RUM DAY
Matthew,
Chapter 25, verse 24-25:
24
Then the one who
had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a
demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you
did not scatter; 25so out of fear I went off and buried your
talent in the ground. Here it is back.’
Christ is always trying to draw us
away from fear to having a relationship of love and peace with the Trinity. For
if we live our faith in fear, we will be like the person who buried his only
talent. We must if filled with the love and joy of Christ go forth bravely to
build Christ’s Kingdom in our own spheres of influence and in our way of
being.
Ask our Lord how he wants you to spend your time
assisting our priests today.
·
Holiness
is also parrhesía: it is boldness, an impulse to evangelize and to leave
a mark in this world. To allow us to do this, Jesus himself comes and tells us
once more, serenely yet firmly: “Do not be afraid”. “I am with you always, to
the end of the world”. These words enable us to go forth and serve with the
same courage that the Holy Spirit stirred up in the Apostles, impelling them to
proclaim Jesus Christ. Boldness, enthusiasm, the freedom to speak out,
apostolic fervour, all these are included in the word parrhesía. The
Bible also uses this word to describe the freedom of a life open to God and to
others. Blessed Paul VI, in referring to obstacles to evangelization,
spoke of a lack of fervour (parrhesía) that is “all the more serious
because it comes from within”. How often we are tempted to keep close to the
shore! Yet the Lord calls us to put out into the deep and let down our nets. He
bids us spend our lives in his service. Clinging to him, we are inspired to put
all our charisms at the service of others. May we always feel compelled by his
love and say with Saint Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel”. Look
at Jesus. His deep compassion reached out to others. It did not make him
hesitant, timid or self-conscious, as often happens with us. Quite the
opposite. His compassion made him go out actively to preach and to send others
on a mission of healing and liberation. Let us acknowledge our weakness, but
allow Jesus to lay hold of it and send us too on mission. We are weak, yet we
hold a treasure that can enlarge us and make those who receive it better and
happier. Boldness and apostolic courage are an essential part of mission. Parrhesía
is a seal of the Spirit; it testifies to the authenticity of our preaching. It
is a joyful assurance that leads us to glory in the Gospel we proclaim. It is
an unshakeable trust in the faithful Witness who gives us the certainty that
nothing can “separate us from the love of God”. We need the Spirit’s prompting,
lest we be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, lest we grow used to
keeping within safe bounds. Let us remember that closed spaces grow musty and
unhealthy. When the Apostles were tempted to let themselves be crippled by
danger and threats, they joined in prayer to implore parrhesía: “And
now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your
word with all boldness”. As a result, “when they had prayed, the place in which
they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness”.
·
Like
the prophet Jonah, we are constantly tempted to flee to a safe haven. It can
have many names: individualism, spiritualism, living in a little world,
addiction, intransigence, the rejection of new ideas and approaches, dogmatism,
nostalgia, pessimism, hiding behind rules and regulations. We can resist
leaving behind a familiar and easy way of doing things. Yet the challenges
involved can be like the storm, the whale, the worm that dried the gourd plant,
or the wind and sun that burned Jonah’s head. For us, as for him, they can
serve to bring us back to the God of tenderness, who invites us to set out ever
anew on our journey.
·
God
is eternal newness. He impels us constantly to set out anew, to pass beyond
what is familiar, to the fringes and beyond. He takes us to where humanity is
most wounded, where men and women, beneath the appearance of a shallow
conformity, continue to seek an answer to the question of life’s meaning. God
is not afraid! He is fearless! He is always greater than our plans and schemes.
Unafraid of the fringes, he himself became a fringe. So, if we dare to go to
the fringes, we will find him there; indeed, he is already there. Jesus is
already there, in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, in their wounded
flesh, in their troubles and in their profound desolation. He is already there.
·
True
enough, we need to open the door of our hearts to Jesus, who stands and knocks.
Sometimes I wonder, though, if perhaps Jesus is already inside us and knocking
on the door for us to let him escape from our stale self-centredness. In the
Gospel, we see how Jesus “went through the cities and villages, preaching and
bringing the good news of the kingdom of God”. After the resurrection, when the
disciples went forth in all directions, the Lord accompanied them. This is what
happens as the result of true encounter.
·
Complacency
is seductive; it tells us that there is no point in trying to change things,
that there is nothing we can do, because this is the way things have always
been and yet we always manage to survive. By force of habit we no longer stand
up to evil. We “let things be”, or as others have decided they ought to be. Yet
let us allow the Lord to rouse us from our torpor, to free us from our inertia.
