The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

False Identity

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S O M E T I M E S. . .

It’s not WHO YOU ARE

It’s WHO Someone Thinks YOU ARE

That not only matters, but which brings the most healing.

When you SHOW UP. . .

You just may not GIVE the GIFT you’ve come to render–

So much as Receive the Present you could no where else ever obtain.

When you’re falsely identified. . . you may never be more YOU than YOU could ever be or hope to be at THAT GIVEN MOMENT!

When you SHOW UP. . .

Hmmmmmmm…YOU may actually Show up…maybe for the FIRST TIME EVER in a way, even you’ve never recognized or that any mirror, real or magically has ever reflected.

SHOW UP…anyway!

Become THAT Image another needs you to be for them, then…NOW!

S H O W U P

Foul Ball

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Forty-Five years is a long time. . .but sometimes, not long enough.

July 2, 1969.

45 years ago to the day.

The Kid was 13…he still had about a month to his 14th Birthday.

His grandparents rented a Summer camp and it was the holiday weekend. There were lots of families, guests, relatives, cookouts, snipe hunting, hide-and-seeking, fishing, swimming and softball.

The Big Softball game.

The Staff (the older folks)

VS

The Stuff (the kids and everybody else).

He bought the Kid his first ball and showed him how to use it

He bought the Kid his first glove and showed him how to use it.

He bought the Kid his first bat and showed him how to use it.

The Kid was up to bat and HE was pitching.

The first pitch was way to high.

The Kid laughed and taunted him.

The second pitch was outside.

The Kid laughed and taunted him.

The third pitch was perfect. It was like a huge Beach ball coming towards him. He saw every seam of THAT Softball. He saw every stitch–all 88 of them.

The Kid hit the ball harder than anything he’s ever hit.

It was solid and it rocketed off his bat–fast–straight up the middle and hit HIM in the side. . . .

Ruptured Spleen. . .Surgery. . .Cancer found. . .ICU. . .Coma. . .Unresponsive. . .Dead.

A siren was never heard the same way again.

The Kid always thought that every one, every single shrill siren he heard, was coming after him…for The Murder.

There was no Dr Phil back in 1969. No Adolescent Psychologists. No Bereavement Counselors. Thank God, No Judge Judy. There was no real talking about “Issues.”

IT. . .

just stayed there.

The Kid remembers just a few days before his 14th Birthday, one night after dinner, there was a knock on the aluminum door.

The Kid was petrified to answer it while everyone else was in the dining room. He hadn’t heard the siren, they must have turned it off to surprise him so he wouldn’t run away. That’s what the Kid thought as soon as he saw the figure of a man silhouetted in the doorway.

The Kid, for the first time in his nearly 14 years of age was actually glad it was the Minister of the Church his parents made him go to each week.

The Kid doesn’t remember what Rev. Dozier said that night.

The Kid was shocked that he drove over 30 miles, over the State line from Pennsylvania to West Virginia to come and BE…to come and BE…to Come and BE…TO Come and BE…TO COME AND BE. . .

. . .with a grieving family and a Scared, a very Scared Kid.

July 2, 1969.

Forty-five years is a long time ago. . .but sometimes not all that long ago.

A Foul…a very FOUL BALL was hit.

Something much more powerful was Caught…and in 45 years…it’s never been fumbled, jumbled, or dropped.

THAT’S made all the difference in the not-so-little KID and more. . .

The Kid’s been able to do the same for others–

S H O W I N G

UP

Will Do THAT. . .

again and again and again….

An Honor–Not a Job or a Day

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Father’s Day was yesterday….

I’m not much for observing any day whenever it actually is. To me, right now, at this moment as you are reading this post, it’s just as much Father’s Day as any one that appears the third Sunday of any June.

Every year for the for the past 34 I’ve gotten my kids PRESENTS for Father’s Day. The logic to me, and I’ve taught them: I’M NOT A DAD WITHOUT YOU…THANKS FOR BEING MY GIFTS.

Yesterday was no exception, they all got Gifts of Appreciation from me.

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Your Last Words

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I’m Sorry.

I was wrong.

Forgive me.

Give me another Chance.

Is there anything I can do to make it better?

I love you.

Not bad words at anytime, are they?

They may be classic LAST WORDS…but that’s the problem, isn’t it?

We really don’t know the actual Last Words you we might speak to Someone else.

WOULD IT REALLY CHANGE ANYTHING IF WE DID–If we actually knew that our words, any one we may even be thinking right now, might be the last ones we either spoke, or that another might hear?

Of course we say, “A B S O L U T E L Y,” but Hypothesizing or even Knowing, is not really
DOING, is it?

But…but does that mean we shouldn’t try?

I complimented a hostess at McDonald’s yesterday. I told her that she has a real gift in dealing with people and how much I appreciated her not just taking care of me, but being most excellent at what she does. I went on to tell her that her cheery outlook made my morning brighter and because of her enthusiasm I was absolutely going to make sure that I would do the same with the people I was going to meet today.

She smiled and thanked me for being so nice. And then proved it by giving me three coupons, one for what I had just ordered and two more for future orders!

No big deal, huh? But, but, what if it were the last thing she ever did? Wonder if it was the literal last thing that someone ever did for me?

What if the last word you spoke before reading this was YOUR LAST? Satisfied? Room for improvement?

I’m sorry.

I was wrong.

Forgive me.

Give me another chance.

Is there anything I can do to make it better?

I love you.

Bless the Beasts and. . . .

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Bless the Beasts and the Children…great song, an even better idea and an absolutely fantastic feeling.

It’s a simple question that has usually gotten me into a lot of trouble and sometimes much hurt:

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET A LONG?

Seriously, it’s a question I ask with an immense amount of Compassion and apparently a lot more naivety.

