The Conversation.

On Friday, since the day was nice and the breezes gentle, I went up to sit under a covered deck on the third floor of the building where I work to take a few minutes to engage in prayer and take a break from writing year end evaluations.

I had only been seated a few moments when I began to hear bits and pieces of a woman shouting in anger from the street below. I stood, looked over the balcony and saw a young woman I work with, angrily yelling through a rolled down window at a man seated in the driver’s seat of a car parked in one of the angled parking places near the entrance of our building.

Her back was mostly turned toward me so I could only see her face part but I could see enough to know this was not just a disagreement I was observing but a full on confrontation. She is actually very lovely and while I did not know her well, she had always been very sweet and kind. As an IT support person, her job was to trouble shoot workstations issues and I had never seen her be anything but patient and helpful. Yesterday, however, her features were twisted with anger, her face red and she gestured and pointed wildly at the man in the car.

Because of distance, I could only hear snippets of what she was screaming. Things like, “I can’t believe you would do something like this” and “After all of our time together to have you suddenly change your mind” and “There is no going back now.” She suddenly turned and stormed away through the front door of the building. The man continued to sit in the car and I could see him shaking his head back and forth and pounding the steering wheel with one hand. It was only then I observed there was a third person there, a woman sitting in the passenger seat of the car who was also waving her hand in a way which clearly demonstrated she want the man to drive them away. After only a few more moments, he backed out of the parking spot and sped away with his tires spinning as he accelerated.

I sat back down so I could re-engage my breviary but just then the young lady burst through the doors and out onto the deck. She looked over and saw me sitting there. She locked eyes with me, her features drawn and pinched. Realizing I must have overhead the encounter with the man in the car in the street, she burst into tears and kept repeating, “I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry,” shaking her head back and forth.

I got up, went over to her, and putting one hand on each shoulder, guided her into a chair. I sat next to her and just waited. She quickly regained her composure and wiped the tears away as best she could. Without looking at me she began to talk. Slowly at first, spilling out parts of sentences which did not make much sense. Then seeming to gain momentum, she told me the story. It is a quite simple story, really, and one that is all too common.

She had been married for a couple of years to a man she been in a relationship with for over 8 years before the wedding. They had traveled through Europe and worked on fishing boats in Alaska together. She worked as an IT support person and as waitress to support the man while he finished his degree and became a CPA. It was time, she thought, for children. It was time, he thought, to fall in love with someone else and leave.

When the story was done she finally looked at me with a face which had given up anger but had fallen into sorrow. I told her I would pray for her because that is what I do best. Finally smiling, even if it was just slight, sly smile and said she had heard I was a monk or something like that. I smiled back and told her, yes, I am something like that and invited her to seek me out again if she wanted to just talk. She said she would consider it but we both knew it is unlikely another meeting will take place. For her sake, I hope we don’t if it is because she has to once again talk herself back from the abyss of anger.

There is one more thing. Now I can ask you all to pray for her as well. Pray she will be blessed in ways only God knows best for her.

For Rozanne

And so we gather again as a family to celebrate the life of Rozanne Davenport Koterba. Some of us have traveled from just down the road from here a piece but also from one coast to another and across continents to come to this place.

This is not the first time we have come to this green meadow grown wild with a riot of summer flowers and green grass. We were here 5 summers ago to say goodbye and it is for that reason we gather here again.

There is another whose presence we should invite to be present with us, one who is always with us, our Heavenly Father. Please join me in a prayer of invocation.

Jesus, we ask you to remember the sorrow felt because of the death of Lazarus. You know what is to grieve and feel loss. Send forth your healing spirit to console us today and to remind us there is also joy to embrace even through our broken hearts. Be with us, guide, support us, laugh with us this day and help our tears to dry. Be with us not just this day but always. We pray all this in your holy name. Amen

When we last came together in February, our hurt was fresh but now we have some time to heal, to reflect and to remember. We have learned life will continue on for us and while there is loss there is also a fullness which is given to us through the strength of memories and shared family bonds. Each day love grows to fill the emptiness many of you have felt every day.

