A NOTE FROM FR. VINCE
Hello everybody! My first paragraph is rated PG-13. That’s because of what I encountered Sunday at the Waukee Hy-Vee. It was 9 a.m. and I was there that early for the Sunday Paper and sweet rolls (plus a few healthier items). I don’t know if I told you that strange things happen to me. They may happen to you, but for the past 45 years, I’ve been paid to watch. Watch why? Because I’m looking for homily material. So to get to my point, there it was next to the sweet rolls. It was a sheet cake in the actual form of a roll of toilet paper. Not two dimensional----three dimensional! I was immediately in a crisis. I didn’t bring in my phone so that I could take a picture, nor did I want to pay $13.95 for the cake. I just stood there. There was not one of them; there was 10 of them. I knew they were going to be apparently very popular, and I was going to be left out.
If you are looking for a relevant point to this, here it is. Even at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning, there was no toilet paper or paper towels in the whole aisle where they regularly were. There were just 10 sheet cakes. This has got to be a sign of something. My guess is that these 2 products…if one is desperate….are interchangeable. Not six years ago or six weeks ago, NOW!
I know what you are thinking: that this second paragraph does not make a relevant point as promised.
My point is that, in our lives, we better find the things that are interchangeable, or we will not be able to navigate this crisis. These are ‘everyday things’ as well as what we label as ‘spiritual things’. Who would have thought that, for every student at whatever grade level, we would interchange live school and virtual school. Who would have thought that we would interchange grocery stores and food by delivery where we would throw $10 bills at a delivery person at 6 ft.
We might reach our limit in this metaphor when we are forced to interchange our physical presence at Sunday mass for a virtual mass through an Ipad. That may be one step too far. The problem is that they are now interchangeable. I know what we would rather have, but we just can’t have it. And it may be months rather than weeks before we will be comfortable gathering in a group.
Keep looking for spiritual ways that are interchangeable. Prayer ways that are interchangeable. Ways of gathering that our interchangeable.
I’m continuing this conversation on Friday. Please send me your interchangeable ideas to
frvinard@gmail.com
. Stay strong everybody!
