At the church I attend, our Priest, will sometimes throw his
notes aside and just speak from his heart at homily time. Almost always, you
get the feeling that he is being extra serious about his job and he doesn’t
feel the need to quote others or dazzle us with flowery presentations from
learned people. He just seems to say, “If I can’t convince you with my own
words and actions of the seriousness, of living our lives through God, then I
have failed.” I really don’t believe that in this man, of whom I speak of--
that failure is even on the table. I think what sets him aside, at least in my
mind, is he’s in his thirties and it’s not the wisdom of age so many leaders
use as their credentials that drives him. It’s just some God given gift that
few people have.
So often in life I have met people who through their
examples change the very way you think and feel. It’s not just clergy, it can
be teachers, parents and bosses or your best friend or even the guy/gal next
door. Were cautious creatures, always sitting on the fence of life waiting to
be pushed or pulled one way or the other. Indecisiveness is not a weakness as
many might think. For most of us, it’s simply a time to stop and think before
we leap. Did you ever notice, why it is so easy to walk forward and so hard to
walk backwards? That’s mostly because walking forward seems to be filled with
hope, opportunity, an eye to the future and a goal in mind and your looking
right at it. Walking backwards smacks of retreating blindly, failure and
somehow, starting back over again.
My life has long been fraught with one step forward and two
steps back and I often think-- such wasted energy. Have you every wondered why
older people seem to be more content? Yes I know-- and I agree, they’re mostly
retired and they have less going on in their lives, so consequentially they
have less to get upset about. But I think it’s also because they have been
there and done that and even if they are physically walking slower then ever,
they seem to be one step ahead of others. This is because their efforts are
mostly in the right direction. True most old people don’t take direction very
well anymore but unless their minds are weak they seem to seldom need
direction.
But back to what I was talking about on the first paragraph.
People whom at a young age seeming to already have a following. Last Sunday
this same Priest talked about Peter and how for a while he didn’t really trust
his Lord. But then he relented and
went back to follow him. Trust is what it’s really about isn’t it when we look
for a leader? We have an election coming up and the politicians are jockeying
around trying to win over our hearts and our votes. But we don’t trust them
anymore. My question is this. Where is that man or woman whom we will trust to
lead us? Has our government gotten so tainted that they are all bad? Do we have
to pick from a blowhard business man or a Secretary of State whom no one seems
to trust, or a wishy washy ex governor? Where is the person who will shun the
wishes of the lobbyists and the political parties? The person who will say “no”
to the leeches who sponge of our government and “yes” to those who want a
better life for all of us. Where is that person, who will be his or her own
person and one that we can trust?
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