Bill Zapcic - Unpaid Bill

And may perpetual light…

It’s been four years.

It’s been as long as a presidential term, or a stint in local government. It’s been longer than what we call four years of college, longer than the time we owned any of our Country Squire station wagons in the 1960s and ’70s.

Dad died in the early-early hours of Feb. 11, 2015. He was 85⅔. He had been sick, really sick, though none of us knew it until nearly the end.

His illness was not the only unknown.

As we came to realize that Dad’s time was almost at hand, my brothers and sisters-in-law and Andrea and I recalled things about Dad — things we did, things we said, character quirks. It became obvious quite quickly, quite startlingly, that each of us seemed to know someone a bit different from the person the others knew.

Each of us had a different story to tell, and some of us were hearing them for the first time.

To be clear: This was no multiple-personality situation, not in a clinical sense. Dad was many things to many people. Many, many, many people. He gave of himself generously, and could mingle with titans of industry (his favorite) as easily as he did with row-house ladies who reminded him of the residents of the steel-mill town he left behind in 1947.

It just was a shock to learn things about our father on his deathbed. Finding out that some things we recalled as funny or cute had a slightly darker edge … but which always led to redemption, resurrection, renewal, lessons learned.

Just. Finding. Out.

Beyond unexpected.

In my four years in college, longer ago than I prefer to note, I did learn a lot, terrible GPA notwithstanding.

In the last four years, though, what I’ve learned is that I knew just a few facets of this not-fully-polished diamond, and that’s all I ever will know. And I’ve learned that I’m not alone in having a parent shrouded in mystery.

I also learned that other people had fathers and mothers whose lives were open books, family albums in the flesh, and of them I’m jealous.

I’m savvy enough to understand why Dad pulled on his cloak of invisibility, even when it led to his under-communicating with my brothers and me. Understanding helps dull the sting, a little.

Because he had given so much of himself to so many people for nearly half a century, and because he feared — or at least suspected — that his people would want just a little more, Dad essentially dropped off the face of the Earth when he retired to Florida. He huddled with his core friends, played golf and cooked, traveled internationally with a sand wedge in hand, and when golf slipped out of his life, he slid into a chair in front of a huge flat-screen TV.

“This! Is! Jeopardy!”

His retreat from the wider world pulled him back from us, and in that retreat, as his memory faded and dementia took his edge, his secrets were sealed in the vault that eventually would become his tomb.

It’s been four years since the night we sat in chairs around his bed, hearing him tug for each breath, pressing ourselves to stay awake while he transitioned into his final rest. Our memories are the ones fading now.

I’ll never know everything about him that I want to; I won’t even know what I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t and won’t be as much a cipher to my family when it’s my time.

That’s Dad’s final lesson.

… and blues

Mention rituals — capital R Rituals — and most folks think of chants, robes, candles and scented smoke. Dead languages, maybe, or at least peculiar usages, phrasing and vocabulary.

Beads, rattles, drums, chimes and bells. Shamans, healers, mystics, seers … or some sort of clergy, anyway.

Ancient history that may or may not be relevant today.

Capital R stuff.

And it’s easy to see how, in a super-interconnected electronified world, the buzzy repetition of a mantra might not compare well with flossing in Fortnite.

What’s eluding notice, though, is how many small-R rituals we’ve begun to develop over and above the ones we’ve always had.

Let’s start with those, the ones we’ve always had.

Rituals, which give our lives their rhythm and organization, stop being noticed as we integrate them, the same way we stop thinking about pedals and merely drive our cars. The rituals are automatic, or damned near.

Yes, if we get overly ritualized, we can be judged obsessive, but as long as we can defy rituals’ control from time to time, we’re fine.

Sock-sock-shoe-shoe or sock-shoe-sock-shoe? Left first, or right? Shirt then pants, or pants first? Floss-brush or brush-floss-gargle?

The correct answer is always whatever’s right for us.

The list goes on for each of us. On and on and on. Mundane things, though important in themselves.

