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

This is a story about Father’s Day, but bear with me.

Sometimes, suddenly, I become full of fear about my job or my health or a relationship with someone. There will be no basis for this fear, but there I’ll be, worried something awful is going to happen, leaving me high and dry, terribly sick or dead, or lonely. Crazy, huh?

Fear will then become coupled with resentment. After I’ve gotten a good, irrational fear going, I’ll react by getting mad at my employer or my friend or God.

Before long I’m fighting a battle of the mind, defending myself against all charges when I realize there are no charges. Then I’m ashamed of myself and start feeling guilty for having been mad for no reason.

This, of course, leads to feelings of self-justification, some “legitimate” displeasure. I figure it’s not right that I have to be going through and emotional wringer all the time. God has it in for me. Then I realize I’m in an emotional wringer all right: the spin cycle.

Don’t laugh. People do go through all these ugly feelings, all for no reason. I know they do because I do. You may be perfectly at ease all the time, but I’m not.

My emotions become convoluted and I get mad and fly off the handle at my wife and/or my kids. I worry. I feel like a failure. I feel like what’s the use.

This is still about Father’s Day, so hang in there.

I have found that there’s nothing like a dose of honesty in the midst of emotional turmoil to cure what ails you. You’ve seen it on the silver screen. The soldier is hysterical and somebody slaps his face. In my own experience, I can become a knot of self-pitying gush born of irrational fear and somebody will call me a big baby. Nothing like a little humility (read: truth) to bring a person to his senses.

I was driving back to the old homeplace the other day. It takes a while to get there and usually I’m lost in thought by the time I arrive – no longer simply driving, but riding and emotional rollercoaster. A lot of nostalgia seeps into the cracks of my consciousness and I get excited-wan about the old days.

This trip, I made a pit stop at the Dairy Queen in Loogootee, my head full of visions and gushy feelings not about the past, but about illusions about the past. Inside the Dairy Queen john, a young father was helping his little boy with his britches. This proved to be my slap in the face, the truth that brought me back.

Back on the road, the sweetness of the child’s voice and the tenderness of the father’s rang in my ears, as I recalled the simplicity of the task that confronts every father and son at one time or another. It may not seem like much, but it’s quite something, really, for a dad and his boy to make happen and work out okay. It takes patience and cooperation. It takes the dad’s responsibility and the boy’s trust. It takes uncompromising, unconditional love.

In this case, their circumstances reminded me of mine: the truth that I’m a dad, too, and despite what was or what I thought I was, despite what crazy feelings invade my consciousness, despite my propensity for self-pity and getting mad at the world – I’ve got kids who depend on me. They look to me not only for food and shelter (they take that for granted), but also they expect, ahem, emotional maturity (they don’t know they expect that).

Yep, that does it for me. When I get on an emotional jag, all I have to do is remember I’m a dad, that straightens me right out. See, I told you this was about Father’s Day.

By the way, I thought about that father with his little boy. I remembered mine when they were that little. It made me cry. – T.R.


written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 21st, 1987

On surrendering to God

My son John has declared that he wants to be called Spike. That’s his nickname, he said, and he for sure does not want to be called Robert, which is his middle name.

I asked if it would be OK to call him Buzz. He said that it would not. John or Spike, but not Buzz and definitely not Robert.

I dearly love that boy and, of course, all my children. I would gladly lay down my life for them. There’s no courageous heroism or grandiosity in that. Their lives simply mean more to me than mine does. It’s something instinctive, I think, something in nature.

Stories about parents standing in harm’s way in defense of their children are myriad in human history. We’ve heard of mothers lifting enormous tree trunks to free a pinned son. Fathers have drowned saving their daughters.

Sure, an evil world spawns aberrations in parent-child relationships. But in the natural order, a parent’s love is not conditional. Even a bird will die defending an egg.

What then are we to make of God the Father giving up His only Son to death? Surely that relationship is fraught with more love than even a dad could have for a small boy named Spike. I cannot understand it, but my faith confirms the truth of it, just as I do not doubt that a mother can lift three times her weight to extricate a son.

