Dear Family,
If today were not the 27th Sunday in Ordinary time, it would be celebrated as the feast of the Guardian Angels. For both my pastorates, the feast marked my installations as pastor. I tell you this so that you will be able to thank those heavenly messengers for keeping the place from totally going to pot, despite me.
By the way that’s not reference to marijuana. In fact, according to The Phrase Finder, people had been going to pot long before hippies and the 60’s. 'Going to (the) pot', meant being chopped up and boiled for food. That usage dates back at least as far as the 16th century; ...The colloquial, metaphorical usage of 'ruin; destruction' is fairly old and was in common use by the 17th century. Edmund Hickeringill used the term in The History of Whiggism, 1682: ‘Poor Thorp, Lord Chief Justice, went to Pot, in plain English, he was Hang'd.’ That meaning alludes to the fact that the journey of an animal or ingredient to the pot was a one-way trip, with a very short future ahead.
I know you were awake last night wondering about the origin of the phase ‘going to pot.’ Of course there is another meaning as well, but since it hits too close to home, even after I lost weight, we’re not going to pursue that any further.
It might seem thus far, that I am short of material for this week’s Twitch. Actually, that’s not the case, but I’m having a bit of a challenge wanting to say something very personal. As I write we are only one day after José Fernández’s boat accident which took his life and that of two friends.
When someone told me about it after the 8:30 Mass last Sunday, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. At that moment, I didn’t stop to think why it was affecting me so much.
Now I think I know why.
For those few unenlightened of you who may not be fans of the Miami Marlins baseball team, José, at age 24, was probably our best pitcher. But far more than that, I think he was a special presence in the dugout and on the team that I can only think of as light. When he smiled everything around him seemed to glow a little. I’m sure by the time you read this we will have heard a lot more about him. His life story, as short as it was, is very moving from his 2007 escape by boat from Cuba with his mother to his becoming a citizen last year... His meteoric pro career simply reflected his talent.
But more than anything else, for me, José encourages me to remember how dramatically I might be able to affect what is going on around me, by something so simple as a laugh and a smile. His enthusiasm seemed to be infectious, a gigantic buffer against sarcasm and cynicism, simply bolstered by an almost childlike innocence.
I want to keep his memory working in my present and in my presence. I want to keep him from becoming an artifact in the collection of my fading memories.
Maybe I can use my “Pastor Anniversary’ to remind me to give thanks for him and pray for him and his family, especially his yet-to-be-born child.
I believe that all the praise you’ll hear, including this, might be an embarrassment for José. But I can also see him saying, maybe in surprise, “Really?” and then smiling. It wouldn’t be a grin of ego. It would be a signal of humble truth. It would be a unique gift his teammates knew about and appreciated because he was willing to share it.
May we walk in that same humble truth.
In Jesus,
