Comfort Me With Apples

I took a day to retreat into an apple orchard. Laurie, a Sonshine friend, invited me to travel the country roads in Wayne County where the apples are at their peak. It was brisk, cool morning, sunlight dancing through the orchard groves and the cloud formations were spectacular in the deep, blue sky above as you can see in our photo.

There was a young person who came to the local monastery in search of enlightenment. There, he asked to hear one of the abbot’s lectures - and was granted permission.

That afternoon, the abbot’s discourse was about the importance of work in the field. After the lecture, the young man said to one of the monks: "That was amazing. I thought I would hear a fine sermon about virtues and sins, and the abbot spoke only of apples, peaches, pears, and irrigation. Where I come from, all believe that God is merciful: all one must do is pray."

The monk smiled and replied: "Here we believe that God has already done His part; now it is up to us to continue the process." The abbot shared another story about a farmer who grew award-winning apples. Each year he entered his apples in the state fair where it won many blue ribbons.

One year a reporter came to his farm to interview him and learn how this farmer grew these winning apples. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his apple seeds with his neighbors. "How can you afford to share your best apple plants with your neighbors when they are entering apples in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked.

"Why sir," said the farmer, "didn't you know? The bees carry the pollen from one ripening apple tree to another. If my neighbors grow inferior apples, the cross-pollination would steadily degrade the quality of my apples. If I am to grow good apples, I must help my neighbors grow good apples too."

He is very much aware of the connectedness of life. His apples cannot improve unless his neighbor's apple orchards also improve.

So it is in other dimensions. Those who choose to be at peace must help their neighbors to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others to find happiness for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all.

The lesson for each of us is this: if we are to grow good apple orchards we must help our neighbors grow good apples.

God prays for us as we reflect: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10).

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who generously spread the seed of goodness to their neighbors by their daily sacrifices and prayers. Bless all our farmers who are working hard to harvest their crops that fill our tables. In gratitude, let us be mindful to reach out to those families who are still unemployed and need a helping hand.

Flat Spots

You might never noticed but the for the most part, the Bible dispenses with the kinds of adverbs you might find in novels in which, when a character speaks a line, we may well be told that he spoke those particular words “sternly” or “laughingly” or “gravely.” But the Bible doesn’t usually include such narrative details, leaving the reader—free to imagine the acoustics of the text.

I like you to use your imagination and think about the sound of Jesus’ voice. If you google “voices” for God, you come up with hundreds of hits. Some refer to the sound of thunder and others a whisper? Do you think his voice to be mighty stern or disappointed? Does it come across as tender? Maybe, it reflects a heartbroken, trembling tone whose words have some difficult things to say.

Jesus wants to be alone with you and what he has to say is difficult. It is going to be something pretty tough to verbalize. He says he will suffer and be abused and die on a cross. Yes, a day of resurrection would come, thanks be to God, but the thing about a resurrection is that you always have to pass through death first to get there.

“I love you” is best whispered into the ear while the beloved is close enough to embrace. “I’m going to suffer and die soon” is “I love you” in God-speak and reflects what’s in his heart for each of us.

I wonder how hurtful it must have been for Jesus to take his disciples aside to tell them about his suffering only to then look up and see blank expressions on their faces. They didn’t appear to comprehend—or believe—what he was saying. I like to call this moment our “flat spot.”

“Flat spots” appear in many forms—forget our keys is an inconvenience, being late for your appointment is rude. Young tykes “flat spots” appear as carelessness for neglecting one’s chores, or punching their siblings. Young adults “flat spots” might more be about excessive drinking, driving restlessly, or failing to study. As we get older “flat spots” accumulate. We are thoughtless to open a door for someone in a wheelchair, or excuse our irritability, or fail to meet our healthy lifestyle goals, or worse emotionally abuse our loved ones because of past anger and resentments.

What are your flat spots?

We must admit that we all suffer from those “flat spots” when we failed to listen and take responsibility for decisions that result in our suffering and the suffering of others.

God prays for us as we reflect: “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will; go for us?’ And I said. ‘Here am I. Send me’” (Isaiah 6:8).

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends whose voices bring tenderness and understanding to the suffering of others. Help us to focus our efforts to welcome your children “the little and the brittle” with great patience and surrender our “flat spots.”

Corrupted and Beautiful

What is happiness? Perhaps the most profound response, I ever read said: “Happiness is freedom from frustration, freedom from fear and freedom from guilt.”

Last week, I went online to create the annual calendar for my Sonshine friends. I reviewed hundreds of images and picked 13 that you can view now by clicking: http://www.drmatt.org/gallery/main.php

In addition to the national holidays, I added our holy days of obligation since they sometimes change, for example All Saints Day in 2010 while a holy day of obligation is abrogated because it falls on a Monday. But I believe if you go to church on Monday and pray to your saint I’m sure they will appreciate your effort. Nobody goes to hell on that day for missing Mass.

My frustration began when I uploaded all the holidays and holydays and discovered the following morning that the calendar “defaulted.” What that meant was that a holiday like Martin Luther King would be repeated three times in the box for January 18^th. Needless to say, this computer novice called the “Help” line and talked to twelve different customer service reps that had “no clue” why this was happening but simply helped me reload the entire calendar.

Imagine teaching a customer service rep in Jamaica, India and Canada what All Saints Day or the Assumption is all about. Online CCD. Despite their courtesy to reload and learn something about our Catholic tradition, the calendar would “default “again and again twelve times. Each time, I explain the problem, the young voice would hear the shrills of frustration and of despair and try their best to resolve the problem. Then comes the voice of a little angel by the name of Amry from Jamaica. This heavenly soul understood that the problem was a “corrupted file” and her best solution was to create a new calendar with a new template. She patiently loaded all 13 images and even complemented the work asking me if I would be kind enough to reload all the holydays and holidays for a twelfth time.

Sometimes, we feel like we are going out of our minds with the frustrations of daily life. We feel “corrupted” by all the defaults that come our way in the form of another layoff, or another illness or another lost. Life makes us panic with fear and worse we begin to think that we are “corrupt” with all the negative messages that fill our brain. Let me gently remind you, as we begin another season of Sonshine, that the God we pray to wants you to be happy both now on earth as it will be in heaven. Let us meditate for a moment as you gaze at the water or the clouds or look at the red reflection of the tree in the water and know that your angel knows who are not “corrupted” but a “beauty” made in his image. Happiness is this freedom from fear, freedom from frustration and freedom from guilt.

God prays for us as we reflect: “The spirit of the lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the brokenhearted…(Isaiah 61:1)

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine friends daily as we begin another season of sharing a heavenly love that desperately wants us all to be happy and free of the “defaults” of life. Bless us with your spirit of patience and perseverance.