Pilgrimage 80

PILGRIMAGE 80

I am celebrating my 80th birthday with a pilgrimage walk reminiscent of such a walk when I was fifty.   You can read about it here:

 https://gf.me/u/y2wrhw

And this is one of the sites for the walk:

From the Archives August 25, 1990

From the Archives: August 25, 1990  While Pastor at 

Church of the Gesu, Philadelphia

Off to getting some exercise, I was seeking a parking site on one of the Chestnut Hill entrances to Wissahickon Valley Park.   Reaching an unfamiliar corner where I imagined that I should make a left turn, I checked and found no opposing traffic.  But I failed to see the red light mounted on a pole to the right.   The next thing I can remember: waking up in the hospital recovering from a concussion.  While my car was totaled, thankfully there were no injuries to the people driving the truck.

The nurse told me that the police had walked me into the emergency room of Chestnut Hill Hospital and dropped me there with a singular remark, "he was in an accident and is very confused."

I have no recollection of those hours of unconsciousness but I did dream during that period.  One a dream of a woman I had seen just a short time before walking in a section of the Park where I could not find a proper parking space.   And another dream at least of the sound of the CAT scan.   When I came to later at my bedside I found  Jesuit and housemate Vince Taggart and Gesu parishioner Mary Greene, a confirmation for me that I would be OK.

A Cloud of Survival

I wonder now about the sound

That crashed against my skull.

It did not reach my ears or mind.

My memory is null.

 

I hear instead the water flow,

A trickle cross the stones.

It heals my heart, it heals my soul,

It heals my very bones.

 

The path that slopes above the stream

Is almost overgrown.

I climb it as if in a dream

And find I’m not alone.

 

I overtake with tepid pace

Her slow and graceful gait.

And with a smile on her face

She tells me of my fate.

 

Lost the crash, lost the groans

And lost are all the sighs

When I awake I see my friends

They hold me in their eyes.

 

 

Photogenic Tiger Swallowtail

 TIGER SWALLOWTAIL

We are indebted to some benefactors who planted on the edge of our property a small garden attracting and supporting the butterfly population of Eastern Pennsylvania.    A number of butterflies will entertain visitors at any August visit.  The photos here are of a particularly cooperative swallowtail who showed off both obverse and reverse. 

Oddly the underwear is more beautiful than the outerwear!

Our black friends call out "How Long, O Lord!"

 Cries for Justice at the Philadelphia Art Museum    June, 2020

Over the past four weeks I have been feeling the terrible weight of racism in our country, freshly renewed by recent brutality.   I grew up in a white neighborhood in the Philly suburbs basically ignorant of the way the country was treating our black citizens.    My family was often in the city visiting relatives, relatives who lived in white neighborhoods and I vaguely remember conversations about where blacks might be moving.    I must have been ten or twelve years old when I first was driven on an alternate route into the city through a black neighborhood.   I saw black men and women talking on street corners and sitting on stoops and children playing in the streets.   The housing looked deficient compared to the white city neighborhoods that I had visited and the children lacked the broad yards and open streets, parks and fields where I and my siblings played with our friends. The environment looked stressed.   Did I already know that God loved these kids on this street as much as God loved me and my city relatives?

For the last fifty years I have been given the grace of knowing wonderful black men and women.  I first assisted in an interracial project when as a deacon preparing for Jesuit priesthood in 1971 and since was blessed with ministry in a black parish and school.    But now still I am struck dumb.   That is, yes the neighborhoods I saw in the 1950s were deficient and they remain deficient through the years since.  But I was able to meet people who lived in these neighborhoods, to worship with them, to visit in their homes and to enjoy baptisms and weddings and even many faith-filled funerals.  I learned more about community, about reconciliation, about family and faith, about humor and solidarity, much more than I could have anticipated.   But suffering, and very often raw and bitter suffering, visited every household.   At best Christ shares the victory of the paschal mystery in so many of these households.  But at worst the strain of economic struggle, the stress of poor health, and the lack of promising futures offered to the young fray and fracture the edges of even the strongest of families.

During the first days of June when I realized that Philly’s neighborhoods were in turmoil because of the terrible ugliness of the death of George Floyd and so many others, I felt sorrow for all the extraordinary men and women I knew in these neighborhoods who worked years and years to foster health and integrity, pastors who built senior and home-ownership housing, churches that sponsored investment clubs to support small business, and leaders and teachers refreshing schools and making them as good as any in the suburbs.  With this sorrow, I came to realize, too, that the recurring violence against black men and women simply ignited a reaction fitting to its brutality.  

Now when a tired calmness has returned to these neighborhoods, these institutions and men and women of soul are still in place.   And I find hope in knowing that they will stay in place and stand up.  They and their like will raise their voices and use this moment to strengthen their institutions with added classrooms, added health centers, added housing, added ways of reconciling with those responsible for just law enforcement.