The Son of God was in fact Love Incarnate. The Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son. No, my mind quits – trying to comprehend.

I know this: I could not bear to live knowing that I had avoided saving my son from death, even at the expense of my own life. I might have physical life, but my soul would be forever anguished, rendering the physical life also tormented.

Jesus said He came that we might have life, and He freely laid down His own life in His purpose. I know, though, that the life He meant for us to have was not physical life, but spiritual. I know that to obtain this spiritual life, I have to die, not physically – but to my own will.

There must come a time to surrender to God, in yielding my will to His, when what I give up is not only sin, but also even that which is most precious to me. If the truth be known, what is most precious to me is my will.

Abraham was a father. Surely Isaac’s life was more precious to him than his own. Gladly would he yield his own life, but Isaac’s? A father’s will for his son to have life is very strong. With Abraham’s surrender, he gave up the powerful life of his own will. Isaac was spared. Jesus, however, was not spared. He did die.

That’s a radical turnaround, a surprise to the sensibilities. It calls the Son Himself into the picture. The Father freely relinquishes His Son; the Son freely relinquishes His life because of His Father’s love, not only for Him, but also for all His children.

A lot of dying going on, giving up, surrendering. But what’s really dying is any consideration of self. Only by doing that kind of dying, as we are taught by the life and death of Jesus, can anyone obtain the kind of life worth having. – T.R.

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

Missed opportunities

Being an opportunist is not necessarily a good thing. Seizing upon a situation for personal advantage, but at someone else’s expense, may be good worldly wisdom, but it’s surely not God’s way.

Circumstances and things do come along, however, which are genuine opportunities and truly are blessings from God. We can pursue these things with enthusiasm and dedication knowing that here is our chance to succeed, indeed to excel.

There have been times like these in my life; and times, too, when out of laziness and ignorance and pride, out of immaturity and weakness and stupidity, I’ve blown it. I’ve messed up. I’ve turned fabulous opportunity into empty failure.

These ghosts of the past rear their ugly heads from time to time. If you’ve had the experience, you know what I mean when I talk about the guilt, the remorse, the anger, the unrequited anxiety. These are the missed opportunities.

Sometimes these experiences are big. Real big. Life changing big. At least one skeleton in my closet represents a missed opportunity that could have made a vast difference in my life, both from the perspective of personal satisfaction and probably financially. Not me, though. No. I was more interested in partying than in making the necessary commitment to a career in law. I wanted to boogie!

Suffice it to say that my decision to drop out of law school has flooded my late night consciousness more than a few times in the intervening years. My sarcasm belies my anger at myself and even a sense of shame and embarrassment. Too late now. The feelings can be unlovely. If you’ve ever blown it big, you know what I mean.

At other times my missed opportunities are on a smaller scale. The other night one of my young ones came into the living room wanting to show me some school papers. I was in a sour mood. I had lost something and was mad because I couldn’t find it. When the school papers were presented I said tersely, I don’t want to look at these now. Get them out of my way. Put them on the table over there and leave me alone. Have you seen my …?

The next morning I saw the stack of papers where my child had left them. He was now in school. When I saw the papers I felt empty and sad. I had been hell-bent on being boorish and bearish and I had accomplished that handily, but I had missed the opportunity to share a peaceful and joyful and pleasant moment with a child. Such life-giving pauses can never be recovered. There’s never really any such thing as making up for it at another time.

Each of us has an emblem or two from the past that represents what would have been, what could have been. All of us have missed the opportunities, great and small. For me, it seems the distinction is beginning to blur.

I have trashed whole giant opportunities in my life. Somehow those big circumstances, however, leave me wanting to kick myself no more than the smaller things that come along: the blown opportunity to say a kind word; the lazy excuse for failing to visit a sickbed; the angry preoccupation preventing a session of patient listening.

The older I get, the more I have come to believe that there can be great power in a single moment. Sometimes, eternity may be hidden in waiting 30 seconds more.

