    

I was in fifth grade during a school visit.  Tongue-tied, I shyly presented my carefully crafted Thanksgiving turkey.  He joyfully accepted it and taped it to his window.  Confined to a wheelchair, he welcomed me, a stranger into his space.  Though school only expected us to visit one time, I continued to drop in a few times a week during my walk home after school.  I’d wheel him outside to the back patio to enjoy fresh air or to pick up a copy of Life magazine.  We liked the pictures especially the Parting Shots.  He’d tell me funny stories about the people I did not know.  He gurgled when we laughed. 

Three months later on a February afternoon, I stopped in to find a vacant bed and no wheelchair.  Fresh linens wrapped the bed.  My friend had died.  My turkey remained taped to his window.  I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.  I’d probably been tongue-tied, lost as to what to say, but I wasn’t given a chance.  With no pictures, I raced home to plant his face in my memory.  So I’d never forget, I attempted to draw a picture of him sitting proudly, jovial in his wheelchair.  One can imagine it looked nothing like him.  However, on this eve decades later, I could see his sheepish grin and a Life magazine in his lap. 

I sat quietly in the church amongst the candles honoring ordinary souls.  I never know when a saint in my life might drop by.  A peaceful smile seizes my soul in the blessed silence. 

Humility

I have spent the majority of my adult life with fluctuating weight.  I’ve also spent that entire time with a vision of myself as the athlete I once was.  If it weren’t for the mirrors in our home showing ever increasing glimpses of an aging, fat man walking around in my clothes, I would probably still be able to keep up that internal fantasy of myself as an athletic youth.  However, I am proud to say that I had been running again recently, and that I had slowly built up my running mileage quite a bit.  I was praying the rosary and able to get into some deep thought during my long runs in solitude through the trails, paths, and roads around our home.  I was thanking God for my improved health and all of His blessings upon me.  Some people exercise because they have excellent self-discipline and know that it is good for them.  I ran because I enjoyed it.  Truly and honestly, when I am out running, especially along dirt trails winding through the trees, I really love it.  I was convinced that God was awarding me with regained youthful energy for some greater purpose.

And then it all ended abruptly.  Massive injury.  A pop.  A tear.  I had blown out my ankle on a morning run.  I briefly wondered why God was telling me not to get into better shape, and why He didn’t want me to exercise anymore.  Why didn’t He want me to have time alone to pray and meditate?  I came to the conclusion that I was destined to be injured, but in His loving compassion, God must have allowed the injury to occur close to home on that day, instead of miles away on some obscure trail by myself.  I figure that’s a pretty mature and faith-filled response in answer to the question “Why?”  Because I am such a good person, and running has given me such clarity in my faith, I was able to come up with this meaningful rationale. 

As I was telling my story to a very close, and intelligent, priest friend this weekend, he interrupted and announced loudly, “It was to teach you humility.”  Hmm.  I never did like that guy.  Just because someone is a priest, doesn’t mean they are smart.  Humility!?  What does he know anyway?

And so, as I write this blog, and prepare to post my very important thoughts onto the internet for the entire world to stop and read, I ponder the meaning of humility.  Why would I assume anyone wants to read something that I put forth?  What does my story have to do with faith or fatherhood or family?  Is anyone even still reading at this point?    When we are humble, we do not need to be boastful or showy.  Jesus was humble, but His words were always impactful.  Humility allows us to speak the truth and be confident that truth is all we need.  We don’t need to add fluff or excess to get a point across.  We can simply let the truth be known, confident that is enough. 

I feel like now is a good time to clarify some points to the story about my running injury.  Really, I can’t even say I was running…that day it was an easy jog, and I was on a sidewalk near our home.  There are no good anecdotes about hurdling over a log, or crashing across a slippery rock on a creek crossing during a 10 mile trail race.  I wasn’t even running away from the sharp antlers of an 8-point buck, or a charging bear, or a herd of rabid wolverines.  That would have been a cool story!  Nope, none of that.  Truth be told, I hopped over a sprinkler going across the sidewalk, and blew out my ankle on the landing.  I like to say that I ‘blew out my ankle’, because it has connotations of a more rigorous nature, but it’s an ankle sprain, plain and simple.  This isn’t an injury from some intense contact sport.  It’s an ankle sprain…similar to the injury my grandma had…when she was 86.