I never could never understand as a child and now a past-middle-aged adult why we could just not get a long, why there were wars, fights, arguments? I guess I still can’t.

I have learned it many times as a Church Pastor, a Hospice Chaplain, a Team-Leader, a Speaker, an Author, a Husband, a Father, a Grandfather, a Friend, a Neighbor, a Person.

Listen, I’m not ripping the Pope. I have only heard what he said about Pets…but I still ask the same question as a dad and a pet owner of cats and dogs, and one time of lizards, geckos, a feeder rat, fish, hamsters, hermit crabs and yeah, even spiders.

I know, as studies have said, they’ve all made my blood pressure go lower and I believe, absolutely, higher at times.

I know I’ve told my dogs and cats things I’ve never told another human being.

I know I’ve cried when I have dug their graves in my back yard and laid them to rest.

I know. . . .

. . .and so do you!

So instead of some scathing attack of HOW DARE YOU’s or I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT’s or something(S) much worse and stronger…I’m going to emulate Molly, the dog I have laying beside me right now as I type this: I’m going to be loving, accepting, forgiving, cuddling, appreciative,

U N C O N D I T I O N A L L Y

I conducted a memorial service of a young hospice patient recently. She was a brilliant, caring, loving daughter, friend, lawyer, dog-owner. Shortly after she died, her dog died as well. Her vet said it was a broken heart. When the patient’s grieving mother asked me, hesitantly, embarrassingly, if I could hold a service for both of them this past weekend, I never paused when I said assuredly, “Absolutely.” Their ashes were mixed together in the urn, NEVER TO BE SEPARATED AGAIN….

I think when I grow up I want to be a little kid and/or his dog.

I want to believe, to accept, to love, to trust to love UNCONDITIONALLY just like THEM.

I want the Beast and the child in me to be Blessed…and I want to bless accordingly.

Uhhh, yeah. . .I have the naivety, the audacity, the compassion to think that could actually change the world…one pet, one child, one person at a time.

Join me!

The Calling

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“THEY SAY. . . ,” you will not have just a job or more, just a career, but most likely FIVE of them during your life time.

Gone are the days of working for a corporation/factory/school district/job for forty years to leave with a nice pension, 401K and the proverbial gold engraved Watch.

It’s this time of the year with Graduation Ceremonies abounding that we hear of 70, 80, 91 year old’s actually graduating. Their Retirement, better still, their Calling has changed. It doesn’t matter WHO they were before…it matters WHO THEY ARE NOW!

Us too.

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Sand Art and Baseball

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Cancer and kids don’t mix; never should. In fact, cancer and people, no matter how old the KID, never mix.

She just turned nine. She has cancer. I got to meet her and her sister and mother today, the first and most likely for the last time.

It was a Supervisory I made with a colleague, who was superb. We read a story about the different colors we often feel and are. We put different colored sand in bottles, carefully layered. We drew pictures, laughed, talked and laughed some more and then left.

I felt Compassion. It was a light-baby-blue color that lapped over me like warm Caribbean waves.

Cancer and kids don’t mix; never should.

I left there and drove 45 minutes to a nursing home and visited a 79 year old kid. She has cancer, too. She was eating her lunch and watching her TV with the volume almost up to the max. We didn’t read stories, make sand art or draw…but we did laugh. She told me of how some hospice volunteers and staff took her to a Cleveland Indians game and how she didn’t have A hotdog or A beer, but TWO hotdogs and TWO beers. With a huge, mostly toothless smile, she gushed about how a ball boy reached over the railing and gave her a ball–which she had secretively hidden so that it ‘wouldn’t roll away into someone else’s keeping.’

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Toughest Job

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3xM93rXbY

Is it the worst job ever?

To be sure, it’s ONE job, few would ever apply, accept, or keep…and yet, there are well over a billion that holds the actual gut-wretching-never-ending position.

And to that there are only Two Words, never said enough days before, Day of, or days after. . .

T H A N K Y O U.

Go hug a mom…and if you can’t. . .

HUG A CHILD OF ONE–hard and just a little longer than usual!

…happy mother’s day–Every Day!

When 60 Minutes Takes Less than 30 Seconds

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Did you see it?

I don’t normally watch 60 Minutes on Sunday’s…mostly because I rarely am able to put 60 minutes together consecutively…I didn’t last Sunday either; but you know what “THEY” say: “Timing is everything.”

I was REMOTELY switching through some channels when I chanced upon a 60 Minutes expose as it started…pure chance or….

It featured 104 year old Nicholas Winton. He was a young stockbroker in 1938 and he was severely distressed as he watched Hitler’s Germany march its way across Eastern Europe. When he was in Prague for a vacation he thought, “Someone should do something?” and he thought even more decisively, “Hey, I AM SOMEONE!”

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Love Past A Season

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WE say it’s easier if you love someone.

We say it’s easier if it’s a family member.

We say it’s the right thing to do.

We say it’s longer lasting than a Moment, A Day, or a Season.

We say. . . .

The truest Love wrapped in the warmest Compassion overcomes most likely everything in and out of this world.

That Love will grow weary.

That Love will become weaker.

That Love will Know all things, Believe all things, Endure all things.

That Love will never fail.

That Love will never end.

That Love is what we possess and have the power to parlay to and for the good of others.

Let someone else do it?

We are SOMEONE ELSE!

See. Be Free that wonderful gift that exists and you and begs to be shared…but never just once. It becomes more potent each time shared.

Make the Best time…the Next time!

Don’t waste too many breaths in between the two!

Love past a Season is the only Season that lasts and is worth Living…it’s always the Perfect climate! It’s the only time of the year that continues, any you’re it’s caretaker!

The World needs a little ‘SEASONING.’ None better than yours–EVER!

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man