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Oklahoma

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I didn’t mention it here on the blog, but you might have picked up on the fact that I spent most of the month of May back home in Oklahoma.

St. Fidelis Seminary had a break between school terms and because of some family issues, I decided to spend that time in Tulsa.

My aunt, the only member of the older generation left in my immediate family, suffered a fall during Easter and has been recovering at a rehabilitation facility ever since.  My sister Stacey is currently the closest relative (100 miles away) and has been managing her care and financial issues pretty much by herself.

I decided to use my break time to come home and help out as much as I could.  I’m not sure how much good I really did, but I was able to visit with my aunt on a daily basis which I hope was a comfort to her.

My brother Kevin and his wife Maureen came to town one weekend too, which was awesome.  We don’t all three get together that often and it was unlikely to happen at all while I’m working in PNG.

 

Friends

My friends in Tulsa really took care of me while I was home.  It seemed like someone was always willing to have dinner,  go to a baseball game, throw the frisbee around, see a movie, or just hang out in a coffee shop for awhile.

I thought I might suffer from some reverse culture shock when I came home, but I don’t think I experienced anything of the sort.  Dropping into my home city, driving the familiar roads and visiting the familiar faces was just like putting on a glove.  Of course, I really hadn’t been gone all that long anyway.

What surprised me was how much bigger my friends’ children had grown in the past 5 months.  I should have expected it, I guess, but they’ve all grown up so much.  Cuter and more precocious too!

 

Storms

If you’ve read much of my blog, you won’t be surprised when I say that I have a strong attachment to my home state of Oklahoma.  I’m sure others feel the same way about their states, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s just something special about the people there.

I left Tulsa to return to PNG just after the terrible tornadoes struck Moore, Oklahoma.  It brought back memories of the devastating 1999 storms and actually surpassed them in destruction.  I knew people who lost their homes in 1999, and once again I learned that a college friend and his family lost their home this time.

Oklahoma, for all of its good attributes, does seem to attract more than its fair share of tragedy.  Storms, earthquakes, domestic terrorism, economic depressions, droughts, dust storms, wild fires, and flooding seem to happen with some regularity.

What I find interesting is that the people always seem to rise to the challenge.  It would be hard to find a more giving or more generous people, united by both the blessings and challenges of living there.

Sometimes so many people want to help their neighbors in need that organizers don’t know what to do with all of them. As I was heading to the airport, I heard a story on the radio about a Moore area church asking for volunteers to help clean up their property so they could have a memorial service.  Over a thousand people showed up to help on a Tuesday afternoon.  Incredible.

SinceI left Tulsa, there have been even more devastating storms.  One in Broken Arrow, a neighboring city to Tulsa, was only about 5 miles from my home.  The one in El Reno, west of Oklahoma City, killed 20 people, caused massive flooding after 11 inches of rain, and at one point was making a beeline for Stacey’s house in Edmond.

You would think that many people would be making a run for the border after so many storms in such a short time.  I’ve learned though that this only seems to endear Oklahoma to the people and just makes them roll up their sleeves and work all that much harder to repair the damage, try to learn something from the storms, and be just that much better prepared for the next one.

I know it sounds crazy, but being away from the mayhem is hard.  I’d rather be there in the thick of it, ready to help if I can.  I know there would be people to help me if I was the one needing it.

(Note:  the photo slideshow on this post is just some pasture shots that I took in Craig County near Grand Lake.  Nothing special but they do remind me of home and its wide open spaces.)

Fortnight for Freedom: Day 10 – “We didn’t pick the time, nor did we pick the fight”

/ esteban

I had the pleasure to meet Archbishop Joseph Naumann briefly during the 2011 Catholic New Media Conference in Kansas City, KS.

This interview with him, published in the Catholic World Report, has some very interesting comments about the fight for religious liberty, social justice, the principle of subsidiarity and personal virtue.

Social justice doesn’t mean the state taking care of everybody, but empowering people so they can take care of themselves and their families. That’s the real dignity we want to help people achieve.

 

I so agree with this.  We have so many problems to address in our society, but in my belief, very very few of them must be solved by the government, the least effective means of solving any problem.

Does the state have some role to play with the poor? Absolutely, I think, in terms of a safety net. But that doesn’t mean that we keep increasing the number of people who are dependent on the state in some way. That, to me, is the direction we’ve been going for the last 50 years.

When the government purposely strives to have the majority of its people dependent on it for food, health care, etc., it is subverting the true meaning of that wonderful phrase from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

 

Fortnight for Freedom: Day 5 – Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

/ esteban

 

We, who by the grace of God are Catholics… must steel ourselves for the battle we shall certainly have to fight to fulfill our program and give our country, in the not too distant future, happier days and a morally healthy society, but to achieve this we need constant prayer to obtain from God that grace without which all our efforts are useless; organization and discipline to be ready for action at the right time; and finally, the sacrifice of our passion and of ourselves, because without that we cannot achieve our aim.”
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, Turin, Italy, 1922
(1901-1925)

 

Learn more about Blessed Pier Giorgio here.

Fortnight for Freedom: Day 2

/ esteban

Last Wednesday, on the eve of the beginning of the Fortnight for Freedom, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap., delivered a speech to attendees of the Catholic Press Association conference, meeting in Indianapolis.

It is a very sobering assessment of the war being raged against religious freedom in our country, and how perilous the situation in the Church is today and its ability to confront it.

I urge you to take the time to read his speech, which can be found at First Things.

Walter’s Tale

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This is Walter.  Say Hi!

