Things to pray about

Whenever I’ve run out of things to pray about, I can take a look at this list:

- I can pray for all the people who have used me, manipulated me, walked all over me or taken me for granted. I can ask God to give these people every good thing that I would want for myself. In fact, I could ask God to give them good things instead of giving them to me.

- I can pray for people who have no sense of having harmed me, when they have.

- I can pray for forgiveness for all the mean, petty, selfish, inconsiderate things I have done lately.

- I can pray for freedom from deep-seated anger, my inability to let go with humility, and with surrender to God’s desire for my peace of mind.

- I can pray for the grace to speak plainly and honestly at all times with those in my environments.

- I can pray for the grace to bear with the trial of loving my neighbor when it’s particularly inconvenient.

- I can pray for those who are experiencing the same difficulties that I have, that God will find cause in my suffering to alleviate theirs.

- I can pray for my prejudices to become apparent to me, enabling me to see past them to the goodness, worth and dignity of all people, no matter who they are, what they have done, or what they believe.

- I can pray that God will show me my stinginess, which I paint prettier and justify and rationalize

- I can pray for deeper gratitude for the abundant blessings in my life, and for the grace to remember that my gratitude is cause to uplift others and God, and not occasion to think better of myself for being so grateful.

- I can pray for the people who right at this moment are dying with hardened and embittered hearts, that the light of Jesus Christ will so overwhelm their conscience that they can utter deep in their spirits a simple “I’m sorry.”

- I can pray that in every circumstance of my life I can see myself standing in God’s presence as I think, say and do.

- I can pray that my religion is more than some pious notion, more than a few half-hearted prayers, more than two dollars in the collection basket – but a commitment of head and hand and heart, of my life, all of it, turned over, turned inside out, sold out to Jesus Christ; a religion so radical that it just doesn’t go well with the world and its ways; a religion so radical that the world laughs and pokes fun. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 10th, 1987

Hanley

When I was a boy I had a neighbor whose name was Hanley. I liked Hanley, and I still think of him often even though he’s been dead more than 25 years. He fell asleep with a cigarette and burnt up in bed. He was a good man, though many in the world may not have considered him such. He spoke in a deep, rich, sonorous voice. Sometimes he called me Tommy, but mostly he simply called me boy.

The reason the world may have looked askance at Hanley was because he was addicted to alcohol. We’d sleep out in the tent under the apple tree in the summer, and we’d wait for Hanley to come up the back alley from the First and Last Chance. We’d greet him, but at those times he often didn’t speak. He’d be drunk and staggering.

On many occasions I went to his house in the morning. He lived with his elderly mother who would pour Hanley his cups of strong coffee before he went to work at the light plant. His mother would smile broadly at me with her teeth out. Hanley would be unshaven and groggy, but it would be obvious that he was pleased that I had come in. Somehow I found their company warm and pleasant.

I know that alcoholism is a dreadful thing, and I don’t dismiss it in Hanley’s case. He died because he was an alcoholic. Being just a neighbor kid, I was spared the probable terrible ramifications of Hanley’s malady. As it was, I liked Hanley, and he liked me. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes and I remember the tar stains on his fingertips. He was a raw-boned fellow and tall, with a weathered face and long hands.

My friendship with Hanley was by no means deep. There was enough distance between us that I took the news of his death with shock, but not with grief. I don’t want to sound cold, but the shock I felt was not disbelief, more the quality one experiences when stark reality sets in. Hanley’s end was not unexpected in our environs. Folks said well, they were shocked but not surprised, seeing how he was, seeing how he drank.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever had any kind of relationship with Hanley. Perhaps it was because I was a child. A child will go in where adults fear to tread. I never saw an adult neighbor at Hanley’s house at 7:30 in the morning, people who just stopped in early for no particular reason. Kids do that, but adults don’t. Trusting children take people as they come, without preconditions.

I read the 13th chapter of First Corinthians today, St. Paul’s great teaching about love; and I prayed that the Lord would teach me to love. After I read the Scripture, I was a bit apprehensive, wondering if I would ever understand love in my time. In my mind, I saw Jesus on the cross and I knew that was love, but I don’t pretend to fully comprehend it.

