Dismissals

  • I have been driving through Kentucky and Tennessee, reading signs and billboards as I go. A sign in front of a church said: “Spring is here and God is all around us!” I wanted to turn around and add an asterisk to that sign: “God was here all winter, too!” I kept driving. Then I saw another sign: “Josh! Chill out! That was a nice sign! Enjoy Springtime!” Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Josh

  • This from a letter received by a man in prison: “I expect to change the world today, not with grand gestures or mighty acts but with a dry bone to a hungry dog, a dime and a listening ear to a beggar, a kind word to someone who has not heard a kind word in a long time. Now you are to do these works while you are in prison: Feed the scraps of your own meager meal to the stray cats who come up to your window. In your prayers and dreams, beg forgiveness of those whom you have injured, tend to their wounds and listen to them, they have something to say to you. And to those in…

  • My friend had never been east of the Mississippi. He got out of his car and said: “I wanted to avoid highway construction so I bought a map that shows where they’re working. I avoided those roads. This morning, the lady at the hotel told me to drive up on this one road, she said she drove it every day and it didn’t have any construction. I drove that road and it was beautiful. Then I studied that map. Those marks don’t mean construction. Those marks mean it’s a scenic highway! I’ll get a second chance on my way home.” Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!Josh

  • Alleluia! Let us Praise the Lord! From our lips to God’s ear, an Alleluia does not meander at the speed of sound or traipse through the cosmos at the mere speed of light. God may stand next to us at the bus stop or be in some faraway galaxy yet, in a twinkling, our Alleluia goes straight to God’s ear. God, ever busy in the care of Creation, hears every tear as it falls and every shout of Alleluia! At each Alleluia, God pauses, nods, smiles and presses on. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Josh

  • I walked through the sunlit Atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art to the lower level of the old museum. There I wandered among medieval artifacts of our faith: Icons, reliquaries, chalices, patens, processional crosses and altars. In the dark and cool of that space I sat on a wooden bench before a mid-1400s altarpiece, painted in exquisite detail by an artist known only as “Master of the Schlagl Altarpiece.” There are nine, sequential panels that tell the story of the Passion of Christ, from prayer in the garden, trial, crucifixion to descent from the cross. I sat on that bench for a long time. People came and went: A school tour, an art student sketching, a guard who stood…

  • We walked in a Cleveland park, once the homestead of a wealthy industrialist, now the domain of wildlife, woods and overgrowth. As we walked, a man on a bicycle stopped and told us of a wounded deer. “Its leg’s broke, she can barely walk and there’s coyotes here.” We promised to be on the lookout for the deer. We walked on through the woods, around the great, paved circle that was the driveway to the mansion. Once there were grand carriages and limousines, now squirrels, coyotes and, somewhere, a wounded deer. We walked on and saw the man sitting on a bench, his bicycle by his side, looking out across a small lake with a boathouse and an island at…

  • I stood in the side aisle at the intermission of a classical concert. A young man, early twenties, came and stood by me. There was nothing remarkable in his appearance. I said something cordial and he replied with a non sequitur about his assignment to a secret military base. He will soon be sent on a mission at the personal request of the president. I listened. His name is Donald. At the end of the concert I saw Donald’s worried parents. I introduced myself. I said that Donald and I enjoyed our few minutes together and we would meet again. Donald’s father gave me a warm handshake and his mother whispered, “Thank you.” When we listen, God hears. Go in…

  • St. Christopher, it is said, once operated a ferryboat. He was strong and able yet his faith was weak. One day a storm came and the ferryboat capsized. Christopher dove into the roiling waters and pulled a child to the safety of the shore. Looking upon the child as it gasped for breath, Christopher saw the image and very presence of Christ. At that moment, Christopher’s faith was made strong. Ronald Rohlheiser, author and Catholic priest, says it this way: “God does not ask us to have a faith that is certain but a service that is sure.” Like St. Christopher, we serve in the world. In our service, we find Christ where we least expect him and there our…

  • I was in my apartment, clickety-clack typing on my 1946 Royal typewriter when there came a knock at my door. A neighbor, passing in the hall, heard me typing. “Is that a typewriter?” she asked. She looked at it. “That can’t be a typewriter! Why would anyone use a typewriter?” She did not wait for the answer: That I type letters to family and friends. I write in the medium by which someone writes to me. If email, then email. If a friend sends a handwritten letter, I will reply by hand. So, too, my listening to God. When there is ‘sheer silence’ I remain still and quiet. When God whispers, I whisper in reply. When God types me a…

  • Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men” is a novel (and an Ethan and Joel Coen movie) set in the desert along the Mexican border. It is a tale of an old sheriff pitted against an unremitting evil that cannot be overtaken or brought to heel. At the novel’s end, a friend says to the sheriff, “All the time you spend trying to get back what’s been took from you, more’s going out the door.” In its undercurrent, the novel is a theological statement about evil and about good. The devil may be in the desert but so, too, is God. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

  • Lent begins with ashes. Robert Bly’s book “Iron John” speaks of an ancient civilization where the young take their place in the community by sitting in ashes from the fire, listening to the stories of the elders. Bly borrows a Greek word to describe this process: katabasis. This is a descent, a remove downward, away from distraction and in search of clarity. Lent is our katabasis, our taking on stillness and quiet so that we might hear the words of the elders, written in scripture, and in those words the voice of God. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

  • We lived then without electricity. We had kerosene lamps for light but no refrigerator. One day, a small refrigerator came in a wooden crate. Made for the tropics, it would burn kerosene to keep food cool. The less-than-helpful instructions said: “Steadfastly hold a candle beneath until within the burner a clear flame flourishes.” I vividly recall those instructions and recollect my father’s invective as he knelt and held candle after candle under that refrigerator, trying to get it started. Each candle burned to a nub and no flame flourished in the burner. My mother was so disappointed. My father, no mechanic, was crestfallen. He was an artist, a Dartmouth graduate in literature, brought low by something he did not understand,…