Walter is a male cockatiel that belongs to my friends Andrew and Jessica.   I don’t remember how old Walter is, but he’s been Andrew’s pet at least 10 years I would guess.  He lived in St. Louis until about a year ago.

Last Christmas, Walter was a guest in my house for a week while Andrew and Jessica were away visiting family.  We bonded.  We shared Wheat Thins.

Five days ago, Walter flew away.  I never heard how it happened, but it was taken tragically by those that know him.   Walter has never been a free bird and it was doubtful that he would survive or be found. Continue reading →

Superbolt of Lightning, Very Very Frightening

/ esteban / 2 Comments

(Galileo!)

I had been having a rough night sleeping anyway.

Then about 3:30am, I was jolted out of sleep by something new.  It had been raining and thundering all night as it was, but I sensed something different was happening.

As I became fully awake, I knew that this particular thunder had been rolling across the city from west to east for a good 10 seconds.  As it passed my house, everything began to shake and the light fixture over my bed began to dance the hula.  No joke.  It sounded like it was ready to start dropping bits and pieces.

I started to wonder if this might actually be an earthquake, being so similar in sight and sound to the one experienced some months ago.

It took me a few seconds to focus on what was actually happening.  The ground was still, but everything else was shaking.

“Thunder-quake” some are calling it.  Apparently, it’s really a “super-bolt” of lightning, which occurs only 5 times out of a million bolts.

Thank God for that!  I don’t think my house would take too many of those.   Tomorrow I’m expecting reports of all sorts of psychotic animals and frayed nerves among the citizenry.

Here’s what the local news has to say about it.

Goodness, another weather phenomena to check off the list in Oklahoma.  It does keep things interesting.

Beatus!

/ esteban / 1 Comment

 

Last Sunday, I had the great privilege of attending the beatification Mass of Pope John Paul II, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.

From my previous posts, you may know that Fr. Roderick and I were in Rome a few days prior to this and saw the influx of pilgrims and the preparations on-going throughout the city.

On Sunday morning, after many people spent the night outside the Vatican and in the Via della Conciliazione, St. Peter’s Square was finally reopened and pilgrims were allowed in for the Beatification Mass.

I was very impressed with the way the security forces managed the crowd, and despite the long night and tiredness of the crowd, I did not witness any problems. Groups of a few thousand people at a time were let in and allowed to go through the security scanners in order to enter the square. It took more than 3 hours, but by 10 am the Square and the Via were completely filled, all the way from St. Peter’s to the Tiber River.

Fr. Roderick and I avoided the crowds and left the Friezen Church just as the square was getting filled. Somehow, we ended up in a “no man’s land” between the end of St. Peter’s Square and the beginning of the Via della Conciliazione. I think we were actually in a security lane, but so were a lot of other people who didn’t look like they necessarily belonged there.

Nonetheless, our vantage point was near the big video screen I’ve mentioned before, and at the very edge of St. Peter’s Square, technically standing in the middle of the street. We tried to keep a low profile so that security wouldn’t kick us out.

Mass began with the entrance of Pope Benedict in the pope-mobile. We were a long distance from his entrance route, but we did actually see him. The photos below were taken from the video screen, but you can get the gist. The crowd was quite excited to see him and you could tell that he was enjoying himself.

The Beatification itself was a fairly simple affair, occurring after the Entrance and Penitential Rites and before the Liturgy of the Word. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome, presented a humble petition to Pope Benedict, asking that Servant of God, Pope John Paul II be inscribed among the list of those Beatified. (This according to my attempts to translate the Italian).

Pope Benedict replied, according to the current formula, as follows (also according to my limited ability to translate Italian):

“Acceding to the request of our Brother Agostino Cardinal Vallini, our Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome, of many other of our Brothers in the episcopate, and many of the faithful, after consultation with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, by our apostolic authority we declare that the Venerable Servant of God John Paul II, pope, shall henceforth be invoked as Blessed and that his feast shall be celebrated every year on the 22nd of October, in the places and according to the norms established by Church law.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

After this, the Mass pretty much proceeded as any other Mass would.  I would point your attention to a terrific homily given by Pope Benedict about Bl. Pope John Paul II.    If you haven’t read it, you can find the text here.  The Holy Father’s personal note at the end of the homily is particularly moving.

Estimates I’ve seen put the attendance at between 1 and 1.5 million people.  Clearly this was the biggest gathering I’ve ever been a part of.  It was a highlight of my life to be both a witness and participant in this occasion, one I will never forget.

Here is a montage of photos from my vantage point at the end of St. Peter’s Square.  You don’t really get a sense of the size of the crowd, you can find those photos elsewhere.

I have no doubts about the saintliness of Bl. Pope John Paul.  As the proclamation of his beatitude was made and his portrait on the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica was unveiled, you could feel the electricity and joy in the air and hear the gathering chant of “Juan Pablo” as it rolled up through the crowd beginning at the Tiber River and ending at St. Peter’s Basilica.   It would be hard to experience that and leave with doubts.

 

 

“The Way” Movie

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The Way – Trailer. Watch more top selected videos about: St james, BBC

I have great anticipation for the upcoming film “The Way”, directed by Emilio Estevez and starring Martin Sheen.    It’s a fictional story filmed along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

I was blessed to spend more than 3 weeks walking the Camino in the spring of 2007 with my good friends Jim and Tom.  It was a great experience and continues to have an impact on my life.  I would like to walk the entire Camino some day, but until then, I hope this film will serve as a worthy reminder of that time.

So, take out your calendar and make a note to search out this film on September 30th.    If you’re lucky enough to live in Ireland or the UK, you can see the film starting May 30th.