Two days down - two days to go - and Thanksgiving weekend is finished. To this point, I had a rather wonderful two days. I'm not looking for trouble, but if the Thanksgiving week ended right now, I would be happy. It has always been my favorite holiday. Much more than Christmas or Easter. Now before you reach for your pitchforks to burn me at the stake for such an obvious religious heresy and sign of atheistic indifference - first, get a life - and ask yourself why I might not like Christmas or Easter. It has everything to do with the practical life of a busy parish priest. Any priest worth his salt is going to be exhausted after Christmas or Easter. The crowds are large. The pace is brutal. So many things can go on. It is anything other than relaxed - and if there is always one individual (usually difference ones over the years) - who present problems and discomfort, and goodness knows what else.
My favorite holiday (in a negative way) was the Christmas celebration during one of the Christmas Eve Masses when a guy stormed out of church and came out to where I was standing in the atrium. Then he said the following to me in a tone that was less than joyful and also less than soft, "I come once a year to Mass and I can't even get a seat." He had absolutely no idea how crazy he sounded. I said softly to him, "Merry Christmas" and walked away from him. Never saw him again. Wherever he is, I hope he is happy.
In the past several two weeks, I've had a few things happen that were profoundly happy. I'm not sharing them with you because I'm an only child and not good at sharing! But suffice to say that these things brought a huge smile to me - and the events bringing smiles continued through today. If more events occur on Saturday and Sunday, I won't object.
I'm praying with lots of gratitude today. I'm always praying that I do not forget to express my gratitude to God - which sometimes I do, to my dismay. I pray every single day for each of you - and once in a while I forget to pray for me - which is part of gratitude so I have to get better at it. But, right now, for this moment, I'm grateful. I'm happy. I'm mellow.
I'll take it.
(personal note: One thing that causes me to lose my state of being mellow is when someone comes up to me or contacts me and just shares how upset they are at so and so in the church who has said something or done something or not said something or not done something os is not responding to an issue the way that they feel it should be done. If someone unloads on me about some other person in the Church, I no longer will feel responsible to answer them. As of this moment in time, I hereby decide that I am no longer answering or even commenting on such topics. The Church is composed of 1,200,000,000 members. None of us can be responsible for what 1.2 billion people in the church are capable of doing. This might be self-evident, but my inadequate approach to such things has given me far more stress than you might imagine. So - I ain't going to play the person's game. I am responsible for myself. If you have a problem with someone else, then go seek out that person in the group of 1,200,000,000 who comprise the Church. I am just not going to let people get me down who brings up things about other people - that I have nothing to do with. I cannot tell you the number of people who come up to me and just unload about others and question me - i.e., how can the Church allow this, how can this happen, and so many other things. And then they walk away - and just leave me with this new fresh delivery of stress in my life.
Now this might seem petulant, but I prefer to call it healthy. The more than I type these words, the better I feel. I am retired. I have now ended allowing other people the ability to make me tense. I wish I had thought of this decades ago. I never felt that I had the right to make other people feel tense. It does not have to be that way. This is not a perfect solution to a problem that is other quite complicated. But it is a practical way get my life on a smoother path. I feel good about it. My doctors tell me that I have to address stress in my life. Well, here is one way that I'm trying to be healthy. I had unrelenting stress for 48 years. Enough!)
