#confession – Tattoos, Motorcycles, Beer, Bourbon and Faith

Find the Right Cleaner

I have this coffee mug that I use at work. I use it every day, multiple times. It was a gift. Well, actually, I received a flower arrangement in it when I was recovering from having a unilateral mastectomy. It is a big smiley face cup, and I mean it’s quite large. I love it because it holds a large quantity of coffee. I love coffee! In fact, I am not very pleasant to be around until I have had a couple of cups.

Now I have to admit, I am not great at cleaning that cup out on a regular basis. A lot of times I even forget to rinse it out before I leave for the day. When I come back to the office the next morning, coffee crust and a crud ring have developed in my cup. I then proceed to the sink to try and clean it, never getting the coffee ring and crud completely removed. Yes, I suppose that is kind of gross because I then reuse that same mug with some coffee remains from the day before.

My clean mug with new coffee crud already forming

You see, the sink in which I attempt to wash my cup is a bathroom sink that only provides some hand soap. I found that hand soap is ineffective in combatting coffee crud. I have gone so far as to put hand soap and hot water in my mug and let it sit overnight. Unfortunately, there were no earth-shattering results the next day. Much to my dismay, the ring, or rings because by this time more than one had formed, remained.

I decided to try my luck with an “all-purpose” cleaner. Before I left work one evening, I sprayed my mug with some cleaner and, again, let it sit overnight. I was sure this heavy-duty dirt and grime fighting cleaner would do the job. It did not. On top of that, it took quite a while to get the residue from the cleaner out of my cup, while still leaving the coffee residue fully intact.

Well, my mug had gotten to a place of total and utter disgust, to the point that I didn’t want to use it. That’s a problem because let’s face it, I am not easy to be around un-caffeinated. This week, I broke down and finally purchased some dish soap to keep in my office. I washed my cup with it this morning.

The shelf in my work bathroom, complete with dish soap.

Guess what? The coffee ring, gone! The coffee crud, gone! The coffee residue, gone! My mug looked pristine. It was like a brand new mug! It is amazing what the right cleaner can do!

You know, confession is a lot like that. I have never been a big fan of confession, but I have begun to embrace it as a vital part of my faith. Now I don’t want to say that I look forward to going because I don’t. At least now I don’t dread it anymore. It is actually quite a gift and it is liberating to know that you are forgiven and still deeply loved by God despite your shortcomings and transgressions. Confession is the right cleaner for restoring your relationship with God and often times with others. It’s a clean slate, a soul sanitizer, a fresh start, a new beginning… a clean coffee mug. It is amazing what the right cleaner can do.

Today, find the cleaner that is right for you. It may be some quiet time to reflect on your life, your decisions, and your interactions. It may be some time spent in the chapel with the Lord. It may be a “vent” session with a trusted friend, or it may be confession with a priest. Whatever it is, find the right cleaner. I think it just might change your perception a little bit and might even make your coffee taste better. And today, please pray for me and I will continue to pray for you.

Memories, Confession, and REO Speedwagon

This memory came up on my Facebook feed yesterday. It is from December 19, 2018. It seems like a lifetime ago, but I remember that day very vividly. I actually read the feed while I sat waiting for Sunday Morning mass to begin. Coincidentally, I had been pondering going to confession before Christmas. Even though it is dated and I now longer work for the Franciscan Sisters, I thought it was worth sharing.

December 19, 2018
I really do not like going to confession. I know there are some people that enjoy it, they feel liberated and restored and, therefore, receive the sacrament of reconciliation often. I don’t experience that same “joy”. The thought of confessing my sins, whether it is to a priest I know well or to a total stranger, makes me feel physically ill. I become anxious and agitated and eventually talk myself out of going to confession at all. That would explain why in the past 25 years, I may have gone to confession half a dozen times.

Confession by Florida Georgia Line

But now I work for religious sisters, sisters who receive the sacrament of reconciliation weekly. I mean I already kind of feel like a heathen when I am with them, but now I feel even more like an unrepentant sinner because I don’t like the process of atonement. In the 3 years that I have worked for them, I have gone to confession 3 times. That 3 times is included in the 6 times that I have gone in the past quarter century. One of those times was today.

There is a priest who comes every other week to hear confessions at the Mother House for the sisters. I asked if I could sign up for one of the confession slots. One of the sisters was kind enough to put me on the schedule for this afternoon. Then this morning before mass began, I had a change of heart. I just wasn’t feeling the whole “let’s go confess our sins” thing. I had decided that I would take my name off of the schedule. I’m not going to confession, no big deal, right? Wrong.

