You Can't Earn Heaven, but What You Do is Important

I hesitate to write anything that is preachy, because frankly, who am I to preach. But the following lines from the Gospel Reading on Sunday inspired me to post this: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.” A Catholic commentary on the last two lines of the Gospel says that the basis on which we are judged will be our conduct. Thus, it supports the Catholic view of the importance of faith and good works.

My Visit to the Ireland Delayed and New Inspiration

For Irish Americans who are into the Irish "business," a trip to Ireland is always on the brain.  As I get older, my ideas continue to evolve in terms of what I'd do there and who I would see. As the pennies have drifted from my business, it seems highly unlikely that I will ever make the trip.  And honestly, unless I am whole financially I would not want to go. I don't enjoy steak when I have little money, but a burger tastes pretty good on a budget.  I could never enjoy traveling unless I could pay for it all myself and take care of things at home.  Even if I won a trip and still had a bathroom that needs fixing or a rusty car, I just couldn't go. Coming to reality with my trip to Ireland reminds me of another come back down to earth moment that I had recently.

A fine Jewish scholar by the name of Marc Trestman, the current head coach of the Chicago Bears said some things to the University of Illinois football team that I caught on You Tube.  Football ( like soccer or hurdling or basketball or baseball or other team sports) is often used as metaphor for life.  Life lessons pour out of the sports world.  Anyway, Trestman said that it was important to approach victories and defeats in the same way.  He pointed out that we need to meet our setbacks, learn from them, and then continue.  He was talking to college kids, but his suggestion is something that has been difficult for me all my life.  I really like to avoid the bumps in the road if possible.  I am a hard worker, few are more determined than myself, but boy do I hate setbacks.  Often for me, my mind stops working when problems fall down like an avalanche.  I remember some pithy saying about troubles or problems that someone came up with and I think, yah that's OK for him, but he's a millionaire.  Or I think OK, but look how young he is.  I suppose sometimes my thinking gets down right ridiculous.  Oh yah, she made her business work, but she lives in Rhode Island!  Oh yah, he can do it, but he's Lithuanian! 

I took Trestman's talk to heart.  He made a lot of other good points that are life lessons.  He talked about how important it was that everyone in the locker room respects one another--that players pick up after themselves and don't leave things for someone else to have to remove.  He told the players that everything they did either inside or outside the locker room was important and would have an impact on the entire team.  He said everyone coming into the locker room was welcome and everyone should be valued.  And then he told the young men that everything they did for others on the team would last long past their life, but things they did for themselves would be short lived.  He said that when everyone works together to help each other out, that's when great things happen.  Point after point was the kind of stuff the nuns used to tell us in grade school.  It was wonderful to hear again. 

Money for People with Minds that Hate

I suppose John Lennon received many requests from people and groups who wanted money.  He had quite a bit.  But in the song "Revolution," he turned down the haters with his answer to such requests.  

All I can tell you brother is that you'll have to wait. 

The song essentially suggests that violence and hate are the wrong response to problems.  It's very simple and very direct. 

Depending upon your point of view, John Lennon may be numbered among the great 20th Century good guys who really had an eye on peace.  But many of the great peacemakers were hated.  Make your own list and you'll find that they came under attack from many different directions.  

In modern times, the Roman Catholic Pope is someone who spends a lot of time, words, wisdom, and prayer aimed at peace.  At Easter, Pope Francis pleaded and prayed for peaceful solutions to the trouble in the Ukraine and Syria.  The Pope appeals often on behalf of the poor, he constantly shows patience, and he displays love towards those who are marginalized in our modern world. From his Vatican neighborhood, it seems like everyday the Pope reaches out to someone new.

Yet, there are many people who hate Pope Francis. It seems like each time I  look on the Internet to a story on Pope Francis, I'll see hateful comments.  When you go to YouTube for a story on the Pope, often a positive story is side by side with someone's evil post brimming with hate.  The hateful messages just wear on me. 

To me, hate-filled messages are especially difficult to take when the hate comes from people who consider themselves devout Christians and even devout Catholics.  And yet Jesus Christ lost patience with those who hated others.  I guess they read the Bible, but just don't get it.  Christ was never fond of finger pointers and those who put themselves above everyone else.  

During Lent, when Pope Francis came into church to hear confessions, he marched away from where he was led and knelt down at a Confessional and made his own confession.  He's reached out to the divorced.  He  holds back judgment on gay people.  He has expressed mercy and love.  And perhaps most remarkable is that he works hard to avoid slamming doors on people.  Whenever I am overwhelmed by haters, I look to Pope Francis, who seems to rise above it all.