The lists comprise our unique comfort zones.

And all would be well if hypno-technology hadn’t started interfering.

For longer than I can calculate, my daily routine, my morning and evening and nighttime rituals included checking my email and other related posts and missives. Desktop, laptop and mobile. If there were fewer than 100 messages in a batch, I felt cheated. More than 400 — not often but far from rare — and I stressed.

Like Capital R Rituals, these rituals took on mythic proportions, assumed significance that, viewed objectively, they did not deserve the way true Capital Rs do.

Thus, when I lost two company email accounts and access to a myriad of networks, and surrendered my second phone, I went through withdrawal. Fellow travelers in the land of unexpected retirement told me similar stories. And all of us confess to seeking some sort of replacement activity.

Like the frog being boiled in water that was slowly heated around it, we’ve been surrendering to this for decades. Asimov and Heinlein hinted at it in short stories and novels. Rod Serling routinely used the tool that was addicting us to warn us about the tool that was addicting us. Marie Winn wrote “The Plug-In Drug” in 1977 and could document then how electrons and phosphors and scanning lines on snowy screens could hold us in thrall.

Our screens are not going away. Our need for rituals is hard-wired into our human psyches, so that’s definitely not going away.

What is fading? Our ability to control the rhythms of our days, the places where we use rituals to regulate and comfort, and not to be controlled by a stressful overlord.

I guess sometimes you do have to think about what pedals to step on.

The dog star

It’s been a few months since the media giant decided it could succeed without me in its ranks, and since then there have been buyouts, layoffs, talks of mergers, hints of hostile takeover attempts, and now a suggestion that the takeover attempt may instead have been a surrendering of assets.

Agatha Christie must be writing this. Kenneth Branagh, please direct the cinema version.

From a corporate standpoint, the biggest wrinkle was the announced retirement of the CEO, a man just into his 60s who’s leaving with a slightly larger buyout than other employees in their 60s who left (or were thanked for their hard work and loyalty).

The Egon Zehnder executive recruiting firm is conducting a worldwide search for RD’s successor. They say their marching orders are to find somebody outside the newspaper industry.

As of Oct. 23, 2018, I’ve been outside the newspaper industry. That’s why, last week, I added my CV to the Ghostbusters’ … um, scratch that; it’s Zehnder and not Spengler … to the headhunter’s database.

The whole CEO thing needs serious re-examination these days, which is why I (a) applied, even though I likely won’t be considered or even taken seriously, and (b) know that, without an MBA or PhD or Brooks Brothers suit, I’m the best candidate.

I’m not going to get into income inequality or golden parachutes or the like here. Let’s just think about what makes a good leader.

First, a leader must embrace the credo that everyone in the organization has the same job — to ensure the success and continued viability of the enterprise. What differentiates custodians from publishers are their tasks. A good leader knows the value of each, knows where those tasks fit in the overall machine (sorry, but let’s be real), knows the scope and ideally the mechanics of every one of those tasks, could perform any and all (or most) of those tasks, and makes sure enough of the right people are performing those tasks.

Second, a leader must know the people performing those tasks. Not in a “That was Eric Stratton, pledge chairman, and he was damned glad to meet ya” way, but the way classmates at a small residential college get to know each other. Shared experiences: work, play, joy, heartache, hangovers and indigestion. A leader accompanies an ad rep on a sales call. A leader takes a police report and bangs out three paragraphs for the website, app and in-print briefs column. A leader knows where the coffee grounds are stored and brews a fresh pot. Not as a fake show of solidarity but as a matter of simple humility.

Third, a leader listens to the people doing the heavy lifting. A leader learns from the efficiencies discovered and honed by the staff in the trenches, and then evangelizes them, giving credit where it’s due. Years ago, when Ford built Escorts in Central Jersey, the upholstery fabric snagged as it was pulled over the foam rubber on the seat frames, slowing the assembly line and/or leading to recalls and warranty work. A creative genius on the line brought in a few cents’ worth of angel hair — the Christmas decoration — and draped it over the foam. The upholstery slid on quickly and fit without wrinkles. Ford adopted it as SOP.

