Sunday Homily 8-24-08, 21st, Ordinary Time

Readings: Entrance procession, Luke 19, 28-40; Isaiah 50, 4-7; Psalm 22, My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?; Philippians 2, 6-11; Passion, Luke 22, 14-23, 1-49. 

 Some short reflections on the readings, short because of the length of the readings, i.e., the Passion.

It is very unfortunate that we only read little sections of the Luke’s Gospel each Sunday.  It is like seeing a few minutes of a movie; we keep getting interrupted and can too easily lose the whole plot.  Remember, Luke’s product is both the Gospel and the Book of Acts and together they form a complete message.

The very early church was Jewish.  After the Resurrection, the followers of Jesus continued to go to the synagogue or temple, this we see in Acts, and they also met in each other’s homes to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  As they reflected on the life of Jesus, they turned to what they were most familiar with, namely the Old Testament, in their efforts to try and understand Jesus’ place better.  And so after forty or fifty or even sixty years of this, as our Gospels emerge they are hugely influenced by the Old Testament.  It was the only way the gospel writers and the early communities knew how to understand Jesus and his message.

Today, we have one of those points, if we were watching a movie, when the music would be cranked up.  For Luke, from Chapter 9:51 up until today’s first Gospel reading Chapter 19:28 Jesus has been journeying towards Jerusalem.  Today he enters Jerusalem and begins what we know as the Jerusalem ministry, a mere two and a half chapters. You will remember way back at the beginning of this gospel, when Jesus gets left behind in Jerusalem, he says to his parents, “Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs.” Right after today’s reading, Luke has Jesus go to the temple and clean it out and then begin teaching in the Temple every day. 

We get the sense of more time than just the few days we experience between Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and what we will read about shortly as the Holy Week events. 

Finally, recall on the first Sunday of Lent, we read of the temptations of Jesus after his 40 days in the desert.  Luke ends that story with the words “the devil left him to return at the proper time.”   We will see that return in our reading of the Passion when Peter denies Jesus 22:31, when Satan enters Judas 22:3 and at the hour of darkness, 22:53.

We are almost done with Lent.  Now we turn to the events of Holy Week and Easter.  Our Gospels give us different interpretations of these events, influenced by the early church’s interpretation in the light of the Old Testament.  Each one of us also needs to reflect on what these events mean to us and how our lives are different.  Was this just a sad story, which happened over two thousand years ago, or are our lives today lived with a different meaning because of Jesus?

Picture 1:   Palm Sunday Mass begins with Tony

Picture 2:   Tony blesses the Palms

Picture 3:   Denni, Nancy, & Ron await the Procession

Picture 4:   The Procession with the Palms

Picture 5:  The Kless Family await the blessing, Christine, Cara, her friend, Sean, and Ed

Buddies, Zoe and Emma arriving.

Readings:

2 Samuel  12, 1-14,  The verses of this reading are expanded because of the excellence of the story, King David and Bathsheba.

Psalm 32,  Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.

Galatians 2, 16-21,  If justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Luke 7, 36-8, 3,  She stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears.  Another beautiful reading.

14 seconds over Little Axe, OK, outside Norman, tore this car apart. Little Axe was hit the day before Moore, a middle class suburb of OK City.

Relief Work
in OK City

This morning I would like to talk with you about the trip I made to OK
City a week ago.  Three aspects, the time
and the geography of the tornadoes, gratitude, and the three teams.

You might not know it, but three tornadoes hit the area.  The third and second were E5’s, the kind with
winds over 250 miles per hour.  The third
was also the tornado with the diameter of about 2 & a half miles.  20 people were killed, including the 3
professional tornado watchers, but it mostly roamed the countryside, not living
areas. 

Maybe unrecognizable, a pick up, upside down, door and window gone, trailer on top, OU lawn chair I set up.

The middle tornado was the Moore tornado, Moore being a suburb of OK
City.  You drive north on I-35.  On the right you see devastation—of houses
like in Plano or Richardson.  On the left
you see devastation–of a large strip shopping complex like Collin Creek
Mall. 

Where is the little boy who practiced hoops on this basket? Little Axe, where the first of the 3 big tornadoes hit, is rural and comparatively poor with unpaved, dirt roads. This debris has been bulldozed to the edge of the road, where it will be picked up.

The first tornado, a day or two before Moore, hit Little Axe, a small
village of maybe 50 houses.  35 were
destroyed.  I would conjecture the
majority of the residences were portables, trailer homes.  This tornado spent 14 seconds on the ground
and you will see the result. 