The late poet, priest and spiritualist John O’Donohue had some profound wisdom to share with us before his own untimely passing. I would like to share some of the things he had to say because they remind me so much of Rozanne and our family.

Thinking back to those dark days in February, this comes to mind, “Sometimes people are very worried about dying. There is no need to be afraid. When the moment of your dying comes, you will be given everything that you need to make that journey in a graceful, elegant, and trusting way.”

Surely that describes her passing. There was no fear but there was grace and trust.

And there is this, “If you live in this world with kindness, if you don’t add to other people’s burdens, but if you try to serve love, when the time comes for you to make the journey, you will receive a serenity, peace and a welcoming freedom that will enable you to go to the other world with great elegance, grace and acceptance.”

Surely this all describes Rozanne, especially the kindness. She was always unfailingly kind and for that she now knows welcoming freedom.

Today is not just about Rozanne but also about Donny. The life they shared together in this world was interrupted by his death but now they are together again in the next world where they will never be separated again. In the gospel of Mark we are told that in heaven we will become like angels, creatures who exist only to love and serve each other and God. They will not know anger or jealousy or sorrow but will become completely fulfilled by God.

Let us now get to why we have come here today.

When we gathered before on another beautiful sun struck day and we shared together Psalm 121 which is called the Psalm of Ascents.

A song of ascents.

I raise my eyes toward the mountains.

From whence shall come my help? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; or your guardian to sleep.

Behold, the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps.

The LORD is your guardian; the LORD is your shade at your right hand. By day the sun will not strike you, nor the moon by night. The LORD will guard you from all evil; he will guard your soul. The LORD will guard your coming and going both now and forever.

John O’Donohue also had this to say, ““At death, this physical separation is broken. The soul is released from its particular and exclusive location in this body. The soul then comes in to a free and fluent universe of spiritual belonging.”


It is time for the releasing.

We come from dust, our physical beings formed by things of this world and we walk upon dirt of the earth all of our days. Upon death, our physical presence is returned to dust and so we return to from where we first came. Our spirit is set free reach out to touch the face of God. We are set free. Knowing the freedom that awaits us should bring us all great consolation.

Now I ask that we each reach out and take the hand of whoever is standing nearby, and raise up our joined hands to heaven as we all together recite the Lord’s Prayer.

It is time to take leave of this place but we should take with us the memory of this day and our time together sure in the knowledge of God’s love for us and our love for each other.

Final Blessing

May the grace, peace and mercy of Christ Jesus the savior, God the Father and the Holy Spirit be with us this day and always through all of our comings and goings. Amen

I’ve been asking God a lot this year to help me find my purpose. The reality of it though, is that He has shown me what it is, but I’m struggling to accept that this is the road I must walk. What about what I want?! Doesn’t that count?

I have enjoyed my nice predictable schedule the past few years.  I have considerable control over when I do something and I live my life in a pretty tidy, orderly fashion. After years having been on call, I no longer flinch when my phone rings. So why am I am I being called to wade into the chaos to serve him?

And even as I speak it, I realize how strange it must all sound to Him. I ask Him to show me the way and when He does, instead of being grateful, I say ‘But wait, no, I don’t really like how this sounds. What about me, what about what I want? Doesn’t what I want matter?’

Today we encounter John I find myself feeling sheepish. I might have to hit the pause button and resume watching a program if I am called to serve. John was a little more committed. A lot more committed. As we say today, he was all in.

John the Baptist’s life isn’t one we would consider a ‘success’ if we measured it against the yardstick of conventional human achievement. He lived a hermetic life on the fringes of civilization. He wore wild clothes, foraged for his food. And though he inspired a following with his message of baptism and repentance, his ministry was eventually eclipsed by Jesus’. In the end, he died a gruesome death, at the hands of a foolish king and his vain daughter. Yet here was a man at whose birth, the angels declared, “… many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord”. This isn’t ‘greatness’ as we would know it, is it? Not in the conventional sense of the word at least.

