John Janaro's Blog, page 185

Father and Youngest Daughter, Spring 2018

Here is a current picture of Daddy and Jojo. These kinds of pictures are not so easy to get as they used to be. It's been a while since Jojo was the "camera ham" in the house.
If this picture looks "fancy," it's because I did a little work on the background.
Because of the way we were sitting, this picture might make Josefina look a bit taller than she is. She remains petite, but she's healthy and growing at her own pace. And there's no mistaking her for a "little kid"—she's got a keen look in her eyes and a bright and intelligent face. It shows how much she really is maturing!

A Day for Our Mothers

Yesterday we celebrated the mothers among us here in America, or we remembered them, missed them, mourned for them.

Mothers, in turn, enjoyed the special attention. Some also, no doubt, were surprised by a moment of reconciliation with estranged children, or contact with distant children. These moments are meaningful even if they don't last very long.

The strength, the persistence, and the paradoxical frailty of human nature: how vividly this drama plays out in the life of every family—with motherhood at the heart of it all. Mothers are the vital connecting links between generations. They have a fundamental, relational empathy that affects their experience of all the joys and burdens and accomplishments and suffering of family life.

Motherhood is essential. It is powerful. It is awesome. It is vulnerable.

My kids have an amazing mother. They know it, even though they often forget or take it for granted, as kids will do. Eileen is a person of tremendous gifts and capabilities, and right now she is using all of them in order to stay strong in the midst of complex difficulties and challenges in our family, and in her work as an educator at John XXIII Montessori who mentors and assists so many other families.

I love my wife, and I admire her. I am so grateful for her.

I also know another amazing mother. We spent yesterday afternoon with her. My own mother is a great woman—brilliant, profound, sympathetic, ardent, a lover of the truth—who has spent a large part of her life battling against her own health problems and has endured so much suffering. Now in her 80th year of life and 58th year of marriage, she is called to live new depths of vulnerability in front of my father's advanced dementia and physical breakdown.

She remains very lucid in her mind, but in a different way the core of her suffering is as hidden from me as what my father is going through. We continue to do everything we can for her, knowing that we can't take away all the pain. We have to accompany her in her sorrow.

Jesus did not come into the world to take the pain and suffering out of life. Indeed, real faith is the exact opposite of finding a facile solution for our problems. Jesus assured the disciples, "You will weep and mourn" with a grief that is real, that cannot be explained away, that finds its resolution only in the presence of His love which proves itself always greater: "But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you" (John 16:20, 22).

Spring Reawakening

This was originally a photograph I took a few days ago. I used it to make a work of "digital art," to convey some of the feeling of the reawakening of the trees, the grass, the whole ambient that emerges after the Spring rains.
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Christina Grimmie's Legacy Has Just Begun

There is an old tradition of marking the one month anniversary of a person's death with special remembrance and prayer. It is unusual, however, to continue marking every month for 23 months (and counting...).
Christina Grimmie is simply unforgettable.
There are many reasons for this, one of which is the pioneering role she played in helping to carve out a new space for artists to express their creativity. For her own part, she filled that space for seven years with the gratuitous gift of her enormous talent and her inspiring human presence and goodness.
In these past two years, the Grimmie family has continued to foster her musical legacy, and has opened new avenues for the movement of love that Christina initiated from within her own beautiful heart. Tomorrow, the Grimmie family will release another of Christina's original songs, and Team Grimmie "frands" from literally all over the world will continue to share their own creative tributes to her in a wide variety of forms and venues.
What is it about Christina Grimmie? She was a sweet, kind, fun-loving human being; she was an extraordinarily talented young person whose life was taken too soon; she was very much a normal girl beginning to become a lovely young woman; she had a bright future yet she was still accessible and authentic and grounded.
It was a tragedy that should cause us sorrow, even if we never knew her. There are too many tragedies like this in our poor, violent, and suffering world.
But with Christina there is something more; something that has cast a wide circle of impact, and that continues to resonate, to endure, and to grow.
In her 22 years in this world, Christina Grimmie took up the popular music idiom and the means of communication of our time and changed them , not only by her singular, spectacular voice, but above all by investing them with her own person, through her courage to take risks, her persistent desire to give of herself, and the deep gratitude that she expressed for life and other people.
It has become impossible for an old cynic (like me) to say, "There's no way anything good can come from pop culture today" or "there's nothing good that can come from all this crazy new media."
...Because...there is Christina Grimmie!
Something good has already happened in the midst of our deeply ambivalent culture, a space for love has opened up, and that space can grow.
No one knows what the future holds, but insofar as music and communications media increase in their capacity to bring people together in authentic human ways, Christina Grimmie will be remembered as one of the protagonists who took the first steps and opened the doors to new possibilities.
She will be remembered, and honored and loved.
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Original photo credit to owner (please notify me for any appropriate citation). Text and layout are by John Janaro. Credit to Christina Grimmie for being an inspiration to us all...and to Jesus Christ her Lord who gave her the gift of her voice, whom she loved and for whom she sang.