Many of the 50 or so homes in Little Axe were trailer homes which were mounted on these I beams. The wind twisted the beams like spaghetti. These were long trailer homes with beautiful scenery around them.

We were sent to Little Axe because it had been neglected and forgotten
after Moore.  Moore was urban and middle
class.  Little Axe was rural and
relatively poor.  The roads were not paved,
just gravel and dirt.  Moore sucked up
all the press coverage and attention.  We
were sent to redress this neglect.

Debris piles being removed. 35 houses were swept away.

Secondly, the gratitude.  The
first thing I noticed, after the shock of seeing Moore from I-35 as I drove
north, was the gratitude of people.  We
wore our Bona Responds brown T shirts as we visited stores like Home
Depot.  Customers and staff all thanked
us for coming to help out.  At the Stihl
outlet where we went to buy chain saw parts, the staff comes out with Stihl T
shirts for all of us.  Jim gave them Bona
Responds T shirts.   It was humbling.   See the two types of T shirts.

Bona Responds team. Besides Jim and Jerry, two professors from St. Bonaventure, an OU chemistry professor and graduate of St. B. joined us with his daughter, Rose.

Thirdly, the teams.  Obviously, we
were the team from St. Bonaventure, the Catholic university.  Besides Jim, who is a finance professor,
there was Jerry, a chemistry professor. 

The second team was Israeli.  The
first morning I’m standing outside our barracks style quarters at this generic
church.  I hear these kids talking a language
I don’t recognize.  I look more closely
at them and see the obvious Israeli blue & white flag on their white T
shirts.  I ask them who they are and what
are they doing.  They say they have come
from Israel to help.  I am stunned.

Less than half of the Israeli team. These kids actually flew in to work relief in OK. They were living with us in the same complex of barracks. I heard them speaking a language I did not know one morning and asked, "Who are you guys?" The shirts have the Israeli flag.

A footnote on these kids.  When I
am driving to our site in Little Axe later that morning, the two girls in my
Prius see the Israeli kids and are all excited because they had worked together
at another site.  Guess where: New York
after Sandy.  They were like old friends
meeting.

The third group was a group of, get this, Muslim kids.  Marvelous young people.  Acting and looking just like us except they
were dark, the guys I talked with said they were from St. Louis.

The Israeli trailer of equipment. It says "Jewish Response to Disaster." Our kids had worked with the Israeli kids in NY after Sandy. They were old friends.

Both the Muslim and the Israeli groups obviously have organizations behind them on the ground in the U.S. 
They both had more equipment than we. 
Like, the Muslims had a generator with which they ran a saw that cut I
beams. 

In fact, during the afternoon I worked a lot with the Muslims.  They were cutting up I beams and I and some
others were carrying 6-9 foot sections up out of a valley to the edge of the
road where we had 3 piles, metal, wood, and trash.

While the Israelis were a delightful surprise for me, the biggest surprise came with the 3rd team, "Muslims for Humanity," as it says on the truck door. Meet Dwight, with whom I worked sawing the I beams into 9 foot sections so they could be taken over to the metals pile on the edge of the road. Humbling to work with these kids.

At one point I trip over some debris on the ground and fall.  Fortunately for sports in my early years I
learned how to fall.  Not hurt at all,
just rolling into ground.  Guess who the
first person to reach out to me was: not one of those Catholic kids, not even
an Israeli, a Muslim.   The others were not near anyway.  They did not even know I fell. Check the pictures of
the teams and equipment.

This open area once was a home. In the background is a tornado shelter. 13 people and a dog saved their lives a second or two before the tornado swept down on them by jumping into this shelter. Imagine opening the door of the shelter and looking where your house once stood.

I told you all how proud I am to be part of you, of this little community
which is so generous and makes such a positive difference.   You
people not only helped the people of Little Axe, but you helped these kids from
St. Bonaventure have a marvelous ecumenical and international experience.

Thanks.

Special Mass today celebrating Our Joan Gleason

Readings:  

 Exodus, 16, 2-4 & 12-15, I will rain down bread from heaven for you.

 Psalm 78, The Lord gave them bread from heaven

Ephesians 4, 17, 20-24, You should put away the old self of your former way of life.

John 6, 24-35, Sir, give us this bread always. 

Joan with her pastry

Exodus observations:

What:

 Exodus is a fun book and a good read.  It comes after Genesis & it has three main sections.