CBS TV made a big show out of a company president or CEO supposedly getting on-the-job training at the bottom of the food chain. “Undercover Boss”; yeah, right. All true leaders already do this, because their sleeves are rolled up. Maybe only figuratively, but always.

A leader makes decisions based on the good of the company but with a human face, because s/he knows those people any decision most affects. Jenn in Texas, Scott in Wisconsin, Steve in California, Nina in New York. People whose loyalty and hard work are for the good of the company and for the benefit of the customers, the readers.

A leader follows that Scout camping maxim: Leave it better than you found it.

Egon Zehnder, I am that leader. My application is a serious one. No one will work harder or care more. No one.

Too bad you almost assuredly won’t consider me.

Du jour know

The chatty young phlebotomist was polite but curious as she made small talk to calm her patient. “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a journalist.”

“Oh, how cool! Me too! I write in my journal every day. I’ve been journaling for years.”

I looked at the fire hose and nozzle she was about to plunge into my skinny vein and thought better about disabusing her of the notion that we were true colleagues.

“Do you get paid to journal?” she continued.

“A bit, when it’s published in the newspaper or on the website.”

“Wow. I’ll have to send you mine to get it published.”

I’ve since learned that she wasn’t totally wrong. Historians say the terms “journalist” and “journalism” were coined in the 1800s to reflect daily — du jour — reporting, newsgathering, dissemination. Tools that included the telegraph and news organizations that banded together into cooperatives and wire services made immediacy possible.

Now, as we know, immediacy means real time. Any event can be streamed. And if not streamed, podcast. ASMR (creepy!). Intentionally boring (zzZZZzZZzz).

Virality is a goal. Lack of it means failure.

But the Covington students incident is a stark reminder that the totality of a story may take a while to report. The old saw went “UPI gets it first; AP gets it right.” Santayana was correct: We’ve forgotten that being first can bite us.

My vampiric friend made the error about journalism that too many people — especially (choose your expletive) shareholders and hedge funds — all make. A trained journalist is not a stenographer, not a journaler. A trained journalist analyzes, assesses, adds perspective, checks all the angles. What looks like a crowd of 10,000 from the back can turn out to be 1,000 strategically scattered partisans when seen from above or from the front.

Stenographers and journalers are valuable in their own spheres, but not downstage center in newsgathering.

A trained journalist has embraced a calling. “I am a journalist” is what we say, not “I do journalism” or “I report the news.” At least, not as a first answer. It’s who we are (which is why we don’t often get along with people outside the profession. Sorry…).

Many great journalists saw their jobs taken from them today, as did I three months ago. That means far fewer people are left to get the perspectives needed to tell the whole story, to get all the facts, to get to the truth of the matter.

Ah, truth. The real victim.

Most, if not all, of those who were laid off will continue to describe themselves as journalists in perpetuity. It’s who we are, and that won’t change.

The way we make our living may.

Bruncle, part three

(with apologies for the gap in chapters…)

First, check your guest list: How many will be brunching with you today? The calculations start with one (you) and go up to 12 semi-hungry folks, six mostly hungry people, or four would-be lumberjacks. Then, check your fridge: You do have a dozen eggs, right?

Next, clear a space on the counter, or, if you’re Felix Unger, on a large flat cutting board.

Grab a loaf of bread. Round-top is better if you have a round frying pan; otherwise, sandwich will do just fine. Place one slice of bread flat on the counter (or the cutting board; sheesh) and start jabbing at its center with your index fingers until you’ve flattened a circular area about 1½ inches in diameter. Gently pull that squished piece away from the rest of the slice, leaving a nice hole.

A lumberjack gets three of these. Other guests, two or one. Poke away until you have enough slices to accommodate their appetites, one egg per slice.

