John Janaro's Blog, page 63

Franco Harris Finishes the Race

Rest In Peace, Franco Harris.🏈

The 72-year-old Hall of Fame running back—who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the “glory days” when they won four Super Bowls and fielded one of the most awesome teams in American Football history—passed away unexpectedly at his home on Tuesday of an undisclosed illness. 

His death at this time has an added poignancy, coming three days short of today, the 50th anniversary of a play he made in his rookie season that transformed last-minute defeat into astonishing victory in a playoff game against the Oakland Raiders. Numerous polls of sports experts and fans alike in the U.S.A. have rated it the greatest play in sports history.

I remember this incredible afternoon so well, though it was 50 years ago.

The Steelers trailed 7-6 with only a few seconds left on the clock. On 4th down, Terry Bradshaw threw a desperate pass to Frenchy Fuqua. What followed is best expressed in the words that still echo in my mind:

”And the pass is deflected, incomplete… but WAIT, Franco Harris comes up with the football! FRANCO HARRIS IS RUNNING WITH THE FOOTBALL!! Franco Harris is running down the field. He’s running into the end zone FOR A TOUCHDOWN!!!” 

My father, my brother, and I were there… in front of the radio in our house in Pittsburgh listening to the Steelers radio announcer, broadcasting the game to local blacked-out Steelers fans (home games were not televised in the teams’ local areas back then). It was Sunday afternoon, December 23, 1972. Later, we saw the television replay again and again and again, but there was a kind of unforgettable craziness in first hearing it, live, on the radio. The announcers didn’t know how he’d gotten the ball. Everyone was so confused and happy. 

Franco caught the deflection near the sidelines, on the run, inches above the ground. And he just kept running. It was a “miraculous catch”—but that night, our local lovable, quirky, sports talk-show-host Myron Cope coined the term that would come to define the legend: the “Immaculate Reception.”

I was a week shy of 10 years old. I grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1970s… the “City of Champions”!🏆 I have some vivid and precious sports memories from those years growing up. I saw some great teams, great athletes, and even—in the case of the next approaching 50-year-old memory—the singular, magnificent heroism of Roberto Clemente. 

What makes all these memories most evocative for me is that they were moments I shared with my father.

Franco Harris, my Dad, Roberto Clemente—they have all gone to God now, as the Christmas Season of 2022 approaches. May God receive them into the embrace of His mercy.

Floating On Liquid Silver

“Mid-Winter Riverbank” #JJStudios

Here is an old memory. A quarter century ago, when my health was good and I was full of energy, I frequently went boating and fishing on the Shenandoah River. I remember one warm December day on the river. As the sun set at 4:30pm, the calm waters around my boat shimmered briefly with what looked like silver. For a fraction of a moment, I was floating on a mirror of liquid silver. 

I have tried many versions of this digital painting, but I can’t reproduce the color. I’m not sure it’s possible to capture the process of changing hues, glowing light and shadows, reflection and movement on that water. 

I can only say that for me it was a moment in which I was grateful for being alive.🙂

Agnese’s 24th Birthday 🙂

Happy Birthday Agnese Janaro. We love you!❤️❤️

Papa Builds a Tower (…well, He TRIES to, but…)

Papa likes to build towers by stacking Maria’s blocks. Or, rather, he likes to try. But Maria seems to get a special satisfaction from knocking them down…not because she wants to play with the blocks herself, but just because she likes to make “mischief” and get a rise out of her Papa.

It goes without saying that Papa is more than willing to be the “foil”—over and over and over again.😆☺️ But you can see for yourselves

While this video is on my YouTube channel, it is not publicly listed. The only way you can access it is through this BLOG, by using the line link provided only on this post: https://youtu.be/_P4W6MwXlQs . Or you can watch it in the screen below.

Winter Scenery

Here comes the Winter Solstice. While Southern Hemisphere places like Argentina bathe in the sunshine of Summer (as well as the World Cup), we in the North are just beginning the long DARK journey through the Winter months. It has been a cold and cloudy month of December, and I have been stiffer than usual. The wide vistas that December usually opens up around here have been somewhat more “muted” since we haven’t had many of those splendid, brief bright December days I enjoy so much.

