Oddwalk Ministries

Category: family

catholicism, family, Jesus, JesusJusticeJoy, liturgy, reflection

Already, Not Yet

Side note – this is a pretty terrible Photoshop hack right here…

At the Hammond-Johnson house, we are getting some landscaping done.  Right now, it’s the backyard, which always was a bit of a jungle – an empty and not well maintained rectangle that was not real usable space for us.  But, since we finally sold our old home last year, we’ve begun making needed upgrades to our present home.  In the backyard, we’ve redone a parking space and a gate off the alley, added a storage shed, a patio area of pavers, and had the whole thing leveled and are now just awaiting sod.

Well, that’s not the only thing we’re awaiting.  Erin has, for many years now, longed for the day when she might have a pool in the backyard again, after spending many of her childhood years with one right off the back deck.  As we both work, generally speaking, for the Church, we are of limited means, but a small pool is actually not out of the question.  But, it may yet be some time – we would probably wait for the end of the season sales to start to try to get the best deal we can, which would mean another Summer without a pool in the backyard.

So, while our backyard, in a few days, will look finished up, it really won’t be, until some unknown time in the future.  Life in the Church is like that as well – not really finished yet, and not until some unknown time down the road.

We just celebrated Jesus’ ascension, and will soon celebrate the coming of the Spirit at pentecost.  Jesus’ death and resurrection earned for us a new life and a “New Jerusalem” but we’re not there yet.  Jesus’ ascension and the arrival of the Spirit show us that same thing – where he has gone, we one day hope to follow – but not yet.  “Already, and not yet” is one of the overlooked paradoxes of our Christian faith, I think.  This odd in-between time is hard to wrap our heads around.  To wit: most of us view heaven as the ultimate and final destination of our souls, but I think that’s only because that’s what it’s been for 2,000 years. Your grandparents (or even parents) might have had to memorize this answer from the Baltimore Catechism once upon a time: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.”  But wait – isn’t that ultimate goal, as recited in the Creed every Sunday, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come?

It feels, sometimes, as if our Church has lost that sense of expectation after all this time.  Do we, like the early apostles might have, glance up at each passing cloud and wonder, is this the one which is bringing Jesus back to us?  When will Christ come again?  Is it today?  Am I ready?  These are the sorts of things we pray over at the end of each Church year and into advent as well but this is also a perfect time to reexamine our lives and our faith.  Are you ready?  How can you be more ready?  

catholicism, family, friends, JesusJusticeJoy, Joy, ministry, music, odd, oddwalkia, reflection

Christian Silliness and Joy

Anyone who has heard me (Shannon) talk about my Boy Scout days for any length of time might have noticed a glaring absence from that account: the complete lack of references to any actual scouting topics. There’s typically no talk of merit badges, rank advancement, and leadership roles. It’s not that those things weren’t a part of my experience. They certainly were. I earned many merit badges, advanced to the Life rank, and held several leadership positions in the troop. The reason those things are typically left out is because, in the end, they just don’t matter to me all that much. When I think about my time as a Scout, it’s the time spent with the other boys that matters the most to me. The boys in my troop were my first true friends. Those were the guys who, outside of my family, allowed me to be the bumbling, awkward person I was, without too much pressure to change.

One of the things I discovered through my time in scouting was my love of music performance. I wouldn’t have called it “music performance” back in the day, of course. Had I been forced to come up with a name, I might have called it: “having a blast with my friends, singing and making up songs and drumming on a tortilla chip box in the back of the van, while Mr. Bruss drove us to the campout”. Whether we were on our way to an outing, sitting around the campfire, or just hanging out at a troop meeting, these kinds of experiences helped me discover how much I loved entertaining and engaging audiences and, later, leading congregations in music and prayer. As I grew into adulthood, and my skills developed, I ended up with hundreds of opportunities to share my musical gifts.

Even now, some of the most fun I have planning music are times when it’s just me, a guitar, and a group which is ready to get silly. Sometimes that’s a churchy group, but most times, it isn’t. This is when I can just be dumb, make people laugh, and sing really loudly. Opportunities like these have given me songs like The Dooley Boy Rock, At The Grotto, Mexican Café, Shay Shay Cool Yay, Mr. Crocodile, When The Spirit Says, Dum Dum Deedle, I’m a Little Teapot/We Will Rock You, and many others. These songs are so goofy, but are so fun to do.

Today, along with my friends Chris and Isaiah Korte, I am performing two Week of the Young Child concerts in Kirksville, MO. For the thirteenth consecutive year, preschoolers, daycare kids, and kindergartners from around Kirksville will gather at Rotary Park to spend about forty-five minutes singing a lot of the dumb songs I’ve collected over the years. We’ll scream and encourage the kids to scream as well. We’ll do ridiculous hand motions and laugh a lot. And, while these aren’t Christian events, per se, the expression of joy will leave little doubt that God is in it somehow.

catholicism, family, friends, JesusJusticeJoy, Justice, keytar, ministry, pope, quote, reflection, retreat

If you don’t…

There’s a new meme circulating around, like the one here, which I (Orin) have made a version of in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way.  The gist of the meme in general is for a person to point out when they are at their worst and when they are best, and that some significant other in their lives needs to love the meme-making person at their worst, or else that significant other doesn’t deserve the meme-maker at their very best.

(Describing and analyzing memes makes them even more funny, right?)

Anyway, what I’m going for here, by way of amusement, is that 1) I’m at my worst when I pick up the keytar and “try” to be “cool” (which is quite possibly accurate), and 2) that I don’t really have a best – in a way, the joke is possibly even that my worst is all I have.  When seen through eyes of faith, of course, that’s all wrong.  The meme as a whole is asking another to love unconditionally – and so far, so good.  But what rubs me the wrong way a little bit, is that most of these memes try to distinguish human worth and value by something pretty superficial – either physical appearance, or by certain accomplishments, or other external things.  Something Oddwalk often tries to “get at” when present retreats is that our worth, our dignity, is given us by God, that we are created by God in God’s image and likeness, that we are temples of the Holy Spirit as a dwelling for the Divine.  Each of us, regardless of gender, race, any economic or social status, even regardless of our faith (or lack thereof) have this innate dignity.  Nothing can change it, nothing can take it away.

If we were to try to make this meme about God’s love for us, we would quickly find we couldn’t, really.  Sure, we are all sinful, and in those worst of times, God still loves us as much as ever.  And to try to say that God might not as some point deserve us, well, that’s just kooky, to put it colloquially.  And as God loves us, so we must try to love another: to love at all times, and to never place ourselves on a pedestal, that someone feels they must earn (or deserve) our love.  This Christian dignity, once recognized and lived out, will truly change the world, making it an infinitely more just and peaceful place.  We must not only live love, we must be love, at all times.  Are you ready to pick up the challenge?

Pope Francis, in “Gaudete et Exsultate,” tells us that he often likes

“to contemplate the holiness present in the patience of God’s people: in those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile.”

May we too all see holiness in every person we meet!