Heat up some cooking oil in a large frying pan. Add the bread only when the oil is hot enough to make a drop of water dance. Otherwise, the bread will soak up the oil, which will cause a host of problems. Let the bread sizzle for about 30 seconds.

Now, with extreme care, crack one egg per slice and center the yolk into the hole (aha!), letting the white spread over the rest of the bread. Try to get all of them cooking as quickly as possible so they can be turned together.

As soon as the white is opaque, flip the concoction with a spatula, being careful not to break the yolk. Or breaking it, if that’s your preference.

Keep an eye on the eggs; you’ll know when they reach your preferred doneness.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Of course, Uncle Richard occasionally added ketchup. That’s OK; this is his recipe/procedure, and his contribution to the culinary education of his nephews.

As soon as any of us hit 10 or so, Mom would let us do some basic cooking, as long as she or Richard were supervising. Egginnabread — it has dozens of names and hundreds of variations, but this is how we made it and what we called it — egginnabread was the first foodstuff that challenged us to know about oil temperatures, cracking eggs, flipping foods. The index finger thing added flourish that I use to this day. For silliness, I usually add sound effects to each jab, boops or explosions to brighten the morning.

Richard taught us the secret of pancakes — the popped bubbles that call out “Flip the flapjacks.” And the real magic — fry up some bacon first, leave the grease in the pan, crumble a couple of the well-done pieces back into the grease, and ladle in the batter.

He taught us cookin’ with love.

I later tweaked a recipe he taught me, as a defense against a proselytizing babysitter.

Creamed chipped beef on buttered toast. SOS, to Greatest Generation members and their kin. Entree and dessert in one, to this Baby Boomer.

I recently had learned that food coloring adds no flavor. Who knew? If it was blue, it had to taste disgusting, right? Nope. Same as always; just blue.

Three or four drops of cyan into that white floury goop, and EP left me alone all night. No stern warnings from the Book of Revelation.

Jesus apparently forgave me.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Richard.

… to be continued

De-scribed

I’ve spent the last few days reading farewell columns written by superb journalists — close friends and acquaintances, personally and professionally — as they accept retirement offers from our former employer, a media giant. Many of the retirements came earlier than my friends or I expected, and some of us are rewiring more than retiring.

I continue to insist that, for now, the only retirement I’m considering involves Michelin or Goodyear treads.

The farewell columns share a common theme: It’s been a great career, and here are some of the highlights.

Journalists have a lot of amazing memories, because we’ve been there.

Political conventions and town councils. Super Bowls and high school gridiron rivalries. Broadway and the Broad Street Players. Rolling Stones and forgettable tones.

There’s not a one of us who’d have traded a moment of it, and there’s not a one of us who’s not a bit smug (and yet a bit sheepish, too) about the experiences we’ve had that many “regular folks” haven’t, and likely won’t.

I’ve had dozens upon dozens of seats on the aisle at plays and concerts. I’ve dined with celebrities, seen movies’ world premieres, ridden Kingda Ka eight times before paying customers got their first whoosh.

Sweet.

So, of course, when we look back, journalists have a lot to reminisce about, a lot to wish we weren’t leaving behind.

We got to meet Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman. Mighty Max, Clarence and Bruuuuce. Bernie and Cory.

We got free meals, Hilton points and air miles on the company dime, conventions and conferences we needed passports to attend.

Really sweet.

But please remember — and this is important — we did it for you. We were your eyes and ears and noses and sometimes your scorched cheeks, covering accidents and fires and robberies and trials and political events where your tax dollars were being allocated.

We celebrated your births and engagements and weddings. We cheered your Halloweens and New Years. We helped bury your dead.

We met with grieving parents to learn about their children’s lives, cut short. We tried to make sense of terrible diseases afflicting old and young.

You didn’t have to be there, because we were.

There are fewer of us now, continuing a spiral of attrition that some folks simply, glibly call the death of newspapers. But there are fewer of us in magazines and TV and radio as well. Fewer eyes and ears and noses and cheeks to represent your interests. Fewer of us to kick over the rocks that snakes and cockroaches hide under. Fewer of us to shine a light into dark corners, to use that antiseptic sunlight on your behalf.