There were several tiny little signs that were telling me I needed to go to confession today. The first one was before I even got to work. I was coming down the drive to work when I was overcome by a profound feeling of sadness. It hit me like a wave and I felt like I was drowning. I started thinking about my Dad, how Christmas was less than a week away and that this would be the first Christmas without him. All of these thoughts are running through my head as I pull into the parking space and I notice a deer in the grass at the edge of the lot. The Reverend Mother had told me that the deer symbolizes God’s grace. Immediately, the feeling of sadness left me. Amazing!

Fr. Gregory said mass this morning, and he opened up mass talking about REO Speedwagon’s song “Keep on Lovin’ You.” He said that is why we are here, to love Jesus. It made me smile and kind of laugh to myself. REO Speedwagon’s cassette, Hi-Infidelity, was the first tape I ever bought. That is the album which contains “Keep on Lovin’ You”. Really? What are the chances of that actually coming up in mass – ever. It caused me to reflect on the happiness of my childhood. I can still remember listening to that tape in a tape recorder, sitting on the wall along the drive of the house on Whitehaven when I was nine years old. That memory makes me smile.

Fr. Gregory had a great homily about how God bears fruit in us, even when we might not see it. We just need to be open to the work He will do within us and through us. Then he closed mass by stating that he would be available for confession if anybody would be interested. I sat in the pew dumfounded. Alright, I get it. So I went to confession.

It is amazing the ways in which God will speak to you if you only listen. It is amazing the work He will do in you and through you if you only open yourself up to that possibility. I never thought it was possible, to hear God, but now that I have, it is pretty amazing what He says. Today, listen for God to speak to you; it may even happen through an REO Speedwagon song.

As I prepare to share this, I am also getting ready to go to morning mass; morning mass at that very monastery. I am not sure who the celebrant will be or what words of wisdom he might share, but I am looking forward to listening for God to speak to me today. And today, please pray for me and I will continue to pray for you.

What’s In It For Me?

What’s in it for me? Do you ever find yourself asking that very question, particularly when you are asked to do something? I never thought of myself as particularly selfish, but I find myself pondering this very question more and more often whenever I am asked, no whenever I have to do something, anything.

This really started with going to Sunday mass. You see, I typically go to daily morning mass, Monday through Friday and enjoy it immensely. I always take something away from the readings, the gospel, or the homily. Sometimes it is the psalms and the responses. Sometimes it’s a song (at the churches that have music during their weekday mass). Sometimes it is just the fellowship of the people who are also there each morning celebrating the mystery of the Holy Eucharist with me that make it meaningful.

Photo by David Eucaristu00eda on Pexels.com

Just last Friday when I attended morning mass, there were only three of us celebrating and that included the priest. I’ll be honest, at first, I thought, this is a little strange, so few people at morning mass. But it turned out to be extremely blessed and intimate. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am with them.” — Matthew 18:20. It was a profound experience.

While I have these wonderful weekly experiences, of being fed spiritually and even socially, during weekday mass, I don’t enjoy that same experience during the Sunday service. In fact, if I am being honest, I dread going. It is not the same experience or even the same atmosphere. It feels pretentious and fake to me. I cannot follow the homilies; they are so convoluted. The service itself is so drawn out, even ostentatious with the changes to the Gloria and the Holy, Holy. I find myself completely distracted during mass and become irritated and tense.

At first, I thought it was simply the parish where I was attending mass. And this is a parish that I absolutely love. But, you know, sometimes change is good. So, we tried a different parish. And while I connected more with the homily, I still found myself distracted and anxious. There is a lot that I just don’t understand, and I have been Catholic my entire life. Everything feels forced and attending makes me feel fake, because I’m not feeling it. Because I don’t want to be there. And that makes me feel guilty.

This is not a good feeling for me. Why do I love the experience, the interaction through the week but loathe it on the weekend? I love going to mass during the week because each day I feel my faith being nourished and restored. But when Sunday rolls around I find myself dreading the arrival of mass time, feeling anxious and frustrated and even angry. I’m not getting anything out of the Sunday service. So, I have found myself asking, “What’s in it for me?”, because I’m not feeling nourished and restored when I leave mass on the weekends.

Then I remembered a conversation that I had with a priest friend of mine, who very gently called me out about not going to Sunday mass, because I had been skipping out for quite a while. He pointed out that “Sunday masses are the ones that it is a sin to miss – even a mortal sin.” And this wasn’t mass shaming, it was telling me what I needed to hear. I was sinning, I knew I was sinning, but needed someone to hold me accountable. That’s when I got my act together, went to confession and got back to Sunday mass.