I think John Lennon would have been a big fan. 

Saint Patrick's Day Quiz 2014

Here are questions a good Irish American should be able to answer. See if you have the right stuff for this St. Patrick's Day. To make it easy on you, these are true or false questions: (Answers are below)

1. ___Saint Patrick was kidnapped from Britain.
2. ___Saint Patrick's Breastplate is a coat of arms with a shamrock.
3. ___Trinity College is one of the oldest Catholic Universities in the world.
4. ___The Book of Kells is a beautifully decorated book of poetry.
5. ___Frank McCourt was born in Limerick.
6. ___The potato famine occurred in the late 1800s.
7. ___The Commitments is a famous movie about Irish Folk Music.
8. ___Saint Brigid was known for her generosity.
9. ___William Butler Yeats is a famous Irish Catholic poet.
10. ___Peat was burned to heat homes in Ireland.
11. ___Joseph Kennedy served as Ambassador to Ireland.
12. ___Jean Kennedy Smith served as Ambassador to Ireland.
13. ___The native tongue of Ireland is English.
14. ___The Hebrides are Irish islands.
15. ___There are no Mosques in Ireland.
16. ___The largest Christian Church in Northern Ireland is the Catholic Church.
17. ___Bing Crosby won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Going My Way.
18. ___St. Columba waged a battle that killed thousands over a literary dispute.
19. ___In A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift suggested that the poor Irish might sell their children as food for the rich.
20. ___An estimated 1 million Irish died from the potato famine and another 1 million emigrated.
21. ___"Let's match-make America" is a line from the movie, the MatchMaker --given by  Milo O'Shea. 
22. ___When David Kelly talked about a "vulgar business" in the MatchMaker, he was talking about the fee for his genealogy research.

Copyright 2014, Sporting Chance Press

Answers below:

1. T--Saint Patrick was kidnapped from Britain.
2. F--Saint Patrick's Breastplate is a coat of arms with a shamrock. It's a prayer.
3. F--Trinity College is one of the oldest Catholic Universities in the world. It was established by the English queen as a Protestant institution.
4. F--The Book of Kells is a beautifully decorated book of poetry. Reproduces the Gospels.
5. F--Frank McCourt was born in Limerick. McCourt was born in NY, but his Irish parents returned to their native land and McCourt grew up in Limerick. McCourt passed away in 2009.
6. F--The potato famine occurred in the late 1800s. It occurred from approximately 1845-1849.
7. F--The Commitments is a famous movie about Irish Folk Music. The movie is about soul music sung by an Irish band.
8. T--Saint Brigid was known for her generosity.
9. F--William Butler Yeats is a famous Irish Catholic poet. Yeats was a Protestant who became a Nationalist--loved by almost all Irish.
10. T--Peat was burned to heat homes in Ireland.
11. F--Joseph Kennedy served as Ambassador to Ireland. Ambassador to the UK, Roosevelt wanted him to take the less-sensitive Irish job at the time just before WWII, but he pushed for the UK job.
12. T--Jean Kennedy Smith served as Ambassador to Ireland.
13. F--The native tongue of Ireland is English. It is Irish or Irish Gaelic.
14. F--The Hebrides are Irish islands. Scotland.
15. F--There are no Mosques in Ireland.  There are at least 12 mosques or Islamic prayer centers in Ireland.
16. T--The largest Christian Church in Northern Ireland is the Catholic Church. True--there are more Protestants, but those are from different churches.
17. T--Bing Crosby won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Going My Way.
18. T--St. Columba waged a battle that killed thousands over a literary dispute. Columba copied a manuscript containing Psalms without permission of its owner Saint Finian. When Columba lost the legal battle for his copy, he put together an army to retaliate. The loss of life was horrific and it brought shame and remorse to Columba who was essentially exiled from Ireland. The Irish loss was the Scots gain -- Columba became a great missionary to Scotland and established great monasteries there.
19. T--In A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift suggested that the poor Irish might sell their children as food for the rich. He was being sarcastic, but seriously mocking some of the days thinkers.
20. T--An estimated 1 million Irish died from the potato famine and another 1 million emigrated. There are different estimates, but the losses were huge.
Copyright 2011 Sporting Chance Press,Inc.
 21. T--""Let's match-make America" is a line from the movie, the MatchMaker --given by  Milo O'Shea.  Milo O'Shea passed away in 2013.
22. T--When David Kelly talked about a "vulgar business" in the MatchMaker, he was talking about the fee for his genealogy research.  David Kelly passed away in 2012.

