Counting on It
I was the parent-scorekeeper for a multitude of youth baseball, softball and basketball teams as the children grew. It was a natural responsibility because I started my career as a sports writer. I kept stats for hundreds of high school contests and wrote stories about them for the local newspapers. I recorded a lot of data in the margins of the scorecards, including the exact second in a basketball game when a play changed the momentum.
I imagined from my seat at the scorer’s table or on the bench near the coach that I knew enough minutia about my children that it seemed plausible God actually did know the number of hairs on my head.
I once wore a fitness device that recorded my steps, heart rate and other things I’m only mildly interested in. I need steps, and I finally caught up with the rest of the fitness-focused crowd trying to ward off one or the other – an early demise or a painful one. Late to that party, I was an early adopter among my peers of a less sexy wearable device – hearing aids, for both ears. I gather more of what’s said and collect lots of data on my health every minute, but the information is no more useful today than the number of doubles Becky hit during a season 20 years ago. She led the team in doubles that year, a team of boys playing hardball. The fact it happened seems more important now than the number.
I suppose that’s how God sees it, too. He can collect infinitely more data than the dizzying amount of information gathered by the devices we employ on earth and in the heavens. But I hope he looks at the notes scribbled on the edges of the scorecard, not just the ledger of times we were charitable or selfish. The defining moments of our lives are often in the margins when momentum changes for good or bad, through courage or fear, in faith or doubt.
Our response to those events is not a number but a moment of grace if we accept. I imagine that’s what God is counting on.
Persistence
The odd tone of my young daughter’s question did not fully register when I first heard it.
“Daddy, do we have dinosaurs here?” She was upstairs and I was down, in the middle of something that seemed more important, and I simply answered “Nooo.”
After a brief moment she asked again, and the answer was surely along this line: “Of course we don’t have dinosaurs here.”
She was looking out her bedroom window, into a backyard that meets up with a big field, big enough for dinosaurs, if we had any.
When she said it a third time, more a statement than a question, I was compelled to investigate. A flock of wild turkeys were in the yard under her window and to a child seeing them for the first time they might look like dinosaurs, but thankfully not the house-size ones.
I remember this at the wrong time, during the first reading at Mass about the young Samuel, a future judge of Israel. God calls Samuel in his sleep three times, and three times Samuel goes to his mentor Eli, thinking Eli is calling him. Twice Eli tells him he is mistaken, that he did not call Samuel, and sends him back to bed. The third time, Eli realizes it is God who is calling Samuel, and gives him the instruction to listen when next He calls.
If only it were that easy, to listen when next He calls. God and children are persistent in their calling. It would be better if we were as persistent in our listening.
Just Another Monkey
The monkeys swung from tree to tree, barely holding on to a branch as they went. A man in a Jersey City apartment watched the miracle on television. He was in wonder, more so of the agility of the monkeys than the magic of nature films brought to a busy city street in the early years of television.
Many years later, as a daily communicant and dying old man, his pastor asked him how he had remained faithful to his parish and Church throughout his lifetime when so many others turned away.
“Oh, Father,” my grandfather told him in a tone meant to diminish the accomplishment, “I’m just another monkey in a tree, barely holding on to a branch.”
These words resonate through the years because they were carefully chosen by him and repeated during his eulogy. They describe what he believed and demonstrated throughout his life: That faith in God’s endless grace carries a person through life, from branch to branch, even those that are worrisome or seem beyond reach. In accepting grace, we receive help for each of life’s challenges and transitions.
For even if we are barely holding on, we are not falling.
PS: My grandfather’s pastor also remembered this little exchange:
Priest: Joe, why do you continue working when you’re nearly 80?
Joe: Oh, Father, I don’t work. I’m employed by the County.
Orange Hearts, Barley Loaves
A child in our community passed away some time ago. She was not 15 years old. She wasn’t supposed to live long after her first birthday. She was special in many ways beyond her needs, so special that people who didn’t know her knew of her in a warm way.
It mattered little that her family runs a reputable business and are likeable. The girl lived an inspired life of her own. She touched everyone she encountered. The news of her death spread sadness quickly throughout our community. Then the orange hearts appeared.
They were on mailboxes and handmade roadside signs, on business signs and even painted on the highway. Orange ribbons and fabric adorned other mailboxes and signs. The uninformed traveler must have wondered about the meaning of so many orange things along a stretch of miles.
Orange was her favorite color and that news spread quickly, too, as a community of friends and strangers sent a message to her family: She is remembered and you are not forgotten in your sorrow.
She proved for us again that a child has power beyond her years.
There once was a boy who had five barley loaves and two fishes. All Four Evangelists tell the story of the multiplication of loaves and fishes for the 5,000 men; only John’s Gospel (6:1-15) mentions the boy.
Did the boy procure the loaves and fishes on his own? If there were 5,000 men, perhaps one of them (or more likely, one from the larger crowd of mothers, wives, sisters, daughters) sent the boy to the Apostles. If all the people were hungry, he certainly was, too. It might have been intimidating to go where Jesus and his disciples were discussing how to feed the multitude. He went with what little he had.
The boy in the crowd and the girl in our community are God’s instruments. The multiplication of loaves and fishes was a great sign, just like the fading orange hearts still on our mailboxes and the fresh ones that appear.
Practicing, Not Perfect 