Pots, pans and belonging

This is Mr. Weber's address to the student body on Monday, April 20, 2009.

What a weekend--the Taylor Swift "You Belong with Me" video, ball games, pre-Prom dinners, the Prom itself, post-Prom parties, and the Societas induction ceremony on Sunday! All of us, I suspect, are a little tired this morning. I’d like to publicly thank Ms. Champlin for working so hard to make Prom a success, all the teachers who volunteered for duty on Friday night to help the video go smoothly, Dr. Caron for organizing the induction ceremony, and all of the JPII student body for making the weekend worth the effort. At 11:30 on Friday night, having worked with you for over 8 hours, the director of the video told me, “This is an awesome student body. We definitely chose the right school to make this video. They’re first class, all the way.” I told him I agreed with him—you’re amazing!

One final note about the weekend: They told me it would take in the neighborhood of 3 weeks or so to finish the editing and release the video. If that occurs before we’re out of school, I asked them if we could watch the video here at JPII in a school assembly the day it’s released, and they agreed. Let’s hope that happens. It will be fun to watch it together.

So, we’re back to the ordinary again, but that’s a good thing. Many people go through their lives a thrill at a time, always looking forward to the “next big thing”, while not paying enough attention to their daily lives, which, in the case of a high school means attending class, studying, and appreciating our friends.

St. Teresa of Avila once said: “God dwells among the pots and pans”. She means that people too often look for God in lofty places—in grand cathedrals, perhaps, or some deeply moving religious service—and fail to notice that God speaks to us more often within the routine of our lives—through our friends, our teachers, our family and through the ordinary.

We have about a month of school left. As we complete our year together, let us remember the words of St. Teresa, so that we can appreciate all the ways in which God daily speaks to us and blesses us. We are attracted to so many things, but he wants us, ultimately to be close to him. The message of this Easter season is that despite our deepest pessimism about the human condition, ultimately, God’s love reigns. We may veer away, we may sin, we may forget who we are, but ultimately, God tells us something we know deep down in our hearts. He tells us: “You belong with me.”

Windows, not Mirrors

This is Mr. Weber's address to Our Lady of Lake CCD students on Wednesday, November 20, 2008.

I have something of a brainteaser for you.

There’s a true story of a corporation in Dallas that spent several 100 million dollars building a new corporate headquarters—a 50 story building featuring all the amenities. Besides giving their employees more room, the leaders of the corporation hoped that moving into this new building would improve corporate morale.

However, when the big day came for the employees to move in, they realized they had made a terrible mistake. Apparently, the elevator system they installed was too slow, such that all their employees began to complain. It got to the point after several weeks that the leadership began to think the new building was actually hurting morale, and were on the verge of ripping out the brand new elevator system to put in a faster one, which would have cost the company over 10 million dollars.

But before they made that decision, they decided to hire an industrial psychologist to study the problem. The psychologist came to the new building, rode up and down the elevators with employees several times, walked into corporate headquarters and made a suggestion that would only cost the company about $1,000. The company took his advice and from the moment they did, complaining almost completely stopped. The original elevator system is still in use today.

Q. What did the expert suggest?

A. Install mirrors inside the elevators. Once the mirrors were installed, the employees spent so much time primping and inspecting themselves, they forgot all about the slow elevators.

That’s a true story, but there is a kind of parable-like quality to it in terms of what it says about us. It is reminiscent, I believe, of the story of Narcissus from Greek and Roman mythology. You remember the story. Narcissus (Nar-SIS-us) became thirsty and went to drink from a stream. When he saw his reflection in the water, he fell in love with it, not knowing that it was himself. As he bent down to kiss it, it seemed to "run away" and he was heart broken. He grew thirstier but he wouldn't touch the water for fear of damaging his reflection, so he eventually died of thirst and self love, staring at his own reflection.

There is within us, I think, a certain amount “narcissism” –vanity and self-centeredness--that makes us unaware of our surroundings, and certainly unaware of the needs and struggle of others. The “mirror” becomes a kind of symbol of that, and perhaps even a symbol of our society today. We don’t need more mirrors. Instead, we need windows that help us look outside ourselves and see the needs of others.

My prayer is that the Christian Service internship is an opportunity for you to create windows in your life. May you see through those windows clearly and have the compassion and courage to act on what you see.

Go Make a Difference

This is Mr. Weber's address to the JPII student body on November 11, 2008.

We sing a song at our school masses occasionally, called “Go Make a Difference”. The lyrics are very simple: “Go make a difference, you can make a difference. Go make a difference in this world”.

Well, if you lean to the slightly cynical, as I do from time to time, you’re thinking: In the face of massive poverty, war, starvation in some parts of the world, and the all pervasive influence of sin, can we REALLY make a difference, or is this just polly-annish Christian do-goodism?

A thought experiment:

According to the World Data Base, as on June of this year, the world’s population was 6,673,286,767 and growing at an annual rate of 1.17%.

Suppose, by some catastrophic world event that shattered the faith of everyone in the world except for you, that you ended up the world’s only Christian. Since you believe it’s very important--most important, in fact-- you try and convert people back to the Christian faith.

Suppose a modest estimate is that you bring back only 2 people into the faith each year, and that these new Christians bring back 2 new Christians each year. So after year there are 3 of you, after year two there are 9, after year 3 there are 27, etc.

How many years would it take before the entire world became Christian, at that rate?

Just 21 years—the whole world could be Christian in just one generation.

But that’s starting from just one. Though estimates vary, there are approximately 2 billion Christians in the world today, or just less than 1/3 of the world. If we took our faith seriously, what kind of difference could Christians make in this world?

You may have seen those very effective Liberty Mutual commercials on TV, in which a good deed, done in kindness, causes others to do good deeds through-out the day. We forget, I think, the power we each have to make a difference in our families, in our school, and in this community—simply by going out of our way to be kind to one another.

Go, make a difference.