Please visit WWW.SPORTINGCHANCEPRESS.COM to buy my books.

Bit of Inspiration from Yeats

I came across a poem by William Butler Yeats that I thought was especially powerful and  I decided to make it into a poster.  I thought it turned out very nice.  Within a few weeks I'll have it up on my web site at sportingchancepress.com and people will be able to buy it along with other posters and the books that I have published as part of my business, Sporting Chance Press. But if you like this poster and would like to order a copy, two, three or more right away, just send me an email at lmj.norris@gmail.com with your shipping information and number of copies--I'll send the poster(s) with a bill.  The poster is 14" X 12" digitally printed on thick stock and suitable for framing.  The cost of the poster is $12, plus tax if applicable.  I will pay the shipping charges.  I roll them up and send them in a thick tube--either first class or priority mail.

Saint Patrick's Lorica

Photograph taken by my son, Daniel Norris

I love this prayer and I asked my son to set a portion of it up on a poster for my publishing business.  Within a few weeks I'll have it up on my web site at sportingchancepress.com and people will be able to buy it along with other posters and the books that I have published as part of my business, Sporting Chance Press. 

It has taken the better part of  year to develop and publish each new book that I've done.  We're a bit of a boutique publishing company.  If you like this poster and would like to order a copy, two, three or more, just send me an email at lmj.norris@gmail.com with your shipping information and number of copies--I'll send the poster(s) with a bill.  The poster is 14" X 12" digitally printed on thick stock and suitable for framing.  The cost of the poster is $12, plus tax if applicable.  I will pay the shipping charges.  I roll them up and send them in a thick tube--either first class or priority mail. 

 

Mass Today

We went to Mass this morning and it certainly did us good.  Afterward, my wife was talking about the length of Mass and that when she was a child her parish had very short masses because of the size of the church and number of parishioners to serve.  Our daughter who was with us this morning is a high school student.  She seems to enjoy hearing about stuff "back in the day," at least within reason. We continued to reminisce. 

Looking back at Mass as a kid, I mentioned going to Mass with my dad who for a while liked to go to the High Mass in our parish in Chicago.  The High Mass was very long and like all Masses at the time, it  was in Latin.  I remember being very young and trying to make sounds like I was reciting Latin---mimicking the adults around me were.  It was something like shishwa-shishwa-shishwa...

Second, I thought of my dad's devotion to God and his church.  He was an Irish Catholic cop whose mother, Mary Callaghan Norris, had him going to Novenas and other services as a small boy.  My dad was an extremely humble man and always in his own world at Mass.  Often the old school Catholics followed the prayers at Mass, but also said the Rosary between them.  You saw a lot of beads at Mass in those days.  I know this runs contrary to what is taught today about the Mass being a communal celebration, but a lot of old school Catholics were inwardly focused at church.  

My dad gave us a great example of how to look at the world and faith.  His faith was never very far from what was going on around him.   If we heard an ambulance, we'd pray that the person being transported would be OK.  If we passed a cemetery, as we did often in my neighborhood, we prayed a Hail Mary.  If someone mentioned that somone from the neighborhood was sick, there were more prayers.  But my dad never asked us to say them out loud.  We would just say them to ourselves as he did. There was never, ever any show with faith.  It was very personal.  That was how it was at that time.  

I loved so many things about my dad and tried to copy him.  I would often walk with my dad to church and try to imitate his gait.  He walked slowly with his feet pointing out.  On cold days I would walk behind him and use his big wide body to shield me from the wind.  As I got older, he consistently had a working car and we switched going from the later Masses to the  earlier ones.  He probably did it for my mom who was claustrophobic and had difficulty going to crowded services. If he took her to Mass very early, she could attend comfortably. If we went to the later ones, she would stand in the vestabule and seemed very uncomfortable.

My memories were very simple with respect to my dad's faith, but they were strong.  And when we went to Mass with Dad, he was always in a good mood after the service.  In good times, when Mass was over he would take us to a restaurant.   I'd order chocolate chip pancakes and a chocolate milk.

Saint Patrick's Day Memories

I've written before about how my relatives were Irish and expressed my late-blooming appreciation of St. Patrick.  Although my father never played the Irish card here in Chicago, he was indeed an Irish cop.  His brothers would sometimes sing Irish songs at celebrations and in taverns after a few drinks.  Their off-key and essentially horrible versions of  the usual songs that Irish Americans often sing, were so bad I had little interest in anything Irish.