One might say it was nothing that I didn’t take a minute and look at my son’s papers, especially compared to those great rewards I could have had in a legal profession. We’ll never know. That minute with my son could have changed his life, and mine. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 31st, 1987

Looking at life through my son John’s eyes

My father-in-law died not long ago, and one of the things we brought home with us from Detroit was a picture of my wife’s family when she and her sisters were little. Our children have been fascinated with it.

Our two youngest sit on the couch and stare at the picture in its frame and talk. I’ve never been able to pick up all their conversation. I gather what’s happening is that they’re internalizing that their mother came from a family, too. But there’s more that our children are aware of concerning this great mystery that is life.

When my wife was still a little girl, her mother died and she went to live with aunt and her uncle. Subsequently they adopted her. For our children, that has meant grandparents in Maine and grandpa in Detroit. Our children always have known that grandpa in Detroit was their mom’s “real” father, and that their Maine grandparents are the adoptive parents of their mother. I don’t suppose we see things, though, until we see them through a child’s eyes.

I passed by my youngest’s bedroom the other night after he had already been to bed for a while. I saw and heard that he was crying. I stepped in to see what was making John so sad.

Why are you crying John, I said, what’s the matter? Grandpa, he said, I miss grandpa. He was my favorite grandpa.

John is named after his grandpa. His middle name is Robert. We call him that a lot. We call him John Robert. He is six years old. I touched John’s hair and hugged him. I told him I understood that it was hard to lose his grandpa. Grandpa had died, I said, but he had gone to be with Jesus and that we would be with him again someday when we die and go to be with Jesus, too.

Grandpa was mom’s real dad, he said. That other grandpa and grandma in Maine are fakes. They’re fakes, he said, and you could tell he wasn’t happy about that at all. It made him mad that his other grandpa and grandma were fakes.

I said, they’re not fakes, John. They love your mother. They adopted her and took care of her. They provided her clothes and her food and gave her a home and sent her to school. They cared for her as one of their own and she really was, and still is, a member of their family.

No she’s not, John said. They’re fake. A lot of people say that, he said. If they’re not your real mom and dad, they’re fakes and that’s what they are.

People may say that, John, I said, but they are wrong. Your grandpa and grandma in Maine are your mom’s foster parents. Who was Jesus’ real father, John? He was God, wasn’t He?

John gave me one of those faraway, thoughtful looks through his moist eyes. Yes, he said.

Yet when Jesus came down to earth, He had to have a father to take care of Him, to love Him, to be His dad. That man was St. Joseph. St. Joseph was not Jesus’ real dad, but he wasn’t a fake. He was Jesus’ foster father. St. Joseph gave Jesus hugs, made sure He had food, taught Him how to do things.

People may say that grandpas and grandmas who are not real moms and dads are fakes, John. But that just isn’t true. They’re foster parents, just like St. Joseph was Jesus’ foster parent.

John Robert didn’t say anything. I love you, John, I said, and I grabbed him close to me. I know it’s hard to lose your grandpa, I said. I smoothed down his hair and he pulled the covers up around him. Very soon, he was asleep. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on April 5th, 1987

The beauty of forgiving and seeking forgiveness

The second week of February was International Forgiveness Week, and doggone it, I missed it. I could have used the opportunity to forgive and seek forgiveness, but I let it pass.

I could have forgiven my mother for that time she punished me for something I didn’t do.

I could have forgiven my father for those times when I just couldn’t make him understand all my anger.

I could have asked my brother to forgive me for all that blind, immature selfishness I had that time he said, “You’re a punk, Tommy. A New York, Chicago punk.” I couldn’t see that he was right. I couldn’t see all the hurt I was causing my family. There has been a barrier between me and my brother for 20 years.

I could have forgiven the nun who was vindictive toward me. I could have asked her forgiveness for the mean acidic things I said about her behind her back.

I could have forgiven that person for being so empty-headed toward my children, thinking her kids could do no wrong, but scolding mine. The nerve!

I’ve never personally known Lyndon Johnson or William Westmoreland or Stanley Resor, but they are archetypes in my mind of the draftee Army. I gave myself over to full-blown, unrepentant hatred in the Army toward this government which had so much power over me, and these people represented this government. This same government did not send me to Vietnam in the heat of the Vietnam War. This same government has helped me buy two houses, and paid for advanced education. I know forgiveness would heal the hurt, but I let it pass.

