#St John Vianny

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Sacred Song (Post 101) 8-12-15

                        Natalie and I have continued our game of YouTube tag throughout the last several weeks.  It passed the time nicely on our Maryland excursion, but we have also found that it is pretty fun to play on short expeditions as well.  The pop music stations that Natalie prefers become drearily repetitious when we don’t break things up, although it is entertaining to listen to her accompany the artist as a background singer.  Sometimes Nicholas sings along to his music as well, but I probably shouldn’t disclose that.  Playing music on YouTube instead means that I can intertwine songs that I like in between the sandwich ends of inevitable Taylor Swift anthems.

One night last week we carried the game of tune tit-for-tat that we were playing on our phone into the house, across the kitchen and to the breakfast table where my mother was getting ready to serve my father his supper.  Curious and knowing that he likes all things Gaelic, I pulled up a video of a scene from the movie Empire of the Sun in which a young British lad stands at attention and salutes through the barbed wire fence of a Japanese internment camp singing the Welsh lullaby Suo Gan as zeros takeoff into the sun. For me Suo Gan is a particularly haunting song because the melody is the same as the hymn Christ Before Us which I first encountered on my Emmaus weekend nearly two years ago.  Hearing a particular hymn at a peculiarly emotional time can add a spiritual impact to a song for a specific person that it may not have for other people.  Morning Has Broken can similarly bring tears to my eyes, because it was sung at Pam’s funeral service.

As it turned out my father’s love of Gaelic music did not include any special feelings towards the Welsh classic, but we did share some memories about walking into an English church in some town that I could not recall where we arrived just in time for an afternoon rehearsal of the parish boys’ choir.  They were very talented.  The idea of pulling up hymns on YouTube did intrigue my father, surprisingly.  He asked me to play Jesus I Come for him, which, he explained, was the hymn they were playing at the Tremont Baptist Church when he entered there for the first time. My mother had evidently invited him to her church when they were dating.  My father agreed; he would have also probably agreed to try bungee jumping had my mother suggested it and that particular form of stupidity existed anywhere else other than in the Australian outback at the time of their 1960’s courtship. Instead of the Sunday morning’s boredom that my father probably expected, he experienced a powerful intervention by the Holy Spirit into his life through the gateway of a beautiful hymn sung by a talented choir.

So I searched his request, queued up the hymn, hit play and passed him his favorite sacred music on the little midget screen of the IPhone5 that I most often use for scrolling Facebook.  Although the music didn’t sound special to me, it caught my 78 year old father like fly-paper.  He sat transfixed at the breakfast table totally oblivious to me and to the usual bustle of my family interacting about our kitchen at dinner time.  The kids could have been having chicken fights and he would not have noticed.  As far as I could tell, my father was 650 miles and 60 years eastward sitting in a pew in a famous New England church with the girl he loved, encountering awesome beauty of Jesus Christ sung about him by angelic voices.  I wished that he could stay there for longer than the odd five minutes of the hymn.  I envied him. For a time he was through the looking glass or had tumbled through the fur coats of the magic wardrobe that I often hope to find but rarely do.

You would think that it would be easier to have that type of heavenly experience than it usually turns out to be.  I had hoped for a trip back through the years to simpler times on the family excursion we took to a Cleveland Indians game last Friday night.  Nicholas, Natalie, Stephen and I made the trip, but it didn’t turn out quite as I had planned.  First of all I was very tired, having worked some early and long days on Monday through Thursday completing a project that we had begun almost a month before.  Things were also progressing well with our house purchase.  It seemed like a good chance for some family-style rest and relaxation. Also the Tribe was having a dollar hot dog night promotion with a fireworks show as a nightcap.  Our plan seemed all in order.

 Like a good father, I had wielded the proposed trip as a motivating sledgehammer thought the preceding week.  Stephen, for instance, because of his illness, habitually complains about small or imagined injuries like blackouts and falling out of bed on a near continual basis.  The last week he had added mysterious arm stiffness to his list of hypochondriac symptoms.  Whenever I offered to delay our trip until he felt better, his maladies made an immediate improvement.  Stephen is gravitationally attracted towards quality meat products at entirely too reasonable a price-point.  He is not above taste testing gas station sushi so dollar hot dog night is right up his alley.