Every one of those beautiful, bittersweet farewell columns signifies loss. Loss of the best career I or any of us could have imagined for ourselves, yes. But loss, mostly, for those who still need the news, even if they don’t realize how much they do.

Where the heart should be

A homily for Christmas 2018.

Hi, honey, I’m home!

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Every day, in every nation, in every language, people announce “I’m home, dear,” and the activity starts. Hugs, hoorays, dogs jumping and barking, maybe a meal. If the person who’s arriving has been away for a while, there are shouts of “What did you bring me?”, followed by a few gifts and more hoorays.

This time of year, of course, we pepper our hellos with Merry Christmases and Happy New Years, but there’s an implied I’m home.

We even have a song that promises I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

Christmas is a time for going home to family. To friends, old and new. To places filled with memories.

We come home from school. Come home from military deployments, thank God. Come home from business trips. Come home with the grandkids to spend time with extended families.

And, at Christmas, people come home to church.

When they do, what should they expect to find?

Family, filled with love.

Friends in a community of faith and service.

The banquet set by Jesus at his Last Supper.

What else can we find this Christmas morning?

Well, there’s a Middle Eastern refugee couple in trouble. You see, they were ordered to leave their home and travel to their “official” hometown, where they found that the town had no home for them. They barely survived on the kindness of strangers, stayed in subhuman conditions while their baby was born, and became refugees again when the king decided their baby wasn’t fit to live.

Scripture tells us a lot about the Nativity itself, how the lowliest shepherds were the first to learn of the miraculous arrival of Jesus, the redeemer of the world, setting the tone for Christ’s embrace of the poor and marginalized.

We learn from the Gospels that, even as an infant who could not talk, who as a fully human child undoubtedly cried and drooled and needed 2 a.m. feedings, Jesus showed his divine nature to religious sages such as Simeon. With this birth, the world was changing for the better.

We fast-forward to Jesus at 12, staying behind in the temple as the caravan trudged on, teaching and preaching with wisdom beyond his years. He comes home, finally, and grows in wisdom and grace and age.

The Gospels leave Joseph behind at this point, other than to call Jesus “that carpenter’s son” as Christ carried out his ministries.

But during the Christmas season, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, JMJ, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the home base from which the Word Made Flesh ventured out.

In our baptismal rite, we parents vow that we will be our children’s first and best teachers. Two millennia ago, it was the same. Home was where Jesus learned about God, whom he called Abba, Father.

Who, because of Jesus, we get to call Father, too.

Joseph, as a good Jew and descendant of King David, would have prayed, would have known the law of Moses, would have known psalms and Isaiah and Jeremiah. Probably not as well as the religious leaders at the temple, but well enough for them to steer his life. And well enough that he and Mary could teach their child, Jesus.

Joseph, as provider for his family, would have worked hard, would have worked honorably, would have worked profitably enough to keep a roof over their heads. He would have served his duty as a husband and father. And, as a master, he would have taught all these skills and ethics to his apprentice, Jesus.

Mary, as a dutiful Jewish wife and mother and keeper of the home, would have reinforced everything Joseph was doing. Love makes a house a home, and Mary’s heart linked – still links – directly to the love of God.

Love makes a house a home, and the Jewish custom of hospitality centers on the home, where, of course, Jesus learned it.

It’s a shame nobody in Bethlehem remembered it that first Christmas night. Mary and Joseph would have remembered how they were treated, and, considering how Jesus turned out, it’s safe to guess that his parents opted to make sure nobody who needed hospitality from them was ever ignored.

Hospitality – kindness – is a key theme of Christ’s mission, his mission then and his continuing mission, the mission that we, as his hands and hearts today, are called to do. Jesus sought hospitality when he needed it – remember, he once grumbled that he had no place to lay his head, meaning literally that he had no home to go to, and metaphorically that some people were not embracing his Way.