Let us rethink our usual way of doing things; let us open our eyes and ears,
and above all our hearts, so as not to be complacent about things as they are,
but unsettled by the living and effective word of the risen Lord.
·
We
are inspired to act by the example of all those priests, religious, and laity
who devote themselves to proclamation and to serving others with great
fidelity, often at the risk of their lives and certainly at the cost of their
comfort. Their testimony reminds us that, more than bureaucrats and
functionaries, the Church needs passionate missionaries, enthusiastic about
sharing true life. The saints surprise us, they confound us, because by their
lives they urge us to abandon a dull and dreary mediocrity.
·
Let
us ask the Lord for the grace not to hesitate when the Spirit calls us to take
a step forward. Let us ask for the apostolic courage to share the Gospel with
others and to stop trying to make our Christian life a museum of memories. In
every situation, may the Holy Spirit cause us to contemplate history in the
light of the risen Jesus. In this way, the Church will not stand still, but
constantly welcome the Lord’s surprises.
When
I first started training for marathons a little over ten years ago, my coach told me something I’ve never
forgotten: that I would need to learn how to be comfortable with being
uncomfortable. I didn’t know it at the time, but that skill, cultivated through
running, would help me as much, if not more, off the road as it would on it. It’s not just me, and it’s not just running. Ask
anyone whose day regularly includes a hard bike ride, sprints in the pool, a
complex problem on the climbing wall, or a progressive powerlifting circuit,
and they’ll likely tell you the same: A difficult conversation just doesn’t
seem so difficult anymore. A tight deadline is not so intimidating.
Relationship problems are not so problematic. Maybe it’s that if you’re
regularly working out, you’re simply too tired to care. But that’s probably not
the case. Research shows that, if anything, physical activity boosts short-term
brain function and heightens awareness. And even on days they don’t train —
which rules out fatigue as a factor — those who habitually push their bodies
tend to confront daily stressors with a stoic demeanor. While the traditional
benefits of vigorous exercise — like prevention and treatment of diabetes,
heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and osteoporosis — are well known and
often reported, the most powerful benefit might be the lesson that my coach
imparted to me: In a world where comfort is king, arduous physical activity
provides a rare opportunity to practice suffering.
Few hone this skill better than professional endurance and adventure athletes.
Regardless of sport, the most resounding theme, by far, is that they’ve all
learned how to embrace uncomfortable situations:
† Olympic marathoner Des Linden told
me that at mile 20 of 26.2, when the inevitable suffering kicks in, through
years of practice she’s learned to stay relaxed and in the moment. She repeats
the mantra: “calm, calm, calm; relax, relax, relax.”
† World-champion big-wave surfer Nic
Lamb says being uncomfortable, and even afraid, is a prerequisite to riding
four-story waves. But he also knows it’s “the path to personal development.”
He’s learned that while you can pull back, you can almost always push through.
“Pushing through is courage. Pulling back is regret,” he says.
† Free-soloist Alex Honnold explains
that, “The only way to deal with [pain] is practice. [I] get used to it during
training so that when it happens on big climbs, it feels normal.”
† Evelyn Stevens, the women’s record
holder for most miles cycled in an hour (29.81 – yes, that’s nuts), says that
during her hardest training intervals, “instead of thinking I want these to
be over, I try to feel and sit with the pain. Heck, I even try to embrace it.”
† Big-mountain climber Jimmy Chin,
the first American to climb up — and then ski down — Mt. Everest’s South Pillar
Route, told me an element of fear is there in everything he does, but he’s
learned how to manage it: “It’s about sorting out perceived risk from real
risk, and then being as rational as possible with what’s left.”