The truth is, I was injured trying to avoid a light spray of water in the air!  The truth is, I have no more right or ability to be writing a blog post about faith than anyone else out there.  The truth is, we have no right to anything in our lives…not health or wealth or relationships or possessions.  We are injured beings, created to enjoy perfection with God, but we are fallen.  If we have a moment of health or wealth or comfort, then it is all due to God’s loving grace.  If those fleeting gifts leave us, then we should still rejoice as we seek the eternal ecstasy of our salvation.   

In baptism God allows simple water to wash away the horrible stain of original sin.  Apparently if my priest friend is correct, He also allows a lawn sprinkler to wash humility over a middle-aged Ballwin man.  This month, I have no words of my own that contain wisdom worth sharing.  I can only remind you that God’s Word contains the truth of life.  Read it…seek it out in the sacraments…and find healing of soul, amidst the injuries of this life.

-Matt Buehrig

Reality

by Fred Vilbig


   Reality. We all know what it is, right? It’s the earth under our feet; the sky above us; the food we eat; and the warmth of the sun.

   But reality is actually much more than just these physical things. We can’t see, feel, or touch love, but can we live without it? The love of a mother for a child and of a child for its mother; the love between a husband and wife who are devoted to one another; and the love between friends. At its best, love is not about the good of the lover, but rather the good of the beloved. It is sacrificial.

   Even when we experience any of these loves in an imperfect way, we know love is still real. We know that it is missing when we don’t have it. It is almost as necessary for our human existence as the air that we breathe. Without love, our souls suffocate. Although love is not physical, it is nonetheless real.

    Each Sunday we pray the Nicene Creed. The first stanza (if you will) is as follows:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of Heaven and earth,
of all that is visible and invisible.

  We affirm each Sunday that God is the creator. He is the only creator since He made all things. Nothing exists unless God made it. God did not make sin and evil, so in a sense, they do not exist. Instead, they are just a perversion or a twisting of reality.

  We know that love is real, but love is invisible, so there is an invisible reality. Since God is pure spirit and He is invisible, it seems to me that we could say that the spiritual reality is in a sense more real than the physical reality.

  We spend a lot of time worried about our physical reality. Yet we all know that the world around us will pass away eventually, and we will die even sooner. We spend so much time dealing with the physical reality that we neglect the spiritual. And yet, the spiritual reality is the reality that will last. It is the eternal dimension of our existence. It is not subject to time or the vicissitudes of the world around us.

  We seem to have a confused focus in our lives. Maybe we should spend more time with God coming to understand the spiritual part of our reality. And the way we do that is through prayer.

To quote Our Lady of Fatima, “Pray, pray very much.”

Sully and Mully

Last week I took a few of my kids to see the movie 'Mully' (Thanks Bill Gilmore for the tip).  One of my older kids asked if it was the story of the guy who landed his plane in the river in New York.  No, I said - that was Sully.

I'm guessing that most of us have heard of Sully, the airline pilot who was at the helm when his plane had mechanical problems and made the decision to ditch in the Hudson River.  'Sully' is Chelsey Sullenberger, and for his quick thinking he was lauded as a hero, accounting for the safety of 155 lives that day.  He has since become a national figure, a symbol of American ingenuity and pride - someone that many people look to as a role model.  Sully has gained many honors, written 2 books, had a major motion picture made telling his story starring Tom Hanks, and was ranked second in Time's "Top 100 Most Influential Heroes and Icons of 2009."  There are 80 references on Sully's Wikipedia page.

