Spring is the season when the live oaks drop last year’s leaves as the new ones begin to come in. This means that we have huge quantities of leaves in the yard, at the same time that quantities of golden tree pollen settle on cars and everything else.
So I was in the yard, wielding the pitchfork, hefting piles of leaves into a bin, when a nice-looking young man called out from.jpg "Dry Leaves")
the sidewalk, “I could help you!”
“Thank you, but no,” I replied. “I’m getting my exercise.”
He walked over and persisted, “I could do that, and you could give me a couple of dollars. I need a beer real bad.”
I tried to explain that since the city no longer accepts leaves in plastic bags, and we have only two plastic cans, there wasn’t a lot that could be done in one day.
“I’ll do two bins, and you can give me three dollars!”
“No,” I said again. “The doctor wants me to exercise.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responded, looking sympathetic, evidently commiserating with whatever grave medical condition would inspire doctor-ordered exercise. “But I need beer,” he added pleasantly. “I drink a lot.”
“Why do you drink a lot?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m an alcoholic.”
“That’s not so good,” I said.
“Yeah, man. The stuff’ll kill you.”
“Yes, it can. It killed an uncle of mine.”
“For real, man?” (He sounded surprised, as if he had not seriously believed the danger up until now.)
“Yes, he got cirrhosis of the liver and died.”
After a few more moments of conversation, we shook hands, and he headed off toward downtown.
“Have a nice day. God bless you,” he called out.
“You have a nice evening,” I said. “And don’t drink too much beer!”
When I recounted the conversation to Sister Betty, she pointed out that he needs some lessons in PR, if he really wants to be paid for yard work. I agreed that his sales pitch left something to be desired, but at least he didn’t claim that he needed the money to bury his dear grandma.
All of us are broken in one way or another. Most of us are just better at hiding it – or at least we think we are better at hiding it. And we are all helpless to mend ourselves.
Fertile powerlessness
The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are very spiritually sound. Here are the first three:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or substitute here another addiction]—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
(For the rest of the Twelve Steps, click here.)
Some of us not in AA or other Twelve-Step programs still suffer under the illusion that we can manage our lives by ourselves. Saint Paul, though, knew that he could not. He heard God telling him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
My power is made perfect, God says, not in your strength, but in your weakness.
Whether we are raking leaves or longing for beer or managing a Fortune 500 corporation, we stand in need of the powerful and tender mercies of the God who loves us.
The fallen spring leaves witness to the new life already emerging on the oaks, which will look scraggly and unkempt for a few weeks. Our own unkempt, ragged hearts, stripped of what we thought was our strength, offer the fertile weakness through which God’s grace brings new life — both for us and for the blessing of the world.
Dan Bar-On tells of Andre, a 12-year-old boy in a small German town. One day in 1938 Andre comes home from a youth meeting and tells his father that the next day the children are supposed to throw stones at the shops owned by Jews. He is in a dilemma. Everyone else is going to throw stones. What should he do?
Catholic tradition. Respectful challenge has been a part of Christian faithfulness to authority beginning as early as the Saint Paul’s challenge to the first pope, Saint Peter, as recounted in Galatians 2. Paul writes that he opposed Peter “to his face,” as Peter appeared to be wobbling regarding the decision not to require Christians to become Jews according to the law.
Today Catherine might well be accused of not being faithful to the magisterium. But for her, fidelity was not the same thing as agreement with everything the pope said or did. In her case, fidelity to Pope Gregory meant challenging him to do the right thing for the people of God.
recognition of a miracle resulting from Newman’s intercession):