But you
don’t need to scale massive vertical pitches or run five-minute miles to reap
the benefits. Simply training for your first half marathon or CrossFit competition
can also yield huge dividends that carry over into other areas of life. In the
words of Kelly Starrett, one of the founding fathers of the CrossFit movement,
“Anyone can benefit from cultivating a physical practice.” Science backs him up. A study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology found
that college students who went from not exercising at all to even a modest
program (just two to three gym visits per week) reported a decrease in stress,
smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, an increase in healthy eating and
maintenance of household chores, and better spending and study habits. In
addition to these real-life improvements, after two months of regular exercise,
the students also performed better on laboratory tests of self-control. This
led the researchers to speculate that exercise had a powerful impact on the
students’ “capacity for self-regulation.” In laypeople’s terms, pushing through
the discomfort associated with exercise — saying “yes” when their bodies and
minds were telling them to say “no” — taught the students to stay cool, calm,
and collected in the face of difficulty, whether that meant better managing
stress, drinking less, or studying more. For this
reason, the author Charles Duhigg, in his 2012 bestseller The
Power of Habit,
calls exercise a “keystone habit,” or a change in one area life that brings
about positive effects in other areas. Duhigg says keystone habits are powerful
because “they change our sense of self and our sense of what is possible.” This
explains why the charity Back on My
Feet uses running
to help individuals who are experiencing homelessness improve their situations.
Since launching in 2009, Back on My Feet has had over 5,500 runners, 40 percent
of whom have gained employment after starting to run with the group and 25
percent of whom have found permanent housing. This is also likely why it’s so
common to hear about people who started training for a marathon to help them
get over a divorce or even the death of a loved one.
Another study, this one published in the European Journal of
Applied Physiology, evaluated how exercise changes our
physiological response to stress. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology, in Germany, divided students into two groups at the beginning of
the semester and instructed half to run twice a week for 20 weeks. At the end
of the 20 weeks, which coincided with a particularly stressful time for the
students — exams — the researchers had the students wear heart-rate monitors to
measure their heart-rate variability, which is a common indicator of
physiological stress (the more variability, the less stress). As you might
guess by now, the students who were enrolled in the running program showed
significantly greater heart-rate variability. Their bodies literally were not
as stressed during exams: They were more comfortable during a generally
uncomfortable time. What’s remarkable and encouraging
about these studies is that the subjects weren’t exercising at heroic
intensities or volumes. They were simply doing something that was physically
challenging for them – going from no exercise to some exercise; one need not be
an elite athlete or fitness nerd to reap the bulletproofing benefits of exercise. Why does any of this matter? For one,
articles that claim prioritizing big fitness goals is a waste of time (exhibit
A: “Don’t Run a
Marathon”) are
downright wrong. But far more important than internet banter, perhaps a broader
reframing of exercise is in order. Exercise isn’t just about helping out your
health down the road, and it’s certainly not just about vanity. What you do in
the gym (or on the roads, in the ocean, etc.) makes you a better, higher-performing
person outside of it. The truth, cliché as it may sound, is this: When you
develop physical fitness, you’re developing life fitness, too.
“The only way that I could figure they
could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life’s most delightful elixirs, which
studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put rum
or bourbon in it.” ~ Lewis Grizzard
Rum is a fantastic drink, one that has
served as the stuff of legends for pirates of every walk of life. Rum also
appears in everything from dinners to desserts, with rum balls being one of our
particular favorites. Of course, as the great Lewis Grizzard said, it also is
an amazing mixer, and one of the only ones capable of improving Coca-Cola. So,
we all know that pirates like rum and that rum is an alcoholic beverage but
many of us are less than clear on what, exactly, makes rum RUM. Let’s start
with the basics, shall we? Rum is a distilled alcohol, specifically distilled
from byproducts of sugarcane. Some varieties are made from molasses, others
from sugarcane juice but all rum, when its finished being distilled, is clear.
The color you see in rum is from additives or seasonings and are not in any way
a bad thing. Rum first was created in the Caribbean after it was discovered
that molasses could be fermented into alcohol. Ironically, it was the slaves
who made this discovery, but it was the Colonials who discovered how to distil
it into true rum. So important did rum become in the years to follow that it
played a major role in the political system of the colonies. How? By being
offered as a bribe to those the candidates wished to curry favor with. The
people thus coerced were no fools, however. They would attend multiple hustings
to determine which of their patrons might provide them with the largest
quantity of rum. Thus, it can be fairly said that rum was of such note that it
literally decided elections.
How to Celebrate Rum Day
Yo ho ho matey! The best way to celebrate
Rum Day is to indulge in this most ignoble and distinguished of drinks. A
contradiction? Not at all! Rum has long had a reputation for being the devil’s
drink by dint of the ease of production, the delicious flavor, and the powerful
kick it carried. Rum Day is your opportunity to sample as many varieties as you
like and decide which one will be coming aboard your vessel for the next
pillage.
Daily Devotions
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