DaddyRoBlog

A Good Day

I learned something today.

I’ve been a Black Sabbath fan since I was a kid.  I still have their Paranoid album, and I still enjoy listening to it (and even play drums along with it on occasion).  I know the songs by heart.

One thing, though, has puzzled me over the years.  I wondered why more people haven’t objected to the title song.  I always thought it encouraged people to commit suicide, saying “I’m telling you to end your life, I wish I could but am too late.”

Well, my family and my brother’s family got each other Rock Band for Christmas. It’s a video game where one person plays guitar, another plays guitar or bass, anther plays drums, and another person sings.  In essence, you form a rock band and play song covers.

One of the songs you play is Paranoid.  Because someone else wanted to play the drums, I said I’d sing.  It’s sort of like karaoke; the game feeds you the words and you sing along.  Guess what?  Paranoid doesn’t have Ozzy telling people “to end your life”.  What I just learned is it actually says, “I’m telling you to ENJOY life, I wish I could but am too late.”

Wow!  Quite a difference.

Merry Christmas

At 3:55PM yesterday, right before our first service, I remarked that it did not feel at all like Christmas to me.  I think it was  a combination of things, such as the usual pace of life issues, the warm weather and the  green grass (our neighbor was actually mowing his lawn as I left for church).

But then the service started with our Chistmas pageant, which was really great,  and happy people in the Christmas Spirit kept pouring in, and we laughed and sang and worshipped and squeezed in even tighter together like the family we are and suddenly, well, it really did seem like Christmas was here after all.

It was the same  at each of the later services.  What a great day!

Now one more service, a small, peaceful, quiet service that somehow fits Christmas day especially well, and then on home to relax and enjoy being with my family.

Work Well Done?

One of the things I think a person asks themselves when they have done something for twenty years, and anticipate doing it for at least another twenty more, is whether they will ever really master what they do.   We do our jobs, and perhaps even do them well, but I think we are painfully aware we could do them better.

As a priest and as a person, part of what I’ve had to learn over the past 21 years is to how to recognize for myself when I’ve done good work and to be able to take delight in it.   I think I’ve been able to do that to a certain extent, and maybe that should even be enough when all is said and done.

But here is what I find myself thinking these days.  What would it take for my kids to be proud of me?  Not in a general, “I love him, he’s my dad” kind of way, but on the purely on the basis of the work I’ve done and the impact it has had.   That, I think, would be good work. 

The Inevitable Tough Times

My wife reminded me that Saturday was the 21^st anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood.  What is interesting about that is that if they did approval ratings for priests, mine would probably be at an all time low.  I’m not sure that is how it is supposed to work!

I made peace a long time ago with the fact that I am not as good as some people think I am nor am I as bad.  There are some things I do well, and some things I don’t do well at all.  Sometimes when people are upset with me it is because I have brought it upon myself.  But at other times people are upset with me for reasons that don’t have anything to do with me; it’s their own stuff that is presenting itself.

And, of course, being a priest isn’t about approval ratings in the first place, because the life of a church isn’t about the life of a priest.   It’s a very dangerous thing when those lines get blurred either by the priest or the congregation.  If a priest thinks the life of his church is all about him, then he will no longer be able to serve his people well because he’ll have to use his congregation to serve his own ego needs.  If a congregation thinks the life of their church is about their priest, pretty soon they will be more concerned about taking care of the priest (which is his job, not theirs!) instead of caring for the world around them.

What the life of the church is about is faithfulness.   I think that is what the life of a priest is called to be about as well.   I don’t think faithfulness comes easy to anyone, or without a price given the world in which we live.

Still, I do feel bad when people are unhappy, and, that is something I’ve not yet been able to make peace with.

Disconcerting

Last night as I was taking a shower the strangest thing happened.   All of a sudden it was like time folded in on itself and I was back taking a shower in the home in which I grew up.  The sensation was so real that it completely disoriented me.

The thought came that I couldn’t be back in the home of my youth, but I could not figure out where I was.  I could not for the life of me figure out what was outside the bathroom door.  I thought it was a hallway (the house of my youth) but somehow that didn’t seem right (the reality was that our bedroom is outside the door).  I couldn’t remember if I was upstairs or downstairs.  I couldn’t remember how one would get to the shower from our front door because I couldn’t remember where the front door was or how our house is laid out.

I tried several times to force my brain to remember, but I couldn’t do it.  A panic started to build in me.  And then it all came back, and I knew where I was.

If that never happens to me again, it will still be too soon!  Very, very creepy…