What about that landlord that kept my rent deposit? I could have forgiven him, but I didn’t.

The crazy woman that drives me crazy could have been on my list. She never listens to what I have to say, but is ever expecting me to endure her great wisdom.

Ah, my dear mother-in-law. I’ve never known what to call my mother-in-law after all these years of being married to her daughter. Generally, I avoid the subject – talk around it, you know. Whatever name I choose to call her will be the wrong one, you can bet on that. It’ll be disrespectful or too familiar, and I refuse to call my own mother-in-law Mrs.

I think of the boss I need to forgive, stealing my ideas, earning credit for the work that I did.

The Church has made me mad, so blind to my needs, so irrelevant to my circumstances, so smug and rich and intellectually arrogant, answers changing from one priest to the next, one decade to the next. I could have forgiven my Church. I could have seen in Her leaders the same imperfect exercise I see in my own parenting.

I could have forgiven God for taking my mother and my father and my only dear grandparent. I know that God has no need of my forgiveness, that the change has to take place in me. But somehow I have preferred the bitterness, perversely enjoyed the resentment which feeds on itself, and grows – even though I am the only one who suffers. I know in my heart that forgiveness would bring peace and a whole new dimension to living, but I hang on.

Reliving these old circumstances in my life has helped me to appreciate anew the sheer beauty of forgiving and being forgiven. Knowing that I have in fact dealt with each of these relationships has changed the very quality and nature of my life. I do have peace.

Sometimes we sit between the ledge and the mountaintop, separated by a cloud. The peak is just a leap away. As the cloud passes, in the bright clarity, we have our chance. A little courage, a little action will bring us safely to the other side.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on February 15th, 1987

Marriage: living and loving together in Christ

Just because my wife and I have been married for 16 years doesn’t make me an expert on marriage. I’m sure my wife will testify to that. It is true, however, that I have learned a thing or two. I don’t presume to suggest that I have a world view or that my views apply to anyone’s marriage other than my own.

One thing I’ve learned is that I shouldn’t be callous and domineering. I once suggested to a group of people there is only one thing in the world that I expect of my wife – that she keeps the bed made. A woman remarked from the group, “Why can’t you make the bed?” Gee, I said, I didn’t think it was too much to expect only one thing.

Of course, I was simply trying a little humor – that I was clinging to a last strand of chauvinism among the millions and billions of things involved in a marriage. It was a poor joke.

Even though I’m writing this from my perspective, I “feel” my wife’s attitudes and ideas and perspectives. For the record, my wife makes the bed if she feels like it. Far be it from me to tell her what to do. That becomes particularly significant in matters of faith.

I know that Lizzie needs to be free to be who she is in Jesus Christ, just as I do. He made us one and we are as one, but we are not one and the same. I’m what you might call lockstep wishy-washy, for example, and demand the freedom to be so. Elizabeth, however, has a tendency to regard matters with more conviction. I take a broader view, she a more detailed approach. She accepts people as they are, whereas I accept people as I think they ought to be.

Elizabeth needs freedom to go places and do things, particularly as she seeks the Lord, even if I believe she’s dead wrong. That does not mean that I cannot voice my opinion, that I cannot share deeply and intimately my own faith and feelings. However, I cannot tell her what kind of relationship to have with God. It is her relationship with Him. In the last analysis, we both worship the same God the Father, in Jesus Christ, together with the Holy Spirit.

If God wants my wife to make widgets or to associate with people who, uh, don’t always see things the way I do, then who am I to judge? I’m confident we are in agreement that God loves all His people.

Another thing I have learned is that I shouldn’t be selfish. I am decidedly selfish, but only in letting go of my laziness and preferences and pride do I find real peace.

One thing my wife won’t let me do is be patronizing or false. She has a highly developed awareness of the dishonest. I can’t say “It’s OK if you go there” if I don’t genuinely think that. She’ll catch it like a frog catching a bug. No, she wants the dignity of my honesty with her, not the indignity of my pseudo-complicity only to find out later I was really opposed.