Mostly, though, Jesus offered hospitality. He offered the precious gift of time; he gave the present of presence, healing people sick in their bodies and sick in their souls. He lifted up the lowly; the rich, he sent away empty. Not out of spite, but out of a sense of justice. The justice that calls us to share our time and treasure with all of our fellow humans, tall, short, red, green, rainbow. To make a home for them in our lives.

Because when we do, as St. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us, when we feed or shelter or clothe or visit the least among us, we’re being hospitable to Christ.

We’re making a home for the newborn king in our hearts, today at Christmas and every day.

Listen again, please.

I’ll be home for Christmas.

I’m home, dear.

That’s Jesus speaking to us.

Tempus fugit

The Ford dump truck was long past retirement, as probably was the shotgun passenger.

The July sun was searing the young man and the grizzled laborer through a hole in the truck’s cab’s roof, first punched there by misloaded rocks or asphalt and then widened by rust.

We’d finished a job that morning on the southern end of Monmouth County and we were expected at another site, about 20 miles away, after lunch.

We’d grabbed lunch at a local gin mill; for me, it was the $1.25 forgettable special and a short whatever was on tap and cheap, and for my partner du jour it was a shot with three tall ones as chasers. Obviously, not a sandwich or blue plate guy.

As soon as he’d tossed back draft No. 3, I hustled him into the truck and fired it up, using our size to muscle into back-to-work traffic.

“Hey, I didn’t get my full half-hour,” he growled, to which I replied, “We gotta get to Oceanport.”

“We’re on the clock, kid.”

I agreed with the assertion, not realizing at the time we actually were poles apart.

“We’re on the clock, kid.” To him, it meant slow down, we’re getting paid while we crawl up Route 36, the boss should be happy we’re taking his money, the boss should be happy we deign to punch his time clock.

“We’re on the clock, kid.” To me, it meant we’re getting paid for what we produce, that otherwise we’re taking the boss’s money with nothing to show for it.

I’ve not had to punch a clock or fill out a time sheet for all but four non-contiguous years of my career; I’ve been “exempt” in nearly all my roles as a journalist. The task’s size and complexity — and deadline; always a deadline! — dictated the clock.

Maybe it was my upbringing. Dad stayed at his office until every patient had been cared for.

Maybe it’s my temperament. I want to see the finished product, the completed task, which made news a perfect career: There’s always something to see and touch at deadline, whether it’s a complete newspaper or a digital post.

It’s probably why I don’t start certain projects I know will need multiple sessions to finish. I don’t always like to do but I thoroughly enjoy having done.

And I concede the anti-capitalists’ point that anything I produce belongs to the company, but I still get a sense of accomplishment. That’s mine.

We’re on the clock? Perhaps, but I don’t watch it.

AI ay yi yi

On one hand, Facebook’s facial-recognition software makes tagging people in photos easier, makes gathering your friends closer to you a snap.

Look! It knows that’s Tom! Hey, it tagged Pat and Kyle and I didn’t have to do a thing!

On the other hand, when the artificial intelligence is more artificial than intelligent, it’s at best humorous and at worst insulting.

Every now and then, I get a notification that one friend or another — or, more amusingly, someone who turns out to be a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend — has included me in a post. Sometimes I’m tipped that they’ve included a photo of me. Which, at six degrees of separation or more, seems an odd thing for that person to do.

Except the image is not of me.

As of this writing, FB has 21 images of #45 that FB’s AI has tagged “Bill Zapcic.” Here’s an example:

Maybe it’s the bags under his eyes, or the squint; I, alas, have them too.

Nose? Pursed lips? Dunno.

Last I looked, I have whiskers and bluer eyes. When I smile, it’s not a stage direction on the TelePrompTer.

And what goes around doesn’t seem to come around. When Charles Apple posted a photo of me on my birthday (thank you, Chas!), FB AI didn’t tag it as #45.