When we ask God to show us His purpose for us, very often the answer surprises us and not always in a positive way. When that happens, it is important to remember that God doesn’t judge a purposeful life the same way we do. Not for Him the accolades and awards of achievement. Instead, He wants a contrite and humble heart, a heart willing to be led even into the desert, to the fringes of humanity. A heart that says ‘I do, despite my reservations because I trust you, Lord’. And our reward? Life everlasting with Him. Maybe what I should be praying for instead, is the courage and humility to say, ‘Let Thy will be done’ – and the endurance that is needed to follow through on it.

Prayer: We pray for those who are searching for their vocation and their purpose. We pray for the Holy Spirit to quieten their internal turmoil so that they may hear His quiet voice deep within.

Thanksgiving: We give thanks that God loves us despite all of the bad decisions we have made.

The Recipe

The recipe I would like to share has a story to tell which needs to be shared before the questions posed can be answered. Once told, however, I believe there to be a close relationship between the recipe and the subject matter of this course.

My wife comes from a North Central Montana farm family of German descent. Part of the history of many families was the passing down through the generations a recipe for sausage making which was source of pride not to mention some good natured competition. After all if you are participating in a sausage contest there are no losers, only happy people with full stomachs. My father in law, as my good fortune would have it, held a recipe that was one of the best around. Many people tried to make sausage that was tasty as Roger’s but while they might come up with a version that was tasty, the result was, well, not just quite right.

The problem with the recipe was that there was no recipe. Even when I was around to participate in the sausage making, I could not really tell how he was spicing nor could he really tell me. We started with 100 pounds of pork and 100 pounds of venison mixed together with paddle in a large tub. Handfuls of spice were tossed in and mixed in until the meat was well mixed, the meat looked right and had just the right smell. It is not that he would not have been happy to share his knowledge about how much of which spice to add but he never wrote down the recipe.

Some years after my father passed away before we could get the recipe nailed down, my in-laws encouraged me to take up the art to see if I could come up with my own recipe that would be a close representation of what become known as “Roger’s Farm Sausage.” I took up the challenge.

Working from memory, I gathered the spices I remembered he used. I asked other members of the family about what they could remember about how he went about spicing the sausage. Everyone I talked to had a slightly different version of how the process unfolded. Eventually I had enough information to get started so I started grinding, mixing, spicing, stuffing and smoking what hoped would pass for Roger’s Farm Sausage. Curiously, just about everyone who tried it, had a different suggestion what was needed to get sausage closer to the ideal sausage cherished in memory.

Overtime I finally came to understand the reality of certain facts. First, he never made the sausage exactly the same way from year to year. If one spice was too expensive or hard to find, another spice was substituted. He varied the kind of wood he used in the smoker and some years he used liquid smoke and didn’t use wood smoke at all. Second, people remembered different things about how the sausage tasted but they all remembered how they felt eating the sausage. Sunday brunch after Mass always involved a big serving of sausage that had been simmered slowly in a can of beer. The sausage meant the family was together. Finally, the recipe which was finally hammered out over time which was favored by all ended up very different from the first version I tried. The reality is that we all like food spicier now that in years past. The addition of red pepper was an addition of my own which accepted with gusto.

Now to the questions – what constitutes a good recipe? From my perspective the best recipe has a history that intertwines it through the generations and branches of family. The details are not as important as the connection made by just by sharing the meal. Getting the recipe right is part of the charm and enjoyment.

What are the elements we come to expect when reading a recipe? Proportions, measurements, steps, times and temperatures but most important step is the love that goes into the effort. Don’t all the best recipes create the foods we use as an excuse to gather together?

How are the elements arranged? There has to first be a gathering, then an arranging which is followed by the making but there always as to be indication at the end telling when it is time to eat.

Photographs are very helpful in helping you see what are creating should look like at different stages as well was what the finished product should look like. What it comes to sausage, words along will suffice. When the sausage has darkened from pink to a solid brown and is stiff to the touch, it is done. No picture is necessary.