Natalie was also on her best behavior throughout the week.  She was quite excited on Friday night when I arrived home from the boomerang ride of my Youngstown round trip.  That is when the threads of my carefully woven plan began to unravel. I had arrived home early and, unfortunately, exhausted, hoping to catch a quick cat-nap before H hour. Unbeknownst to me, Nicholas had committed me to driving over to my brother’s house to pick up Abby’s car for which my father was paying to have a stereo installed as a birthday present. I stayed awake for the mini-excursion that set us off our Cleveland bound time schedule by about an hour. We would be significantly late.  Strike one.

Still, we were a happy bunch as we drove towards the RTA Station on Shaker Blvd (RTA is Cleveland’s BART.)  Natalie and I sat together.  Nicholas and Stephen sat separately as Stephen had acquired a case of oppressive halitosis that he attributed to dry mouth from his medication.  Natalie and I talked quietly until our train came to a kerchunking halt at an interchange station for us.  Natalie, Nicholas and I assembled in column formation in the aisle. I looked over to Stephen to see why he was not following.  I could see that he had adopted a posture to arise, but was stuck in place.  He was frozen and I could tell that he was experiencing a focal seizure, the malady that he had been reporting to the disbelieving me for the last several weeks.  I had watched Pam have hundreds of focal and full seizures during the period of time between her two brain surgeries.  Like my dad’s trip back to Boston, I was transported to another place and time as I watched my son struggle to stand, a time that I had hoped never to visit again. Father Groeschel would describe that location as a point on the pathway inclining up a hill called Calvary.

Because he finally stood after a few dozen seconds and showed no ill effects, we decided to proceed to the game despite the scare.  I think I am glad we proceeded; it was an excellent and terrible outing all at once.  We got there late, but the seats were the best that I have ever bought – that’s what happens when Nicholas goes to the box office with my credit card.  Interestingly we discovered that Natalie despises hot dogs, but will eat three in close succession when she is starving and Nicholas is buying American sausages like he is feeding Slimer from the movie Ghost Busters. Stephen had another focal seizure with a similarly quick recovery when one of the Indians unexpectedly knocked a hanging curve into the bleachers to tie the game late.  It was an Indians game, though, so they lost in the ninth inning on a home run to a Twins outfielder that is old enough to have been in high school while I was in college. Happy that Stephen had made it through the game without a more significant medical incident we headed home without waiting for the fireworks.

So it is Tuesday, as I write this.  I am in the ER with Stephen to get his condition checked out.  He seems to be OK, but without a local doctor, the ER seemed the quickest alternative to get blood work, a CAT scan and access to medical specialists without the bureaucracy of referrals.  Frankly, I don’t care to be in another hospital, ever, but I realize that this is a necessary trip.  I would feel better if Father Luke from St John Vianny in Walnut Creek would happen in soon to anoint Stephen and pray with us, but I think we are out of his jurisdiction.  John Muir was tough to revisit for Nicholas’ treatment, anyway, but it was also seemed as comfortable as an old shoe, albeit with the possibility of a chance meeting transporting me back to a good or bad place in another lifetime.  

Today things turned out well with no bad news in either Stephen’s scans or labs.  I drove him home later after discharge thankful that he is relatively healthy.  We stopped on the way back at Arby’s and at one of the parishes that we might eventually choose as our own to visit Jesus in Adoration.  On the road again towards Streetsboro, I reconsidered again why all this inconvenience might have happened knowing that Stephen’s actual health remains largely the same.  Sure it was good to get him checked out, discover a good hospital and get assigned a family doctor for a follow-up visit, but why was I put through this dry run of worry and fear for the umpteenth time.  Was God holding me back a grade for some lesson that I should have learned one, two or three years ago?  

Then I remembered the conversation that I overheard among the doctors at the nursing station from my perch by the door of Stephen’s transient ER suite.  They were preparing to inform a patient and family that multiple unexplained lumps had been discovered throughout the lungs in some other poor patient’s scan. Thoughtfully, I removed the mini rosary that I had received at Emmaus from its place on my dashboard and prayed a Divine Mercy Chaplet for another family that got bad news while Stephen and I received our discharge paperwork.

