Proposed beatitudes

I want to propose a couple of new beatitudes. Here’s the first:

Blessed are they who were born without will power, for they shall have to depend on God.

Spiritual power and will power are two different things. Some of us, myself included, have none of the latter, but all of us have the former in abundance – if only we choose to appropriate it.

The two really have nothing whatever to do with each other. I can certainly not bend God to my will any more than God needs me to accomplish His purposes. If, however, I abandon my will in favor of His, then I have the opportunity of being an instrument in His hands – if He chooses to use me. My faith confirms the certainty within me that He desires my instrumentality, albeit that we both know He has a poor workman on the staff. Puny as I am, I’m reminded of what Pope John Paul II once told the priests in Florida while visiting the U.S. We have a tendency to forget, the Pope said, that God can use not only our strength but also our weakness – that our weakness can be most effective in His service.

Along these same lines, I know that there is much about me that I am powerless to change. Even though I want to, I can’t, no matter how many resolutions I make. Left to my own devices, I’m beat, whipped, doomed – a hopeless case.

Go ahead, scoff. Say I could change if I wanted to. Browbeat me. Say I’m the master of my own ship. All the old chidings. They will do no good. I know that my only hope is not in will power, but in spiritual power. Not that I live, but that Christ lives in me. Not that I accomplish, but that God accomplishes in my behalf. I know that my victory will come in and through the beneficence and grace of Jesus Christ the Lord. He’s the real power.

My second beatitude says: Blessed are they who don’t make people their project, for they shall make some authentic friends.

It seems to me that there are so many religious programs around these days that some of them have begun to run their course for want of adherents. In the wake of this shortage of applicants, people have abandoned certain bounds of authenticity in an effort to lure others onto the roles of commencing experiences. I don’t think there’s malice in this: there’s just something cold about it. Recruitment activities seem to me to objectify “pigeons,” rather than spring from sincerity of wanting to offer a genuine friend a genuine opportunity to grow closer to God. Even as we are moved to share our faith with others, should we not begin by accepting them just as they are? In my own zeal to recruit, I have had ulterior motives in establishing relationships. I have found myself being less that honest. Better, I think, to have a sincere, unrecruited friend than a disillusioned acquaintance.

Maybe what it takes is more spiritual power and less will power. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 10th, 1988

Lent is a season, and not a deadline to be met

So how is your Lent going?

You say you forgot to get ashes on Ash Wednesday?

You say you obeyed the rules for fasting, but you had two big small meals and one gigantic main meal?

You say you abstained from meat, and for your penance you had the smoked salmon filet, or was it the king crab?

Is that what’s troubling you, friend?

I have a tendency to focus on the wrong things. I feel disheartened because I have not made a good start for Lent. I feel discouraged, and I want to give up before I have even begun. I focus on the letter and not the spirit. I have had some faint glimmer that this Lent would be different, but even so soon it is a weakening ember of hope.

I need the Lord’s help to abandon my scrupulosity. I need His help to understand that Lent is not a rigid schedule of fixed dates, a make-it-or-break-it deadline to get going or bust. I need His help to see that Lent is a season, like springtime. The calendar says that spring has not yet come, but already I have felt the warmth of sun amid the cool days. I have been invigorated by air that makes life worth living.

Would that the Lord would let me see that it’s always now, and never any other time. Let this day be that springtime day that comes unannounced, off schedule like a child’s hilarity, like a crocus in the snow.

I would be free of the shackles of my own rigidity, the smokescreen of excuses for my unwillingness to change. I need the Lord to show me in my heart that Lent didn’t begin without me, that Lent awaits me like a kind friend rejoices as his tardy companion arrives.

It’s funny how desperately I cling to the old way, as if I refuse abundant life. I can’t understand how I let myself be strapped by the lamest reasons like: It’s too late! I didn’t start on time! Bosh. Have I forgotten that the Christians sang in the Colosseum? Did not all the saints speak always and everywhere of joy? St. Augustine cried out, “How late have I loved thee, Lord!” St. Augustine, intercede for this foot-dragger.

The Lord made this day just as He made all the others. I need Him to open my eyes to the great power that comes from Him to turn my heart away from habit and self-seeking.

I have bought into the ways of the world, and my justification system is elaborate. Rather than renounce it, I have found ways to incorporate its values into mine. Surely my ideals have become gilded and spread about with cushions and lots of articulate and wise rationale.

