Champaign Memories

This Thursday, June 24, we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist. Permit me to roll back my personal calendar to 1968 and share some poignant memories. I was between my junior and senior years at University of Dayton, and involved in The Conference on Inter-American Student Projects. That summer, 11 of us had traveled to the tiny village of Lerdo de Tejada, Mexico, on a missionary trip. We each lived with a local family, and mine was extremely poor; I slept on a narrow cot covered with a mosquito net, we had no indoor plumbing, ants crawled across our plates as we sat on hard wooden benches to eat our tortillas, and pigs and chickens roamed through the kitchen and into the sitting room and out again during the heat of the day. My family and I began to bond after a fashion, but I was terribly homesick and miserable with Montezuma’s revenge. June 24th approached and they began to talk about a party in honor of my birthday – wasn’t I born in March?? – but the Mexican custom was to name the baby for the saint on whose feast s/he was born, and no matter how I objected, I had to have been born on the feast of John the Baptist given my name of Joan! They gathered all of the “gringos” on that day, and filled our tiny house with music, a very lopsided cake, and – how did they get this?? – a bottle of champaign! That was the day that my Mexican family really came into my heart, and it was on that day that I adopted John the Baptist as my patron, and fittingly so. I didn’t know at the time that my life’s work would be in the Church, and that my job would be to get out of the way and point to Jesus. Patrons can be powerful superheroes in our lives, continually encouraging us in the right direction, cheering us on, being constant reminders of how a saint lives, and calling us to that path. If you have not taken seriously the call of your patron, or have forgotten the saint you chose at your confirmation, chose one now! Read My Life With the Saints and get in touch with the power of witness.
[The views expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.]

Who's Watching the Till?

I just finished reading an article from NCR on making ethical business decisions, and it spoke to me about the many opportunities to do otherwise in the workplace. A friend of mine recently changed jobs and shared me with some of the inner issues at her former company related to her leaving - issues of sidelining certain employees because of jealousy, fear, and self-interest; -issues of maintaining the “inner circle”, issues of control, subtle ways to frustrate forward-thinking contributions of some rather than upset the delicate balance favorable to a few. Evil – pure evil centered on getting ahead at any cost, climbing that corporate ladder no matter whose fingers are being hammered in the process. Watching the nightly news confirms that unethical behavior is not confined to corporate America either. There’s so much guidance out there in making good, ethical decisions: James Martin dedicates a chapter in his book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything to this topic, and the Greenwich Leadership Forum is a resource for Connecticut businesspeople concerned with such. But more simply, David Miller of Princeton University and leader of GLF begins his breakfast meetings by holding up a bible with a copy of the Wall Street Journal tucked inside. Could there be a better visual? Ethical decisions are part of our every day, whether we realize it or not. Hopefully they’re dispatched so automatically that we don’t even consider them; we form ourselves into ethical people. I begin several days each week with morning Mass, and one of my constant prayers is that my two sons, both of whom own their own businesses, make good ethical decisions. And going back to that visual, would you love to see our preachers every weekend begin their homilies by holding up a bibile with the daily newspaper tucked inside?

Family Ties

An interesting fact which I came across in the book, Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor: there are 33,000 sects of Christianity in the world! Take it in – 33,000!!! In my time, I knew of one church which had been begun by an acquaintance and her spouse, when they no longer agreed with their pastor. And now I know of another woman who has been telling me about searching the web for an appropriate name for the church she and some of her friends are going to start because, again, they think their pastor has gone too far afield. Neither of these churches is Catholic. Wherever in the world we have wandered, be it someplace in the US or on some Caribbean Island, whether the Mass is in English or Spanish, we know what’s going on. There’s ritual, there’s an expectant rhythm; we are comfortable with the prayer and know that there’s unity of belief in the Eucharist. This morning I went to the prayer site, Pray As You Go, a Jesuit site from England. The reflection was on the beatitudes, the gospel from today’s morning Mass which I had just heard read by Fr. Dave in Dayton Ohio, shortly before. Ours is one big Church, with lots of room for disagreement and lots of opinions as well. There are many ways of praying, and lots of wrestling with Church positions. But we are a family, arguments aplenty and baggage in tow; we’re not abandoning ship and we’re certainly not starting our own churches – at least for the most part. We are catholic, in the best sense of the word – open to all. ‘Here comes everyone,’ as the saying goes. And I’m proud to be part of this.

The Appropriate Good-Bye

Babies are born – we celebrate with showers and baptism parties. First Communions, bar-mitzvahs and bat-mitzvahs, quinceaños, confirmations, weddings, anniversaries, and finally deaths are all occasions of celebration. -maybe even especially deaths, for those are times when we can appreciate the expanse of one’s life, and see that life from the perspective of many who were touched by it. I recently attended two ‘celebrations of life’ – so called by the daughter of our friends, both of whom died within 4 months of each other. The first was at Yankee Trace Golf Club, attended by probably over 100 people who were wined and dined as if it were a wedding. The table centerpieces were made up of an assortment of Angie’s (Angelo’s) favorites – favorite candy, sports tickets, computer, jokes, mini Jack Daniel bottles, and I can’t remember what else. His children stood to tell tales of their dad, while waiters poured shots of JD for a final toast. We raised our glasses and downed the Jack Daniels, remembering how he loved that drink and loved a good party. Four months later a smaller crowd gathered at the Greene Wine Loft for a similar event for his wife. There we sat in a large circle, wine in hand, as one by one folks told tales of Wanda, and tales of Wanda and Angie together. We laughed and cried as all again remembered these two dear people. I swallowed my scornful words at the disrespect of such gatherings as they truly were wonderful ways to re-member our non-believing friends. Better people one could not meet: honest, respectable, charitable, fun – just not church-goers. I have been thinking how important funerals are, for they give us a chance to bring closure to a relationship, but more importantly, they give us a chance to take one more peek into someone’s life – to see one more inspiring quality, to hear one more funny anecdote, to learn one more thing about God as reflected in this person, to be touched one more time until eternity when we will revel in each other’s presence once again.