I confess that my mom and dad have now been married for 50 years. I can’t begin to express what a gift it is to be raised by parents who know what it means to love. What I learned from mom and dad, among many other things, was that love equals fidelity over time.
I confess I am disappointed that the recent winter storm didn’t produce the ten inches of snow I was promised. I am grateful for the snow we got, but am feeling a little bit like I was taken for a ride. I confess that I have nearly always loved the winter, and the cold, and the snow, but I find it harder to enjoy these days because so many of my friends live on the street, and in tents or make-shift houses in the woods around the Kansas City area. None of these friends could venture out to make it to church this week, and something just didn’t feel right about it. I confess that I am worried that someone might not have made it through Sunday night, as it was a good bit below zero in Kansas. I hope my friends are safe and that they will find wholeness and healing one day… and if they don’t, at least maybe they will know through their friendship with our church, that they are deeply loved by God – even in the midst of their brokenness.
I think that I’m essentially a hopeful person. But I confess that I sometimes despair of the kind of world in which my kids are growing up. I sometimes wonder if we are totally blowing it for them because we are too selfish to face up to the ways in which we are building our house upon the sand. I confess that the biggest hunch I have along these lines is that we are failing in our basic obligation to take good care of the planet. My hunch is that those who are pointing out the ways in which we are failing to treat our planet as something precious are exactly right. This means that our cavalier attitude toward this world we have been given is going to cause great pain and suffering somewhere down the line. I sometimes despair of those who would rather grow and expand without limits rather than face up to our basic obligation to care for one another, and our world. I’m essentially a hopeful person, but I confess that this hunch sometimes makes it hard.
I confess that when I start to feel that way it is helpful to play with my children and to give myself wholeheartedly to their well being in the present moment. I sometimes wonder if the best we can do for our children is to help them know that they are loved and worthy of love, and then to try to keep good faith with their future by the way that we live our lives today. I confess that I sometimes think I have an awfully long way to go in this endeavor. But when I play with my kids, I can nearly always find a place that could truthfully be called hope.
I confess that I believe there may not be any more important piece of literature known to humankind than the Sermon on the Mount. I am convinced that if we did nothing else for the rest of our lives but reflect upon this text, allow it to shape our personal lives and our life together, it would be nothing short of a complete and total political, social, and economic revolution.
I confess that it is probably time to give up my everyday tennis shoes – an old pair of Sambas that have long since past their prime. I have a brand new pair of Sambas in the closet that I’ve tried to wear them a couple of time, but this old ratty pair is so dang comfortable I can’t bring myself to let them go.
I confess that I’m headed up to Conception Abbey to spend some time in silence, and hopefully working on the last substantive edits for Shrink. I confess that I have not been to the Abbey in a shamefully long time. Over the past 7-8 years I have typically spent between 20 and 25 days at the abbey learning to pray, and trying to care for my soul. Last year I only got up there around 10 days the whole year. I can really tell. I hope that I am learning the deep wisdom of retreat, and its necessity for my life.
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