The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

BEFORE SUNDAY

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Resurrections are no big things
That they are noticed, Is
How many nights
turn to morrows
How Lightlessnessess
turn into Cockcrows
sans roll away Stones
The Truest Resurrections
don’t require coming back
from the dead
but just a stale breath yawn
a Snap-Crack-Popping Stretch
chasing away Night’s inkinesses
and opening your eyes
Waking Up

Before we can ever get to an EASTER SUNDAY
we have to go through the not so GOOD FRIDAY
that we find ourselves living one of our
biggest flaws:
NOT NOTICING WHAT WE RECOGNIZE
and then.          .         .

 

A RESURRECTION MANIFESTO

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Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

DEATH AWAKENINGS

I went to sleep
and never woke up
A-lay-me-down-to-sleep-can’t-stay-
awake-anymoreness-kind-of-sleep
To a not all-that-well-to-known-
kind-of-Hereness
And it wasn’t an Okaynessability
or an Alrightynessity
but an Is-ie-ness
A never-not-to-be be-unknowability
that makes any new day
A Death Awakening
An Infinity
not a new Reality
sleeplessly Forevernity 



DO MORE THAN LOOK.        .         .
SEE
NOTICE
RECOGNIZE
R  E  S  U  R  R  E  C  T

THE UN-CONFUSED THERMOMETER

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The Seven of Pentacles–Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the lady bugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

I came across this nice Spring Time poem as the weather forecaster is telling us that snow and wintry weather is about to descend down upon us
IN  MARCH
(uhhhhhhh just 10 days away from Spring)
which is enough to make any Thermometer
(AND US)
be a little more than confused

THE UN-CONFUSED THERMOMETER 

Sometimes a Place 
can have all four Seasons
in one day
that’ll schizophrenically 
have you guessing how to dress
so you’re not shivering or sweating
at any unknowingly moment
confusing the most sophisticated
of Thermometers  
And yet you meet 
THAT Heart
that’ll have you begging
for the harshest of Winter’s Terriblesnesses
so IT could forever be Warmed
Now any Caring Catalyst
S            H            O            W            S 
that it’s not the Season we’re in
we dress for
but the Season we bring
to the worst
t e m p e r a t u r e s
a confused Thermometer
can ever read.    .    .

 

SNOWING when it DOESN’T

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While others were complaining

about it

S              N              O              W              I              N              G

again

and yes,

I absolutely was tempted.        .        .

I caught myself

and literally stopped in my tracks for

just a couple of minutes

T O     R E C O G N I Z E   W H A T     I     N O T I C E D.         .        .

Amazingly

when I just did that for two minutes

and a mere seven seconds

The other side of the coin flipped for me

and instantly

instead of literally joining the Masses

and severely

C      O      M      P      L      A      I      N      I      N      G

about it being APRIL 8

and it was snowing

A          G          A          I          N.          .          .

i  instead heard the most amazing

symphony being composed and performed at the same time

by an orchestra and chorus of birds

who were in the snow like me

and singing back in defiance

WHO CARES, WHO CARES, WHO CARES, WHO CARES, WHO CARES, 

and I stopped  myself  and  S   A   N   G

back this amazing refrain from an inner voice

I didn’t recognize:

I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, I DO, 

and I did

.            .          .I finally recognized what I noticed

that  m o m e n t s

even those sprinkled with snow flakes

on a April 8th Sunday Morning

on the edge of an empty Church Parking lot

where bare brush and trees only purpose

were to collect rare Spring snowflakes

are  L I F E T I M E S

that never perish

and nor do the ones

who take the time

to recognize

what they notice.          .          .

I won the coin flip

to one of the biggest events

in my life

(this time)

but it was all I had

and all I wanted

in just two-minutes and seven seconds.          .          .          .

Recognizing what you NOTICE

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Back early in the Spring

I had a fleeting thought of

photographing/videoing

a tree that didn’t quiet explode

with leaves

beside one that

D       I       D

and I never

N          O          T          I          C          E          D

o           n          e

I wasn’t looking

expecting

noticing

seeing

recognizing

a tree with no leaves

beside a tree that was full of one

and then in the FALL

right before me

the magical

the quite-unexpected happened right before me:

A      TREE      WITHOUT      LEAVES

Sharing nakedly beside two beside and one behind

that hadn’t even changed color yet

let alone shed its leaves.          .          .

Maybe it’s the most paradoxical question of all time:

DO       YOU       ALWAYS       NOTICE       WHAT       YOU       RECOGNIZE ?

