John Janaro's Blog, page 256

My College Graduation... Thirty Years Ago!

Not much comment needed here. I graduated from college 30 years ago. That's thirty years ago. As in 1985.

My parents in this picture are both younger than I am today. Life is mysterious. It's also difficult, but it's beautiful and it's worth it.

Congratulations to all the graduates of the Class of 2015! God willing, the next thirty years of your lives will be as blessed as mine have been.

God bless you all!

No Cheap Grace, No Cheap Answers

Christianity is grace, but as we are often reminded, it is not "cheap grace." It is not an escape from suffering. It does not dispense us from the need to strive to live a genuine human life, to be obedient to the wise and loving plan of God, or to wage relentless war against our own selfishness.
Christianity does not provide "cheap answers" to the painful and mysterious questions of our lives. It is not a refuge from failure or a pretext to compromise with mediocrity. It is not a place to hide from our own weakness.
Critics claim that people embrace faith because they want easy answers. They want a package of solutions to their problems and emotional comfort for their hurts and fears.
But this is not the effect of real Christianity. It is not an anesthetic. On the contrary, it opens new dimensions of the questions of the heart, and sparks a deeper dynamic of intelligence in the search for understanding. It awakens a unique sensibility to our own wounds and a compassion for the wounds of the world. It engenders a love that is the opposite of power and domination, a love that has the courage to be more vulnerable, to be poor and humble, to endure our own sufferings and to be with others in the places where they suffer.
Christianity is not a list of cheap answers that take away the real drama and vulnerability of human life. Christianity is a Person who loves us and endures our vulnerability to the very end, transforming it from within. The "answer" is the way He embraces each of our lives. We are changed by living with Him.
We are not changed by a "satisfying explanation." We are changed by Him.

The Rosary and the Heart of Mary

Click HERE to learn more
about Stuflesser statues"Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:15).

We can join Mary, our merciful mother, in this pondering of love, in the singular gaze of the one who is the Panagia, the "All Holy" and the Immaculata, the pure heart that truly "sees God."

Mary knows Jesus. She sees Jesus. She has belonged fully to Him from the beginning, even before He took flesh in her womb and was embraced by her faith and love.

She sees Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection, in His glory, and in each one of us. We can walk with her and be led by her along her intimate paths of loving wisdom.

The mysteries of the Rosary open up concretely these paths of wisdom, prayer, and silence that bring us to dwell with Jesus within our own lives. The Rosary opens our eyes and our hearts to reality, which may account for both its simplicity and its difficulty.

Pray the Rosary, even when it seems long and dry and dull and entirely unhelpful.

Think about it: the Rosary is so human. It's so much like everything else in daily life. And just as we don't live very well, chances are we don't pray it very well.

But keep praying the Rosary. Don't ever give up on the Rosary. Mary accompanies us in the Rosary. She will lead us to pray it "better," with greater awareness and greater humility.
She will lead us, slowly.
She is patient with us. We must be patient with ourselves. We must take up the Rosary every day and do our best, and with each bead -- each step of the journey -- we can renew that determination and let Mary take our hand.

She will share her heart with us -- her love for Jesus -- through the Rosary and in the ordinary, mundane moments of life.

She dwells upon each one of us in her heart. She treasures us, the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, and keeps us close to Him.

I Still Journey to the Moon

I hope my friends on the Internet are not bored with "zoom lens pictures of the moon" that I keep posting all the time. I'm always thrilled when I can catch a clear shot. Here's our early morning waning moon:


For people of my generation, a view of the topography of the moon brings back childhood memories. We all had our "moon maps" and we knew where our astronauts were going. (I think the "Sea of Tranquility" is just beyond the shadow of this half moon.)
For me, at least, these are memories of wonder and amazement. I was only six and a half years old in 1969 when Neil Armstrong made his "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" and placed his foot on the rocky lunar ground. I remember it all. We watched on television, of course.
My brother and I used to get up early in the morning to watch the Apollo launches. I had models of the rockets and the lunar module, and -- like so many boys in those days -- I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.
It was the 1960s and America was in tumult. I remember playing in the living room in those days during the evening news and hearing machine guns and words like "Saigon" and "the Viet Cong" and "Cambodia" and "student protests" and "Richard Nixon."
As a child, however, my memory of the time is dominated by the images of the moon, and of the heroic effort of so many people who worked together, made sacrifices, and took incredible risks to make a marvelous journey. I new nothing of the "space race" or the politics of it all.
It seemed to me that the whole journey to the moon was driven by the desire to see it, to know it better. But it was too enormous to conquer, and so our journey was not about dominating the moon but drawing close to it, so that our astonishment about it could grow.
This is what a little boy remembers, in any case, and what he still feels when he looks up at the sky and sees the moon.

Hope in the Face of Death

Marko Rupnik, mosaic (detail) of crucified JesusMy hope in the face of death is Jesus.

My hope is that I will recognize Jesus in my own death: He who died for me and who "dies with me" -- really it's more correct to say that I am going to "die His death."

The drama of life and death is to abandon myself totally and completely to Him, or at least to throw my whole self -- however wildly and desperately -- upon His infinite mercy.