Now for the connection I promised at the start. My story about the recipe reminds me of how Gospels came together. First there was an oral tradition that was handed out across the community and then down through the generations through a period of time measured in centuries. Finally, the Gospel was written down and argued into an acceptable version which was incorporated into the bible.

Dimes, Dogs and Cousins

5 Dimes

This is a short story, but it has many pieces that must come together quickly for any of it to make sense. It was not easy to write or read because affairs of the heart can be bittersweet to embrace. We were at the short end of a long goodbye, and the road before us grew steeper with every step.

This is a story about dimes, cousins, a father, a telephone man with a kind heart, his wife, an old yellow dog, and God's infinite mercy.

Let's start with the dimes. Oakley was my 14-year-old yellow Labrador. That is her in the picture above. When I composed these thoughts, she was in the last days of renal failure and was suffering from what is, for a large dog, extreme old age. We went for a walk, not a long one, at least in terms of distance, but it was just far enough. Along the way, I found a dime in the street along the curb, just a house down the way from our home. It was shiny and bright, so it caught my eye. I picked it up and stuck it in my pocket to throw in the old crystal ashtray I keep on my dresser for spare change. A few steps later I found a second dime, this one had even more shine but did not given evidence of having been run over by traffic. Even though it was way lying in, away from the curb, more out where it was easy to run over. I put the second dime in the pocket with the first one. Turning the corner at the end of the block, I found a third dime, this one in the middle of the street, but it was shiny new and had clearly not been there before the heavy rains that fell during the passing thunderstorm earlier that day. A fourth dime showed up a few steps further up the hill. I put it in my pocket with the others, and we continued slowly up the hill.

A few steps later, I realized in a flash that the dimes were not turning up by coincidence. I was meant to find them—they were there for me to see and, in being seen, to deliver a message. It was not the first time I had a mysterious encounter with dimes appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

Now that the old yellow dog and the dimes have been introduced, it is time to talk about cousins. My father and Pat Power Christianson were first cousins. They were very close growing up, even though her family ranched in Central Washington and our family ranched along the Big Hole River outside Twin Bridges. In the way the passage of years can loosen family ties, our families followed different paths in the years following my father's death when I was 11. We rarely saw Pat and her family. I don't recall having met her children before her daughter Carri, named after my grandmother, contacted my aunt, the widow of my father's brother, and asked to get together with us.

We met and quickly became very close, perhaps sensing in each other what our parents had shared together as cousins so many years ago. By the time we met, Pat had passed away after a long struggle with cancer. Before she died, she and Carri determined that if there was a way for Pat to communicate with Carri, she would leave dimes where Carri would find them. Carri told me she would occasionally find dimes in unexpected places at unexpected times, but the dimes would turn up when Carri needed to find one.

Shortly after we met for the first time, when she brought her triplets to meet the family, Carri and I were coming in through the side door of my house, and one of us spotted a dime stuck in the doormat. Over the next couple of days, we found several more. Laughing at the "coincidences," we agreed that her mother was happy that Carri and I were together and getting to know each other.

I have very little understanding of such phenomena. As a Catholic steeped in Catholic tradition and theology, there is no real explanation for how dimes would mysteriously show up as the dimes did for Carri and me, both when we were apart and when we were together. I believe in matters of faith some things happen for which there is no rational reason. That is, in fact, what faith is all about, belief in a God who can move through time and space to touch a human heart in astonishing ways, including the mysterious presence of dimes.

Since Carri and I met, I have had dimes show up occasionally, but all that really happened was picking up the dime, smiling at the pleasant memories of other times I found dimes, and stuffing the coins in my pocket. That is not what happened the night I walked around the block with the dog.

It is time to expand the story. Roy Halvorson and his wife Helen lived down the alley behind my grandparents, and the Halvorson and Trent families forged a friendship that kept our families bonded through the generations for more than 7 decades. Roy was a great hunter, as were my grandfather, father and uncles, and they often hunted together. Roy had a world-class Labrador retriever named Yippy, and from Yippy came several litters of award-winning puppies. Yippy and her progeny were one of the early lines of blue-blood Labrador Retriever royalty, and from Yippy came the first yellow Labrador to become a field trial grand champion.