A black brother Jesuit, Fr. Mario Powell, president of Brooklyn Jesuit Prep, points to Psalm 13 as the cry of black Americans: “How long, O Lord, will my enemy triumph over me?”  He asks us all to come close to the suffering.   “…until you jump up on the cross with black Americans, there can be no Easter for America.”

Pictures of a Maturing Spring

A Day in the Life

 May 12, 2020:   The 52nd day of sheltering

Outside my window at 5 AM: The Morning Stars:  Moon, Jupiter and even Saturn and maybe Mars

And the Sunset at about 8 PM

Jesus and the Time of Pandemic

JESUS IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC

"OH FREEDOM"

ART OF DR. DAVID DRISKELL,  (1931-2020)  VICTIM OF COVID-19  

AFRICAN-AMERICAN ARTIST AND FACULTY MEMBER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

“There are truths that can be discovered only through suffering or from the critical vantage point of extreme situations.”    

 Ignacio Martin-Baro, S.J., martyr at the UCA, El Salvador, 1989

The voracious presence of COVID-19 stuns the world.   We who believe that God always helps us in our works of love are numb.  How can God allow this destructive virus?   But, truly, to make it worse such extreme situations present themselves often.    We remind ourselves of our struggle to learn what God teaches us in the Shoah, in our history of slavery or in frequent natural disasters.  These situations take place in the world our God creates and each challenges our understanding.

We want our God to exercise what we think of as control over His creation.  And when He does not do what we think best, we experience sorrow and distrust.   In our confusion there is nowhere to go but to turn to the suffering Jesus who speaks to his Father and to us from his cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But Jesus will not save himself and call on a display of his Father’s power.  Within this question he trusts in the promise of resurrected life.

Crises of every kind cause us to echo Christ’s words.  We look at Him carrying out his love for us.    He teaches us sinners the kind of life to which His Father’s creation calls us.   We react and He must endure the price of our stubborn refusal to hear him.   But if we listen we come to know a God of love who will not force Himself on us or put us under a spell of power.   Rather this God creates a world where we in turn, without coercion but freely and with hope, can imitate His love for us and return it in our love for others.   

God calls us in this age of the pandemic to acknowledge our shared dignity as His family and extend ourselves in care for one another.   We give God thanks and praise that so many are answering that call.  

COVID 19? No problem for Geese

MOM AND DAD SHELTERED TOGETHER FOR FOUR WEEKS!

THEN THEIR OFFSPRING APPEARED ALREADY PREPARED TO SWIM!

WATCH AS AN EVIL VIDEOGRAPHER BREAKS UP A RELAXED FAMILY GATHERING:



https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q44Iwn5GHJvFC8ZuywBOHMHdGGqPdeUk/view?usp=sharing

Goose and Gander Back Again

GOOSE AND GANDER

While we shelter on the property, the goose and gander find shelter in our pond for their most important role in life.    

They're back again for the fourth Spring in a row and they are nesting in exactly the same spot!  They even seem to remember who we are and do not get distressed when we approach the nest!  They will bring forth their young in about a week.

May we also profit in some way from our need to 

"stay-at-home".

"Here's lookin' at ya."

Covid 19, Time for Hope

A blossoming "fruit" tree on our grounds.   One of the first days of summer provided perfect sun and sky as background.

Even while we mourn the deaths of thousands whose lives are taken by COVID 19, at the same time these very deaths are moving medical professionals to search for a long-term fix that will end this pandemic.    So many of us are living today because of so-called miracle drugs and vaccines that owe their existence to skillful and committed scientists.   I benefited myself from penicillin, a drug that first became available only in the years that I needed it to cure my rheumatic fever.    Had I been born and contracted the disease just twenty years earlier, I may not have lived past my eighth birthday.   

With this experience I am naturally optimistic.    Our optimism, however, is often challenged.  The predictions of treatments that will save the lives of cancer patients have often been too optimistic.    And the nature of this new virus may be such that it will always be ahead of our ability to control it.   That being said, we have proven our ability to control other such viruses.

But my optimism also has its source in hope.   As a Christian I understand the scriptural record of Jesus’ healings as a revelation of God’s hopes for humanity.    I think of the revelation in this way:  God understood that we ourselves, created in God’s image, had the ability to better care for one another.   If Jesus knew nothing about medical science, he shared with his heavenly Father in this hope-filled understanding.    He shared the Father’s confidence that in imitating his own love for us we would develop new talents for compassion and care. 

The committed and curious health care workers and scientists among us are the saints who have practiced this compassion with all of their energy.   They are doing Christ’s work.    God alone knows how it will all play out.   But our efforts at compassion and care can only enhance the plan that God has for us.