I would also guess that most of us have never heard of Mully, an entrepreneur who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mully Children’s Family (MCF). 'Mully' is Charles Mulli, and it just so happens that he is lauded as a hero in his native Kenya.  By some estimates he has saved the lives of 12,000 young children in Kenya, orphans he picks up in the streets and brings to his home, raising them as his own.  Mully has also won many honors for his philanthropy,  has written 2 books, and had a film produced about his story.   When I search Time.com for 'Mully', there are no results.  There are 7 references on Mully's Wiki.

Sully and Mully...what are we to think of these two men? 

I don't know anything about Sully's upbringing, but I would venture to guess that he had a typical American experience.  Stable family, good education, no worries about the necessities of life.  Again I am assuming he chased the American Dream - a good job, a loving wife, kids, house, car... Sully was trained as an airline pilot, and from all accounts was a damn good one.   When the time came for him to put an important part of his training into action, he performed flawlessly, his decision making spot on.

Mully grew up in a poor village in Kenya.  His family abandoned him when he was about 10.  He wandered around for years, begging to survive.  A kindhearted woman took him in, and gave him a job.  Because of his hard work and entrepreneur attitude he soon built a series of businesses, and in time became a millionaire.  He married and had 8 kids.  God tugged on his heart, and he gave it all up to serve the orphaned boys and girls in ravaged Kenya.  He gave and gave of himself and his goods until there was nothing left, and then gave more.  His wife and family thought he was crazy at first, but as time went on and the miracles started happening, they all came round.  He's been serving God through serving the orphans ever since.

I hope you understand I do not intend to disparage Sully in any way, for what he did was an act of heroism, and I know very little else about him - other than the clear fact that the media and our culture wants me to look to him as someone to emulate.

In my humble opinion, Mully is more like the person I want to be.  He overcame lack, and then he overcame abundance.  In the end he chose to follow God, at all costs.  He humbly and tirelessly serves his God, and touches the hearts of countless others with his faith and willingness to know and love those who have no one else to know and love them.

I would venture to guess that in 50 to 100 years, when both men are dead, not many will still know who Sully was, while there will be a whole chorus of men and women who will be telling their children about Mully and the impact he had in their lives.

Our Brothers and Sisters?

September 1, innocently doing laundry at her mother’s, Tamara Collier, 24 (pictured on left), a nurses’ assistant was shot.  An errant bullet fired from a high-powered rifle ricocheted even penetrated a wall and door hitting the young mother of two in the neck severing her spinal cord.  She fell to the floor lying between her blood splattered children, Dominique, 5, and D’Marri, 1.  Paralyzed below her shoulders, Tamara is at SLU Hospital struggling with a feeding tube, and fighting to breathe without a ventilator. 

Tamara look familiar?  Not to me.  My wife in frustration with violence brought her to my attention.  “Does her life matter?”

Two weeks later, protests and violence erupted in St. Louis following the acquittal of Stockley in the shooting death of Smith.  Do the protesters know Tamara Collier?  My gut wrenches.  My mind questions; what will this young mother’s care be if she survives?  I can’t plead ignorance.  While Ms. Collier battles for life, many work to repeal the Affordable Care Act cutting millions who need healthcare in addition to capping services to those who’ve fought desperately to defeat a terminal disease to survive or have preexisting conditions.

So many issues surround Tamara and her children.  Issues in community welfare, education, violence, poverty, inadequate healthcare, teen pregnancy, abuse; all existed in St. Louis before she was shot.  Now, for her personally, these are beyond magnification!  Hatred, racism, and greed are learned.  Thirty-five years ago, I entered teaching with the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision to bus students from St. Louis City to suburban schools in an attempt to answer to the issues above with desegregation.  Poverty continues to run high in Ms. Collier’s community.  Will her children grow to be disenfranchised?  Will her family be judged for need or will her family escape ridicule to manage beyond assistance for food, clothing, and shelter?  How many different agencies will come to their aid?  How many that “have” will work to cut her services so that they will “have more?” What would agencies become if they merged as allies working together to reduce racial bias and socio-economic injustice? What justice will her children inherit?

