An Aside

We will never know why things happen when they do? They often seem to happen at the worst time. All I can do is ride out the wave and hope to land safely.

This mishap with the oven was one of those occurrences. Every year during this time I bake Cross Breads and Saint Joseph Breads; Jane bakes cookies and soda breads, and we donate them to the annual St. Joseph’s Table, a fundraising event at our local parish. It gives us the opportunity to reflect on the liturgical time of the year which happens to be the most tragic and yet most glorious. Because we didn’t have an oven, we couldn’t participate this year. We were both unhappy about it. But, have also found that these events occasionally unveil moments of enlightenment.

I just realized that today was Palm Sunday. Such distractions overwhelm and shift attentions away from meaningful aspects of life to more tedious ones. Hold on now before you click me off. I just want to make a point. So please indulge me for a few more minutes.

As I sit here writing this, I happen to be listening to a Sunday morning TV news panel debating the troubles of the Mideast and our involvement with it. They predict a dismal future no matter what we might do. Although we can dismiss the events that took place 2000 years ago, the reality is, those events still affect us today. It doesn’t matter what we choose to believe or not to believe. It does however matter what we choose to do.

As I see it, if you strip down any religion to the basic words its ideology professes, and do not attach any divine attributes to their champions, you will arrive at these words for the most part.

• Sacrifice, service, compassion, unconditional love, charity, hope, tolerance, understanding, forgiveness, empathy, joy, communion, redemption, eternal life, and peace

• Withholding, hindering, animosity, oppression, hatred, malevolence, despair, prejudice, mercilessness, blame, apathy, depression, antagonism, slavery, and jihad

Suppressing any reference to God, and based only on these grouping of words, which environment would you choose to live in?