 One – the struggle between stubborn old Pharoah vs Moses & Yahweh.  Pharoah loses.  You can imagine the Passover had a significant impact. 

Two – the time of wandering in the Sinai desert and the covenant, that is, the 10 Commandments

Three – the coming into the Promised Land. 

This all took around 40 years, and so we have stories in-between.  Today’s is one of these, showing Yahweh feeding his grumbling people.

Joan with us

When written:

Toward the end of the Babylonian Captivity, around 550 before Christ

Who wrote it:

Not Moses, but people who lived centuries after this mythical character.  How much of this is historical is a question.  The story greatly encouraged the Jewish people enslaved in Babylon.

The Gleasons

Our selection:

An amusing account of the Jewish people grumbling against Moses.  They say they would prefer to be back in Egypt than in this infernal desert where they are wandering in the heat & sand.  We can sympathize with them in these days of 100’s.  They did not have a/c.   So Yahweh feeds them.  See how.

One of Joan's favorites, The Brunch

Joan

I would like to say a few words this morning about Joan.

When we started our little community almost 8 years ago, I had 3 dreams. 

First, I wanted the community to be totally inclusive.

Secondly, I did not want to take up collections during our celebrations.

Thirdly, I wanted to provide coffee & donuts & juice free to the community.  I figured coffee & donuts invited people to hang around and chat.  We had no other Mass starting.   Why not hang out?

Curtis is 83 Today!

For a year, maybe two, we provided coffee & donuts & juice every Sunday.  It was delightful.   At some point I noticed that a cake was showing up every week.  I asked Rosemary had she noticed.  She had noticed, but did not know who was doing it. 

With a sung happy birthday from the community, Curtis receives a birthday cup cake.

Guess who it was.  Yes, Joan.  Without anyone asking her, she just started feeding the community.   How appropriate are the two readings today that talk about God feeding his people.   This is so Joan, feeding us, feeding God’s people. 

This was just one way Joan touched my heart and our hearts.  Another way came through her marvelous spirit.  One Sunday a couple of weeks before she died, Rosemary & I came to visit.  Joan was sitting up in a recliner chair, looked great, and was pert as ever.  As we departed I blessed her and touched her head, or more accurately, her hair.   “Don’t mess my hair,” she cracks.  I had to laugh.  “Joan,” I said, “I can see, there is nothing wrong with you.”    Well, there was.  She just did not show it, even though she was approaching the bridge. 

See how far we have come on our Habitat House

Another side to her spirit was the manner in which she dealt with her condition and the approach of that bridge.  There were only 36 days between the day the doctors discovered her cancer and the day she died.  What did she decide to do with the three treatment plans?  She said she did not want any treatment.  Everybody has their day, she told me, and she was ready for hers. 

Tom, our Habitat Man, with day laborer

I asked her how she felt about dying.  “Fine,” she said.  No hesitation, “Fine.”  She had moved through the psychological stages of dying in a lightening flash, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and arrived at acceptance.  I am privileged to walk the last mile with a lot of people.  Seldom am I so touched by such marvelous acceptance.

Would you trust your house to this laborer?

After Joan had told me she felt fine about her approaching death, she told me she had one wish.  That her family remain family.  She repeated this the night we all got together so everyone who wanted to could talk about what was going on.

Joan gifted us all with this family, Jerry, Maureen & Bill, Debbie & Tom, T.J. & Sean, and all the other grand kids.  Thanks for being a gift to me and to our community, All of You.

Hospitality and Lunch area with Carol and Rosemary. Special thanks to Tom and Lynda for coordinating lunch for everyone.

I would like now to read the neat little prayer Joan has on her card.  It is so Joan.

          To Those I Love & Those Who Love Me

When I am gone, release me, let me go.  I have so many things to see and do.  You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears, be happy that we had so many years.  I gave you my love and you can only guess how much you gave me in happiness.  I thank you for the love you have each shown, but now it is time I traveled on alone.  So grieve awhile for me, if grieve you must, then let your grief be comforted by trust.  It’s only for awhile that we must part, so bless the memories within your heart.  I won’t be far away, for life goes on. So, if you need me, call and I will come.  Though you can’t see or touch me, I’ll be near, and if you listen with your heart, you’ll hear all my love around you soft and clear. And then, when you must come this way alone, I’ll greet you with a smile and say, “Welcome Home.”

What is the greatest gift Joan has given you?

Readings:

Acts 4,  8-12,  In his name this man stands before you healed.

