It was mentioned once that I should refrain from going on crusades.  I can’t seem to help it, though.  I’m Catholic.  It’s in my blood.

Recently the Des Moines Diocese took up a campaign that has made its way throughout the country, known as “Catholics Come Home.”  It is an attempt by the Church to bring back into the fold the many Catholics that no longer active in their faith.  Chances are by now you’ve seen a commercial or two on TV.

The little rural parish of St Patrick’s discussed how they would like to take part in the effort.  Letters were sent out, and advertisements were ran in the local paper.  Not long after our decision to do so, Catholicism was making headlines.

An archbishop in another state had sent a letter to those under his care cautioning them about buying cookies from the Girl Scouts.  His objection was to a part of the policy behind the organization and where a small part of the proceeds may be devoted.  Not longer after the letter, other religious leaders of other faiths were quick to announce their support of him.

I thought it a shame that in our discussion of where to run our ads, we had never thought of running them in the St Louis Post Dispatch.

Under the Archbishop’s care are fathers more caught up in distant political events than they are their own families.  There are mothers more dedicated to living longer than they are anything else.  There are children who don’t understand the freedom found in freely choosing to submit.  There are those that are pro-life only as far as birth, those wanting someone else to change how they live so they themselves don’t have to, those who think charity is something that happens on election day, and those moved with mercy and compassion for their fellow men, but have none for any in particular.

All of these things lie somewhere in my own heart, and to all of these, the topic the Archbishop felt most needed a letter urging an examination of conscience was the Girl Scouts.  Some will be critical of my being critical of the Archbishop.  Most of them are freely critical of the current Pope.

Early Christians, I suppose, interacted with the Roman children whose parents killed them for sport.  They followed a radical Christ.  In His life He seemed to keep reminding the religious of the day that faith should be about how we live our own lives, not how someone else lives theirs.  There was a minority receptive to the idea.  The rest crucified Him for it.

The hypocrisy that sometimes surfaces is why some have left their faiths.  Christ remained, though, and who am I to argue with that?  To ultimately find that hypocrisy I need to look no farther than myself.  My journey is an imperfect one to say the least, but in spite of that and the hoopla around the Samoas, it is the one that will take me home.

That old ocean out before us,
just trying to climb ashore.
Did you ever stop to wonder,
what all its climbing is for?

It’s been forty years now.
That old ocean looks the same.
But my in all that time,
how you and I have changed.

I see you looking out there,
scared to make a sound.
If I could I’d walk there,
just to turn right back around.

I’d have what I always wanted,
that old ocean view,
it couldn’t be more beautiful,
the one it has of you.

It laps against the shoreline,
while your toes are in the sand,
That ocean has still got no one,
and we’re back where we began.

That old ocean out before us,
just trying to climb ashore.
Did you ever stop to wonder
what all its climbing is for?

 

Bull sale season is wrapping up now, and it hardly arrives or passes without my mind still going back to the late Fred Johnson.  As I got to know him in my early 20’s, he was getting into his 80’s.  Once a year we would visit for an hour or so, and in the process he would always relate the little stories that carried with them a lifetime of observation.

“You know I was once at a big Angus sale in Upstate New York.  I had wound up sitting beside a guy who owned a fine New York City steakhouse.  He had decided he was going to get into the Angus business, and he did so by giving $20,000 for a $500 heifer calf.

We had talked a little prior, and right after his purchase he turned and asked me, ‘So, is there any money in this business?’

I replied, ‘You’re damn right there is.  I’ve sunk a fortune into it.  The trick isn’t putting it in, though, the trick is getting it back out.'”

You’ve probably never heard of Fred Johnson, nor his now gone ranch of Summitcrest, but if you’ve ever heard of Certified Angus Beef, then you are probably familiar with his accomplishments.  And if your childhood memory is like mine, and you remember the lime green and yellow tile floor at the local McDonald’s, then you remember the culmination of the Johnson family’s Summitville Tile business.

The purebred business is a funny thing, made up of all types of folks, just like life is.  For some it’s the image of rugged independence, steadfast loyalty, and high regard for a reputation.  Fred never seemed overly concerned about these at all.

What is rugged independence, after all, but dependence so great it drives one to isolate themselves?  What is loyalty, but the willingness to do what someone wants you to do for them rather than doing what you should do for them?  And who, at our age, would be unable to come up with a whole list of the disreputable things we’ve done in order to keep our reputations?

The first time I spoke to him, he asked me if I knew what the most important part of a registration paper was.  After some hesitation, I simply admitted I didn’t.

“It’s the breeder’s name at the top.  If you can’t believe that, then nothing else really matters.”

Perhaps in order to believe it, you need someone who recognizes the dependence the next owner will have on it.  Someone who’s willing to tell you what you don’t want to hear.  Who has the humility to tell you what they don’t want to say.  I believed Fred Johnson.

In one of his obituaries, I found that Fred had been injured in World War II, and left on the battlefield for dead.  A couple of days later, they found he wasn’t, and he began a several month process of making it back to the living.  I suppose he had plenty of time for reflection.

It seemed Fred put his whole self into his life, with a tenacity and determination still evident in his early 80’s.  Maybe that is the trick, then, that allows someone like me to still get a piece of it back out.  We are all worth the same, some just have a knack for adding value.

A folded newspaper, with scissors in hand,
a child goes to work,
cutting paper hearts from the jumbled words of Man.

Producing a string, one for me and one for you
and I suppose all our neighbors,
Yes, I am sure they once had one too.

Decades of jumble, for hearts paper thin,
folded them back to the paper lines,
Children will cut them from again.

But why don’t we pull that edge there,
and let’s release our grip,
and smooth out all the creases, and never mind the rips.

And we will let the neighbors, keep the kids employed.
Up above the jumble, and the hell with paper lines.