Percolators and roller skates

More and more sounds can only be heard in our memories. So many have disappeared within my lifetime so far:

1. All-metal rollerskates on the sidewalk. Nylon wheels just don't have the same ratchety sound.

2. The rumble of car tires on brick streets.

3. Actual ringers in phones, including when you bang the receiver down, the bell inside responds with a clong!

4. A percolator, on the stove or plugged in, slowing down through those last majestic upheavals (is it done? No, one more long snort...)

5. Two-noted police whistles urging either people (two notes) or cars (one note) to get themselves moving. The traffic cops don't even seem to own whistles anymore. (This may be specific to Chicago.)

6. The promising hissssss heard after dropping the phonograph needle on a record, before the music starts. I'm having some old favorite albums put on CD and I've asked the guy to leave the hiss on at the beginning; it doesn't sound right otherwise.

7. The row of real chiming bells on the ice cream trucks (endless amplified "Oh Susanna" will greet all who enter Gehenna) AND (to date myself) the two-noted cowbell sound of the scissor-and-knife-sharpening cart that used to come down the alleys.

There must be more. Your memories, please?

Yikes: will today's ten-year-olds sigh over the sound of a bug zapper? Twenty-year-olds get teary-eyed over the sound of a hard drive booting up? Thirty-year-olds smile at the sound of Pong?

Please, St. Anthony, look around....

Something's lost and must be found!

Today is the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua, the gentle but effective preacher and evangelizer of the early 1200's. This Franciscan, who was, by the evidence of his surviving habit, quite a tubby guy (yay for us tubby people!) has become the popular saint for finding lost articles.

The kiddie prayer I wrote above should really be replaced by this one, to properly understand the role of the saints' intercession for us:

Dear Saint Anthony, you are the patron of the poor and the helper of all who seek lost articles. Help me to find the object I have lost so that I will be able to make better use of the time I will gain for God's greater honor and glory. Grant your gracious aid to all people who seek what they have lost - especially those who seek to regain God's grace. Amen.

Here's a prayer that St. Anthony himself wrote:

Ecce Crucem Domini!
Fugite partes adversae!
Vicit Leo de tribu Juda,
Radix David! Alleluia!

Behold the Cross of the Lord!
Be gone all evil powers!
The Lion of the tribe of Judah,
The root of David has conquered! Alleluia!

Nice short tight little prayer, glorifying the Lord. I love to learn more and come to love our models and friends in Heaven!

Sheep, sheep, sheep...camel?

Why did Jesus suggest that we should picture stuffing a camel through the eye of a needle? When He tells us a parable, it's usually "cue the sheep!"

In a post in a great Evangelical Christian blog called From The Morning, the blogger was talking about his reaction to Joel Osteen, the ubiquitous TV preacher and author. The comment thread drifted, as they are wont to do, and someone made reference to Jesus' parable to the rich man found in Luke 18:18-27 (and elsewhere).

In it, He looked at the rich man, obedient to the Law, who was truly asking what he could do to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven and, loving him, replied "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

God knows we're sheeplike: we huddle together, we're kind of stupid when we all think together, we can be picked off by a host of Enemies. The Old Testament promised a Messiah who will "feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young." (Isaiah 40:11)

So why didn't He give us the mental picture of passing a sheep through a needle's eye? If you picked up a sheep and told it you were going to insert it into an impossibly small aperture, the sheep would probably blink earnestly and say "duh, uh, okeydokey." It might even attempt to help, not being overloaded with brains.

But no, we are given the picture of a camel. A hard-footed, mean, biting, kicking, smelly, spitting, stubborn, uncooperative and unreliable animal. Camels never dash into burning buildings to bark the families awake. Camels never curl up around lost children and keep them warm in the winter's blast. They have nothing to recommend them but strength, stamina and a kind of grisly courage.

My heart IS that camel. Rebellious, selfish, greedy, uncooperative. I don't so much lead it gently as I haul it around, snorting and protesting and pulling against the lead every chance available. Just when I thought I was getting to be a pretty cute Christian, too.

Great story, Lord.

Medical marijuana my eye!

My own short thought on medical marijuana: as someone with glaucoma, who is getting a little tired of my ex- (or still-)stoner friends digging me in the ribs and pointing out, in a surprising Cheech and Chong whine that takes me right back, that I can probably justify a little daily toke, man, this is what my eye doctor told me: that I would have to smoke marijuana at least ten times every day, evenly spaced throughout the day and night, to get any relief for glaucoma's increased interocular pressure. He further said that there is not a symptom eased by marijuana that isn't also eased by any other legal drug.

So it's no use asking me to share.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

Everybody thinks all the great church holidays are at Easter and Christmas. But we have such lovely ones during Ordinary Time, too. After ending Easter with such a bang on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, we slipped back into the green vestments and discarded the extra flowers around the altar. First came Trinity Sunday. Then we had the feast of Corpus Christi, complete with Eucharistic processions and special times of Adoration in some parishes, including mine.

Now we have the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. How awesome to contemplate that God, Creator of all things, Infinite, Uncreated, Sustainer of everything in the world, came to earth to love us with a human heart.

It's also First Friday, so many people will have a special chance for extra worship or Adoration at their churches today.

Here's today's second reading, from 1 John 4:

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.

This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.

God is love, and whoever remains in love
remains in God and God in him.

Could the Lord BE any more obvious? He loves you and He loves me in a way that we can actually understand, if not completely. Spend the day with that sure knowledge.