For me, hope in the face of death doesn't come from trying to isolate my "I" exclusively in the spiritual aspect of myself, while suppressing and devaluing the whole reality of being a bodily person. Sometimes we imagine that in death we become angels, and the human body is shed like a casing that never really belonged to us.

But that is not who we are.

I am a bodily person. My spiritual, immortal soul is also by nature the form of my body. My body is an aspect of me. That is why death, in itself, is such an impenetrable mystery.

But Jesus transforms death, and my hope is that in dying I will "lose myself" only to discover myself fully in Him. In death I shall "lose" my body of this present age in order to live fully, face to face with Infinite Love, as a member of Christ's mystical body (a member of "the Church Triumphant").

This is my hope.

The ultimate fullness of His victory will therefore include my own resurrection, so that the God who is Love might indeed be all, in all.

Josefina's First Holy Communion

Josefina after the Mass, with her Daddy.
This is 8 years earlier, before she had another setback
in the NICU. She was there the first 7 months of her
life. Many prayers brought her from then to today! During this past year, Jojo was well prepared by John XXIII Montessori Center's Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program. Here is a picture of her working on the Last Supper and using the materials to see its relationship to the Mass of the present time. Materials used in the Last Supper work.


She's perhaps the smallest in size of today's CGS first communion kids. Afterwards, we celebrated by having a lovely family dinner out.
Speaking of food, mine included this salmon and asparagus salad, and a beer that deserved (and got) a picture all it's own.

I'm Still a Teacher, Even Though I Can't "Do the Job"

Over the past four years, this blog has been one way in which my work as a teacher has continued even "after" everything came crashing down in 2008. My task has been reborn and even expanded in ways I never would have imagined before chronic health problems brought about my (very) early retirement from the standard classroom and the dynamic life of a college institution.

I've done an awful lot of "blogging" -- enough to have realized that a blog is it's own kind of place for communication.

I was going to commemorate with Internet bells and whistles my one thousandth blog post , but apparently I passed the thousand mark without even noticing. (This is post number 1005.) Although I have been posting more pictures and experimenting with multimedia formats, writing is still the main feature of the Never Give Up blog. I try to use my understanding to see the purpose of things and to express myself with words.

I also have a lot of problems. Nevertheless, even when I feel overwhelmed, I try to articulate what I think is the meaning that I'm seeking, or rather begging to see in all of it.

Sometimes I articulate it pretty well, and it "sounds like" I have acquired a vital understanding of deep things.

But please do not mistake this for any kind of wisdom. I am not a wise man. I am a desperate man who speaks and writes because for me the search for understanding has an urgent intensity. For me the need to think (at least while I'm awake) is like the need to breathe. I'm just trying to stay alive here. But I also know that in the end all my words must surrender....

Nevertheless, right now, I still have these words. And I have this desire to share my words with others. Indeed, I am charged with task of sharing these words with the persons who are entrusted to me. I am called to share the search for beauty and truth and goodness that propels my own life, to walk with others on this journey and to help them with whatever understanding I find.

There is a "light" that nearly always "stays on" somewhere in my soul, not to dispel my own darkness so much as to enable me express my experience in words -- my experience of weakness in faith and the obtuseness of bodily and mental affliction, as well as the strange and mysterious presence of Another and the hope He generates and sustains within me, a hope that refuses to go away.

A charism is at work here, rooted in the enduring vocation of teaching. I may not have a "teaching job" anymore, but I am still a teacher. I couldn't stop being a teacher even if I tried. When I perceive something -- even if it has only gained a tenuous and embattled foothold on the shores of my heart -- I am moved to communicate it.

I try to cooperate with this grace. It is an impetus that sometimes "overrides" my illness and my physical and mental exhaustion, giving me the energy and capacity to speak and write. (Unfortunately, "overrides" does not mean "takes away" -- rather it stirs around the whole mess and sometimes makes it worse. It helps too, however, in ways I don't understand. But that's another topic.)

This charism also works within a whole complex set of motives, wrestling with pride, self-love, enormous vanity, the desire for appreciation, and all the distortions, hesitations, and fear that come from my damaged mind and stunted emotions.

No doubt there are many wasted words.

Nevertheless, people find something in all my words that helps them. Not many people, perhaps, but a few. The charism shines through, because this grace has been given first of all for you who read or listen to me and are drawn by the Lord to see the mystery and the pain of life in a different way.

A charism is given to build up God's people. In that sense, the fact that I'm a bumbling, incompetent Christian and a hypocrite looking for applause doesn't matter. If you find anything helpful in what I say it's because He loves you and wants to encourage you, strengthen you, and draw you to Himself.

He also wants to shape my life, and I really want to live the truth of this charism!

Well... sometimes I really want to. Often I forget all about it, or I say something like, "Jesus make me holy... but not yet!"

Most of the time, I'm just afraid. I'm afraid of the depths. I'm afraid of suffering.

But something is different. There is this hope. I know He is here, He is with me. I have hope because He has touched my life and awakened hope within me. Hope is the living memory of that encounter and the fruit of His embrace that continues even when I can't "feel it."