Vulnerability: We Cannot Escape It

These days I fumble around searching for "where-to-put-my-feet-on-the-ground" when it comes to having a meaningful relationship with my Dad. He speaks incoherently, drawing out—from what he can still picture in the advanced dementia of his failing brain—fragments of impressions and experiences of a lifetime, making them into a puzzle that neither he nor any of us can solve.

He is being called to endure a strange sorrow, and though I don't know how to understand what he's going through or even enter into it, I know that I must accompany him through it, somehow, in whatever way I can, to the very end.

He will never get "better," at least not in this world, not in any sense that I can yet grasp or relate to experientially.

We humans have all this stuff in our amazing 21st century, all this power... but in the end, does it really matter for our lives? Sooner or later, we become helpless, or our loved ones are powerless and we can't help them, we can't "restore" them.

Vulnerability is inescapable. We all must pass through it, and the passage is unfathomable and can seem unbearable. But we must not give up.

The reasons why life is worth living, suffering worth enduring, and compassion worth giving haven't changed.

It is all the more necessary to hold onto these essential reasons, to remember them, to return to them when everything else fails us. In those moments, we see the demands of reality stripped of false sentimentality, stark but vivid.

No matter what their condition, appearance, or capacities may be, the existence of every human person is good. The human person, as such, deserves to be loved.

The awesome dignity of each human being is beyond anything we can construct or even define.

Now more than ever, as we vacillate between the illusion that we have the power to do anything and the fear that nothing we do has any value, we must be true to the mysterious gift and the ineradicable worthiness of every single human person.

This truth will take us through dark places. Don't give up.

We are left with the cry for help. We reach up for a hand in the dark, hoping to be grasped even when we don't know it, even when the waters envelop us and we feel ourselves to be drowning.

We hope beyond consciousness to be buoyed up and carried to the distant shore.

"Teacher Appreciation Day"

So today, apparently, was "Teacher Appreciation Day." Good teachers deserve appreciation, certainly more than they usually get.

Therefore, I salute all my colleagues who work in classrooms and labs, on faculties, in schools and universities, and who struggle to do their best even in the most difficult circumstances.
They have dedicated their lives to helping people who seek wisdom and trying to wake up those who don't.

They apply their learning, experience, and creativity to guide others on the journey to understanding.
On that journey they carry the best maps and tools they can find, point at things that are important, sometimes clear cluttered paths or find new ones, and try to warn the others about wrong turns and dead ends, and especially about intellectual cliffs and intellectual snake pits.
Nothing makes them happier than when those who followed their guidance for a time in the classroom graduate with the readiness to put their feet firmly on the ground of life, take up their vocations as adults, and become companions and even friends.

Christ Our Passover has been Sacrificed

The celebration of the Sacred Liturgy takes us "inside" the miracle of that central event that defines all of history and is the beginning of the New Creation.
In the Roman Rite, the Preface that leads into the Eucharistic Prayer during the Easter Season is particularly rich in content and beautiful imagery. There are five options during Easter, which differ primarily in the middle, where several lines highlight different aspects of the Paschal Mystery.
We hear these words so often that we could easily get used to them and think that we have comprehended their meaning. However, the truth is that the text of the Mass provides a wealth of material for prayer and meditation, and there is value even in "spending time alone" with the Missal, letting ourselves be formed by the words used in the Church's public worship.
Below I have take the distinct sections from each of the five Prefaces and put them together. The priest publicly addresses these words to the Father, which I have indicated in brackets where the word "You" appears in the liturgical text.
Putting these brief passages together provides an opportunity to pray and ponder and contemplate the various facets of the "Immortal Diamond" that is the mystery of Salvation:
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.
[1] He is the true Lamb who has taken away the sins of the world;by dying he has destroyed our death,
and by rising, restored our life.

