un-child-proofed

I was invited to another party Sunday, my second in as many days, a birthday party this time. Again, mostly Latino. When the guest of honor arrived, the dozen or so children lined up with flowers to present to her. One little boy didn't want to. "I want to give it to my mommy!"

With all the happy children at the Akron Catholic Worker house (four houses, actually), it seems like it could be a good place to raise children. A thought I've been turning over in my mind. Presently, the guests there are mostly immigrants, families or single mothers, or fathers with families in Mexico or Peru. I'd feel safe having any of them watch my child.

But I suppose it would be very hard for a child to have their friends move away frequently (as it is really just a transitional place for the guests). Sometimes the families don't move very far, though. And they all go to the Spanish mass at a church downtown, where I'm sure they would still attend if they moved elsewhere in the city.

This article was interesting, too. Just trying to envision future possibilities...

Make your way straight before me

As I start out walking, this is my prayer (taken from the psalm I chanted this morning):

Make your way straight before me.

Let all who take refuge in you rejoice,
let them ever sing for joy;
and do defend them,
that those who love your name may exult in you. (Ps 5.8,11)

"troubadours for Christ"

In May of 1940, Dorothy Day wrote this:

Peter Maurin has been talking for the past two years of recruiting troubadours for Christ. More and more I am convinced that together with our purely material efforts of building up hospices and farming communes we need these fellow travellers with the poor and the dispossessed to share with them their poverty and insecurity and to bring them the reminder of the love of God.

I've been moving in this direction for quite a while now, often without understanding where I was headed. Yet I'm not close enough yet to those who need the gospel the most. I haven't enough direct experience with the poor and afflicted to feel confident and comfortable with them, and so to share God's love in a way they can feel deeply. This is my next step, I think.

[I found out that Dorothy and Peter concluded that the troubadour idea was impractical, since they couldn't imagine getting the extra money to pay for car and trailer and food for such travellers... I guess they assumed no one would be crazy enough to walk.]


Yesterday afternoon was fun. I went to a party for fathers, put on by the guests and volunteers here, mostly all Latino. The food was great (especially the refried black beans). And then many gathered around the TV to watch soccer, cheering and shouting in Spanish, with kids running back and forth the whole time. I couldn't understand many words, but it was fun.

Later I sat out on the front porch and watched the show. A bunch of young guys from the neighborhood played basketball with a hoop they set up in the street, slowing the occasional car that passed. Children circled on bicycles. A man on the porch next door was giving haircuts to some women; and a voice shouted from across the street, "I'm next!" A big, old dog lay in their yard. Watching it all, like me.

praying for me

I was walking through downtown Akron, eerily quiet on a Saturday morning, when a man approached asking for help. We walked together to the place where he was trying to get a room and I gave him the money I had with me. Then he asked God to bless me. And said he would pray for me, assuring me that God heard his prayers.

That afternoon I was late for mass, arriving just as Psalm 69 was being read. This line caught my ear: "For the Lord hears the needy..."

I'm glad to have him praying for me. His name is Vinny.

on the road again

[To read through these entries from the road, use the "next page" link near the bottom of each entry to proceed to the next entry. Or note the date of this entry, and use the "journal archive" in the sidebar on the right to view whole months at a time. There are 38 entries for the 2005 pilgrimage.]




After a disorienting 28-hour bus ride to Akron, OH, I began my walk. Fortunately, I only had to walk about a mile before I got to the Catholic Worker house here, where I'm staying for the weekend. Joe May and Peter Yehl welcomed me warmly over lunch. "You are among friends here." I think this will be a good, quiet place to focus myself for the trip. (The time at my parents' place was also restful and very pleasurable; as Heather said, perfect preparation for an adventure.)

Yesterday morning on the bus I read this line, one that has caught my eye before, describing Jesus' experience on the cross:

So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him..." (Mt 27.41,43)

It echoes Psalm 22.7-8. The cynical challenge to faith.

And the only possible answer to it has to come from God himself. We have to wait and see. "He trusts in God; let God deliver him..."

artemis

Playing with digital photography...




and bows and arrows...

florida wildlife

Heather noticed this 8ft critter in the lake yesterday:

"Come to me"

Yesterday I found my old copy of Kierkegaard's Training in Christianity, and noticed this interesting passage. Here he's commenting on Matthew 11.28, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest":

"Come to me!" Strange! For [mere] human compassion also, and willingly, does something for them that labor and are heavy laden; one feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, makes charitable gifts, builds charitable institutions, and if the compassion be heartfelt, perhaps even visits those that labor and are heavy laden. But to invite them to come to one, that will never do, because then all one's household and manner of living would have to be changed.

For a man cannot himself live in abundance, or at any rate in well‑being and happiness, and at the same time dwell in one and the same house together with, and in daily intercourse with, the poor and miserable, with them that labor and are heavy laden! In order to be able to invite them in such wise, a man must himself live altogether in the same way, as poor as the poorest, as lowly as the lowliest, familiar with the sorrows and sufferings of life, and altogether belonging to the same station as they, whom he invites, that is, they who labor and are heavy laden.

If he wishes to invite a sufferer, he must either change his own condition to be like that of the sufferer, or else change that of the sufferer to be like his own; for if this is not done the difference will stand out only the more by contrast. And if you wish to invite all those who suffer—for you may make an exception with one of them and change his condition [but not all]—it can be done only in one way, which is, to change your condition so as to live as they do; provided your life be not already lived thus, as was the case with him who said: "Come hither unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden!" Thus said he; and they who lived with him saw him, and behold! there was not even the least thing in his manner of life to contradict it.

"even there your hand will lead me"

This morning I sat on my parents' porch (in Florida) and watched the sun rise over the pasture where four horses grazed together. And read these verses from Psalm 139:

You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand will lead me,
and your right hand will hold me.

That's very important to me as Heather and I leave the place that has been secure for us for the last (almost) three years. And I'll be hitting the road again soon.

Sunday, we said goodbye at church and gave them a (much enlarged) copy of this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (with the reference Lk 12.22-31):

leaving tomorrow

This past week has been disorienting. Heather and I are moving out, new people are moving in; we spent a couple days in Champaign, meeting the community we will live with this fall, then came right back into this community; and tomorrow we're flying to Florida to visit my parents, so we're trying to say all our goodbyes. Quite a mix.

Maybe I'll just post some things I enjoyed from the LarkNews website. They just came out with a T-shirt with the slogan:

Bloom Where You're Planted.
Stay Mediocre.
See you in Heaven.

And here's links to a couple of their ads (Flash animation):

From LarkNews Books (see Jer 13.26)

We Can Help (for Heather)