I have accepted the cravings of the flesh, preferred the darkness, the solitary prison of half-measures. Innuendo is okay. Off color is funny. I don’t want the jeering labels of radical, prude, straight-laced.

I have listened to the devil’s lies, though I know that God’s kingdom is not a democracy.

If you didn’t get ashes and your fast was more like a feast; if your abstinence has been a delicious change of pace, Lent was made for folks like you and me. This isn’t late. This is now. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on March 8th, 1987

We know what Lent is all about, if we admit it

Back in my wild days of the barroom, we used to celebrate everything: anybody’s birthday, Tuesday, the full moon. You name it, we celebrated it.

Children were easy to love in those days in the warm glow of a couple or three whiskies after work. The feelings were all gushy and sentimental and fond, uncluttered by the realities of dirty diapers and having to feed them at ungodly times.

Come to find out, though, that celebration without accomplishment is so very empty, and fuzzy feelings don’t have anything to do with love. Love is something you do.

Lent starts this week, and like most Catholics, I find myself face to face with the great challenge of conversion, again. Somehow I think we Catholics have always known the real challenge of Lent; we can feel it in our bones, something very familiar and personal. Before the Great Council, there was a lot of hype about the rules and regulations and pious practices. Since the Council, there’s a lot of hype about there not being so many rules and regulations anymore and talk about pious practices is more loosely construed. Always, though, Lent was really something else: something inside and inexplicable and important, and we knew it. It has to do with little old me and God.

Here soon, Jesus will be going into the desert and beckoning me to follow Him. The desert, the vast, quiet, uneventful place devoid of the incessant messaging of the ear which has become our society. The desert, where there’s nobody to talk to but God, and I don’t want to go there.

It’s spooky out there, and hard and lonely and no good shows on. I stand at the edge and everything in me cries out forget it! No big deal! Who needs it! Bunch of nonsense! Why bother! Keep on keepin’ on, man!

Am I alone in this? We know the challenge of Lent, I’m sure. Fasting doesn’t have anything to do with some rule that says not to eat. That’s dumb. Fasting has to do with focusing our attention away from everything familiar and therefore distracting to us, even something as basic and ordinary as eating, so that we can satisfy our real craving, our hunger for God. Lenten practices, if you will, whether doing something or not doing something, whether required or self-imposed, are surely empty if they are so much stagecraft. We’ve always known that. The buzzing about the rules or lack of them is just one more delaying mechanism for coming to terms with what we know Lent is all about: seeing the truth about ourselves in relationship to God.

I’ve spent a lot of Lents letting things slide, and sure enough Easter was a zero. I did not rise with the Risen Christ because I had not died with Him. It was like those empty celebrations of yore. The new fire burned brightly and I was witness to it in my community, but the new fire did not burn in me. Oh, I wanted to celebrate and rejoice, all right; but I had eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear. I could not celebrate because I had not accomplished.

My friend Pete enjoys motocross, but he as little patience with people who want to talk about motocross who have not experienced motocross. They haven’t done it, he says, so they don’t know about it.

It’s one thing to feel all gooey and nice about my kids in the neighborhood tavern. It’s quite another to come home and have my kids give me a wide berth because of my ill humor and impatience and lack of interest in their affairs.

We’ve always known what Lent is about, and if you’re like me, you fight it tooth and nail. If you’re like me, you make small talk about the rigors and do whatever else you can to avoid confronting what your heart is screaming at you. It’s true I don’t know just what it’s screaming, what it’s saying, what the truth is. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to go into the desert where I can hear and see clearly.

I took one step into the desert one time, from the grass at the edge to the sand. Some journey, huh? Ah, you know what a journey it was. We Catholics, we’ve always known the challenge of Lent, known in our hearts. You don’t get to be an Easter people, with joy unsurpassed, with no sand in your shoes. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on March 1st, 1987

Owensboro Catholic High School Senior Yearbook Note

written by Thomas A. Russell in 1965

Changes on the job

Bob was a big guy and nobody liked him. He worked for a trucking company and all the workers in the place couldn’t stand him. He was a loudmouth. He intimidated everybody he came into contact with, and he especially intimidated Frank.

The think Frank had inside of himself about Bob was horrendous. Anger, outrage. Frank didn’t even want to be around Bob. Bob would come in from taking a load and Frank would go to the other side of the terminal to avoid making contact. Or Frank would hurry to get his work done and be out the door just to keep out of Bob’s way.