In 1959, my father was in his early twenties and still finishing college because he had to drop out when I was born in 1955. He and my mother had virtually nothing while my dad scratched his way through college, and my mother worked as a secretary. Yippy's puppies sold for what would have been a small fortune in the 50s, but Roy found it in his heart to let my father "buy" a puppy from one of the same litters as Buck, the first yellow champion. She was a little thing named Gypsy, and she was the first yellow Labrador female in a long line of successive yellow females in my life from that day until this. For 56 years, my life has been wrapped up and bound together with one dog after the other. With Oakley, the fifth dog, the line came to an end.

Some years later, when Yippy had finally grown old and died, Roy's wife, Helen, comforted my broken heart by telling me in her particular and direct way the price we pay for unconditional love is to have to learn what it means to know loss. Whatever you think you have means minimal unless you mourn the loss of it when it is gone. Those words flooded back every time the chapter for one of my dogs ended. The words are still valid. You really appreciate the value of a good dog when you experience the grief that follows its passing.

Yellow Labradors mean more to me than just being pets. Over the years, 4 other Labradors came into my life and owned my heart. Each of them thought much more of me than I ever deserved. Each of them loved me more than I could ever love them. Each of them brought me comfort, happiness and consolation during inconsolable times. They challenged me to be consistent, giving, disciplined, and considerate. Each made me a better man, but none more so than this fifth and last one, Oakley. She taught me more than all of the rest and, as ancient as she was, is still teaching me even though she passed. I sensed at the time of this experience she would also be the last of the line. So far, that has proven to be true.

My life was changing in ways I could barely comprehend, and the changes happened in ways I would have never expected. Perhaps I had finally grown up, or at least grown. I realized that I no longer lived in my father's shadow, but I was still comfortable with being out in the whole light of life.

The sadness then came not from just the imminent loss of Oakley, which came to pass a few days later, but the passing of a way of life. It was my choice, a decision made in recognition of the changing stages of life I might be called to go where a dog could not accompany me. No one and nothing forced the decision to not get a new puppy on me, and if I changed my mind, nothing would prevent the change. Perhaps some new puppy will come my way, but it is unlikely.

We started with dimes, and now we return to dimes. Why was I finding them? The dimes were an unambiguous message of something, and I believe the message came from Pat. Since my father and I never had the chance to make a pact-like Carri and Pat, I believe he and Pat are together, and my father had Pat send me dimes to let me know everything will be all right. I could let go. He was waiting for this dog to join the other 4 dogs already with him.

So there. The story was told, well, almost told. There was also the matter of the fifth dime I saw lying across the deck from me beneath the BBQ grill as the story flowed from inside out. There is also the mercy of a loving God through whose grace family, friends and 5 good dogs have blessed my life.

Five dimes. Five dogs. I get it. I was a little closer to being able to say goodbye. I am still not quite there yet, but I am okay with that. Acceptance is the consolation of grief, and acceptance comes only through faith that this life is just a chapter and there is more to come. I don't know how sound this theology is, but why I die, I want to go wherever my Labradors went. Can you imagine eternity spent with such love?

Matthew 28:16-20

The disciples worshiped him but they doubted. How very curious. These were the 11 men who had been tapped on the shoulder and called out of the only life they knew to follow a charismatic man who was like no other man in history. They saw him walk on water, multiply loaves, change water in wine, heal the sick, drive out demons and, even more incredibly, raise the dead. They were with him in the upper room when he predicted his passion, they watched as he was arrested, scourged, crucified, died and was buried. They saw him resurrected and glorified, appear and disappear from their presence. They touched his wounds, ate with him, listened with him, talked with him and walked with him and yet they doubted.

What, by that point in time, could they still doubt? They doubted for the same reason we doubt. As much as they know and for as much as we know, we only know a little, just a bit of the mystery which is the trinity.

