Memories

Yesterday when I attended a rally in support of democracy organized by Indivisible, it was the occasion for memories of past times.

Shortly after I arrived at the federal building venue for the rally, Bernadette Mudd approached me. Pat Mudd was a best friend and a seminary classmate before he married Bernadette. I had not seen her since Pat’s funeral. It was good to connect again with that part of my past.
Before Bernadette saw me at the rally, I was standing with the others and reflecting how, 50+ years ago, I was in almost the spot as a marshal for a rally and march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on one of his visits to Louisville during the civil rights era. I have had the good fortune and opportunity to be in the right place at the right time for some significant events.

Fratelli Tutti: Forgiveness

Speaking of forgiveness: The important thing is not to fuel anger, which is unhealthy for our own soul and the soul of our people, or to become obsessed with taking revenge and destroying the other. No one achieves inner peace or returns to a normal life in that way. The truth is that “no family, no group of neighbors, no ethnic group, much less a nation, has a future if the force that unites them, brings them together and resolves their differences is vengeance and hatred. We cannot come to terms and unite for the sake of revenge, or treating others with the same violence with which they treated us, or plotting opportunities for retaliation under apparently legal auspices”. Nothing is gained this way and, in the end, everything is lost.

Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti, §242

Fratelli Tutti: Kindness

Kindness frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships, from the anxiety that prevents us from thinking of others, from the frantic flurry of activity that forgets that others also have a right to be happy. Often nowadays we find neither the time nor the energy to stop and be kind to others, to say “excuse me”, “pardon me”, “thank you”. Yet every now and then, miraculously, a kind person appears and is willing to set everything else aside in order to show interest, to give the gift of a smile, to speak a word of encouragement, to listen amid general indifference. If we make a daily effort to do exactly this, we can create a healthy social atmosphere in which misunderstandings can be overcome and conflict forestalled. Kindness ought to be cultivated; it is no superficial bourgeois virtue. Precisely because it entails esteem and respect for others, once kindness becomes a culture within society it transforms lifestyles, relationships and the ways ideas are discussed and compared. Kindness facilitates the quest for consensus; it opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges.

Pope Francis, in Fratelli Tutti, §224

Migration

So many people are suffering so terribly and so unnecessarily because of the government’s policies and practices concerning migrants. Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti offers guidance for a way forward:

I realize that some people are hesitant and fearful with regard to migrants. I consider this part of our natural instinct of self-defence. Yet it is also true that an individual and a people are only fruitful and productive if they are able to develop a creative openness to others. I ask everyone to move beyond those primal reactions because “there is a problem when doubts and fears condition our way of thinking and acting to the point of making us intolerant, closed and perhaps even – without realizing it – racist. In this way, fear deprives us of the desire and the ability to encounter the other”.

Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti, §41

Louisville Changes

Sunday I took an early morning bike ride to Louisville’s South End where I used to live. I couldn’t believe how much it has changed since I resided there! Particularly my attention was caught in what used to be a lower moderate income residential area–and now is a HUGE parking lot for the University of Louisville which has take over a couple square miles of real estate. This is a view from a brand new overpass (named for Denny Crum, famed UofL basketball coach) on a brand new major thoroughfare through the area.

The view of the other side of the overpass is of a new L&N Stadium adorned with all the advertising of the big corporations that helped build it.

Coming off the overpass, I turned north and went along the main entrance of the stadium. U of L is a basketball school but they did all right by the football team, too!

Indivisible Palooza

Fratelli Tutti’s spiritual basis for the Palooza rally (described in the post after this one).

“Social love” makes it possible to advance towards a civilization of love, to which all of us can feel called. Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world. No mere sentiment, it is the best means of discovering effective paths of development for everyone. Social love is a “force capable of inspiring new ways of approaching the problems of today’s world, of profoundly renewing structures, social organizations and legal systems from within”.

Pope Francis in the Fratelli Tutti encyclical

Indivisible Palooza

The event had speakers and music inside the venue we used and outside at 12 booths like this one where people could get information and discuss many issues.
The last speaker of the day was one of the most engaging. He probably should have been scheduled earlier in the afternoon because by the time he spoke it was closing time and many people had left. (This was the first Indivisible Louisville rally and the organizers learned a lot today.)

An important part of such rallies is meeting fellow activists. I met two sisters I knew from Pewee Valley and Dan, a member of St. Lawrence, my first parish assignment.
Quite a few of us rode our bicycles to the venue, a small brewery in a downtown neighborhood with adjacent abandoned buildings and factories. Quite a setting!