[gracie-bird]

Text from a newspaper article: "In the arms of Princess Grace of Monaco, Elizabeth Brenden Kelly was christened Sunday in Philadelphia. The princess and Prince Rainier are the godparents of the 12-day old daughter of John B. Kelly, jr., brother of the princess. The child was baptized by Father Augustine J. Schulte, rector of St. John Baptist Vianny Catholic church."

The christening was on December 14, 1958, at St. John Baptist Vianny Catholic Church, in Gladwyne, PA. Photo by Charles Higgins.

[damajority]

DaMajority Fresh Article http://www.damajority.com/selected-essays-published-honour-paba-book-launch-november-7th-saint-lucia/

Selected essays published to honour “Paba” - Book launch on November 7th | Saint Lucia

Selected essays published to honour “Paba”

Book launch on November 7th

  To celebrate the 70th birthday of Msgr. Patrick ‘Paba’ Anthony, a number of commemorative events have been held, including the renaming of the Folk Research Centre to the “Msgr. Patrick Anthony Folk Research Centre.”

The FRC has also published a book of selected essays on St. Lucian culture in honour of its founder. The FRC was formally opened in 1973.

The book is titled The Road to Mount Pleasant, and is compiled and edited by John Robert Lee, St. Lucian writer, who is the FRC’s Publications Editor and Embert Charles, the first Executive Director of the FRC.

Its publication is made possible by the generous financial support of the Ministry of Culture, the Jubilee Trust Fund and FLOW. It is designed by Viannie Aimable and printed by the National Printing Corporation.

In his introduction, Embert Charles writes that:

“The articulation of the issues of dynamism and goals of development in the St. Lucian National Cultural Policy mirrored the initial objectives of the Folk Research Centre which was established in 1973, soon after the ordination of Patrick Angus Butcher “Paba” Anthony into the Catholic priesthood. It was no coincidence that the Folk Research Centre and to some extent Paba himself were involved in the development of the policy, but importantly have been engaged very actively in research, documentation and promotion of Saint Lucian culture.  He celebrated his 70th birthday on August 6th 2017 and the publication of this collection of essays is a tribute to his life as cultural missionary and the embodiment of the project towards building of a Caribbean civilization. The collection, which by no means is presented as a comprehensive study of Saint Lucian culture, does attempt to provide some facts and thoughts on the various aspects of the traditional and contemporary life of the Saint Lucian people.”

  Msgr. Patrick Anthony

The contributors are all well-known and recognized for their contribution to the research and documentation of Saint Lucian culture. They are: Msgr. Patrick A.B. Anthony himself, Lindy Ann Alexander, George ‘Fish’ Alphonse, Embert Charles, McDonald Dixon, George Goddard, Kendel Hippolyte, Alcess Ismael, Dr. Kentry JnPierre, Marcian W.E. Jean-Pierre, Dr. Didacus Jules, John Robert Lee, Dame Pearlette Louisy, Vladimir Lucien, Dr. Anthea Octave, Professor Gordon Rohlehr, Kennedy Samuel, Harold Simmons 1914-1966, Professor Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Professor Karl R. Wernhart.

The subjects range from essays by Msgr. Anthony on the role of culture, the Kèlè ceremony, Popular Catholicism and the art work of the late Sir Dunstan St. Omer – to researched writing by other writers on culture and development, the Kwéyòl language, Jounen Kwéyòl, the Flower Festivals, St. Lucian folklore, St. Lucian calypso. As well, a number of St. Lucian poets are included, with poems in English and Kwéyòl.

The cover illustration is titled “Mr. Wo-Wo” and is the work of the late artist and cultural hero Dunstan St. Omer (1927-2015).

FRC’s Executive Director Hilary La Force believes that this latest FRC publication will be a valuable information, study and research source for students, researchers and visitors who are desirous of learning more about various aspects of Saint Lucian culture. Ms. Floreta Nicholas, Chairperson of the FRC, writes in the book’s Foreword, “My hope is that this handbook to Saint Lucian Culture, recording as it does, “The Road to Mount Pleasant,” the home of the FRC and all it represents, would become required reading for all interested in our life and culture, and above all, for our young Saint Lucians.”

The Road to Mount Pleasant (329 pages, illustrated) will be launched at the FRC Headquarters at Mount Pleasant on Tuesday November 7th at 7 pm. The Featured guest speaker will be Dr. Didacus Jules, Director General of the OECS and a founding member of the FRC.