Even if I am opposed to some of the things Elizabeth does, that doesn’t mean that I’m right and she’s wrong. Just the same, it is incumbent upon me to be honest about it and respectful of her freedom as a child of God. I ain’t saying I’m good at it, either. I just know it to be true, that’s all.

We Catholics share a common faith. That does not mean, however, that we do not have different talents, different gifts, different inclinations as we seek to know God and His will in our lives. Differences occur in our faith community and in marriages, too. God knows they do in mine. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 18th, 1987

Perceptions and truth

They say we remember things the way we perceived them to be the first time. I recall my oldest brother grabbing me from my bed one winter morning, taking me outside and setting me down in the new fallen snow. It was up to my waist! I had never seen so much snow!

Many snows have come and gone, but my memory shows the great snow of my childhood. The point is: It wasn’t that we had tall snow, but that I was a short boy.

I used to think that the home of my birth was very big, but it wasn’t so big. The overgrown hilly field behind our house was not a jungle but a thicket.

Many more perceptions come into play as we grow older, things a lot more complicated than big and small. Take marriage, for example. That can be a shocker.

I’m sure I went into marriage satisfied with the old ’60s adage: “You do your thing and I do mine; and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.” That seemed like a reasonable sentiment. Certainly I believed my wife and I had it together, each of us with something to keep and something to share.

Good golly Miss Molly how things change. Things just didn’t work out 50-50 in our wedlock. Come to find out that marriage can be ninety-nine to one or a hundred to nothing. Come to find out that marriage just won’t work any other way.

It seems that so much of maturity deals with coming to terms with disillusionment. It seems so unfair that big things are really small, that snow that once prompted awe now prompts dread, that love can be hard and thankless and painful.

I don’t mean to imply that I go around disillusioned all the time. Far from it. Actually, in a kind of ironic twist, disillusionment has been a great teacher, demonstrating to me that real beauty is found in truth itself rather than in a perception of it.

Who can know the peace, the deep satisfaction, of a couple married 50 years, a Sister celebrating her Silver Jubilee, a priest who has been a priest for 30 years or 40 years? You and I know that they didn’t make those milestones easily or alone. Indeed, they could not have made them without God.

My wife and I have discovered that Jesus Christ must be at the center of our marriage if we are to do the loving that’s called for. We have discovered that He was there all along, whether we chose to acknowledge Him or not. He has that kind of love.

One of the things I tell my kids is that Jesus loves them and that He never stops loving them. Even when they are doing wrong, even when it seems nobody loves them – when they are happy, when they are sad, Jesus loves them. I tell my children this over and over and over again. Sometimes they say, “I know, Dad.” Or they will say, “You always say that, Dad.” Sometimes, though, they don’t say anything – they just look off in one of those childlike stares, seeing what a child sees as he grapples with believing.

Having come through a few disillusionments in my time, I know that my children will face them, too. I cannot spare them that. Maybe, however, when the going gets rough, when life gets unfair and they are called upon to love someone who doesn’t love them back, they will recall with confidence that Someone does love them after all, and never stops.

The Hebrew scholar says that God did not tell us how to begin things. That is His secret. He did, however, reveal to us a precious secret: How to begin again.

That’s what I’ve had to do as I have recovered from my disillusionments. I’m surely thankful that God, Who is Truth, has pulled back the curtain, from which way to go.

As I have begun fitfully and timidly on these new journeys, I know that the snow may not be deep, but it can be serene and pure and awe-inspiring, and that I can appreciate it in a child-like way. I know that love out there will not be based on some preconceived idea, but will be beyond all understanding. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 23rd, 1986

My friend is always there when I need him

Let me tell you about my oldest and dearest friend. I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t around.

That childhood day in the swing on the front porch was quite a time. I sat there holding my old cat, Rhubarb, feelings so sorry for myself. “Rubie,” I said, “you’re my only friend in the world.” It was truly a feast of childhood self pity. I didn’t recognize it as such, of course. I was steeped in my bittersweet emotions with abandon. Who should come along, though, but my old friend. It wasn’t long before dumb Rhubarb had lazed off under the foot-a-nights and I was swinging high with my friend singing made up songs.