I ask myself if I loved Hanley, and I think maybe I did. I don’t know what else to call it. Now that I’m old and crotchety, I don’t have relationships with people like I had with him. I have a tendency to judge. I’m forever imputing motives, second-guessing, suspecting, finding fault, making sure I find a shortcoming or two. In Hanley’s case, I never did do those things. I didn’t condemn him, didn’t think to condemn him. Even when he staggered up the back alley, I actually looked forward to seeing him. In my child’s mind, I’m sure I chuckled and probably said, boy he’s really staggering tonight. But I didn’t think that was good or bad or what an awful man Hanley was for being so drunk. He was just Hanley. I accepted him with no reservations, no expectations that he should change. He did not, in fact, ever change.

For sure, love is more complicated than the love I had for Hanley. Jesus’ love for me and Hanley is indeed infinite compared to the simple, detached friendship a man and a neighbor kid shared so long ago. Nevertheless, there was something there, a beginning perhaps, a place for greater love to begin.

It would be easy for me to take my adult perceptions back to those mornings in Hanley’s kitchen and recast them with all kinds of judgments. Rather, I prefer to bring those mornings into now and again smell the strong coffee on the gas burner, hear Hanley’s gentle bass voice say how you doin’, boy. There is no ego in the air, no condemnation – just acceptance. Maybe it takes a child’s eyes to see the beauty and good and sweetness in a broken man. Love is more than the love I had for Hanley; but simple as it was, it was greater than prophecies and tongues and knowledge… and has endured. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 3rd, 1987

Then, now, and friendship

My good friend, your letter arrived today, and soothed like an ointment an exposed and aching lack of hearing from you. I have missed you, these too many years.

You mentioned that we may be seeking the same thing in our lives now, if on a parallel, like two hunters going into the woods. You didn’t mention specifics. So often it is hard for two friends to share where they are, having come from what was, the way it was.

The old days were full of the wonder of boys in men’s bodies, of dreams and self-confident goals. Someday we would write the Great American Novel, visit the peak of Everest, tour the Balkans and the Lapland tundra, discover the Great Unknown. Money would be a given. We’d be freed to hear the Muse, to stalk the hart and the nuance of language.

I have tried, how I have tried to avoid orthodoxy. I grew my hair long and wore old clothes. When the “Hair” singers sang about long, beautiful hair just stopping by itself, I had no idea they meant it quite so literally.

Discovery still intrigues me, but somehow I can’t make one. I keep discovering what others already know. My dear good friend of so long an absence (Oh, grit my teeth. Can you bear hearing it? Can I bear telling it?) I, well… uh, you see, uh, what’s happened, uh, the thing is, uh, I didn’t mean to, but, well, I have changed.

I’ve put away Balzac and Voltaire and Ken Kesey and Unamuno and picked up Author Unknown and Duck and Bear and Jack and Donald. I’d mull the great verities of the cosmos with Vivaldi and Menuhin, now I sing Mr. Froggy Went a Courtin’, and he did ride, uhuh.

You are sitting down, aren’t you? I have become responsible. That’s right. I am so damn responsible I can’t stand it. I pay the bills and mow the grass and wash the car and take out the trash and watch out for what the kids watch on TV. You are sitting down, aren’t you? I go to church.

Now I know you knew I went to church before, but what you don’t know is that I have fallen in love with God. Some admission for a leftover, beer-drinking, 1960s-reject, pseudo-intellectual, hippy, stargazing, anti-establishment, rebellious, angry young man.

Before, the days were pointless, as if they were endless. Now they are precious, though ironically they pass in melancholy like a forgotten mist.

Old acquaintances have scoffed, saying sardonically, “I guess you’ve found the Lord.” Oddly, I love them for their honesty. They genuinely cannot see a happy life without boozing and hell-raising. My nemesis now is the arrogant, self-righteous, puffed-up, religious person, the modern Pharisee. They load up those around them with heavy burdens, but inside they are rot. They make me mad. Imagine. My embarrassment is that I know them too well.