Copies of the new book will be on sale.

The book launch event is open to the public who are invited.

[francissanthosh-blog]

Praise the Lord. "My Judgment goes forth as the Light, says the Lord; and I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather burnt (ritualistic) offerings." (Hos6:5c-6) God bless you. Wishing you all a happy and blessed feast of "St. John Marie Vianny" - the patron of all the ordained priests of Christ. God bless you.

[perfectthewayyouarerightnow]

St. John Vianney

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

My Writing Homework (Post 78) 3-4-15

                        Last week I was only ten minutes late for Thursday night’s meeting of the Bereavement Group.  It is not that I am intentionally being impolite but the commute time from Richmond to Brentwood is very inconsistent.  The other members of the group graciously allow for my serial interruption of the flow of their conversation.  

Sandy let me know that I had missed her introduction for the topic of next week’s meeting.  She encouraged me to write on the subject for the newsletter in case my pitiable punctuality degraded to an extent that prevented me from presenting my thoughts orally.  Next week’s discussion topic is the three roles that significant people fulfill in our lives.  People enter our life for either a REASON, a SEASON or a LIFETIME.  My homework follows:

‘When someone is in your life for a REASON.  It is usually to meet a need you have expressed.  They have come to assist you with a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a Godsend and they are!  They are for that reason that you need to be.”

For me there have been many significant people who have appeared and exited my life in turnstile fashion.  They answered a prayer, performed a vital service, or administered a spiritual remedy as pleasant to taste as cod liver oil.  Unless you live in solitude, you will be assisted, disappointed or even betrayed by many different people throughout your lifetime.  For many years, I was a semi-professional grudge holder. I never reached black-belt status in prolonged enmity, but I certainly had progressed well beyond the novice white and yellow belts.  Through my journey with Pam’s illness I learned a valuable life lesson:  an Orange Dream Machine from Jamba Juice tastes much better than the poison of hatred. I now try to release any disdain I feel for the bit characters, the Soup Nazis, that troop in and out of my life for the purpose of teaching me how to forgive.

There are also truly pleasant and significant characters that appear in the weekly sitcom of my life for a REASON.  These aren’t the red shirted, engineering, Star Trek, cannon fodder that haplessly blaze away with their phasors at the invincible alien creature before laying down their lives for plot development.  I’m talking about memorable actors in our lives that answer our prayers and then depart quickly into the sunset like McCloud, Rooster Cogburn or the Lone Ranger.

For the Donnelly family many nurses and oncologists fit that description, but the best example is a Catholic priest. Father Luke is the Parochial Vicar at St John Vianny in Walnut Creek, the parish directly across from John Muir Walnut Creek campus, a place where the Donnellys have spent far too much time.  A friend of Father Jerry’s in the seminary, Father Luke hasn’t moved from parish to parish nor is he on the fast track to a bishopric in Des Moines, Singapore or any other Diocese.  He serves the needs of his parishioners and ministers to the patients and families directly across Ygnacio Valley Road from his office.

Father Luke has answered the spiritual bell pull of Donnelly prayers on numerous occasions. Sometimes we requested to talk to him through one of his Eucharistic ministers and sometimes Father Luke has walked into the room without being summoned by anything other than our inner turmoil.  His daily hospital round seems to be directed by a GPS route programmed directly by the Holy Spirit.  Upon arrival at his destination his very presence exudes peace into any predicament like a swung censor at high mass.  If you summed up the total time that Father Luke spent visiting a Donnelly sick room, the total might equate to less than three hours.  On the other hand, if you wished to metaphorically demonstrate the spiritual service that he has done for our family, you would have to rent a dump truck.  For the Donnellys of Brentwood, Father Luke is a REASON.  Understandably, I hope never to meet Father Luke again on this side of the veil, but he will remain in my thankful thoughts and prayers.

“When people come into your life for a SEASON, it is because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.  They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.  They may teach you something you have never done.  They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it!  It is real!  ‘But’ only for a season.”