We used to run for high pop flies together in a neighbor’s field. It’s funny. I wouldn’t be aware that he was running with me. I was a terrible baseball player, but my friend never let on like he minded. I tried out for Little League. That pitcher threw the ball so fast I didn’t even see it. My fellow Little League aspirants were impatient for their turn to try out at bat. They kept taunting me with “What do you want, pal?” All I wanted was a ball I could hit. I was a washout, but my friend made me feel better about it.

I went to St. Thomas Seminary in Louisville what I was 14 years old and I was really glad that my friend went with me. When I hit those terrazzo floors and sniffed those unfamiliar smells at St. Thomas, I was one frightened and homesick boy. I can’t tell you how intensely my friend and I talked that first night when we were supposed to be quiet.

My friend and I rode home together for Christmas that year – Glory be to God! Home! I recall that “Telstar” was playing on the car radio and my friend and I “dum dah dummed” to that instrumental song with happy gusto. What a joyful and sweet day that was.

When I left the seminary in February of my second year in high school, I couldn’t believe it, but my friend came with me. That was particularly comforting because my parents weren’t too happy about me leaving.

When my mother died, I honestly could not have taken the pain without my friend there with me.

There were some years after that when I lost much interest in my friend. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with me. I guess I just didn’t want to be with him. He didn’t like beer bashes and I did. It’s hard to explain. I got all full of bitterness inside. My friend would get in touch with me, want to know if I wanted to talk. For some reason or other, I got mad at him. He just took it. I’ve never heard him say an unkind word to me.

I kept it up, kept it up. Here was a friend who had never hurt me, had been with me through thick and thin, called on me what I wouldn’t call on him; but I started blaming him for everything I found unpleasant in my life.

Somehow or other, we got back together. I’m reasonably confident it was his doing. I told him I was sorry for being such a jerk. He just shrugged and said forget it. He gave it to me straight, tough. He was as honest and true as you can get.

He said we weren’t kids anymore, and the time had come for me to decide if I wanted to be his friend or not. He’d always been my friend, he said, and he certainly wanted to go on being so. What was I going to do, though? Was I going to keep asking him to go places and do things I knew very well he didn’t like? Was I going to go on blaming him for every rough place in the road I came across? Was he going to be the only one to be the friend in this friendship?

He had a good point.

I know that there’s not another one like him. He’s bailed me out of more scrapes. I don’t understand myself sometimes. I forget about him, don’t call him. I can’t remember one time when he wasn’t there for me.

My friend told me one time that there wasn’t a single living, breathing human being in this world he didn’t love deeply. I said wait a minute, you know everybody I know, and even though you’ve been down the line with me, we’re acquainted with some pretty low types. He said, o yeah, who?

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on October 12th, 1986

Too much stuff!

One of the paradoxes of the Information Age is the sheer volume of information we are expected to internalize and deal with. Being ethical, decent people, perhaps we run around with a load of guilt because we simply can’t find the time to care about all the things we’re supposed to care about.

Everywhere there’s a newspaper article, a TV spot, a radio segment, a flyer in the mail, a handbill at the supermarket, a knock at the door, a pre-recorded phone call, a letter sent home from school – all of them urging our undivided attention. Each one asks for money, prayers, or a letter to our congressman.

Phew! If you’re like me, you want to go live in the desert and send out appeals asking for undivided attention, prayers and a generous contribution in the postage-paid return envelope provided.

Here’s a sampling of the important things brought to my attention in recent days, stirring in me a sense that I ought to be doing something, or at least unsettled me in one way or another:

Altar girls, neo-paganism among feminists, abortion, denial of care to deformed infants, Satanism and promiscuous lyrics in rock music, welfare reform in Indiana, alcoholism and drug abuse among young people, Crack, the homeless, strident liberalism in the Church, strident conservatism in the Church, problems of the aged, rural poverty, unemployment, the lonely, the Third Secret of Fatima, intellectual arrogance, anti-intellectualism, world peace.

