Furthermore…

(2 panels)

(1) Praying person says “I believe!”

(2) Jesus responds, “I Be Love!”

 Yesterday I sat behind three people at Mass, two women and a man. The man wore suspenders and I thought he looks like a grampa, and also like a farmer. So when they read the prayer intentions after the gospel, one of them was “for all farmers.”

Weird, I thought. I come here every day for a year, and they never pray for farmers. Now today, I sit behind one, and they pray for them rubes. OK with me. I loved my mother’s brother, who was a farmer in Canada, as was her father, and she was a farm girl.

Later, it sunk in, the gospel was the parable of the sower, who went out to sow seed. Thus, the connection with farmers. How often there are reasons for things, and we just don’t see them!

Shabby guy with placard

    REPENT!

 GIVE ALMS

On my frequent visits to a small bookseller’s shop near the University of Chicago, the proprietor would inevitably ask me, as I entered, “What’s great.” I never had a response of any note.

 Years later, I am beset with the question, “What’s ‘Cool’?” It seems to be something of a ‘God term’ within the youth culture, signifying a kind of inchoate, unchallengable endorsement of the referent, intuitively apparent to all peers. It seems to be the ultimate value, trumping importance, utility, and tradition.

 Something is Cool?  Bring it on, they respond.  No vetting for morality, prudence, value or harmlessness.  The devil, of course, is about convincing anyone who will listen that  Hell is Cool.   Sin?  Cool!