Oddwalk Ministries

Category: friends

announcements, catholicism, friends, good news, graduation, Jesus, JesusJusticeJoy, Joy, Justice, ministry, music, SLCC

Beauty, Truth, and Justice

One of my (Orin’s) other hats in life is as an assistant director for (and singer in) the St. Louis Chamber Chorus. Our artistic director, Philip Barnes, is celebrating his 30th season with the group this year, and Aquinas Institute of Theology (where I graduated from in 2008) awarded him an honorary doctorate this past…

Read more →

Facebook, family, friends, JesusJusticeJoy, Justice

I’m Trying

This week, the world of social media exploded over a scene that unfolded at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. This scene involved a group of teen March for Life participants from a Catholic school, a Native-American elder, and some group called the Black Hebrew Israelites. I would tell you all about, but most of…

Read more →

advent, announcements, catholicism, friends, JesusJusticeJoy, Joy, liturgy, ministry, music, NPM, prayer, quote, reflection

We Cannot Do Everything

The wreath, with a candle marking each week of the season, is a traditional symbol of the Advent. (CNS photo/Lisa A. Johnston, St. Louis Review)

This morning, I (Orin) was briefly interviewed by Matt Reichert, who hosts the NPM Ministry Monday podcast, and is co-host of the great “Open Your Hymnal” podcast on Catholic liturgical music. Matt is reaching out to several parish music directors – who this time of year have 12 or 14 irons in the fire – to ask them, “What do you do to remain sane during Advent?” It’s such a busy time for folks in church music, so the question and the podcast episodes could not come out at a better time. It will likely be split into two parts, with my part likely airing a week from today, or possibly in the next one. We’ll be sure to let you know!

One of the things we briefly talked about was a few lines from what is commonly known as the “Oscar Romero Prayer,” even though he didn’t write it. Check the endnotes at the link above:

This prayer was first presented by Cardinal Dearden in 1979 and quoted by Pope Francis in 2015. This reflection is an excerpt from a homily written for Cardinal Dearden by then-Fr. Ken Untener on the occasion of the Mass for Deceased Priests, October 25, 1979. Pope Francis quoted Cardinal Dearden in his remarks to the Roman Curia on December 21, 2015. Fr. Untener was named bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, in 1980.

The line that came up is this:

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

For me, it’s very freeing, perhaps even joyful, this particular sense of liberation. I, and we, do the best we can with the time, energy, and resources available to us, knowing that we can’t do it all – and that there is a broad Christian community who is also working very hard to build the reign of God on earth.

If you don’t know the whole prayer, please do take a moment to read it and pray it, perhaps even make it a daily part of your advent spirituality.

catholicism, Facebook, friends, Jesus, JesusJusticeJoy, reflection

Don’t Feed the Bears

Several times in the last few days, perusing facebook, I (Orin) have found myself thinking, “Don’t feed the bears!” And I did in fact type that once in a thread, one revolving around the horrendous treatment of a person by, nominally, people of faith, all in the name of preserving that same faith’s morals and doctrine. (I won’t go into that situation here, but anyone who is connected to me on Facebook has either already seen it or can easily find it.)

“Don’t feed the bears.”

It’s a sign that one might see at a zoo or a national park. Why is it there? Well, a couple obvious answers: 1) someone probably already has tried to feed the bears, and 2) that turned out to be a bad idea. Perhaps it was a bad idea for the safety of the person who thought it was a good idea. Or perhaps it’s one way or another bad for the bears, like, bad for their health for instance.

When I have been thinking (or typing) “don’t feed the bears” lately, the bears in this instance have been the previously mentioned nominally-Christian folks who post things online which defend doctrine and morals of the faith but at the expense of attacking the dignity of another human. Some of these bears are websites and/or facebook pages, and some of these bears are the people who “buy in” to what is posted by these sites, and use that rhetoric to fuel their supposedly righteous anger in a way that, to them, allows the ends to justify the means, apparently.

Our faith is a treasury of teachings which must be studied, learned, and applied to our daily living all the time. One of those first teachings, scripturally, is how all humanity was (and is) created in the image and likeness of God. We hold a dignity because of that, yet there are some who would attack it and deny that dignity in the name of nearly anything else, and sometimes in the name of very little.

It is these bears who need not be fed: it is dangerous to those who feed them, because the bear might someday, at any point, choose to attack the feeder. And it’s dangerous for the rest of us, because who needs a larger and stronger bear wreaking havoc in the neighborhood? Most of all, it’s dangerous to the bear itself, who has lost track of the core of Christ’s teachings: love, mercy, and relationship.

If one disagrees with a person’s stance on an issue, or their way of living their lives, the answer is never to devalue that person – that’s what is sometimes called an ad hominem attack, attacking the person rather than their argument. Our creation and our savior have elevated us to more than that, to be better than that.

Don’t feed the bears. It’s not good for anyone.