The first man that was a big influence on my life was a mentor to both my father and me.  Carroll Bailey was a senior teacher on staff when my father became an English teacher at Mount Hermon school.  Later he was my house counselor for a year and a good shepherd that watched out for me during all my four years at a Boston boarding High School. Mr. Bailey, as I think of him even to this day, always had my best interest at heart.  Although I wasn’t the “best” Donnelly (that was my brother Dan,) or the “brightest” Donnelly (that was my brother Jim,) Mr. Bailey knew that I was the nearest clone to my father.  In the absence of my parent’s direct influence, as I staggered the ugly road through adolescence towards manhood, Mr. Bailey’s gentle concern and tongue like an angle-grinder ensured that I didn’t stray too far into the bushes and end up a jerk.  Although  it seemed that he wasn’t always watching me closely, he was invariably on the scene like Bat Man whenever I had made a poor decision.   Whether I had misplaced my razor for a week or had snuck out of a school assembly for some goof-off time, I would invariably run smack dab into Carrol Bailey.  To this day, I remember him shaking his head in resigned disappointment when I had accidentally missed my last Chemistry exam and had to take the test in a one-on-one session at the professor’s house to qualify for graduation.  Mr. Bailey was only in my life for a SEASON, but I never would have made it to and through the Naval Academy without his sub-vocalized instructions rebounding like a puck in my cranium.

A second important man was also only in my life for a SEASON. Jay Balboa was an anonymous academy classmate that I first consciously remember meeting in line for service selection. A fellow math major, he was one slot before me in class rank so we ended up selecting the same ship.  His welcome aboard package included a color picture of the USS Dahlgren, AKA the Dirty D; my picture was a black and white shot that looked like it had been taken surreptitiously by a Russian operative. Jay and I served together for three and half tough years on an aging tin can often administered brutally in Old Navy fashion.  We suffered through an internship regime that called for driving the ship on four hours or less sleep and absorbing vociferous and often public criticism from superior officers.  We kept each other sane and sober – for the most part.  Most importantly, he imparted a wonderful gift upon me:  he helped me start my journey towards making Pam’s Catholic faith my own.  Jay and I have fallen back into friendship as many old shipmates do now through Facebook, but we will probably never again approach the same level of intimacy that we did in our SEASON as shipmates.

“LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.  Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.”

I have written about many of my LIFETIME relationships with different family members throughout the year and a half that I have written this column, most notably about my relationship with Pam, who continues to influence me from her vantage in heaven.  My sister asked me the other week why I write so little about the second oldest relationship of my natural and super-natural life, my relationship with my mother. My answer was simple, “No one is supposed to look at the person behind the curtain.  Pay no attention to the person behind the curtain.”  While I am often superficially characterized as a near clone of my father, my mother’s subtler influence is apparent my better qualities – Mr. Bailey might want to discuss which and how many of those there are.  Thoughtful, patient, faithful, reserved and devoted, my mother’s personality provided the solid foundation necessary for Pam to shape me into a passable Catholic husband.  As I recently spent a week observing my parent’s interaction with young Natalie, I could see how my mom’s quiet personality and humor was successfully imprint onto each of her five children.  I am delighted that Natalie will someday remember my mother’s love and have the opportunity to pass on her own rendition of Sue Donnelly’s motherly affection to my future grandchildren.  Mom has taught me many of life’s most important lessons.  Hers certainly qualifies as a LIFETIME relationship.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

A Hairy Science Project (Post 123) 1-13-16

Nicholas had a science experiment while he was a student at Excelsior Middle School that is famous in our family.  Pam and I were always pretty hands off with respect to that type of assignment as we thought that parental domination of school activities can be pretty smothering and lead to dependent behavior that inhibits initiative and accountability.  The most extreme example of out of control parenting was something that a friend shared while we were midshipmen at the Naval Academy.  He was one of my classmates, and upon discovering that I was from the Akron, Ohio area my friend told me that he had participated in the famous Akron Soap Box Derby as a kid.  I remember seeing pictures of the homemade race-cars in the paper that I delivered each morning, but I never attended.

My classmate explained that the kids in his neighborhood of Annapolis all took turns either winning or doing very well in the annual competition because their fathers were on staff in the USNA Engineering Department and which gave them access to a wind tunnel to test their derby entry each year.  My head nearly exploded as the racket was described.  A cabal of fathers colluding to leverage their access to specialized government lab equipment for the purpose of manipulating a win in a kid’s competition repulsed me.  Teaching kids to cheat seems to be exactly what parents should never do.

