Dear St. Gertrude - November 30, 2003
Dear St. Gertrude,
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving Day. Better than the turkeys had, I hope. Did you get to see the labyrinth in our parking lot? It works. You enter in, your mind is cleared, the twists and turns of life, which can cause anxiety or depression, are shown to be the natural state of things. We become men and women who are masters of the twists and turns. We make our way into the center, discover what the center is and who we are and then make our way out through familiar twists and turns.
You know that the original story of literature is the Odyssey, the story of Odysseus (or Ulysses) who was called “the man of twists and turns . He went off to fight the Trojan War (see the Iliad) and was now working his way back home to Ithaca, wondering if his beloved wife Penelope had waited (20 years!), whether his son Telemachus had become a man, whether his dog was dead. He had gone in his journey home to the underworld where he found his mother who had died and many of his friends and foes from the war. The Odyssey is the first and greatest story ever. Be sure to get your children acquainted with it.
What stories do you think are the key stories for the children? There are so many things to watch and to read “ most of it junk. Parents have to be especially alert to give the kids the right food. It seems to me it is not so important to lament the poor quality of TV or the shallowness of our culture, or the debasement of music by our pop stars or the commercialization of toys, clothes, sports, etc. etc.
Lamentation doesn’t do anything for the children or culture. We have to find the rich, deep, real alternatives. So the rich, deep, real stories would include:
John Donahue was a bigger than life worker for the poor and neglected. He was the head of the Coalition for the Homeless, a well-known social activist, a member of our parish and now a victim of lung cancer. His funeral was on Saturday November 22nd.
The church was full, standing room all taken, and tears were very evident. We had liturgical music, gospel music, folk music, Danny Boy, a mournful cello solo, hand-clapping, and full-throated participation from the entire church. We had a poetic homily from Father Bill Vanecho (a classmate of Jack’s who served as a priest in Panama until Jack married), wonderful eulogies from a co-worker at the Coalition, from another community organizer, from Studs Terkel and from Jack’s family.
The funeral took two hours and then we went over to the social hall for another 2 ½ hours of stories and memories. One of the people at the funeral said to me “That was the shortest longest Mass I was ever at.” Another said, “That is why we build churches.”
It was an honor and a blessing for our church and our parish.
Filed under: Dear Saint Gertrude