It is easy to talk about the one God with three faces, God the father, Jesus the savior and the Holy Spirit and to rationalize the concept of three in one but can we really grasp it. I mean really, really grasp it. We can’t so we worship we can grasp but doubt the rest.

I love a good mystery. I like to read good murder mysteries like those written by James Lee Burke who can draw you into his stories by animating characters who are flawed but capable of nobility and you can become so caught up in the flow of the story you forget to watch for the clues which will lead you to the final revelation of who dunnit at the end of the book. The theology of his books is intensely powerful but not in a traditional manner even though the main character, the antagonist and his family are devoutly Catholic. The stories are filled with Cain versus Able dynamics with vengeance, greed, jealousy all driving the behaviors of every richly drawn character. The end always results in redemption for those who confront evil in imperfect ways and justice for the wrongdoers.

The victims, despite being human and flawed with their humanity, are innocent. Even when the puzzle is solved and the story is ended, there is a mystery which continues, a mystery which conceals how they carry on beyond the end of the words.

British murder mysteries on BBC also fascinate me. The best of them provide a look at place and time where crime seems but familiar but out of place. The main characters always seem to be most unlikely of victims and criminals and often times when the final scene plays out, the murderer often seems as surprised to discover they committed the crime as the victims when they realized they were being murder.

The trinity is not a mystery like we encounter in books and on cinema. There is not a puzzle to solve or riddle to unlock. The trinity is mystery, a place where we see a little, understand a little but never more than that. We are not capable of more, not while we have to use human faculties to capture the supernatural as if it were lightning in a bottle. To believe are capable of more leads to the deceit of pride which clouds our vision or, as it is said, clouds our intellect and we understand less and not more.

So we worship but still doubt. God understands that it is why he has revealed more and more himself over time until revelation was completed in the second face of the trinity and then sent the third face, the Holy Spirit, who connects God to us and us to him. The Trinity is a mystery we can only submerse ourselves into like a deep, dark, bottom pool in which we can float effortlessly but accomplish nothing more. To be at peace in the mystery whether it is for a few minutes or even longer is the reward for worship.

Still we doubt but still we are forgiven.

Sadducees Set A Trap

Oh how smug those Sadducees were. Oh how clever they imagined themselves to be. Can’t you see them nodding their heads at each other with knowing smirks on their faces? “We have got him now,” they said to one another.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, as we learned in the gospel. For them there was nothing like a everlasting life for humans nor did they believe in the existence of angels. Life on earth was a reflection of heaven which ended with individual death. The only thing that survived was the tribe, the community of believers who passed knowledge, as they perceived it, from one generation to the next. On the contrary, the Pharisees had a clunky and ill-defined concept of the afterlife. Only those who listened closely to Jesus were blessed with a better understanding of what was come after death.

They, the Sadducees, did not think Jesus would be able to outwit their neatly constructed trap without contradicting the Law of Moses. They were wrong. He turned their argument right back against them. Explaining resurrection in simple terms, Jesus said we would be like angels. Earthly things like marriage would remain behind on earth where they properly belong to living and we are living are expected to live according to the law as instructed by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In the resurrection everything changes. There is no contradiction of the law because the law has been fulfilled. The law applies to human, not to angels.

Scripture does not describe how the Sadducees reacted to being caught in their own trap so we can use our imagination to color in the blank spots on the canvass. The smirks were wiped away and they no doubt were left sputtering and grumbling.

What lesson today can we draw this from the passage? What happens when we act like the Sadducees?  Inevitably we fall into the trap we ourselves set by not humbly asking for God guide us. The message for us two-fold. First, God is the God of the living. Revelation has been all about how we should live, constantly mindful we were created in his image and hopeful for justice and mercy as our days speed toward human death. Second, informed by our belief, we have an image of our life after death through the gift of the resurrection. God is the God of the living and, if we believe, we will never die but will live forever with him. There is no contradiction for us, only understanding.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Moses, let our hope to be like angels after death encourage us to live today as you have taught us.