One that drives me crazy is John Huston saying “Give to prevent blindness.”

Believe me, folks, I don’t make light of any of these things. But you and I both know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. You could knock out a list longer than mine.

Among all the things that competed for my attention, here’s what I did something about:

- I made out a check to my parish church.
- I took my daughter to and picked her up from baton practice.
- Saturday I met with my Cursillo group and went to the Full Gospel Businessmen’s dinner meeting; Sunday I went to Mass; and Tuesday I prayed with my prayer group.
- I had a conversation with my wife, an argument with my wife and a de-argumentizing conversation with my wife.
- I hugged my kids.
- I hollered at my kids.
- I mowed the grass.
- I started reading a new book.
- I came to work every day at the best job in the world. (This is my job, you see).
- I prayed for a friend who wasn’t feeling so hot.

All of this is to say that these may not be the right things to do, but somehow they’re going to have to be for now.

God made us fearfully and wonderfully. He knows we can’t take on all of this stuff. That’s why, I suppose, we understand that we are but parts of His Mystical Body – each of us with a role to play, a job to do. We have to depend on Him to lead us into areas that we can do something about. He will teach us. He will guide us.

Perhaps by the very awareness we have of global concerns, we are given a better understanding of the awesomeness of God. I, however, am not awesome. I can’t do something about everything.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor in July of 1986

Close moments

People who are involved with Cursillo speak of “close moments,” but you don’t have to be in Cursillo to have had a similar experience. Surely you have had one, for example.

Close moments refer to those times when an individual feels particularly close to Jesus Christ, those times shot through, as it were, with the awareness of God.

These moments can come at any time and can last but an instant or go on for a long time. Nothing I know of in my Christian experience compares with a close moment with Jesus.

It’s helpful to reflect on these times in our experience. They bolster our confidence in times of pain. They are a practical assist to a faith sometimes gone dry. They remind us that God is with us even when it doesn’t seem like it.

I have learned that there is nothing I can do to cause such an experience. Jesus is the Master of the encounter. Indeed, a person doesn’t necessarily have to be a believer. Paul, on the road to Damascus, certainly was no believer. Stories of conversion experiences abound, wherein a hardened sinner turns around owing to a close moment with God.

If Jesus Christ chooses to reveal himself to someone, there doesn’t seem to be much the individual can do about it.

As I grew up, I believed close moments (although I didn’t call them that) were reserved for saintly mystics.

I love the story of St. Francis of Assisi experiencing ecstasy. He cried out, “Enough, Lord, enough!” Apparently that close moment went on and on.

There’s the story of St. Catherine of Sienna being held in such rapture that her sisters believed she was dead. Her confessor had to come and call her back to the real world, so to speak. She cried, the story goes, because she became separated from her union with Christ. Another long one.

I’ve come to find out that Jesus does reveal himself to lowly and unworthy and ordinary persons like me – just plain folks who don’t have a mystical bone in their body.

Let me share with you a couple of close moments.

My son, John, is five. When he was three, my wife, Elizabeth, reported to me what John had told her one morning. She had written it in his baby book.

John said, “He made my sore better! He came into my room last night. He walked in and said, ‘I didn’t know you had a Mickey Mouse bed.’ And He made my sore come out! Jesus did! He called me my name! He called me John!”

Doubtless it was a close moment for John. But I cannot recall that little story without remembering the close moment I had with Jesus the first time I heard it.

Another time, I was returning from Holy Communion. I wasn’t feeling particularly joyful. In fact, I wasn’t feeling much at all. To be sure, I wasn’t running my mouth as I am wont to do. On this occasion, Jesus got a word in edgewise.

I was making my way between chairs toward my seat and everyone began to sing, “Yahweh, I know you are near.” It is not within my power to express to you the experience of what happened in that moment. It was as if my whole being was transformed, from that to this, from the old Tom to the new Tom. I could not stay the same.

Who can say? He touched me. Tears came into my eyes. The experience was physical, mental and spiritual – all encompassing. It was mighty and powerful, yet incredibly gentle and sweet. It was awesome yet peaceful, joyful and life-giving.