Psalm 118,    The stone rejected by the builders has become the corner stone.

1 John 3, 1-2,   See what love the Father has bestowed on us.

 John  10, 11-18,  I am the good shepherd.

Genevieve says, "Hi, Everybody, Welcome. Nice to see you for the first time."

Acts reminders:

Author: Luke, the same who wrote the gospel.  He was an educated, urbane Jew.

Date: the years 75-80 

Subject: This is a travel log, detailing the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome and the Mediterranean in between.

Today: Peter is talking to the elders and leaders of the people, aiming to convince them about Jesus.

Genevieve welcomes the Whole Community, and, in turn, the Whole Community welcomes Genevieve.

The Good Shepherd

I would like to talk this morning about the good shepherd.  Two proposals.  

First, we have shepherds all around us.

Secondly, the good shepherd has three characteristics.

1. The shepherd gathers people.
2. The people the shepherd gathers are richer and happier because of being called.
3. The shepherd, likewise, is richer and happier because of inviting all these people. 

Vivian says, "In two more weeks I will get to say hi to everybody, too."  Hey,  is there something in the water around here?

Four examples.

I mentioned that this past weekend Rosemary & I attended both a Jesuit class reunion and an alumni reunion of 50 years at Spring Hill College in Mobile.  The shepherd who called us together and made all the arrangements was my classmate and good friend, Bill Dowie.  To me this was extraordinary because the last time we all met two years ago, over twenty of us, Bill was still mourning the love of his life, whom he had cared for the last years of her life.

Not only did he gather those who could make it somewhat at the last moment, but he shared with us that he was introduced to someone with whom he sees a special relationship developing.  Rosemary & I were most touched, doubly so by the charming woman he brought.

I left that reunion richer and happier.

The Spring Hill Jesuit reunion group on the Fairhope pier, eastern shore, Mobile Bay.   Bill is third from left, Keqi is first on the left. Others, (l-r), Jim Raymond, Rosemary, an Old Geezer, Carl Castille, and Jack Podsiadlo. Joe Reardon taking the picture.

The second shepherd is in our very midst.  This guy invites with open arms and open heart guys who have hit bottom.  We, too, have accepted his invitation to nurture these men by our help with Souls Harbor, of which he is the director, a 24/7 job. 

Brent, Thanks for being a good shepherd for over 60 men and a shepherd for me and the community.

Our class in '65 in front of Assumption Hall.

The third shepherd, every Thursday at least, loads up 16 meals.  With her friend, Barbara, they deliver Meals on Wheels to homebound men and women, whites and a rainbow of races.

Rosemary and Barbara gather their people by bringing meals to their door.  The people are richer and happier because of their visit, as I am by their example.

Over 100 of us Jesuits lived in Assumption Hall, Spring Hill College, Mobile in the 60's. After expecting that the building would be finally designated as a historical monument, how deflating to find the building demolished and in its hallowed place two student residences. No appreciation for old age!

Finally, there is a lady in our neighborhood named Patty Cody.  She is our neighborhood shepherd.  She organized the neighborhood association.  She has set up a security patrol for us, and a neighborhood communication network.  You can find your lost dog or cat and you can put on line a picture of a lost dog you find in your yard.  All this, plus other conveniences.  But her biggest bringing together takes place on July 4, when everyone is invited to a neighborhood parade, a picnic at the playground of a grade school, and a time when we see each other, maybe the first time since last July 4.

Rosemary & I are the refreshment Czars and each year I come home richer and happier with what Patty has helped us celebrate.

Guess what, Victoria. You were once little, too, just like Genevieve.

Let me add an extra and a special Good Shepherd, Genevieve.  Does she not call us all together?  Do we not feel richer and happier just be in her marvelous presence.  And from my vantage point, I think she, too, is richer and happier because we are all responding to her.

Harper is pretending to be sleeping through another masterpiece homily.

Good shepherds are all around us.  

Who is a good shepherd in your life and for whom are you a good shepherd?

Cupcake of The Week to Paul and Carrie for acing the Boston Marathon last week.

Readings:

 Joshua 24, 1-2, 15-18, Far be it from us to forsake the Lord.

Psalm 34,    Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

Ephesians 5, 21-32,   Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.

John 6, 60-69, There are some of you who do not believe.

"Good Morning, Dear Vivian, and welcome to your community that loves you."  Vivian makes her debut.

