Author: Charles Dittmeier

California Day 5

Our morning started with a 10:30 mass at St. Columba Church in Berkeley. It’s a Black Catholic parish and is a model for welcoming people and for active participation.
A bonus at St. Columba was reconnecting with Dierdre Savino, a former Maryknoll Lay Missioner in Peru. As a newcomer, I was asked to introduce myself, and after hearing my background, Dierdre realized our common vocation with the lay mission program.
After mass we had lunch and then went to a botanical garden but it was closed for a wedding. We then went to a museum but found it was for children. We consoled ourselves with some frozen yogurt and then eventually ended up at the McLaughlin home where Jim and Roberta gathered together some leftovers for dinner. A good day!

California Day 4

Today had a lot of travel but fewer stops.

Our first stop was near Santa Clara, to visit an ailing old friend of Jim and Roberta McLaughlin.
Then we drove farther south to Santa Clara to vist Marge Trant, the mother of Sr. Arlene Trant (R). Arlene and I worked together with the deaf community of Macau. Arlene’s sister Karen (L) was also with her mother today.
A photo of all of us with Jim and Roberta before we had a blessing for Marge before we left.
After the 1.5 hour drive back to Berkeley, it was decided to eat in a restaurant rather than cook at home. People were tired from all the travel in traffic.

California Day 1

Yesterday was a long day, with 7 to 8 hours of flying and at airports, and then starting touring in San Francisco.

The first noticeable element for me was changing planes in Las Vegas. There were slot machines all over the airport terminal, even at the gates.
Jim and Roberta met me at the Oakland airport and wanted to start touring right away after dropping my suitcase at my little house and walking around their neighborhood.

Then at 4:00 PM we watched the fourth lecture of the theologian Marcus Mescher online. He is really good!
Then we walked around their neighborhood and I saw some redwood trees nearby. They are beautiful. We also met their neighbor Ann who organizes an annual cookie fest.

Then we met with Maria, their daughter, and husband Randall and daughters Addis and Zella for dinner. That was lively and interesting.
We also met a man going to bible study who had an interesting T-shirt.
Jim and Roberta regularly take walks around their neighborhood.

St. William’s Church

St. William’s is a small dynamic Catholic community in Louisville who really express themselves in their liturgy. Their church is located in what is now an industrial neighborhood but members come from all over Louisville and their service is streamed online for others in 14 states and 6 countries. The spirit is great there and I attended their Sunday celebrations over the years when I was in town. And I attended there yesterday.

The church has been reconfigured to better locate and involve all those attending. The former sanctuary is now occupied by the musicians. Here they are practicing before the service.
The altar has been moved to the center of the building to bring everyone closer to the table.
Fr. Bill Hammer is the sacramental moderator for St. William’s but the parish administration and leadership is handled by lay people.

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