I shall always be grateful for the gift of that moment – an instant, really, of eternity.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 15th, 1986

Lucy Alice

My mother died when I was 15 years old, almost 25 years ago. She was a friendly woman, hard working, deeply faithful.

Mothers are always special. It takes a long time into adulthood sometimes to believe they have any faults – any at all.

My mother was born near a place called Dermont, Kentucky. Actually, where she was born doesn’t have a name. It’s just the country. We had a blue plate in our home when I was growing up that testified about where my mother’s family used to trade. On the underneath side it said: “Sog Hinton’s Grocery Store, Dermont, Kentucky.”

Her name was Lucy Alice. I came in from playing one day and she was standing at the kitchen sink with her friend, Snooks Kluck. I said, “You’re name is Lucy? Maybe we ought to get a screwdriver and tighten you up!” She roared with laughter. I remember her laugh more than a lot of other things about her. It was so full and so ready and so uninhibited.

She was a strict disciplinarian. There was none of this sitting in the corner business. We got what she called a “thrashin’.” It came swiftly and without hesitation, with a belt or a hairbrush or a willow branch, whatever was handy. I loved her so awfully much.

She’d clean house every day, but Friday was housecleaning day in a big way. She’d dust the baseboards and the tops of pictures and wipe the bottoms of the kitchen chair legs. Lunch was most often leftovers, except on Saturday when there’d be Spanish bar cake and lunch meat from the A&P.

During the week, she lie on the couch at the noon hour in the T.V. room and watch “As the World Turns” on the Lowboy. She’d put her feet in my lap and I would rub them, and her legs. They hurt her from being on them so much.

Every night at 9 o’clock, we’d kneel down in the living room and say the Rosary. Dad would give and we would answer. My mother had a special devotion to Mary. Mother would have coffee many a late morning with her friend Madge who lived up the way. As often as not, it was a faith sharing.

We had a cloister of Passionist nuns near where we used to live. Madge would say, “Now, Lucy, how in the world can them women live in there like that? Seems like they’d go crazy. I would, I know.” And they’d both laugh, and my mother would explain. My mother would talk about Mary. She knew her as a protectress, an intercessor, a friend. To this day, Madge has a statue of our Blessed Mother in her living room. “She’ll keep me safe,” Madge says. She is a Baptist.

When the Rosary was ended, Mother would stand up and I would hold her because she was dizzy. I would hold my arms around her waist and look into her face. Her eyes would be closed and her head would sway gently to the right and left. Then she’d open her eyes and smile, and I would kiss her good night, as would my brothers and my sister.

My mother’s first two babies were miscarried. The doctors told her she would never have any more children. I was her ninth and last pregnancy. She died of cancer when she was 54.

When I was born, my mother named me “Alan,” after Blessed Alan, a Dominican who spent his days encouraging devotion to the Rosary. On my birth certificate, they put “Allen,” and that made my mother mad. She sent it back and made them change it. My birth certificate has “Allen” scratched through and “Alan” handprinted on it. A lot of people called me “Tom” or “Tommy.” My mother was wont to call me “T. Alan.”

My mother knew a lot of pain in her life. She wore a back brace for a long time because of surgery for a slipped disc in her back. I’ve never witnessed anyone have such pain for such a long time as she had with that.

But she also had joy. I remember her dressing up for a party in our home as a Chinese woman, just acting silly. There was so much happiness that night. Her friends were good friends, and many, and life-long. We were a home of extremes, I guess. Our pain was intense. Our laughter was abundant.

On Mother’s Day, all of us think of our mothers. It’s a simple observance, really. We remember that they gave us life. We reflect on how much we love them. For those of us whose mother’s are gone, the day is no less meaningful.

Sometimes in my mind’s eye, when I’ve done things I’ve had no business doing, I became aware that my mother knows everything about me now. I have no secrets from her.

Sometimes, too, I see myself coming into heaven and Momma’s there to greet me. She runs up to me and hugs me hard and says to me, “Honey, come look!”

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor in May of 1986