It wasn’t really just Frank, though. Bob was such a blowhard, there wasn’t a man driving a truck that wouldn’t just as soon Bob went out and never came back. With Frank, the case was more severe, because Frank knew in his heart that the reason he had so much anger toward Bob was because he was afraid of him. Frank was absolutely scared of the man, big, dumb bruiser that he was.

One day, Bob got sick and went to the hospital. The atmosphere at the terminal was decidedly different those days. Suffice it to say, unkind comments were made about Bob being in the hospital, things like good riddance, dressed up with other unsavory vocabulary words.

Frank was glad Bob was out, too; but he still had anger about the man, and he didn’t know what to do about it. The thing about Frank, he had come to a new place in his life, trying to make a few changes, trying to stop living the way he had been living, trying to make some kind of attempt to do what he knew was right in the eyes of God.

Driving home that night, Frank came to a T in the road, and sitting directly across was a card store. Something inside Frank said stop and go in, which he did, and there he found a card to send to Bob. Frank called back to work and got the room number and address of the hospital. He addressed the card right there in the store and bought a stamp from the guy behind the counter because he knew if he didn’t do it now, he wouldn’t do it. Frank signed the get-well card, “Your friend, Frank.”

Immediately outside the card store was a mailbox. The instant he let the card drop in the mailbox, Frank’s anger left him. Just like that.

Seven, eight weeks later, Bob came back to work. The first thing he did was walk up to Frank and stick out his hand. “Thanks,” Bob said. Frank’s was the only card Bob had received from work the whole time he was in the hospital.

Frank did a little investigating after that. He found out Bob had five kids and every one of them was accident-prone. It seemed like one always had something wrong: a broken arm, a broken leg. To top it off, Bob’s wife was a sickly person, along with having emotional problems. The point was that Bob was coming to work every day out of an atmosphere of pressure. He had no easy life.

It was several years later and Frank had a different job by that time, 60 miles away in a different state. He was a used car salesman now. It was a warm day and business at the car lot, which was on a busy highway, was slow. Frank was walking around the lot outside hoping for a customer to come in.

All of a sudden, Frank heard the gasping of air brakes behind him on the highway and the hollow bump, bump, bumping sound of the trailer end of an empty big rig skidding to a short stop. Frank turned and looked up and who should it be but Bob dodging between lanes of moving cars with a smile on his face, waving and hollering, “How ya doing, Frank! Good to see ya, Buddy!”

Bob had stopped his rig in traffic to say hello to his old pal. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 6th, 1987

Faith in the family room

Jamie was a young man, just 15. He sat in the family room in the back of the house, alone this night as he was frequently in those times. Jamie lived with his Dad and his older brother. His Mom had died about a year before.

What had been a house full of kids and a Mom and Dad in the young fellow’s lifetime had become an empty place. Neighbors didn’t come. Meals were attempted but the effort mostly abandoned. It was empty and quiet.

Jamie had determined this night to be honest with himself once and for all. He would decide what he truly believed. It was a young man’s way of dealing with things. So much had happened so soon, but he could not say that then; he could not be wise and knowing about the meaning of his experiences.

Taking a pen and paper, Jamie wrote, “I believe in God.” He pondered the statement, questioning himself rigorously if he sincerely believed what he had written.

Dad had gone out, probably to the Elks. Dad was pretty lonely since Mom had died and Jamie didn’t begrudge his Dad’s need for companionship and relaxation. Jamie loved his Dad, but he couldn’t articulate the numbness in his own spirit. Did he believe anything anymore, anything at all?

Brother was out, too. It wasn’t long ago they had fought, Jamie and his brother. It was a real fight, one with wrestling and temper. Brother told Jamie he’d better start helping around the house, but Jamie wasn’t going to do that. He didn’t care about the damn house. You’re going to care, brother said, and whacked his sibling with the kitchen towel. Jamie grabbed the towel to wrest it away, but found it tight in his brother’s grip. They wrestled with it tensely to the floor.

Jamie’s eyes streamed with tears and anger and a hollowness he himself could not understand. From his center he cried: “I don’t care!” “You’ll start caring!” brother rejoined. And so it went until they both lost their energy, lying side by side, weeping, weeping, anguishing about a power guiding their lives to such an emptiness.

Jamie hated. He didn’t know why, he just hated. Jamie hated Dad, and loved him. Jamie hated God, and loved him. He could not see that his hate was anger, and that his anger covered up his hurt. Love was in him, but it seemed to him to be a painful contradiction.