My dad side also had a name, Norris,  that sounded more English than Irish so the Sisters never gave me any credit for being Irish.  I suppose I also had the odd look of the north as described in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. 

My dad had a very Irish look and as a young man would have fit in very nicely in anything John Ford might have filmed in Ireland.  Still, looks aren't everything and he often said, half jokingly,  that if he had his mother's last name, Callaghan, he would have gone a lot further in the police. 

I was probably in my 30s when my interest in being Irish hit.  My mother's side had come through Scotland--her parents had settled around Glasgow for jobs, but they died while she was young--her mother at her birth and her father about six years later.  She came over here with two of her sisters when she was about 10 years old and ended up being raised by an older brother.  Her brother and siblings seemed to be very smart and ambitious although I think her dad drank himself to death suffering deeply from the loss of his wife along with a bad case of tuberculosis that he contracted while in the service.  My mother's father's people were "Divers"  from north around Donegal and her mother was a "Lynch" from around Dublin. 

I am not exactly sure where my grandfather on my father's side came from.  We are pretty sure the Norris side came from Ireland although the name is more common in England.  There was a Lord Norris, a General I believe, who went into Ireland several hundred years ago, probably to put my other relatives in their place.  He stayed and likely had lots of children.  Whether one of them was a relative of mine, who knows! My grandmother Callaghan was born in Ireland, but spent some time in England doing a bit of housework before she came here.  The other names from both my paternal grandmother's side and my paternal grandfather's side are Irish.  While my grandfather's relatives were go-getters, my grandmother is remembered as a kind simple woman who had a number of  Irish friends here in Chicago. She and a cousin's grandmother were sometimes involved in conspiracies to see that others in the family married good Irish boys and girls so I can't see her marrying Grandpa Norris unless he had strong Irish roots.  I do believe he did have some Protestant roots and much of his family stopped communicating with him after he married my Catholic grandmother.  Like all converts, he was a very good Catholic who didn't swear or drink.  His sons on the other hand....

Anyway, St. Patrick came to me late in life after time had stripped his legacy of all those bad Irish singers, drunken parties and the like.  I've had this kind of twisted sense of myself --one minute kind of straight-forward serious and slightly confident and the next minute insecure, poetic, and emotional.  When I read Saint Patrick's prayer I felt akin to him and his insecurity.  I thought his prayer was so beautiful asking to be surrounded on all sides by Christ--of course St. Patrick had good reason to be so fearful, I frankly did not.  But I was sold on his prayer---and then sold on him--and then sold on the idea of being Irish and understanding what it might mean.  What also helped was a young woman in our area who put together an Irish band and presented great Irish music that was beautiful and sober.  Danny Boy had been about as bad a song as I had ever heard, until she sang it and the light went on in my head. One of our daughters who has a very sweet voice has taken up a few Irish songs (although with a hundred non-Irish), and hearing her sing has brought more Irish joy to me.  So once I got past some of my awful childhood memories of being Irish, I was able to appreciate it as a part of me in an honest and meaningful way.  

I do think we live in an insecure world.  As a lot of folks move away from our religious connections  here in the states and in Ireland as I understand, the world gets a little scarier.  I am not a poster boy for the faith, but I do cling to it tightly and Saint Patrick's prayer has helped.  As a young boy, I could feel God's presence and I had a constant communication with him.  As I get older, I am trying to restore that connection as best I can.

Irish Poem for the Ages

I took the Lit classes that are part and parcel of most English major programs here in the United States. Several classes that focused on poetry were taught by a certain professor who showed little interest in what the two or three men in class had to say . In his class, poems were something young girls could speak about and interpret in great detail.  Men were clueless (and maybe we were).

I left school without much interested in poetry although writing poems myself on an old half plastic-half metal Sears mini portable typewriter was one of my greatest pleasures in high school and college.  When my folks bought me the typewriter and I no longer had to rely on my mom's Underwood with the sticky keys, I was in creative heaven--not that I wrote anything that was good, but I was expressive.

Here's something that struck me recently. I love this one.

                             When You Are Old

                                                  When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

                                                  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

                                                  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

                                                  Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

                                             

                                                   How many loved your moments of glad grace,

                                                   And loved your beauty with love false or true,

                                                   But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

                                                   And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

                                              

                                                  And bending down beside the glowing bars,

                                                  Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

                                                  And paced upon the mountains overhead

                                                  And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

                                                 

                                                                           —William Butler Yeats