More interested in allowing my kids to get hands on experience building stuff, I usually just acted as safety observer when Stephen and Nick put together Pinewood Derby cars and Gutter Regatta boats for scouts.  With Nicholas’ homework, I participated only when he had an assignment that mandated parental participation or when he brought a question to me on his own initiative. My parents had brought us up to be as independent as possible so I tried to do that for my children as well. Certainly that worked out well for Abby, but with Stephen and Nicholas there were plenty of bumps in the road.

One of the bumps in the road for Nicholas was his science project.  Always a procrastinator, Nick invaded my bedroom in the evening of one work night and announced that he needed help on a project. He had a guilty look on his face, which he didn’t understand was an open invitation to cross-examination.  In very short order, I established four very disturbing facts: the project was due the next day, the project had not been started, the assignment had been made approximately two months before, and Nicholas’ approved project proposal was on hair growth.   

Now because most households today have access to the internet and also have at least one blank folding poster board lying around, completing a project in one night is definitely doable.  Nostalgically, I recalled that a standard project in my day was a diorama requiring only cotton balls, a shoe box, construction paper, glue and some plastic figurines of some sort.  Everybody kept that stuff around and a Sunday night emergency project was definitely feasible back then too.

Unfortunately, an emergency science project on hair growth is a total non-starter. Nicholas learned a valuable lesson about procrastination that night – unfortunately, the lesson was not that procrastination was bad, but rather, that self-aware procrastinators should carefully avoid proposing projects that require painstaking, prolonged and detailed records of experimental data. Even Chia pets can’t grow their hair in one night.  Nicholas’s project was totally doomed.

 We came up with something, though.  I believe that I even clipped and donated a lock of head hair of some sort as a sample.  In my memory Abby succumbed to a giggle fit when she reviewed the final train wreck that Nick was carting off to school the next day.  A clump of hair, a graph with two data points, and some informational printouts all garnered from Wikipedia undoubtedly was all that was there.  

In my day an equivalent half-hearted last minute submission would have been a collage of pictures all from the stack of National Geographic magazines that were obligatory for any fully-equipped basement or attic in the 70’s.  It would have garnered a well-deserved F or D-.  Nicholas’s project didn’t receive a failing grade, though, because these days the only way to fail a project is to express a Christian viewpoint.  Still Nicholas project certainly tested all the teacher’s self-esteem protection fail-safes.  His hackneyed mess stood out in full regalia among the highly glossed projects many of which appeared to have been produced by marketing firms.

Nick’s last minute hair project does make me chuckle, but it also could serve as a metaphor for what it must be like for an atheist or agnostic to discover Jesus late in life and decide that they better get cooking. I understand that no one can earn their way into Heaven, but the parable of the servant burying gold certainly makes me self-conscious about whether I am accomplishing enough as a Christian. I wasted a good amount of my early years chasing worldly things, so my batting average with respect to living my faith has only truly improved over the last decade.  Luckily God loves us all very deeply.

A Christian understanding of God is that He loves us very much even to the extent of sacrificing His Only Son for our salvation. Implicit in His great love for us and consistent with my experience, God will do everything in His power to achieve our salvation except violate our free-will.  

Ostensibly, I sought God to some extent for many years, but I didn’t search very effectively and I question how motivated I was to encounter The Holy Spirit, a meeting that would have served to curb my worldliness.  In my view, once a person becomes truly convinced God exists, then sinfulness becomes really really problematic.  Up until God proved His existence definitively to me during my journey with Pam’s illness, I always rationalized my sins by the argument that because I wasn’t 100 percent sure that God existed, my sin was understandable and defensible under the subterfuge of my doubt.

My feigned ignorance and unsurety about God made my continued sinful ways explainable rationally.  I tried to live my life in a Christian fashion and tried to do what I could to earn by merit what we can never earn by our actions until it was time for a good bout of sinning.  In those cases, I would “extinguish my belief,”  flip the God light switch to the off position so that, in my mind, I became invisible to Him, my Guardian Angel and all the other souls in Heaven and Purgatory, for my sinfest.  Then after the sinning was done, in remorse, I could reenter the universe of God like the Millennium Falcon dropping to sub-light speed.  Then it was off to Reconciliation for a quick car wash and a return to my daily Christian hypocrisy.