90 minutes before sunrise March 16

A Clear Morning!

And the planets are still making their presence known six days later, no sheltering in place for them.   in fact Mars has moved down and past Jupiter while Saturn keeps its distance.

The End of Winter

Winter Finally Coming to an End

Two Dull Rainy Months!   January and February of 2020!

But a Hint of Spring on Leap Day

These buds almost hidden in the dead leaves near the East Cloister

But the Morning Skies through February  Featured Jupiter and Mars

And here with the Moon Between Them  (Mars in the upper right hand corner!)

And below on Mar 14, at 6:20 AM they appear much close to one another.    Saturn is also nearby but I will be lucky if I can get it to show in my phone camera.

Legal Protection of the Unborn

January 22  Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children  

Sunrise on January 23

Gospel and Preaching Text for January 22

Gospel   MT 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

The disciples approached Jesus and said,
"Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?"
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
"Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

"See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost."

The period of time after Roe vs. Wade corresponds roughly with my own years as a priest.    I was ordained in June of 1972 and the decision regarding Roe that invalidated state laws prohibiting abortion was handed down in January of 1973.    Through the last 47 years I have followed the debate and spoken frequently about the need to protect life from conception to natural death.    We are blessed to have in every Catholic community men and women who have found ways to assist women who identify pregnancy as a dilemma for them.   

I believe that the developing embryo is a human being from the moment of conception.   If I have any doubt I am persuaded by the need to grant this organism the benefit of the doubt.   This blanket belief is consistent with our universal belief in the human dignity of the child after birth.   I believe that the organism before birth bears the exact essence of the child.   

I take notice, too, of Pope Francis’s pertinent remarks in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.   Here he points to the need for a consistent posture toward life protecting both the developing fetus and the threatened biosphere.

 “….Concern for the protection of nature is… incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, (even earth itself, this my own addition) ….if we fail to protect a human embryo?   If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.”  (120)

In any case the laws prohibiting abortions in the USA were unevenly enforced over the years before Roe.  Even today I believe the weakened laws protecting the fetus from certain procedures or at certain periods of gestation are unevenly enforced.    The difficulty of enforcement has always been one hesitation arguing against absolute and universal abortion laws.  

But we should note that abortion is not the only moral problem that demands prudent law and its careful implementation.     Especially in modern times, for example, war cries out for laws to guarantee the protection of non-combatants and for the enforcement of these laws.   For this reason there are very detailed, absolute and universal laws protecting non-combatants.   These laws have international support and they speak well of our sensitivity to human dignity.     But again these laws are nearly impossible to enforce despite ongoing efforts in an International Criminal Court.     Sadly war-time violence against civilians overwhelms the desire to punish such violence and the desire to eliminate it.   But no reasonable government or civic body questions the nature of the laws.   And their enactment unites communities.

In the case of abortion the widespread belief that the developing embryo and fetus should not be granted human status creates a lack of unity around the need for protection.   Approval in the USA of absolute laws protecting the fetus like those protecting non-combatants faces a very steep up-hill battle.

There are, for example, over 350,000 medical abortions a year in our country.   Even should laws prohibit them, the nation lacks substantially the enforcement and judicial systems required to enforce such a law.   Controlling the drugs used will be almost impossible and offers no solution.   Adding to this enforcement burden the vast majority of the women and medical professionals involved in these medical abortions deny that these procedures in the first ten weeks of pregnancy are the taking of human life.  Any consistent effort to enforce a law against this practice will lead to a fractured human community.    We could say “so bit it” but laws prohibiting medical abortions are very unlikely to be enacted and less likely to be enforced.      Protection for the unborn facing medical abortions will be better served by devoting our resources to education about the nature of the fetus and to providing services to pregnant women who are contemplating abortion.    But in all cases, whether our laws are perfect or imperfect applications of natural law, we can rely on God’s justice and mercy having the last word.

Of course, 60 to 65% of abortions are not medical abortions and there is a need to decide on some level of protection for these unborn, protection that is prudent and that our human community can administer.    Such protection must include continued and expanded outreach to support and encourage pregnant women.  I welcome the wisdom of our two new Justices on the Supreme Court.   I hope that they can aid the court to broaden the level of protection.

We join in prayers for the unborn, for pregnant women no matter their intentions and for medical professionals and bioethicists who dedicate themselves to protect life.

Go West Young Man (and Woman) !

AM  JAN 9, 2020  Vapor Trails   GO WEST YOUNG MAN (and WOMAN)

Three trails getting an edge on the morning, all going west!    But at least we will have warm sun right here in the East.

First photogenic snow of the season Jan 6, 2020

JANUARY 8, 2020

FIRST PHOTOGENIC SNOW OF THE SEASON

THE WEST WIND WHIPS THE SNOW OFF THE TREES