...But bends toward justice," declared the iconic Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is.
But, how long, O God, how long?
Not long, said King again.
More than moral complicity at Auschwitz for deaths of some 300,000 Jews.
Mr. Oskar Groning, 93, claims now his oral responsibility in his role as Waffen-SS officer in the brutality against mostly Hungarian Jews.
His trial April 21st was telling.
Justice needs serving in this long ordeal.
The arc bends toward it as King concedes so well.
He is a frail man speaking in a criminal trial that teeters too for this money counter on a walker now.
And, Saigon's fall reverberates still today like that sorry saga above.
North Vietnam forces were invading as America was frenetically getting out.
In college at the time, I wondered what this all meant while my brother was killed in the TET offensive in 1968, a time of so much disorder, assignations as in Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kenned, so many more men and women fighters, including the demise of South Vietnamese pressing against colonialism as Communism was the U.S.'s take.
April 30th.
4 decades ago tis week.
Blood ran like a river. And, shrapnel seared and knifed my brother there, my parents were told by U.S. officials on their 25th wedding anniversary.
Armed international aggression for containment was our reason for that war and its woes.
Support for that war vanished as some claim the U.S. was gaining ground there.
We were divided then.
Perhaps, we still are. Fragmented, disordered we are for sure.
Warriors returned in body bags like PFC Lukas Ventline, and some 58,000 more American soldiers.
Traumatized are still others today. And, forgotten, in many cases.
How sad.
Clarity about Vietnam and our role needs claiming now.
It was all fuzzy for this college Freshmen at Saint Mary's, Orchard Lake, Michigan 40 years ago.
Coming clean on this and all war helps me mend an unhealed wound, let along a loop long overdue for closure and clarity in the arc of justice.
I still wonder.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Vacations for Catholics, and Others Also
A pilgrimage to Poland.
And, a special presentation Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 6 pm in the Hamtramck Public Library, 2360 Caniff Avenue, 48212.
Warsaw, Niepokalanow Monastery, Swinice Warckie, Jasna Gora Monastery, Black Madonna, Wadowice, Krakow, Wawel Castle, Auschwitz, Zakopane, and more.
Pilgrimage starts Monday, Nov. 9th with an overnight flight from Detroit to Warsaw, Poland at Novotel Centrum. End Nov. 17 back in Warsaw.
Discounts now to resigerat jimadair@thecatholictour.com, 888 878 8187.
Or, contact me at lawrencematthewventline@gmail.com, or, call me at 313 530 2777, a chaplain who may join you if seven sign up.
And, a special presentation Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 6 pm in the Hamtramck Public Library, 2360 Caniff Avenue, 48212.
Warsaw, Niepokalanow Monastery, Swinice Warckie, Jasna Gora Monastery, Black Madonna, Wadowice, Krakow, Wawel Castle, Auschwitz, Zakopane, and more.
Pilgrimage starts Monday, Nov. 9th with an overnight flight from Detroit to Warsaw, Poland at Novotel Centrum. End Nov. 17 back in Warsaw.
Discounts now to resigerat jimadair@thecatholictour.com, 888 878 8187.
Or, contact me at lawrencematthewventline@gmail.com, or, call me at 313 530 2777, a chaplain who may join you if seven sign up.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Sunday's Sermon
Shepherds.
I'm told to smell like them there leaders of smelly lambs, sheep! Pope Francis says his priests should smell like the sheep.
Go figure.
How true.
Like the Good Shepherd, Jesus the Lord.
Jesus went after the lost lamb.
One.
A single sheep gone astray.
Hired hands are paid shepherds like me, a clergyman.
True shepherds lay down their lives. Not counting the cost.
While in line at the Department of Public Works in Warren, Michigan, lines of people with pets waiting for immunizations for those four-legged creatures of God.
I wondered if we wait with the same love for our young children, the lost persons we meet daily, the addicted, the lonely elderly next store?
Would I?
Then, a founding father of this great nation who helped fashion the mission of these United States in its infancy when settlers arrived and natives faced them, Benjamin Franklin penned a newspaper piece, notes the Founders' Bible: The Origin of the Dream of Freedom (Signature historian David Barton), explaining:
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading or driving them out of it. ....There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them.
Franklin gave a litany of "bad fruits that resulted when the Biblical method of care for the poor was not followed:
An increase of poverty, ungratefulness, laziness, higher taxes with no resulting benefits, etc."
Yep. True leaders, in retrospect are those who don't seek their own well-being and flourishing but the well-being and flourishing of those who are entrusted to their care.
This is the path Jesus lays out for the fullness of life and its abundance.
It is.
How to do this, however, is complicated if love goes unpracticed.
God's love.
And, that of the Good Shepherd.
And, you.
And, me.