Joshua:

Who is Joshua and what is this booklet about:  Joshua was Moses' assistant, his lieutenant when the the Israelites wandered in the desert.  The booklet is the story of the Israelite invasion of Canaan under Joshua's leadership. 

Author: somewhat amusingly, the fundamentalists say that Joshua wrote most of the booklet.  More scientific scholars say the work is a compilation of a number of sources.

Genevieve says, "Welcome, Everybody, Nice to be seeing you all.

Date of composition: again fundamentalists state that the booklet was composed 1400-1370, i.e., while Joshua lived.  Scholars of a broader vision suggest that even if a Joshua existed the work was put together 800-700 BCE. 

The work combines a number of traditions about battles & destruction of cities to create a nationalistic narrative that justifies the Israelites' taking another peoples' land for their own.

Ethical Question: genocide.  This is a bloody book.  Yahweh commands that the Israelites exterminate every breathing thing, including women & children & livestock. 

Sienna, too, says, "Hi, Folks, it is fun to be back and see you."

The battle of Jericho is characteristic.  For 6 days the Israelites marched around the city, blowing horns and menacing the people.  On day 7 they marched around 7 times and the walls came tumbling down, as in the spiritual.  Then every person except one woman & her family were slaughtered.  Lots of debate and rationalization over these events.

Our Selection: The last chapter of the booklet.  Joshua, who is dying, calls the people together at a place called Sechem and puts it to them.  Stick with Yahweh who has done all these things for you (which are mentioned in the text but are long & tedious) or choose another path of your own.

Sources: Good News Bible, Got Questions.org, Wikipedia

Brooklyn says, "This is super, I'm not the youngest around here anymore.  Where are those two little girls?"

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord

Sounds good to me, Folks.   However, when I bring this up to Rosemary, what do I get?  “Want to start sleeping in the back yard dog kennel tonight?  Even my mom was not impressed with this little statement of Paul.  Just ask my poor dad. 

And guess what: I married my mom.  So much for the joy of being a married priest.

"Anybody planning a race over here?"  "No thank you.  We would rather sleep while that old geezer goes on talking."

Some years ago while I was waiting in a line to ride the roller coaster at 6 Flags I overheard a husband telling his wife to obey him because of this passage, he was the head of the house and the Bible says it.  I almost dropped my teeth. 

The family, mom, dad, and two young girls were trying to decide something.  Finally, even the wife says to the girls that they have to obey the man.  He is the head.

So, how do we handle this, especially when we are repelled by the idea?

Teamwork.  Vivian's mommy, Bethany taking care of Genevieve.  Does it get any more beautiful?

Perspective!   Traditionally there are three types of family relationships.  This is fairly simple.

    1.  Matriarchal: the woman/wife is the head of the family.  Culturally this has been established occasionally and in some places.

    2.  Patriarchal: the husband is the head. 

    3.  Equality: both are partners, husband and wife. 

         Brandon, the Ace Candle Lighter with his mom, Mary.

Paul's place:  guess which paradigm Paul comes from?  Paul lives in a culture which considered women & children little more than domestic animals.  In Tanzania I found the same paradigm among the ordinary people.  This paradigm has been followed more probably  because men are physically stronger and don’t hesitate to maintain control with physical violence.

Even though today Paul can sound wako & chauvanistic, what he says about husbands loving their wives as they love their own bodies, this was pretty radical.

           Cupcake of The Week Time: Payton and The Girls.

Today: all three of the paradigms are valid.  Among most educated people, however, equality between husband & wife, men & women is the more healthy.    Besides, as we know, women just won’t let us guys get away with it. 

Certainly with education for both men and women, there is equality.  And just this week, two women passed the Army Ranger training program. 

"Zoe, You look even prettier without those teeth."

So, again, beware of taking the Bible literally.  Check our blog from last Thursday to find some other interesting biblical statements.   Like beating your kids.

What paradigm do you prefer???

          And keeping us all together, Mary, Bethany, and Ray.

Readings:

Acts 1, 12-14,   All these devoted themselves to prayer, together with some women.

Psalm 27,  I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.  (good verse for homily)

1 Peter  4, 13-16,  If you are insulted for the name of Christ, blessed are you.

John  17, 1-11,  I pray for them.

Cole says, "Welcome in Everybody."

Reminders on Acts:

What : The second half of Luke’s work, the first part being his gospel.  Acts starts after the Resurrection.  We will read Acts all through May and read the last selection June 1, then June 7, Pentecost.  The work focuses on the spread of the early church with special attention given to Peter and Paul and their conflicts over who was to be a Christian, and Jewish laws, like circumcision.  The conversion of Paul is described.  