[2] Through him the children of light rise to eternal life
and the halls of the heavenly Kingdom are thrown open to the faithful;
for his Death is our ransom from death,
and in his rising the life of all has risen.

[3] He never ceases to offer himself for us
but defends us and ever pleads our cause before [the Father]:
he is the sacrificial Victim who dies no more,
the Lamb, once slain, who lives for ever.

[4] With the old order destroyed,a universe cast down is renewed,
and integrity of life is restored to us in Christ.

[5] By the oblation of his Body,
he brought the sacrifices of old to fulfillment in the reality of the Cross and,
by commending himself to [the Father] for our salvation,
showed himself the Priest, the Altar,
and the Lamb of sacrifice.

His Kindness Endures Forever

Rome Students: Welcome Back!

Dear STUDENTS who have just returned from their Semester in ROME: Welcome Back! I thought you might like a few tips that will help you to readjust to life in the United States of America (the USA, which the Italians call "ooozaa"

Human Relationships: Loving Our Enemies...Really?

In human life we so often emphasize "doing" and "having," and tend to lose sight of the most basic value of being. The dignity of the human person, however, is rooted in who he or she is - first and fundamentally.

In a similar way, human relationships have real depth insofar as they are constituted first by "presence," by "being-with" one another in a personal sense. Personal presence is especially expressed in sharing experience, dialogue, intersubjectivity, mutual understanding, suffering-with one another, staying with and accompanying one another.

Underlying even these features of the vitality of human relationships, however, is a more fundamental reality: the reality of "being-together." We are made "for one another" and entrusted to one another in real life. We are called to "love our neighbor"—which indicates the person who is "near" to us, who is in some way "given to us" within the circumstances of our lives.

There is a particularly difficult aspect of this vocation to love that we cannot avoid: we are called to love even our enemies. What does this actually mean?

Authentic love, first of all, is founded on realism. "Being-together" is radical to our humanity, and it has an impetus to be expressed and lived in interactive relationships within nurturing and vital communities of mutual trust and solidarity. But there are real circumstances that block these normal modes of expression.

Alas, there are all too many of these "blocks." How can we "love" in such situations?

We may need to avoid proximity to a person because they are dangerous to us or those who depend on us. We may need to find space to tend and manage deep and complex wounds inflicted upon us by people who are precisely "enemies" because they have done violence to us in the interpersonal realm. This is most difficult when the "enemy" is someone who has betrayed our trust.

Anyone in such a situation must remember that love is founded on realism. It needs to become clear that love is hard in reality, which means it's tough. This is no time for a false sentimentality about love being able to fix things like magic; it's no time to confuse real love with a dependence based on fear or lack of self-worth.

If a person you think loves you is actually hurting you and abusing you, GET AWAY FROM THAT PERSON and get help!!

Sadly, this abuse and violence happens in various but all-too-real ways in interpersonal relationships, in family relationships, in community relationships. When we "go away" from such people, it shouldn't be said that we are "creating a conflict" by "distancing ourselves" from the "togetherness" of a relationship.

Rather, we are merely recognizing that the other or others have made themselves our "enemies." They have created this interpersonal "distance" by doing violence to us as persons; they have wounded the relationship by establishing our need to live a physical and emotional "space-apart" or even a position of vigorous self-defense if the other refuses to respect this space.

We can (and must, in ordinary circumstances) make and protect a physical and psychological "space-apart" from those who have made themselves our enemies. But we can never choose to hate these persons.

Here it is very important to distinguish the choice of our freedom from the normal psychological experience of feelings of aversion, or the more complex distortions of emotion induced or aggravated by trauma or other factors. This can be a confusing and conflicted experience, and we must not "face the enemy" alone but with the help of others who recognize the danger that threatens us.

The crucial aspect of "loving our enemies" is a matter of freedom. If we choose to hate our enemies, then we become people who hate, people who set our hearts against the dignity of certain human persons and begin to attack the very foundations of the basic human bond we share. Thus violence begets more violence.

If we choose not-to-hate, however, then in a radical sense we are "together with" our enemies, respecting their dignity as persons even when we must defend ourselves against them or remove ourselves from the reach of their aggression.

to be continued ...