We have scenery nonetheless, that provides material for JJStudios to work with:

The World Cup Belongs to Argentina and Lionel Messi

World Cup 2022: Argentina wins it all!🏆⚽️ And Lionel Messi—who didn’t need to prove anything to anybody—proved it anyway: he is a champion. His performance throughout the tournament was a Master Class in playing “the beautiful game.” He consistently created opportunities, set up his young teammates with brilliant passes, and did plenty of scoring too. Messi is an inspiration on and off the field. He knows his genius and the whole range of his abilities, yet he remains humble and is a model of a team player. He also seems genuinely devoted to his wife and three sons.

By any measure, Lionel Messi is one of the all-time greats. And his greatest strength is very simple: he loves the game.⚽️ 

Amigos e amigas di Argentina🇦🇷: Felicitaciones por una gran victoria.⚽️⭐️⭐️👏 

Lionel Messi siempre ha sido una inspiración para mí. 

Todos ustedes deben estar tan felices!🏆🎉🎊💥⚡️🌟 Woot woot!!!

For Christmas: “Renew Our Closeness” to Ukrainian People

At Wednesday’s General Audience, Pope Francis made a proposal for the coming celebration of Christmas that I think is worth emphasizing: “Let us renew our closeness to the martyred Ukrainian people, persevering in prayer for these brothers and sisters of ours who suffer so much. Brothers and sisters, Ukraine is suffering a lot, a lot. I would like to draw attention to the coming Christmas. It’s beautiful to celebrate Christmas, to have parties… but let's lower Christmas spending a little. Let's celebrate a more humble Christmas, with simpler gifts, and send what we can spare to the Ukrainian people, who are in need, suffer a lot, suffer from hunger and cold, and many die because they have no doctors nearby. Lest we forget: Christmas, yes; in peace with the Lord, yes, but also with the Ukrainians in the heart. Let's do a concrete gesture for them.”

How can this become a real gesture for us? There are many possibilities for offering financial assistance as a gift to the Ukrainian people. I have friends I trust who are involved in a group called AVSI. This is a service organization that provides help all over the world through personal collaboration with people in need, in concrete projects that address problems and build local communities. AVSI has been active in Ukraine for years, and has been helping refugees since the Russian invasion began. Any donations to AVSI-partnered programs in Ukraine will reach real people facing desperate circumstances during Christmas and the months ahead. A gift to AVSI will make a difference in the lives of these Ukrainian people.

In any case, let’s follow the Pope’s proposal, and keep the Ukrainians in our hearts this Christmas.

“Come To Our Rescue”

Here are some beautiful prayers from the Roman Liturgy for the third week of Advent. 

We are “grieved,” “walking amid passing things,” “await[ing] with heartfelt desire” for the “saving advent” of Christ. Our hope is in the Lord, to whom we cry, “come, we pray, to our rescue with the protection of your mercy.”

JJ is Frustrated, Perplexed, and (As Usual) Exhausted

These are days filled for me with personal frustration and perplexity, as well as anguish over many catastrophes in the world, and above all this vicious, corrosive war. There is no end of the war in sight, and we have no right to presume that we will escape its ravages. God help us!

I’m not going to hide it. I’m “anxious and concerned about many things,” and I feel like there’s less and less that I can say or do. In three weeks I will be 60 years old. I know, that’s not very old, but it’s “a little bit old”—as in “I-remember-when-my-grandfather-turned-sixty” oldness. Life is “powering down” in new ways after four years of big family changes. I don’t know how that mixes together with the health problems that have already long limited my “productive” activity. So far, it doesn’t seem to mix very well. Or, perhaps, I just don’t yet understand the new rhythm of things. I’m not even sure what that “rhythm” is, because things are still changing, and the possibilities going forward are vast for us and for those five people who used to be little kids under our roof. Children grow up—thank God!—and they become physically and emotionally independent from their parents. I won’t deny that certain aspects of our lives have “gotten easier” or at least less complicated logistically speaking. But we never stop being their parents, and our love for each of them accompanies their lives in ways that—at this stage—we are more aware of than they are. I think I have learned not to “worry too much” about them. (I should note that everyone is doing fine right now.🙂) 

