Month: July 2023

It was the eve of Christmas Eve, December 23, 1988. Close friends, St. Joseph’s choir members, ready to celebrate our traditional holiday menus and traditions – Polish, Irish and Italian. But something was wrong; our host wasn’t answering the door. In fact, the house was dark. Could we have the wrong night?

After several minutes, the door opened. Our host poked his head out.

“Sorry,” he said. “We’re not doing it.”

The door closed. We stood there in the chilly dark, wondering what in the world was going on.

A few days later, we heard our dear friends, husband-wife business partners, had split. He essentially “fired” her, locking the home office door, giving her an actual letter of termination, and throwing her out of the house. We were rightfully – righteously – outraged. I didn’t speak with the husband, our “friend,” for decades. It was only then I learned the full story. Turns out his wife, also our friend, had become pregnant by her out-of-town lover.

Whose sin was worse – the wife, who had a transgression of the heart? Or mine, who made a conscious decision to turn my back on a friend and fellow choir member at the lowest point in his life?

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. But lessons from no-brainers don’t necessarily provide immunity from future stupidity.

Another friend in our close parish circle imploded his family several years back. He had an affair with, and later married, his office manager. His abusive behavior toward his daughters caused a years-long estrangement. Because of this egregious behavior, we – his closest friends – turned our backs on him.

Later, we learned he wasn’t well. He had CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy – an incurable degenerative brain disease that causes severe headaches, memory loss, disorientation, rage, dementia and sometimes suicide. We abandoned a dear friend, our brother in Christ, a good man, because we didn’t find out what was going on with him.

Did we forget all the basic lessons from church school as kids? Were we all sleeping through the homily every Sunday? Or do we just display the Christianity label without buying into the brand?

We tend to condemn ourselves and others without bothering to learn why we suddenly act outside our good characters. We don’t consider what past influences have flawed our present personalities. That’s part of our “human nature.” Also known as “original sin.”

It’s not like we invented sin. Even saints, sometimes especially saints, are seduced by the easy satisfaction of “righteous sin.” St. Paul, stubborn and temperamental, wrote of his own ongoing conflict in a letter to the Christian community in Rome in 56 AD:

“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”

If the Apostle Paul can’t get it right, even after his conversion, we’re really screwed. Now what?

Well, like Paul, accept it. We should always try to be better, but we’ll never be perfect. Never. We will be hurt and hurt others. That doesn’t mean it’s okay, it simply means we should anticipate it. But if that’s all we do, we’ll end up walking around with a big sack of hurt for the rest of our lives. That’s why Step #2 is critical.

Let it go. Forgive. Including yourself. Life’s tough enough without hanging onto that hurt, hoping for payback, holding a grudge. And since screw-ups aren’t one-offs, expect to forgive – a lot. St. Peter, not the forgiving type, had to be set straight by Jesus and his “Seventy Times Seven” rule, which, in Biblical, pre-calculator times, translated to “more than you can ever count.” And then forget it. Don’t let the acid from the past keep burning you in the present.

Doing these things won’t make you better looking or lower your cholesterol. Oh, they may help lower your blood pressure a tad. But here’s the real value – they can keep good relationships from breaking, and can fix broken ones. The synonym for that is – Love.

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I have the greatest retirement job in the world. No, not substitute teaching – although that’s a lot of fun, too. What’s even better is getting paid to watch baseball. My job is to insert electronic graphics into the streaming video production of AAA International League Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp games.

I like the team so much, what did I do on my off-day during the holiday weekend? Helen and I joined 10,278 other fans to watch the Shrimp close out their homestand with the Durham Bulls. But in the top of the 6th inning, right about the time the Bulls broke a 5-5 tie with a two-run home run, I realized I wasn’t just there because I love watching this group of guys play a beautiful game called baseball. On this Independence Day weekend, I was there to escape Red vs. Blue that’s turning our country black and blue.

Like most Americans, I’m saddened and distressed by the deepening fissures in our society. It’s especially disheartening because I’ve been a political junkie for most of my life. My earliest recollection of television was the Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960. I was four years old. My mother was an elections inspector stationed at the polling place in my elementary school. There, I got to meet, and respect, many of local officials and candidates who led our city, county, and state. That set the hook.

But I was born with the journalism gene, so instead of a career in politics, I became a political reporter. To me, the old school ethic of objectivity was sacrosanct – I prided myself in avoiding any personal bias in my work. I carried that ethic to my second career as a journalism professor. My job as an educator was to teach students how to think, never what to think. Only now do I feel free to argue my very diverse but strongly held political positions.

But I no longer have the heart.

Yes, I can get in some spirited debates among friends. But they are few and far between. It’s simply too painful to discuss politics now. Beliefs are far too entrenched. Discussion persuades no one. It is no longer constructive. Instead, it is destructive. And I won’t add to the destruction.

Politics was the farthest thing from my mind as I rooted for a Shrimp comeback against the Bulls. No, my pure objectivity does NOT extend to my fandom, especially the Shrimp. Helen and I were lucky enough to see some great, major-league caliber plays, but also to enjoy the huge crowd celebrating America’s birthday. Part of that crowd was the young family in front of us. The dad was probably in his 20s, taking his kindergarten-aged son to his very first baseball game. Mom held their six-month-old.

The baby seemed fascinated by Helen’s Shrimp cap and my beard, so we couldn’t help but occasionally say a few words and smile at him, leading to some very pleasant “parent” conversation with Mom and Dad. But right around the top of the 6^th, I noticed the light red stripes on the back of Mom’s shirt. They were part of a patriotic design modeled after our flag. A closer look revealed those red stripes were composed of outlines of firearms – pistols, revolvers, hunting rifles, AK-type assault weapons – every type of gun you could imagine.

My knee-jerk thought was, “Great, gun nuts.”

I looked around the sold-out stadium and wondered how many other “gun nuts” were here. But, as the Bulls added an insurance run in the 8^th, I realized I was looking at America – a great and wonderful people with many different views of what America is to them. No, I don’t like guns but I support the Second Amendment. And there was no reason for me to change my identification of the people in front of me to gun nuts instead of what they really were – a nice, young American family.

The political fissure was in my own head and of my own making. So I mentally filled it, quickly completely, and contritely.

Baseball is more than the American pastime. Baseball can be the balm that binds our wounds and summons our better angels. So go see a game. Grab a hot dog and a beverage. If you’re in Jacksonville, you’ll get to see a great group of guys trying hard to fulfill their big-league dreams. But no matter what stadium you visit, look around at the crowd around you – a crowd that you’re a part of. And forget the labels. This is America in all her glory.