Then I got sick and had to miss mass because of my illness. And that’s when the backslide began. So, as I am trying to get myself back to church, I find myself asking again “what’s in it for me?”. And once again I am reminded of something profound Fr. Michael had said which was reiterated recently in a homily by Fr. Drake, and that is at we are there for Jesus, not for us. We are there to celebrate God’s great love for us, to worship, praise and honor Him. So, “what’s in it for me?”…God, God’s love, and a chance for me to thank God for the many blessings in my life. Looks like there is a whole lot in it for me.

Tux the Cat stayed with me while I convalesced

So today, remind yourself that its not always about what’s in it for you, but maybe about what you give back to others. And maybe when you give back to others, you’ll really find out what’s in it for you; love, gratitude, empathy, goodness, compassion, and God Himself. And today, please pray for me and I will continue to pray for you.

The Obvious and The Extraordinary

Thoughts about confession, mass, Satan and God

Have you ever felt like the whole world was conspiring against you to keep you away from God? Maybe I am over dramatizing here, but that is exactly how I have felt these past couple of days. I have felt like God has been so far out of reach, and everything I try doesn’t bring Him any closer.

https://www.franciscansisterstor.org/about/spirituality-and-charisms/father-of-mercy-chapel

I awoke early this morning and was ready to leave the house well before my normal 6:30am departure. I jumped in the car and headed to the Father of Mercy Chapel for morning mass. This is where I normally attend Monday morning mass. However, when I arrived this morning, the doors were locked. Needless to say, I was taken aback.

I had spent that morning drive pondering how I would pray morning prayer. I had left my prayer books at work over the weekend. They were lying on my desk. I had been making a mental plan of how to approach morning prayer for the past 20 minutes. Never did I image that the doors to chapel would be locked. I knocked. No answer. I stood dumbfounded wondering if God knew I was standing outside, wondering why I could not get in.

The prayer booklets I left on my desk at work.

With an air of desperation, I turned and walked down the stairs and back to my car. While doing so, I checked the emailed mass schedule that I had received for the month of October. Mass wasn’t being held today until 8:15am. I drove to work.

This was the second, third or fourth time in the past 24 hours in which I had felt alienated from God (not alienated by God).

I thought this picture capture alienation perfectly. Taken at the Stone Lodge in Beatty Park.

Yesterday evening, I had this incredible desire to go to confession. You should know, this is not something for which I ever have a yearning – ever. Confession is a challenge for me – extremely difficult, yet yesterday evening I had this “pull” or felt this need to go. And I really wanted to go immediately, but that wasn’t possible.

I contacted a few of my priest friends hoping to be able to go this morning, fully expecting this to be possible. Only it wasn’t. Nobody was hearing confessions on this dismal, gray and drizzling Monday morning. It was kind of like, three strikes and you’re out. I had contacted 3 priests. I was truly dumfounded. I mean, I actually wanted to go to confession, and I couldn’t. God felt so far out of reach last night and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

I worried that my longing to receive the sacrament of confession would wane as time passed. I went to bed, contemplating this and what it really meant. Still, I planned to attend mass, but for the first time in a very long time, not receive the Eucharist. All because of this great need to confess my sins to a priest and receive absolution.

As I awoke this morning from one of the deepest sleeps in which I have been in a very long time, I felt a renewed sense of the need to attend morning mass. To discover only an hour later, the doors locked and no one answering my knock, deflated me. I left the hilltop, defeated. As I was descending the hill from the monastery, I began reflecting on how I had been intending to not receive communion this morning. Then I began wondering why getting to God was so difficult these past few days, I mean really difficult.

Satan is real and evil permeates our society. These things you can clearly see if you just look at our world today. All you have to do is turn on the news or read the paper. There is too much evil.

I began to think that this was the devil trying to undermine my relationship with Christ. I mean, I couldn’t find a priest to hear my confession this morning – not one, not two, but three were unavailable. I had left my prayer books at work, lying on my desk. And then the doors to the chapel were locked. LOCKED! I was locked out, away from God.

But as I pulled into my parking space at work, I had a different realization. I realized that perhaps, all of these things were a blessing, and all of these things were orchestrated by divine intervention. Sounds weird, right? But not being able to find a priest to hear my confession today has given me a greater opportunity to examine my conscience, to reflect on my sins and to better prepare for absolution. And yes, I still intend to go, it just might not be as soon as I would like. And the doors being locked and mass being at a different time, I think that was to help me avoid the temptation to receive the body of Christ while not in a state of grace. Yes, I would have been tempted to do that. I probably would have gone to communion had I gone to mass this morning, even if I was thinking that I wouldn’t. It is difficult to explain, and I am sure there are many who understand where I am coming from. But I truly believe it was God’s gentle hand protecting me from falling even further from grace.