Shepherds.
I'm told to smell like them there leaders of smelly lambs, sheep! Pope Francis says his priests should smell like the sheep.
Go figure.
How true.
Like the Good Shepherd, Jesus the Lord.
Jesus went after the lost lamb.
One.
A single sheep gone astray.
Hired hands are paid shepherds like me, a clergyman.
True shepherds lay down their lives. Not counting the cost.
While in line at the Department of Public Works in Warren, Michigan, lines of people with pets waiting for immunizations for those four-legged creatures of God.
I wondered if we wait with the same love for our young children, the lost persons we meet daily, the addicted, the lonely elderly next store?
Would I?
Then, a founding father of this great nation who helped fashion the mission of these United States in its infancy when settlers arrived and natives faced them, Benjamin Franklin penned a newspaper piece, notes the Founders' Bible: The Origin of the Dream of Freedom (Signature historian David Barton), explaining:
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading or driving them out of it. ....There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them.
Franklin gave a litany of "bad fruits that resulted when the Biblical method of care for the poor was not followed:
An increase of poverty, ungratefulness, laziness, higher taxes with no resulting benefits, etc."
Yep. True leaders, in retrospect are those who don't seek their own well-being and flourishing but the well-being and flourishing of those who are entrusted to their care.
This is the path Jesus lays out for the fullness of life and its abundance.
It is.
How to do this, however, is complicated if love goes unpracticed.
God's love.
And, that of the Good Shepherd.
And, you.
And, me.
Stranger than Strange, Yet, Merit Checking Into
Rothchild.
Twice in the same day I was told to check that name out on google.
As I engage in the streets and at the office in counseling, I hear the strangest things.
Yet, this name merits my time and energy.
After all, one guy said that this name is richer than Saudi Arabia. He said Trump is "chump change."
Go figure.
Another said that Rothchild creates all the wars with people at one another's throats all the time.
Got to get to the research.
Sooner better than later, I bet.
Twice in the same day I was told to check that name out on google.
As I engage in the streets and at the office in counseling, I hear the strangest things.
Yet, this name merits my time and energy.
After all, one guy said that this name is richer than Saudi Arabia. He said Trump is "chump change."
Go figure.
Another said that Rothchild creates all the wars with people at one another's throats all the time.
Got to get to the research.
Sooner better than later, I bet.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Hamtramck, Michigan Historical Museum
Our American story is important.
We need to preserve it, and, tell this nation's history. Her story also.
For sure.
We're in the midst of an religious revival.
Religion seems to be everywhere in the public square.
We seem to be at ease with various expressions and faith traditions that the All-Faiths Festival has embraced for decades now in the metropolitan Detroit area.
Thousands of nondenominational churches are born each year, and, Buddhism has been accepted by native Americans in the past decades.
Still, there seems to be a void.
A big void.
A hole.
Even a vacuum.
Individuals and couples, even the married are looking again to seek God, fight fai, have fun, stay pure and endure without giving up in a culture of high technology and low touch and connecting with others.
Last Thursday evening, a handful of people took to the Hamtramck Historical Museum on Jos. Campau in that 2.2 square mile diverse town of more than 42 nations.
West Bloomfield Communications Director and historian, Greg Kowalski, and I spoke on family as the glue of society.
We recognize that transportation and technology, and, our worship of, and addiction to high-tech toys is bungling family life.
It is.
Quick fix.
Fear.
Blur of the real and false self.
Violence as normal.
And, living distanced and distracted lives.
Conditions of our time.
Pulling us apart.
How will we connect and commit again?
How?
We need to preserve it, and, tell this nation's history. Her story also.
For sure.
We're in the midst of an religious revival.
Religion seems to be everywhere in the public square.
We seem to be at ease with various expressions and faith traditions that the All-Faiths Festival has embraced for decades now in the metropolitan Detroit area.
Thousands of nondenominational churches are born each year, and, Buddhism has been accepted by native Americans in the past decades.
Still, there seems to be a void.
A big void.
A hole.
Even a vacuum.
Individuals and couples, even the married are looking again to seek God, fight fai, have fun, stay pure and endure without giving up in a culture of high technology and low touch and connecting with others.
Last Thursday evening, a handful of people took to the Hamtramck Historical Museum on Jos. Campau in that 2.2 square mile diverse town of more than 42 nations.
West Bloomfield Communications Director and historian, Greg Kowalski, and I spoke on family as the glue of society.
We recognize that transportation and technology, and, our worship of, and addiction to high-tech toys is bungling family life.
It is.
Quick fix.
Fear.
Blur of the real and false self.
Violence as normal.
And, living distanced and distracted lives.
Conditions of our time.
Pulling us apart.
How will we connect and commit again?
How?
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