It is this hope that fills me with an urgency to express encouragement: "He loves us. He is here with us. He will not abandon us!"

I feel like I'm nearly drowning in the flood of life, but something moves me to tread water and swim as best as I can. I sink under the water a lot, but in my struggle and thrashing I've also seen the land. It's not far away. And here we are -- all of us awful swimmers in these deep and strange waters -- and I can't help crying out, "Look, look, this way. There is the land. We are going to make it! We are going to be okay."

Colors of May

Cheery bold redbud,shadowy evergreen,wispy baby birch fingers   dusted emerald yellow,distant mountain aquamarine   dulled in milky haze,sun shifting open white folds of clouded sky.

Losing a Job is Like Falling Off a Cliff

We so often feel like we have an obligation to be in control of our whole lives, to have power over every circumstance and provision for every possible adversity.

We try to be invulnerable, because we fear that our own sufferings will impoverish and endanger everyone who has been entrusted to us. We think that our failure will make everything around us fall apart.

Having responsibility -- having others depend on us -- is indeed a very serious and a very real thing. It provokes within us the profound energy to keep working even in the face of many obstacles.

And we must do our best, every day, to invest ourselves in the responsibility that has been entrusted to us. Nevertheless, we fail in many ways, and sometimes our failures are dramatic and humbling. Sometimes we need help.

My name is John Janaro. I am a man, a husband, and a father. I lost my job. In the year 2008 I lost my entire career. Everything I had worked so hard to attain fell through my hands. I lost these resources not only for myself but also for my wife and children.

I have a chronic disability that places frustrating limits on my capacity to do any work. I don't know how to communicate this frustration and the problems it creates for a family. I live with it every day, and it's harder than I can possibly describe. We manage. My wife works, I do what I can, we live a creative frugality, and we have some help. We manage, but it's hard.

I also know well that health is not the only cause of occupational paralysis. Social and economic circumstances can destroy jobs, destroy opportunities, and overwhelm a person's resources. The enormous pressures of this constantly changing society are pushing people off their solid ground, and over the cliff.

Some find their footing again, in a new place that's better than the last. Thank God.

Many just have to grab temporary inadequate solutions. They try to shrink their own humanity as they grapple with the constantly shifting ground under themselves and their families.

Others just keep falling and can't see where it will end.

I want to say something, however inadequate, about people like me who are men, who have been responsible for providing for their families, and who have fallen off the cliff. I want to address the men because I am a man, but I also want to be heard by all those who love and care for such men, and those who depend on them.

I know that there are many men out there, husbands and fathers, my brothers, who tumble through this abyss of anxiety and humiliation. They are hindered by disability or economic changes or other circumstances. So many of my brothers lose their jobs and can't find work.

What a suffering this is! My brothers know they have something to give; they have experienced the hard joy of work and they know the value of its fruits. And one day, this work -- this constructive activity of tenacious self-giving -- is no longer possible for them.

They wake up in the morning, and realize with terrible clarity that there is no work for them that day.

Don't doubt this for a moment: they are ashamed of themselves because of a situation that they cannot change. They feel useless and disconnected from everyone else, even their own family members. But often they are awkward at forming or fostering relationships and are inclined to bury their emotions.

They are trying the best they can, but they are just poor little human beings. This is too much for them.

So they are falling through the gaping hole of loneliness and self-loathing, looking for a lifeline but too often grabbing onto things that let them forget, things that dull the pain.
I wrote a book about my own experience with this kind of stuff, about illness and weakness and suffering and the mysterious mercy of the One who refuses to give up on us. It has been fairly well read by many people in various circumstances.

I often hear from people who suffer from physical and mental illnesses, who are overwhelmed by life's pain, who struggle with their incapacities and incomprehensible losses. Most of the people I hear from are women. Certainly, many women face these same tensions as providers (even primary providers) for families, as well as the many special problems that come with motherhood.

I am always ready to walk with my sisters in solidarity, understanding, and support.

I realize that women often communicate with greater ease about their problems and experiences. Even though there is a vast array of dispositions that shape the human capacity for openness, not the least of which is the unique reality of each person, it often seems that women tend to be more spontaneously inclined to share their difficulties with others.

I wonder, though... where are the men? Where are you, my brothers?

I know that you are suffering, and that you feel helpless and afraid.

Surely we can help one another to bear our burdens. We can walk together, learn new paths, build in new ways, discover a courageous compassion, a virile tenderness.

Work and Gratitude

Work is living in relationship to the world.
I put myself into the ground I till
and the bread I knead and bake.
I build my shelter and my days
with patience and the application of skill.
I shape places for myself
and those entrusted to me.

Work molds the earth into a medium of love,
making stones into bricks,
and bridges,
or visions into pictures
and sounds and marks into words
that reach the heart.

Work is not selling myself,
reducing myself to a product for others to consume.
Work expresses me as a person
and its rightful wage is respect,
honor,
stature as a human being,
access to the elements of freedom,
resources to live as a person
and to care for those entrusted to me.

The adequate response to human work
is gratitude.