Sunday morning I was walking to my car and

I’m not sure if I saw it or it

 J                     U                     M                     P                     E                     D

into      my      eyes

but  at  least  for  this

O N C E     U P O N     A     T  I  M  E

.          .          .this one sacred moment

I recognized what I noticed:

a modern moment parable

gratefully

r     e     c     e     i     v     e     d 

and now humbly

s       h       a       r       e       d :

If you have a chance to

notice or recognize

eliminate the  CHOICE  and

DO  BOTH.        .        .

R E  C O G N I Z E

N    O   T   I   C   E

and at least in this case

WHEN    YOU    FIND    YOURSELF    EMBARRASSINGLY    BARE

SURROUND    YOURSELF    WITH    THAT    WHICH    ISN’T !

Monkey Wrenched

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images-3

Ever felt like a

S M A S H E D   P L A T E ?

S          H          E                      D          I          D

It was the Saturday before Halloween all the

W  A  Y

back in 2002

It was an all day retreat that I was contacted to do on

HOLY HELL

for a couple of Church groups that wanted to work through their

SMASHED PLATE SYNDROMES

S     H     E

was the one who contacted me; she was a Parish Nurse.

The day before the retreat, unbeknownst to me for these past 13 years,

S      H      E

had been diagnosed with MS.

I broke a plate using a monkey wrench

over and over again while asking:

“WHAT’S    YOUR    MONKEY    WRENCH ?  

I pointed out to the group that this was a harrowing sound as these smashed pieces jingled in the bag as I walked around the circle among where they were sitting.

I shared that this eery sound reminds us all of the one single day we celebrate every day of the year, sometimes with gusto:  HALLOWEEN

(Because of all of the varied and many masks we wear)

I told the group not to worry because psycho-sociologists have a remedy for this bag of broken pieces that sounds like a bag of chains with each step taken. . .

“PICK     UP      THE     PIECES     AND     GO     ON”

Problem:

WE STILL HAVE A BAG OF BROKEN PIECES!

B           U           T .    .    .

There’s a Universal law that every major Religion and all of the

N     O     N     E     S

agree:

ALL      THINGS      ARE      MADE       NEW

( Pssssssssst:  Which Spring doesn’t Prove THAT? )

I often tell every group I present before:

“I AM NOT HERE FOR THIS GROUP TODAY. . .I AM ONLY HERE FOR ONE, SINGLE PERSON. . .I JUST DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE OF YOU ?

Nearly Thirteen years later I found out it was

H     E     R

I conducted the funeral for a 95 year old gentleman I had never met before.  He was retired High-School Choral Teacher and there were many of his former students there.  I actually joked about what George Burns once said about getting THAT  old:

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT PEER PRESSURE”

S     H     E

was the wife of the Choral Teacher’s grandson.

S     H     E

came up to me after the service and said,

“You probably don’t remember me.  But I hired you to come to a Church in 2002 to give an all day Seminar for a group of grieving people.  I was one of them.  I had just found out the day before that I had MS and I know it doesn’t show that much but I struggle every day.  My MRI is a mess and I was a terrible wreck that day with where my Life was headed with this terrible Detour I had just been told.  You smashed that plate, telling us that our Life has a way of meeting up not so well with Monkey Wrenches that get thrown into the middle of our living.  I felt like those broken pieces and just when I thought you were going to leave us with,  ‘PICK UP THE PIECES AND GO ON’  you showed us that there was something much better than trying to pick up the pieces and futilely attempting to put them back together, or just going on. . .You held up a brand new plate that was a replica of the one you had just smashed and boldly stated: 

BEHOLD. . .ALL THINGS BECOME NEW !”

With tears trickling down her face she said,  “That day. . .that moment. . .you transformed my life.  Can I give you a hug?”

“TODAY. . .I AM HERE FOR JUST ONE, SINGLE PERSON. . .I JUST DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE OF YOU?”

What. . .

What message are you giving. . .

What One, Single Person needs The Gift. . .

DESPERATELY NEEDS

The Gift of   Y  O  U,  today?

Sometimes, it may take as much as Thirteen years to find. . .

Sometimes, you may never find out. . .?

S      H      O      W              U      P

Do not Disappoint. . .THEM

G          I          V          E

even when you feel

like The Gift is Empty

or as if it’s

N O T H I N G. . . .

images-4

Throw a Monkey Wrench at Something bad to make something good. . .

SOMETHING   NEW !

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man