No longer do I long for the vague, exquisite insights of intellectual trivia. My challenge now is to love the hard-core self-possessed without lapsing into my own pride and condescension. God loved me that way, in that condition.

Loving God is where it’s at, my old friend. Ain’t that a kick? He’s where’s it’s always been. He’s who we seek on our parallel, like two hunters going into the woods. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on April 26th, 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

On finding the Truth

Dishonesty is hard work. One of my more outlandish lies occurred one Saturday afternoon when I told my wife that I was on my way to confession. My real purpose was to idle about with the boys, but I knew my missus would have no part of that.

After my return from an absence of unseemly duration, the wife of course questioned me about the reason. I thought you said you were going to confession, she said. Indeed I had been to confession, I said. But my sins were of such a grievous nature that they could be forgiven only by the bishop. Owing to Father’s having to make arrangements and our having to wait upon his excellency, the hour grew very late, I said, against my best intentions.

So much for one of the redwoods in my forest of saplings.

By contrast, one of my favorite stories about honesty features Betsie ten Boom, Corrie’s sister. Betsie, it seems, so valued telling the truth that her very nature would not allow even slight equivocation. The ten Booms were hiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. The family received word just before the arrival of the SS and hid their precious charges under floorboards, atop which they placed a table. When the Nazis burst in, Corrie said she feared the worst because she knew Betsie would tell the truth if they asked her any questions. Sure enough, a soldier asked Betsie if they were hiding any Jews and she said yes, they were under the table, which was in plain sight. The Nazi mistook Betsie’s truth for sarcasm.

Somehow I have a hard time figuring Jesus for telling a white lie or a fib or mixing fact with fiction to avoid bruising somebody’s ego. I doubt that He harbored any false humility or pride when He came before His Father in prayer. I doubt He had a complex system of denial about the shortcomings of human weakness. I think He was honest with His Father, others and Himself. Would that I could be.

Dishonesty will work you to death covering bases, backtracking, stirring in enough true-seeming deception to get you through the day. Through the grace of God, I’ve found a lot of peace in making a clean breast of things with God, myself and others. Still, though, I know I’ve got arthritis of the tongue, a few spurs and outgrowths in my efforts toward rigorous honesty.

When I come to the Lord in prayer, I want Him to see me just as I want to be or as I’m trying to be, rather than as I actually just plain am. Surely I have a better shot at the Lord’s love and forgiveness with a few qualifiers on my is-ness. You know what I mean. I’m lazy, Lord, but… I have lust in my heart, Lord, but… It’s easy for me to say I’m the most wretched of all creatures; just as easy for me to thank the Lord that I’m not like the rest of men. Why is it I can’t just come before God acknowledging my deliberate choices and my gratitude for all that He has given me? Too much theology, perhaps, and not enough honesty.

My neighbor will call inquiring about my interest in some service to the Church. Surely my hems and haws must sound almost comic. Say that sounds pretty good, I’ll say, but I’m pretty busy. What night? The boss has been pushing me pretty hard lately. I really need to get more involved. ‘Course the wife has been after me to finish wallpapering the bedroom. I’ve been called away on a journey to a faraway land. I’ve bought a yoke of oxen and I have to try them. I’ve taken a bride and I will be unable to attend.

One of the last great victims of my deceptions and dishonesty is me. I lie to myself all the time. I can lie to God and say I’m willing to change, but He knows the score. I can lie to others and say I’m willing to change and some will believe and report back to me how touched they’ve been by my courageous resolve. They, too, however, ultimately bear witness to the fruits of my actions. They’ve got eyes. They can see the same old so and so. Come we now at lengths to the heart of the man, telling himself with confidence and satisfaction that he’ll get going on that self-improvement campaign first thing in the morning. Never was there a lie repeated more often to such a naïve and spellbound believer. I’ll believe anything I tell me with the faith of the fathers.