In many ways I was a functional agnostic hedging my bets through many years of Christian seeming pantomime.  Then, one day, I needed God to be real.  In desperation and fear at Pam’s early diagnosis, I truly wanted to encounter Jesus in a way that would extinguish all my doubt because I needed for our lives to matter and for a merciful God to be running the whole show.  

So I skedaddled across Ignacio Valley Road from John Muir Hospital where a surgeon was operating on my Pam’s brain.  I needed to find an occupied Tabernacle and I was sure that one would be present in the sanctuary of St John Vianny Parish, arriving there in desperation, I fell down on my knees and met Him and knew that He was there, in the place that I needed Him to be - where He had always been all those times that I had been pretending to look for Him.  No ruby slippers needed to be clicked.

Here in this time between Christmas and Lent as I type away at the start of the week, I am thankful for having been assured about the existence of God.  That I 100% believe, is a great relief to me as uncertainly only leads only to unhappiness and fear.  Belief in the afterlife resolves all the anxiety for me.  God truly does set me free.

Anyway, the Donnelly family is happy to be through the holidays, but for a late believer like myself, each day seems a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge’s Christmas Day.  In this New Year, this 2016, I will have the opportunity to prove that I believe, strengthen my belief through participating in the Church and happily, like Ebenezer, I discover each day that I have still more time.  My Christian project can still be done properly.  While I cannot claim that I have or even can earn an “A” with regard to my Christian behavior, I can prove that I grasp the concept through acting as Christ instructed us to behave towards others.  Although I surely will sin, I can do so without pretending that God does not exist.  I will not mentally negate Him, but instead I will do my best to proclaim Him in this Jubilee Year of Mercy.  Thanks be to God.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

The Door of St John Vianny (Post 43) 7-2-14

                        Two Saturdays ago as I spent time with Nick in John Muir Hospital, I realized that it had been nearly three weeks since my last confession.  I try to go every two weeks.  When I delay longer, I become ornery and pick fights with the kids; television or the internet dominate my free time; and my diet and housework discipline descends into chaos.  It always surprises me that very good people can go a year with only one confession. I expect that if I tried to limit myself to an annual confession, I would soon be sporting a tribal tattoo covering half my face and be fired for biting my coworkers.  

Regardless, it is better for all concerned that I frequent the sacrament of confession biweekly if possible. Conveniently, there is a Catholic Church located right across Ygnacio Valley Road from the hospital.  I checked the parish website for St John Vianny and found out that I could make confession at 4 PM.  Nick was doing pretty well so I told him I was going to run across the street for confession and would be back in about an hour.

It seemed surprising to me that I had only trotted across the street once in all the days and weeks I had visited Pam over her eight or so admissions into John Muir during her two-year hit-and-run battle with a glioblastoma.  In most cases I hadn’t needed to make the walk.  The Eucharist was delivered to us unfailingly on a daily basis by some very wonderful parishioners at St John Vianny.  Whenever Pam would have a procedure scheduled we would tell the extraordinary minister of the Eucharist and within an hour or so, Father Luke, a close friend of Father Jerry, like an angle of peace would arrive in Pam’s room to anoint her.  Father Luke has visited Nicholas three times too and almost certainly would have visited us to hear my confession, but I thought it would be good to visit the sanctuary again that I had seen last at the other end of a very dark time tunnel that I entered the night of Pam’s first brain surgery in 2011.

I remember sitting in the hospital waiting room that January afternoon wasting time.  I had brought the Bible and another religious book, maybe the biography of Solanus Casey which Barb, my mother-in-law, had given us.  Understandably, I didn’t feel like reading.  Instead I was playing solitaire on my phone, without really paying attention.  I had only had the phone for about a month and had never won a game.  I was playing out of habit absentmindedly with whatever small portion of my brain was not engaged in worrying.  Would God let Pam survive? What would I do if she died? How would I explain it to the kids?