Must be the Deep State, or the Secret Service.

Time to cull

A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Dec. 2, 2018

Every house has one.

Maybe it’s a drawer in the kitchen, or a cabinet or cubby.

Perhaps it’s a shed or a garage or an entire basement.

But no matter what form it takes, every house has one, at least one.

It’s where we stash our stuff.

Sometimes we call our stuff “junk,” as in, “Check the Junk Drawer.”

Junk or stuff, everything we’ve stashed is valuable, critically needed, can’t do without it.

Or, at least, it was when we first got it.

How many times have you gone to The Home Depot to get a refrigerator bulb and had to buy two, because that item came only in a multi-pack?

The fridge only needed one, so what did you do with the other one?

Junk Drawer.

And we all know that anything that goes into the Junk Drawer hides when we need to fish it out. That bulb? I swear it was in there. Oh well, I’ll go buy another.

This time, of course, the multi-pack is a three-fer, not a two-fer, so even more can get lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

Sometimes we find that bulb after we’ve replaced the refrigerator, and the new one doesn’t take that size.

But do we throw it out? Nooooo, because it’s a perfectly good bulb and we might find a use for it and anyway that would be wasteful.

We never clean out junk drawers or basements or garages. It takes an act of God or an oil spill to get us to excavate.

Junk or stuff, everything we’ve stashed is valuable, critically needed, can’t do without it, remember?

This rule also applies to faded, threadbare T-shirts from concerts in 1978, varsity jackets from 1975, air and oil filters for a 1998 Escort wagon, and dozens of 1157-A taillight bulbs.

We cling to these things the way Andy clung to Woody in the “Toy Story” movies.

St. Paul had some thoughts on this.

In the 13th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians – the scripture we know best for its “love is patient, love is kind” wisdom – St. Paul talks about maturing:

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

When we put aside childish things of this world, material things like toys and clothes and stuff, where are we putting them? Are we giving them to someone who needs them, if they’re still useful? Are we tossing them in the trash if they’re not? Are we putting them in a scrapbook or hope chest to preserve them as souvenirs?

Or are we stashing them in the Junk Drawer in hopes we can use them again?

Hmmm.

Do our lives have spiritual Junk Drawers?

Because, you know, when we speak of childish things the way Paul did, we’re not talking about Mr. Potato Head.

First and foremost, we’re talking about habits, things we do almost without thinking or actively choosing. We’re looking at the way we interact with the divine, with how we follow God’s Law of Love: because, when we were children, somebody told us to do this and not that. Rote memorization of the Catechism. Blind obedience of the Commandments.

A good start. But only a start.

When we put aside childish things, we begin to examine the current state of our relationship with our living, loving God.

We ask if we’ve matured in our personal covenant with our Creator. Or if this “Being a Catholic” thing is a habit Sister Fleurette or our CCD teacher drilled into us.

If it’s merely a habit, if we’re sleepwalking and not actively, intellectually and emotionally embracing the faith, then Paul has some advice.

As we use this Advent season to prepare to sing “Glory to the Newborn King,” here are some questions we should ask ourselves. Depending on how we answer, we should be able to figure out the “what’s next.”

Do we pray? How often? How?

Do we treat God as a lifeline, as a utility belt, as a tool we carry around in our pocket in case we need him but one we forget about when we don’t?

Do we dedicate our activities – work, play, leisure – to God, who gave us the life, the abilities, the opportunities we have?

(Here’s some homework, and there will be a test: If you don’t already know, please look up AMDG and let me know what it means and how it applies to Advent and every day.)

Do we see Christ in the least among us: those in obvious need of life’s necessities such as food, shelter and clothing as the weather turns cold, as well as those with subtler needs, those marginalized because of race, country of origin, different abilities, who they love?

Will we be counted among the sheep or the goats when Jesus judges the multitudes?

Do we want to clean out the Junk Drawer filled with our spiritually childish things, and now and forever have a mature relationship with the Trinity?

God, who is Love, has open arms.