In 1972, there were 300,000 people incarcerated.  Today, in the U.S., 2.3 million are in prison, the highest rate of incarceration of any nation in the world.  Another 7 million sit on parole and probation.¹ Is there a disconnect between incarceration and our beliefs in the dignity of all human life?

“Forgiveness is neither earned nor even deserved, but a gift.  It is also a mystery.  An offender can be punished, but to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offenses ….  If a man takes unto himself God’s right to punish, then he must also take upon himself God’s promise to restore.”             Johann Christoph Arnold, author of Forgiveness

As he ages, will D’Marri become the 1 out of 3 black males between the ages of 18 and 30 to go to prison or on probation or parole; specifically, in urban cities across the U.S., 50 – 60% of all young males of color are in jail or on probation.¹ 

Dominique and D’Marri run a tremendous risk of sinking into poverty.  “We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. And yet, we seem to be very comfortable. The politics of fear and anger have made us believe that these are problems that are not our problems. We've been disconnected.”  -- Bryan Stevenson author of Just Mercy

How are communities of the poor and of color being shaped?  What are potential outcomes?

Are people aware?  Presently in Alabama, 34% of the black male population has permanently lost the right to vote.  The U.S. has numerous states with inmates serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes.  In addition, many of these were young teens at the time of sentencing. ¹

Death penalty error rate:  1 in every 9 executed is proven innocent.¹     

“I talk about race and this question of whether we deserve to kill.  And it's interesting, when I teach my students about African-American history, I tell them about slavery. I tell them about terrorism, the era that began at the end of reconstruction that went on to World War II. We don't really know very much about it. But for African-Americans in this country, that was an era defined by terror. In many communities, people had to worry about being lynched. They had to worry about being bombed. It was the threat of terror that shaped their lives. And these older people come up to me now and they say, "Mr. Stevenson, you give talks, you make speeches, you tell people to stop saying we're dealing with terrorism for the first time in our nation's history after 9/11." They tell me to say, "No, tell them that we grew up with that." And that era of terrorism, of course, was followed by segregation and decades of racial subordination and apartheid.”  Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, author of “Just Mercy:  A Story of Justice and Redemption”

Millions of men and women sacrificed their lives during a second world war that halted the systematic killing of Jews.  In states of the old south, one is 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it if the defendant is black and the victim is white.¹

Am I better than the worst thing I have ever done?  Are our brothers’ and sisters’ better than the worst they’ve done?  Pope Francis spoke to our youth and to the world on a recent TED Talk saying “our humanity depends upon all humanity.” 

Is our society at risk … is Christianity at risk … is our Church at risk … is technology, innovation, creativity at risk … to the abused, denigrated, suffering, and marginalized?

Will the character of our society be measured by innovation, design, reason, and intellect or will it be measured as Christ asked us to live; the character of a society will not be measured by how they treat the powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor and marginalized?

Dollars will not change these issues alone.  Relationships will.  Respect, forgiveness, compassion, grit, and perseverance will   We are the hands and minds of Christ.  We must use them.  Perhaps, we, as men, are overdue to gather with our brothers of different colors, creeds, and cultures in systematic dialogue and action once a quarter?  We are elements of change!

“Who is our neighbor?” Lk 10:29 Who is our brother?  Who is our sister?

Do you hear rumbling or silence?  Our faith holds that all lives matter -- do they?

Though the following passage is related to hurricanes, it is more related to the answers found in the goodness of people.  Demonstrated far better than I am able to write, watch it.  Peace.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-worst-of-harvey-brought-out-americas-best/

***On the heals of the latest shooting in Las Vegas, I was not prepared, but wanted to pass along the words and wisdom of Fr. James Martin SJ author and editor of the Jesuit journal America.  
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2012/12/17/gun-control-pro-life-issue

Footnotes:

Statistics used in my research drawn from the Equal Justice Initiative.

For an insightful, challenging presentation, watch --

(1) “We need to talk about an injustice” – Bryan Stevenson TED Talk and author of “Just Mercy”

https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice