Blessings

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

I pray that you are blessed. Everyone I talk to seems to say the same thing, “This summer has just flown by!” I know we say that every year, and the older we get the more it seems to appear so, but this year truly did seem to fly by. Perhaps it was the weather. We have had far more Spring-like-days than we have in a long time. I feel I just put my window A/C unit in and now it is almost time to take it out. The worst part, aside from the idea that cold weather is just around the corner, is that I feel I have wasted some beautiful weather and did not get out to enjoy it as much as I should have. For example, I just passed up a chance to go boating on Torch Lake, because I had some important “stuff” that had to get done. In hind sight perhaps it wasn’t as urgent as I thought it was. The song “Wasted Days” by Mellencamp and Springsteen keeps playing in my mind.

It is important to give thanks for these beautiful days we have been having, and I can’t think of a better way of giving thanks then to just go out and enjoy them. After all, we are the caretakers of this planet we live on. We are lucky to have a lot of beautiful places to go in a relatively short time, like Lake Michigan and all the other lakes, the wine country, and of course The U.P. I mentioned last week that I had spent a couple weeks up North. It truly is a beautiful place. It got me wondering, in most places I have lived there have always been a large number of locals who have never visited locals sites. Quite a few people in St. Louis have never been up in The Arch or to the St. Louis Zoo, which is always ranked among the top 3 zoos in the country (and it’s free). I wonder how many Michiganders have never been Up North?

We tend to spend a lot of time focusing on the things we do not have. We should instead, spend more time giving thanks for all the things we do have. When people confess such sins as envy, I sometimes offer a penance of simple spending some time in prayer listing all of one’s blessings. Start with the big and obvious things, like family and health and a house, and then work your way to the smaller and less obvious things, like having a house that is also a “home,” living in a 1st world nation, friends that have stood by you, the gift of faith, etc, etc.

If you find yourself upset because you didn’t wind the Mega billion try sitting down with paper and pen (or computer or tablet) and start listing all of your blessings great and small. You may also want to have a list of things you are grateful for not having, like a terminal illness, or living in a war zone, or on a flood plain. Keep the list close at hand, put it on your phone, and keep adding to it. Then whenever you are feeling jealous or envious of others take out your list and start giving thanks to God. It is easy to fixate on the things we don’t have, so much so, that it can blind us and prevent us from seeing all of our many, many blessings. So give thanks to God, and I suggest beginning with this beautiful weather we have been having! (I am writing this on Wednesday.)

In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick