The Heart of the Matter

The Colder Bolder Boulder

A fabulous event for Boulder, even though it was shivvering cold.  Since the Bolder Boulder's race course runs right along our school's property, I love gathering friends together to cheer the runners and walkers on.  This is one of Boulder's best events that make this town so special. 

Every year, right across 13th Street a lady, who had to be a cheerleader as a youngster, does the best job ever of encouraging the runners to keep at it. 

And, right by our school, using our electricity by my OK, we had a great band adding rhythm and excitement to engage the runners and walkers to move to the beat of the uplifting music.  Check out the band: Sue Schnitzer's Interactive Music for Children -  www.weebeemusic.com 

To all the 52,000 participants: attaway!

“What Can We Learn From the Religious?”

Earlier this week there was an article in our local newspaper about a researcher coming to town to study a growing trend, that many people prefer to be spiritual rather than religious; a trend that is prevalent in our Boulder community. It is indeed very prevalent.  The researcher gave a talk at a local Methodist entitled, “What Can We Learn From the Religious?”  I couldn't get to the talk because we had Confirmation here that evening. Let me offer a few reasons why being religious is as important as being spiritual. 

First, I define “being religious” as being connected to a faith community of fellow believers who engage in regular worship of a personal God.  Here are benefits of such membership and participation.

• “I am not alone.”  All by itself this benefit of belonging to a faith community can enrich one’s life by broadening one’s perspective beyond one’s own. 
• “The universe does not revolve around me and my opinions.”  Belonging to a faith community can steer us clear from self-obsessing and from having our own views go unchallenged. 
• “Keeping hope alive.’  Most religions are centuries old, if not millennia, and have witnessed every epoch’s reasons to bury oneself in pessimism.  Belonging to a faith community is to belong to a people who have faced everything we face today.  To belong to a people who have survived and even thrived, no matter what the historical situations were, is to gain perspective so as to live with hope. 
• “Dare to be different!”  It takes courage these days to belong to a faith community because these are the days when “organized religion” is demonized as the purveyor of intolerance and other evils.  Come now, let us set things aright.  Intolerance and injustice are not the sole domain of those who profess membership in a religion.  Intolerance, injustice and every other imaginable evil are part of the human condition.  Was not the 20^th century filled with horrors from those who professed no faith in God or in religion and even persecuted those who did?
• “Seeing through the fog.”  Caricatures of faith-filled people are presented in our culture as rule-bound, negative, intolerant, narrow minded, and unthinking.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The people of faith I know are deep thinkers, reflective, purposeful, discerning, and highly intelligent.  Today’s “cloud of unknowing” leaves too many people unwilling to enter into the deeper issues of life, like the meaning of life, the ultimate destiny of the human race and of every individual, and so much more.   

No, being a believer, and belonging to a community of faith today is only for people of very great depth. 

Exasperating!

There's an odd little quirk about my town.  It's about the names of places.  I don't know if it was a lack of imagination to name different places by nearly the exact same name, or if it is an attempt to confuse, or to keep us all sharp by noticing the nuance of difference in a name. 

• There is Mountain View Cemetery and Green Mountain Cemetery. 
• There's Boulder Community Hospital (on Broadway) and Boulder Community Hospital (on Foothills Parkway). 
• There are nursing homes by the name of Manor Care of Boulder and Boulder Manor. 
• Then there is Balfour.  Which Balfour?  The nursing home?  Or the assisted living Balfour?  Or the hospice at Balfour? 
• And now, get this, there is Hospice of Boulder County, which became the Hospice of Boulder-Broomfield, and now I got a call from Hospice of Louisville.  I had to ask for directions; and the directions were to Balfour!  When I got there, I asked the nurses what the name of the hospice is, and they said they don't know! 

So, where exactly are you asking me to go to?  But we Catholics add to the confusion.  In the same town we have my parish, Sacred Heart of Jesus, and there is also a parish by the name of Sacred Heart of Mary.   

What you see on the Pearl Street Mall

The Pearl Street Mall is just three blocks from church so I like to go to the mall every now and then.  It's one of the more delightful of aspects of living in this beautiful town.  Lately I have been noticing a man who looks to be near 30 years of age walking up and down the mall carrying a wooden cross.  He doesn't say anything; he just silently carries a three foot cross over his shoulder, up and down the mall, daytime and in the evening time.

So, I was sitting on a bench with a friend in the lovely warm weather we had earlier this week.  (Sitting on a bench on the Pearl Street Mall is a wonderful people-watching thing to do.)  In the middle of a great conversation, I noticed the man carrying the cross, so I shouted, "Hello, you carrying the cross."  So he came over and we visited, all three of us.  During Lent some of our parishioners had been spat on while carrying a cross and doing the Stations of the Cross along the mall, so I asked him what kind of reaction he's been getting from people.

Andrew, that's his name, said that he's gotten a lot of reactions, from, "Atta way, man," to "Get lost," to shouts of, "Hypocrite!"  As for why he's carrying the cross, he pointed to beautiful young people walking by and said, "For them."  It seems he's greatly concerned that young people do not know God or what they are doing to move in wrong directions.

Andrew told us that one time a young woman stopped him and told him, "I've just had an abortion!  Oh, do you think the baby will go to heaven?  And do you think God will ever forgive me?"  He said to her, "The baby has done nothing wrong so the baby will certainly be in heaven.  And as for you, are you sorry for what you have done and have you asked Jesus to forgive you?"  "Oh, yes!"  "Then He will indeed forgive you."  At this the woman fell at his feet and wept and wept. 

That's when someone came by and shouted, "Hypocrites!"