Just moments before I arrived at the chapel, I had been listen to the song Fallen, by Sarah McLaughlin. It was almost prophetic for how I have been feeling lately. But I know there is redemption and there is grace and that God does work in mysterious ways. By all accounts, my Monday morning did not go as I had planned, it was a bit mysterious the way in which it unfolded. It seemed obvious that someone or something was trying to undermine my peace. But, in the end, I truly believe it was in my best interest. I just had to look beyond the obvious to see the extraordinary love of God.

So today, look beyond the obvious and find the extraordinary. Everything does, indeed, happen for a reason. And Today, please pray for me and I will continue to pray for you.

Living the Dream

Surprisingly, to others and to myself, I am in a good place right now. You would think that someone facing cancer and a mastectomy in less than two weeks, along with the uncertainty of knowing the extent of the cancer or the treatment plan, might be in a dark, soulless, sad place. I’m not. I am happy, I am at ease, I am content. I am not scared, I am not worried, I am not anxious. In a word, I am peaceful.

When I think about it, I mean really think about it, I am as surprised as anybody by my mental and emotional state. I mean, shouldn’t I be stressed? Shouldn’t I be frazzled? Shouldn’t I be dismayed? Shouldn’t I be nervous? Maybe I should be, but I’m not.

And then I saw a quote shared by a friend on Facebook that read, “You can’t break a woman that seeks her happiness from God.” It really struck me. You see, God and I weren’t really close friends until about two and a half years ago. I mean I believed in God, but I didn’t really have a relationship with Him outside of attending the obligatory Sunday service. And even that didn’t happen with much regularity. I was pretty closed off to God. He was some far distant being that I really didn’t understand and I was pretty certain He did not really know me.

Inspired by my work with the Franciscan Sisters, TOR; I decided I would give a relationship with God a chance. I mean, I was working for these women who had these incredible relationships with God, but I really didn’t. They were happy, joyful, peaceful. I was not. The difference, God was a part of their lives; God was not a part of mine.

So I began attending Sunday mass regularly, then a couple of masses during the week. At first it was sporadic, but then it grew into attending the daily mass. I would skip Saturday, because I thought I needed to sleep in. Yes, lame, I know. Then one Saturday, I was awake early, so I went to mass. Over the course of a few months, it developed into a daily habit…attending mass. I know that habit developed because of the influence of the sisters.

I have been attending daily mass for just over two years. Now on the days, that I do not go to mass, there is a little bit of an emptiness. I miss it. It affects the rest of my day. Fortunately, the days that I miss are few and far between because daily mass is a priority for me. And while I no longer work for the sisters, I still try to attend mass at the monastery at least once a week.

Most of my mornings begin with mass at the high school or at Holy Rosary (the church is right across the street from the school and they have a 7:00am mass Tuesday-Friday). But today I decided to attend 8:00am morning mass at my own parish, Holy Family. I knew the pastor would hear my confession this morning, and I wanted to get right with the Lord before surgery.

There was a reason I was at that mass. Aside from receiving the sacrament of reconciliation and seeing some people whom I have not seen in a while, Monsignor’s homily spoke directly to me. It was based on the responsorial psalm, and the theme – trust in the Lord, do not fear. He asked the congregation, “Do you trust in God? If you do, you will not be afraid.” It was in that moment that I realized that I truly do trust in God to handle this whole cancer thing for me, because I am not afraid. I am at peace. I am happy. Overall, my life is great and I am living the dream. I’m just living the dream with a little bit of cancer.

Yes, there are moments when doubt and fear creep in. There are moments when the uncertainty overwhelms me. I would be lying if said that didn’t happen. It does, but not often. Generally, I am good. No, scratch that, I am great! I got this, because God has got this.

So I will heed the advice contained in Psalm 56, “In God I trust, I shall not fear”. The verse that really touched me, 10B-11: “Now I know that God is with me. In God, in whose promise I glory, in God I trust without fear; what can flesh do against me?” That mass, that homily, that verse reinforced for me that you truly “can’t break a woman that seeks her happiness from God.” A little cancer can’t break me.

So today, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” – Deuteronomy 31:6. Trust in God and don’t let anything break you. Please pray from me and I will continue to pray for you.