Who: Luke, an educated and civilized Jew who wrote in Greek.

Date:  around the year 65, or about 30 years after Jesus’ death.

Our Selection: Activities in the community after the Ascension.

Watch for two words in Psalm 27, gaze and contemplate, see the response above.

Sienna and one-eye Brooklyn say," Come in, Everybody, it's fun here."

 Gaze and Contemplate

I want to talk about two words that come from Psalm 27, gaze and contemplate.

This past week a great black lady died at 86, Maya Angelou  I wish I had known her better.  I memorized one of her poems once, but did not look her up. 

One aspect of her life stuns me.  She went silent for 5 years, from the age 7 to 12, more or less.  Why?  She had been abused by her mother’s boy friend, she told her brother, and a day or so later the boy friend was discovered beaten to death.  Maya was sure her words had caused his death and she was mortified into silence.

Celeste also says, "Hi, Folks, come in."

 It was her mother telling her that she was a special person that eventually convinced Maya to begin talking again.  Yes, I wish I had known her.

I was fortunate, however, to know my own Maya, a black lady named Juanita Craft, who lived in south Dallas, near Fair Park, and was a leader in the NAACP in the ‘50’s & ‘60s.  I got to know her really well because of three events.

Harper says, "Any extra cupcakes today?"

One, the summer of ’66 or ’67 I was looking for something special to do.  I was in the middle of a three year delightful internship teaching at Jesuit as part of my 13 year formation program to be a priest, a Jesuit priest. 

Somehow, I got to meet Juanita and next thing I know I am the only whitey on a Greyhound bus to the National NAACP annual convention in Atlantic City with stopovers in D.C. 

Cowboy Cole, the Candle Man, at work.

I was probably too dumb to know I was in some danger on the trip.  We had a large number of teenaged kids.  If the bus was headed toward Birmingham or Selma in those days, I may have taken a pass. 

One of the highlights of the trip was how the Jesuit community of Georgetown went all out in their hospitality to our group, even having us all into the community dining room for dinner and providing a bunch of cars and drivers to tour everyone around the city.

Sienna and Zoe solving World Problems.

Secondly, when I returned from the trip, I moved into Juanita’s little two bedroom, white frame house in South Dallas, and stayed for the rest of the summer.  I worked with her at her NAACP meetings, understudied her ways, and helped with kids in the neighborhood.  She called me her “white boy.”  I was ca. 26.

My poor mom was mortified by all this.  One evening when they had invited a number of their friends in for dinner, and I was asked to help out, she asked me if I would not tell people what I was doing and where I was living.  A few days later she asked me to forgive her.   I had to laugh.  My dad did not seem to be bothered.

Emma waiting to check out any extra cupcakes.

Thirdly, I learned how a simple person can make a difference.  As head of the Dallas NAACP, she helped integrate UNT, UT Law School, the State Fair, as well as other places like restaurants, theaters, and public buses.  I saw how she got the city to focus on the roads in her neighborhood and how she loved the kids.  She had none of her own and, in fact, I don’t think she ever married.  Juanita was elected to two terms on the Dallas City Council in the ‘80’s.   There is a Dallas park and a rec center named for her. She came to my ordination in '71 at St. Rita's in a squad car.  Impressed all the neighborhood kids.

How she affected me? 

She got me to gaze around and contemplate the neighborhood, see what needed to be done, and do it.  This eventually led me to the tree project.  The interest in tree planting came from Boy Scouts; the mental foundation came from Juanita.

Secondly, Juanita’s jovial personality got me to gaze at and contemplate the beauty and the loveliness of the Lord in people and nature, as Psalm 27 says it. 

Here they come, Emma, Tori, Buddy, and Zoe.

I learned how to pray in public from Juanita and those people.  I was usually in clerics and they called on me often for a prayer, something I was not used to.  I think I wore clerics then and on that bus to avoid being killed.  Likewise in East Africa, especially when crossing the borders, like between Tanzania and Uganda.  Otherwise, no clerics.

Today we are called to gaze and contemplate the beauty around us, White Rock Lake, Tom Woodward Park (which I have yet to see), our kids here, our community, Romeos (Maybe not!), and our families.  Jesuit spirituality got me started on this.  Juanita Craft helped me put it into action.

Who is the Juanita Craft in your life who helps you to gaze and contemplate? 

For whom are you the Juanita Craft?

Communion helpers.