Michael's Random Thoughts and Photos on Spirituality

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/michaelcsp/episodes/2018-08-19T19_27_45-07_00

This was written by my very best friend and he captures my outrage and anger perfectly: Our bishops have asked everyone to do penance. That is the ecclesiastical equivalent of Thoughts and Prayers. No I will not do penance for you. You committed the crimes. You do the penance. YOU discriminate against women. You are so vocal on abortion that the woman who has had one and needs healing would look at the church as the last place to go. YOU tell half the earth's population they can't be priests because they don't image Christ. YOU fuel violence against Queer peopl e with your homophobia. You try to deny us the right to love. How Christian of you! YOU are homophobes. And most homophobes are homos at heart. You scream loudly from inside your closets so that no one will suspect you. I don't know. Most straight men would not be caught dead with a 20 foot scarlet cape. On the other hand many gay men would consider it supreme drag. YOU helped elect the worst pres

Do you find, at times, that you are irritable, restless or discontent?  I do.   When I feel this way I discover that there is a sort of hole in my soul.  It can be a very tiny hole, or a huge hole that seems to want to devour me.  I run into a number of people each week that have holes of various sizes in their souls. These holes want, even need, to be fed.  One of our former pastors here at St. Mary’s was with me as pastor at the Paulist University Parish in Morgantown West Virginia.  He’d come up to me and say, “Michael — I’m depressed."  I’d ask him, "Is this depression leading us to Dairy Queen — or do we need to buy a new car?”  I have bought a lot a fattening junk food and useless items trying to fill the various size holes in my life — and I like to think I am not alone.  Buying stuff gives us the illusion of being in control even if we are wasting our money in the process; and as most of us know, in a few minutes or days we feel empty again. We need comfort foo

Last week Jesus fed well over 5,000 people including women and children.  The people wanted to haul Him off and make Him a king; and why not - He’d be a very useful king to have, especially on a journey.  When traveling we like things just so, useful things, useful people I love road trips, I mean really long one like up into British Columbia, Yukon Territory — Alaska.  Thankfully I don’t have any kids because, as I understand it, the cry goes out a couple of hours into a trip “Are we there yet?”  What seemed like a good idea at the time becomes something else altogether.  At airports, it can happen even before you board the plane. We get disgruntled when things or persons become useless.  We’ve all had the experience of being asked to sign our name to some document and our pen won’t work.  Drats.  If something as insignificant as a pen can upset us, what about the larger issues?  Larger issues like not being able to connect with wifi.  Having to get up to change channels on the