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Strong and Wrong or Weak and Wise?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment


This post appeared as a column in the Sunday, November 19, edition of the St. Michael Catholic Church bulletin.

Last Wednesday’s gospel challenged me. Jesus starts and ends with strong, provocative language—”If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26) and “In the same way, every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

In between, he offers two examples for our reflection. In the first, He asks who would undertake to build a tower without first calculating whether or not he could finish it; in the second, he calls to mind a king assessing the strength of an advancing army to determine whether he could successfully oppose them.

In both examples, the concern is clear: Will I be able to persevere and succeed with the resources I have at hand? But the actions and outcomes are subtly different. In the first, the builder does not take the time to calculate, and his inability to complete his tower leads to failure and ridicule. In the second, however, the king does take the time, and upon realizing he cannot win, seeks peace before the battle ever begins.

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The Final Surrender

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

As some of you know, my father in Michigan is suffering from both Parkinson’s and dementia. He is still at home, and my mother is still able to care for him. He’s gentle and good-humored, and I’m grateful to be able to visit as often as I can.

But it’s terrible to watch his decline and the toll it has taken on both him and my mom. He was a machinist, a mechanic, and a builder, with a great engineering mind despite no formal education. Parkinson’s took his hands first, but dementia is worse—and as much as I would like all the time I can get with him, it’s hard to see him like this.

I’ve prayed for healing, and I know God could do it in an instant if He wants—but so far that’s not His plan. So what should I pray for?

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A Life Well-Remembered

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I remember, many years ago, sitting with Dad in a homemade ice-shanty-turned-deer-shack on the Lofgren farm in Michigan, where we used to hunt. It was muzzleloader deer season, snowy and cold, and we had a little porcelain-coated gas heater to keep us warm while we watched and waited. Dad was slicing an apple with his pocketknife and placing the slices on the top of the heater, where they hissed, filling the shack with the smell of the roasting fruit.

We ate them once they were soft and warm, and talked quietly together. My father is not a religious man; that day he told me he didn’t believe in an afterlife, but that heaven and hell are how people remember you. To his way of thinking, if you were a good person and took care of your family and your neighbors, you would be loved, missed, and remembered well. You would live on in the hearts of others, and that would be heaven.

If you didn’t, you would not be missed, and your memory would fade—or worse, you would be despised in retrospect. That would be hell.

I don’t share this view personally. I believe in a real and eternal afterlife, and I trust in our merciful God to see the goodness and beauty my father has brought into this world. But in the meantime, I want to give Dad something he can use here and now: a glimpse of his “heaven” as it stands today.

Most of our family and close friends know by now that my dad has both Parkinson’s Disease and dementia. If you hadn’t heard, please know that we didn’t intend to keep you in the dark. It’s not the easiest subject to broach, especially for our emotional clan. Parkinson’s and the resulting effects on his hands and mobility have been problems for several years now. The dementia diagnosis is a newer thing. Over the past few years, Dad’s short-term memory has declined and sequential thinking has become more challenging. More recently he has begun to imagine things.

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Mr. Fix-It?

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Back in the summer of 2019, my 1966 Ford F-100, Rosa, died along the side of the road between Elk River and home. She was my daily driver to Saint Andrew and back, and it was a sad day when the tow truck operator rolled her off the flat bed to her shady spot beside the garage.

The neighbor boy, watching the action over the fence with the acute interest of a future heavy equipment operator, said: “Best. TV show. Ever.” He didn’t sense my loss.

As of this weekend, Rosa rides again. Yesterday, she joined the parade of tarp-lined pickups and minivans loaded with leaf bags headed to the compost site to remove the leavings of autumn. She stalled once and sputtered twice at stop signs and traffic lights; she also seeped oil from nearly every seal and gasket for the first couple trips, until they swelled and began to hold again.

I told Jodi during our morning prayers yesterday that I knew we had a busy day planned, but I wanted to do at least one thing that I just flat-out enjoyed.

I’m an emotional guy. The first load of leaves choked me up a bit. I had a big, goofy smile all the way home. Rosa’s back!*

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Autumn Update

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

The older I get, the more I repeat myself, so you may have heard this before: I would take six months of October. A half year of crisp, cool, color-filled autumn; about six weeks of snowy white winter between Thanksgiving and roughly New Year’s Day, and the balance a long, blooming spring that turns green but never quite gets hot.

If ever I find the right combination of latitude and altitude, I’ll be gone. You’re welcome to visit.

We’re currently blessed with a beautiful October here in Minnesota. The leaves turned from green to gold, red, orange, and bright yellow in a few short days, it seemed; a thunderstorm stripped the top two-thirds of one tree across the street, but left the others intact, and even a sticky, wet snowfall earlier this week served only to make the color pop before vanishing into the soil before noon.

This morning the rooftops are coated in pale frost, but the ground is wet and smells like year’s end. Indoors, coffee’s in my cup, bluegrass is on the radio, and a whiff of the furnace’s first burnings is blowing up from the registers. It’s gonna be a good day.

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