Then something in my self-conscious rose to my attention.  I noticed that I had just won three consecutive games of Solitaire after losing my previous hundred attempts.  My seldom used math degree told me that it was impossible for me to win three times in a row when I had never previously won.  The impossibility of the outcome jarred my mind back to the reality of the stupidity of playing solitaire through my wife’s brain surgery.  I don’t know whether I imagined the wins or whether God allowed my guardian angel to manipulate the solitaire application on my Blackberry to lift my stupor of self-pity and worry.  I did immediately recognize that I needed to cease and desist with the phone fiddling and morbid day-dreaming.  I felt an overwhelmingly urgent desire to commune with God and the delightful fish tank in the waiting room was not the inspiration surrounding that I needed.

In full flight or fight mode I couldn’t remember whether John Muir Walnut Creek had a chapel (it does), but I knew I had seen a Catholic Church across the street.  Because Pam would not have likely even begun her surgery I knew that Dr. Chen, her surgeon, would not be updating me for hours.  I told a volunteer where I was going and ambled across the street and up the sidewalk to the front doors of St John Vianny.  It was afternoon but on a weekday so I found the front door locked.  The sanctuary looked mostly dark through the glass doors.  Providentially, one of the parish staff heard me rattling the handle and came to investigate.  I explained to her that my wife was having brain surgery and that I was seeking a place to pray.  The desperation of my words startled me, but seemed not to register with her.  Maybe she had been a frequently robbed bank teller in her previous employment. With charity she opened the door for me, told me to ensure I locked the sanctuary when I left and to check with the front office if I planned to make regular visits while my wife was recovering.

I remember thanking her as if we were having a conversation underwater; my attention seemed transfixed on the tabernacle.  I really wish I could somehow duplicate this proper state of mind when I attend weekly or daily Mass, but I think it was a special gift for one occasion only. I remember making my way to the front row of the sanctuary intending to quietly sit in a pew and pray.  Instead I seemed to lurch forward and mostly collapsed in my brokenness before Jesus.  I was filled with His warm comfort.

I don’t know how long I was there. I don’t think I managed a single Hail Mary or Our Father.  I was just filled with Jesus’ presence in a way that reminded me of my baptism at Phillips Andover twenty-five years before.  On this occasion, the feeling of being full of the Holy Spirit was much deeper and lasted for my entire stay.  I surrendered to Him and to His will and He was pleased with my sacrifice.

After a while I was dismissed by Him.  I knew that it was time to return to my vigil in the waiting room awaiting the results of Pam’s craniotomy.  Jesus had provided me with the grace required for me to carry my cross to the second station of my long journey: the recovery room.  I left John Vianny not only grace-filled to deal with my immediate need, but I left convinced of Christ’s real presence in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church.   As a convert, I had previously believed in The Real Presence on an intellectual level, but had never before felt the Presence. From that hour, I spiritually began to ascend the mountain of faith that for years I had considered climbing but without really doing more than tidy up my base camp.

None of those memories occurred to me as I was sitting in Nicholas’ hospital room in the middle of June. I had been wary about returning to the hospital where Pam had spent so many days and nights together with our companions the seizures, the headaches, the nausea, the aphasia, the shingles, the paralysis and the fear, but nothing at John Muir really rattled me emotionally. Absorbed into Nick’s fight against cancer, the familiar halls, rooms and faces didn’t bring the tears I had dreaded. This trip to John Muir seemed to be just another episode of the twenty-five year movie serial saga, “Steve Goes to the Hospital.”

Lulled by my experience on the other side of Ygnacio Valley Road, I strolled up to pull open the doors to St John Vianny and tripped the emotional booby-trap set for me at the door handles.  I had returned to the location of my personal conversion and the tears flowed. Although unanticipated, the pain was good pain.  

I remembered the taste of the consolation with which God had filled me on that night so long ago.  I remembered the walk back across street to my waiting room vigil.  I don’t think I played another game of solitaire that January.   Then I played obsessively for months to see whether I could win three times in a row again and know that heaven had once again intervened in my life. Of course I was never able to win consecutive games again and the phone eventually was replaced – you can never enter Narnia through the same route wardrobe or electronic device.  

On the night of Pam’s surgery, I don’t think I prayed again either.  I just sat in Jesus’ peace and waited, probably with our wedding album on my lap like Tom Hanks at the bus stop in the final scene of Forest Gump. I was confident in God’s plan, come what may, and remained hopeful that Pam would remember that I was her husband if not by name.