Jesus said He was the truth. It seems ironic that a poor, broken sinner, in a grace-filled moment of honesty, will acknowledge that he is in fact unwilling to change, that in that moment he will meet Christ. I guess it’s true that if we can find the Truth, then we can find the Way: and if we can find the Way, we can find Life. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on March 29th, 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

Self-centeredness has always been in vogue

Pride is a difficult subject these days. So much is said about the importance of a good self-concept, and justifiable pride and the worthiness of pride in accomplishment. We say we’re proud of our Catholic faith, proud of our families, proud of our new car - not that all these things are equal, but we’re proud of them nevertheless. And rightly so.

Where, then, do we draw the line and cross into the Great Defect so ably exposited in the Story of the Fall? The sin in Eden, we know, was not so much disobedience as pride: man and woman thinking they could be equal with God.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around thinking I can be equal with God. I rather doubt, though, that that puts me in the clear with respect to pride. No, it seems to me that pride is not cut and dried, but insidious.

It seems to me that the very nature of pride would disable our ability to recognize it in ourselves. That is, if I’m swelled with pride, oozing with it – the worse the case I’ve got the less willing I am to acknowledge that I am indeed puffed up. How then to break the cycle of spiraling big-shotitis, sacrosanctity, gooey self-satisfaction and holy-and-worthy-of-praise-am-I?

Pride is no more noticeable than it is in someone else. I can spot pride coming up the road. I’ve noticed, however, that when my sensory-receptors become especially keen, I have to run and look in the mirror, there to see his excellency himself sitting in the judgment seat. In short, I’ve learned that one clue to recognizing this beast in myself is the recognition of it in others.

Once recognized, the pill is bitter. Seeing those pompous, egomaniacal, sick-with-self qualities in others, I become forced to admit that I myself must be schooled in these attributes, nay steeped in understanding.

Oh, society will come to my rescue with balms and ointments aplenty. I can round up confederates quickly - quickly stir the gossip mill against my boasting, pride-bloated target. It’s easy to find support to boo the overbearing fop, the woozy drunkard at the trough of self.

Being proud is chic. It’s in. Self-centeredness always has been in vogue, but it has taken on a certain religiosity. It’s true that God didn’t make any junk; but He also didn’t make any other gods. Recognition of self-worth can easily become the Cult of the Self. We may be worth it, but we also may be full of it. The Gospel message is still he who would gain his life must lose it; it’s still the last shall come first; it’s still never act out of rivalry or conceit; rather, let all parties think humbly of others as superior to themselves; it’s still looking to other’s interests rather than to our own.

It’s particularly difficult for me to think as superior to myself of someone who already thinks he’s superior to myself. I’d just as soon assign the jack-a-napes to you know where. I know I’m in a dead run ahead of him, though, if I do. It doesn’t seem right, but I guess it is.

The bottom line again, ever and always is prayer. I can’t get into the right understanding of who I am in relationship with God and my neighbor if I distance myself from the question. Once more, pride breeds a barrier to seeing its ugly face, so plain in others, but so hidden in the mirror. Praising God reminds me of Who indeed is worthy to be praised.

Pride comes in many forms inside this aging clay of mine: vanity (if you can believe that), an air of superiority, thinking little of others, smugness, being a gossip. It’s most insidious when it creeps into my self-confidence, my accomplishments, in the exercise of the gifts God has given me.

I know that there are those who need ego-reinforcement as therapy for crushing and painful circumstances. I know also that it can go too far, that it’s not a cure-all, cure-everything. Somehow in all the blessings afforded by counseling and the other helps we know in our world, a person’s relationship with God has to enter into the picture. Pleasing ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, satisfying ourselves is not a blessed objective without a deep understanding that we are who we are only because God made us that way. In and of ourselves, we are nothing. We gain our worth and dignity only in relationship – to God and to others.

God commanded us to love our neighbor in the same way as we love ourselves. I take that as a command to love ourselves, too. But love is patient, love is kind, is not puffed up, forgives all things and bears all things. To love means to die to self, and that brings the fullness of life.

My biggest hang-up with pride is recognition of good things I have done, thinking how I’ve helped and served and suffered long and patiently. There, too, Jesus taught me: “Why do you call me good?” Jesus said, “Only the Father in heaven is good.” That’s something for us moderns to ponder. – T.R.

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