The boy thought of the fight with his brother as he peered at the words, “I believe in God.” Quickly, there was a shuffling at the back door, and the quiet was broken by the sound of people entering. Immediately the air was pungent with a strange perfume. Jamie’s father, and a woman he had never met, entered the room. “Oh what a pretty boy!” the woman exclaimed.

After pleasantries and a short visit, Dad and his date left and quiet returned. The smell of perfume lingered in the air as Jamie resumed his thoughts, feeling the urgency of deciding what he truly believed, feeling deep longing for the basic, the absolute, the unequivocal. There was indeed something solid about “I believe in God.”

Against all expectation, Dad was home again soon, surprising Jamie in his exercise of discovering the substance of his faith.

Dad sat in the family room. “What you up to, son?” he asked.

Jamie said, “I’m trying to decide what I truly believe, Dad. I’ve begun by saying I believe in God,” feeling the urge to engage his father in discussing this pursuit.

His Dad nodded vacantly. He said, “Did you like that lady I brought by tonight?”

“She seemed like a nice lady.”

“Well, she might be your new momma.”

“Really? Gee, Dad, that’s great.”

Outside, the young man expressed happiness for his Dad. Inside, he retreated in fearful confusion. Barriers and walls went up that imprisoned the emptiness he could not understand. He stopped trying to decide what he truly believed. He began trying instead to repel the pain of the certainty of his doubt. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 6th, 1987

Hungry

A special place is reserved in my heart for people whose own hearts are hardened and ugly and black with sin. The reason is quite simple: Takes one to know one.

I thank God for the profound blessings He has given me in my life. I thank Him especially for the opportunities I have had to love and show compassion for others like me: the bums and derelicts, the haughty, the selfish, the lustful, the greedy and indifferent, the addicted and desperate, the lazy and morose, the liars and thieves. I am not set apart from these. I long for their fellowship with me in our saving, loving, forgiving Lord. I want them to know about the victory that can be ours, not of ourselves, but in Him.

I can’t help it and I can’t explain it, but I feel drawn to those who have cut themselves off from God’s grace. Somehow there’s an urgency inside me for them to know that I understand, I’ve been there; I’m there now; I know the struggle; there’s hope.

I don’t boast of sin. St. Paul says, “What, then, are we to say? ‘Let us continue in sin that grace may abound?’ Certainly not! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” My boast is that God loves us sinners.

The sinners I find most difficult to love are the proud, the arrogant, the puffed up. The reason, again, is apparent. I find pride to be my most debilitating defect. Pride puts me at a distance from those most in need of my authentic concern. Pride blinds me to the beam in my own eye.

Once more, St. Paul: “…Every one of you who judges another is inexcusable. By your judgement you convict yourself, since you do the very same things. (People say) ‘We know that God’s judgement on men who do such things is just.’ Do you suppose, then, that you will escape His judgement, you who condemn these things in others yet do them yourself? Or do you presume kindness and forbearance? Do you not know that God’s kindness is an invitation to you to repent?”

I bring all this up today because I believe it’s important for me not to become smug or self-satisfied, to fail to recognize myself in the coal-blackest sinner. There, but for the grace of God, go I; and in my case – there I go.

As I bask in God’s favor in the Church and in the availability of the Sacraments, somehow hunger has become a growing part of that experience. A hunger for souls – not for the good guys, but for the bad guys.

God loves the poor and our hearts go out to those in need. But it strikes me that sometimes those in most need are the fat cats, the complacent, the stuffed. We sinners need more than a meal.

Whenever the subject of sin comes up these days, somebody always seems to fret about having a good self-concept. For my part, I have no trouble knowing that I am a person in love with God, longing to do His will, striving to follow Him, to obey Him, to love those He loves. I also know I fail in that. I’m aware that parts of me are revolting and embarrassing and dark. I deliberately choose evil. Al Capone had “My Jesus Mercy” chiseled on his tombstone. I wonder if people think, “Good thing Al prayed that prayer,” or if many don’t quietly pray it for themselves. I know I do.

Today, I don’t kneel and thank God that I’m not like the rest of men. On the contrary, it is my kinship with my brothers and sisters which stirs my soul to appreciation. This is why I am grateful: “It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now that we have been justified by His blood, it is all the more certain that we shall be saved by Him from God’s wrath.” - T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 22nd, 1987