And yet, I get into moods where I look at the world with a new kind of trepidation, and I wonder with no little fear about the future our grownup children may have to live through—indeed, the ominous events we may all have to face. I have read many accounts of the terrible evils endured by families in the 20th century, scattered apart by war, dictatorship, famine, genocide. Now in 2022, we comfortable modern Western people can no longer pretend that these are just stories from the past….

There is much to pray about. There is much that prompts us to cry out to God.

So I’m turning 60 years old. As a scholar, author, and—in whatever way I can still manage to be—teacher, I may be approaching the most fruitful decade of my life. I have learned many things, but I don’t know how to share the abundance of what I have been given. Maybe new forms will arise that I can use to communicate. Or maybe my active work is nearly done, and I am soon to be overcome by death or incapacity. Lord, have mercy on me.

As usual, I live constantly on the edge of exhaustion, but now I fear that other new factors are contributing to it. Writing is becoming harder. It demands more of my diminishing resources of energy and mental flexibility. I continue to study and ponder many things, but I don’t have the energy to share much of what I’m learning. At least, not now.

Writing is also harder because our society is becoming increasingly illiterate. It’s a strange new kind of “illiteracy” in which everyone seems to be reading and writing more than ever, but without understanding or patience. “Reading” stops at the level of impressions, which are superficially collected into labels. We crave simplistic images, which signal our ideological tribe (or our enemy’s tribe), which yield a primal experience of belonging and a pseudo-vitality of collective affirmation through the weaponization of words in wars of denunciation that have no rules. Everyone is outraged, and no one is listening.

In the last century, we saw whole nations endure “government” by rage—totalitarian rage—that used words in the service of vindictive and utopian ideologies. This was called propaganda. Today, we have multiple power groups raging against one another—we have contrasting ideologies that generate contrasting forms of propaganda. Their noise dominates what was once called “the field of discourse.” What is a writer to do?

Well, I’ll just have to keep writing. I shall write as well as I can, for as long as I can. It often feels futile, and I am tempted to get discouraged, but I intend to persevere (please pray for me) and leave the results in God’s hands. I’m doing more art too, although that is harder for me to do well, even with the ever-increasing digital aids that are being developed. Art has its own (often obscure) ways of pointing to what matters, or even “speaking” when words have been corrupted.

In any case, I will continue to study and learn in whatever way I can, in whatever circumstances I find myself. Most of what I learn these days only makes me realize how little I really know and how much I have taken for granted. The world is full of so many events, so many stories, so many different peoples, so many needs, so much anger and resentment, so much suffering.

I can’t do much to relieve the suffering that we see all around us in the world today, but I can grow in empathy, or at least in awareness (which is the beginning of empathy), because empathy takes time, and must overcome the powerful instinct to run away from other people’s suffering. But with God’s help and through his mercy, I can begin to suffer with them. I can offer my own loneliness and frustration, which hardly seems like much, but it is “mine”—inseparable from my “self,” which is constituted as a need and desire that I cannot fulfill by my own power (and I have lived long enough and failed often enough to know this is true).

Suffering is unique to each one of us, yet (paradoxically) it is something we all endure. Even in our greatest loneliness, our most solitary cry to God, there is a mysterious space for compassion, for offering mercy toward one another. This is because we are never really “alone.”

We are never alone. This has to do with the wonderful mystery we are preparing to celebrate soon.⭐️ We don’t have to feel sentimental about it, and it’s okay if our feelings are a mess. What matters is to remember that what we are celebrating is true. It really happened. A companionship began in a moment of history, a companionship that accompanies each one of us, in all our circumstances, in all our sorrows, destined to endure forever.

Buena Fiesta de La Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!