Location:Monument Cir,Indianapolis,United States

Snow moving. Winds has picked up. Roads are wet at this time with visibility about a half mile.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone by Richard Salewicz

Location:N Scioto St,Indianapolis,United States

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone by Richard Salewicz

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone by Richard Salewicz

my Dad's smile and an answer to a Prayer

Maybe it was because I was listening to Sufjan Stevens Christmas album, or, maybe it was just one of those days.  But I was feeling a little down yesterday.  Nothing major, but I started to think about Christmas and how different Christmas is now without my Dad.   Then I started to think how proud my Dad must be of me for being more present with my mom and helping her out more than I had in my early adult life.  But what got me down was that I wish I could see his smile.  That smile only a son knows when his father is showing his pride for his son.  I am thankful that I have been able to see that many times in my life, even though I have seen it go the other direction more often than I like.  But as time has moved on, as with anything you are grieving, you start remembering more of the good times than the bad.

I said a prayer in my jeep yesterday morning after thinking about this.  I told God that I wish I could see my Dad’s smile again.  I meditated on that a bit while I was driving and had one of those small good cries with God as I drove to my Mom’s house.  Later that evening when I got home, I checked my mail and to my surprise there was clown nose sent to me as a promotion.  Being the playful fun person I am, I put the nose on and took a picture of myself.  Of course, being a little vain, I had to take several till I got the one I liked.  As I looked through the pictures I noticed something.  I saw my Dad’s smile in my smile.  It was almost identical.  Maybe it was because of the clown nose and it separating my smile from the rest of my face that made me noticed it, or maybe it was God.

The more I explore my faith and my prayer life matures, I find myself seeing God more and more in every day activities.  You always hear people argue that God is not present today and ask, why was he so more present in biblical times than he is today.  But I think one must be open to God to see his graces and presence.

So there I was last night, looking at my iPhone and saw a prayer answered.

Thanks be to God!

But tonight, my start of the Christmas season 2011 I had an epiphany.  Why do I enjoy this season so much?  It’s easy to say, that it is because of my childhood.  The presents.  Santa Claus.  The bigness of everything.  But it is.  Really it IS!   My childhood directly influences why I love Christmas so much and its not because of those things.  For my parents did everything to make Christmas special.  No, I did not get everything, or even THE present I wanted.  There was seldom the Red Ryder BB Gun under the tree.  But there was the possibility!  Oh, the possibility!  Oh the excitement!   And no matter what the big gift was, or the little one that was in the bottom of the stocking, it was special.   It was given with such love that still to this day, I have trouble fully understanding the amount of love that was in the present.   It usually changed everything for the next following year.  May it be a Commodore 64 (even though I barely knew what a computer was), or the matchbox motorcycle under the tree when I wanted a real one.  That made Christmas, it was the moments and the love within those moments.

Let’s not forget the TV.  The TV was the center of my family life growing up.  It was cartoons (animation) of Rudolph, Frosty, The Santa Clause, The little drummer boy, The Christmas Story, The Nativity; and all the music specials that feed into it all.  But there was also one thing; it was one of the two days we ALWAYS went to church.  Midnight Mass! (Even though I got to show off my new clothes as an 80′s teenager), it felt Holy.    It was the love incarnate, which made it special.  And it was my Dad.

My Dad’s favorite Christmas movie was a Wonderful Life.  As he was dyeing from cancer, he lived that.  It was a wonderful life for my Dad.  And he made Christmas that.  As much as he worked, as much time he spent from his family providing, he always made Christmas the pay off.  Not pay off in gifts, but pay off in making the season as he saw it.  Even though he didn’t practice his Catholic faith with piety, he lived it.  As my Mom says, she lives life as a prayer.  And that’s what my Dad did as well in his way.  And he made Christmas a prayer too, in the way he lived life.

Why am I rich man?    I bring you back to tonight.  I am sitting here listening to Christmas music for the first time for this Christmas season and I felt the Christmas spirit rising in me.  The warm thoughts of Christmas long ago started to flow, not quiet like Ebenezer, but flowing the same.   I found myself remembering certain moments.  Maybe gifts or gifts that wanted to be.  But the spirit arose.  And I was overwhelmed with my Dad’s spirit.  His Christmas Spirit, warmth and love surrounded me.  Crying, I looked down and found myself rubbing the palm of my hand……

I am a rich man.  I am my Dad’s son.  I have his name, and his ability to love.  And I feel his love radiating through every molecule that exist or I can imagine existing.  He is not gone, but in the room next to me.  And that’s the best Christmas present ever, and it happened in 2011.

May God keep you and bless you!

Wesolych Swiat

Since my dad passed, the world has been a bit upside down for all of us in our family, to say the least.   There has been many blessings, and some blessings in disguise.  Reflecting on today’s Gospel, I looked at the blessings in disguise.

It’s easy to see the fruits of your faith when things are working out, or going the way you think or want them to go.  When things are not, it’s easy to feel trapped or helpless.  In some ways I feel like the blind man in today’s reading.  There are many things going on where it would be easy to say that the world is working against me.  I have cried “Lord, have mercy on me” many times dealing with my hardships.  But as today’s reading shows, the blind man was relentless with his faith.  And I have to ask myself, where has my faith wavered, where have I left out God and kept control myself.

It’s easy to cry out to the Lord about the injustice you see around you.  But do I petition the Lord to help me to “see” why the injustice and to have faith in the purpose of my path.  Or am I too busy planning how things should be and how I want God to make them for me.  I guess, if I was that blind man in the street and the Son of David was passing, he would turn to me and say “Ye have little faith”.

Many times Christ (and the Catechism of the Catholic Church) teaches us that we must have the faith of a child, to believe completely and freely.  The blind man, asked for pity, not even mercy.  He wanted his God to see him and for him to see God.  Are my cries to the Lord for me to see things His way, or is it to want him to make things the way I want them.

With today’s reading, for a brief moment, I can see.  The Lord is asking me to have faith that He will lead me where I need to be.  That the injustice I feel is a call to faith.  As long as I embrace it and ask Christ to be my light, I will see in faith the beauty of God’s way and see with clearer eyes.

2011 Pumpkin

Go Cardinals!

The last time I did this was in 2006 and we won it all.

This will be the Cardinals 11th World Series win if we win tonight and Friday!

11th Ring in 2011

Destiny!

]]> http://polishjedi.com/2011/10/27/2011-fall-ball-pumpkin-go-cardinals/feed/ 0 RJ FallBall2011 http://polishjedi.com/2011/08/25/etx-90ec/ http://polishjedi.com/2011/08/25/etx-90ec/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:41:36 +0000 Polish Jedi http://rj5570.wordpress.com/?p=355 ]]>

I finally got a new telescope, which I am very excited about.  Even though I have a huge interest in astro-photography, this scope should be fun.  Maybe one of these days I can afford a telescope that will let me take photographs of nebula’s, galaxies and other deepspace objects.  But I am sure this will be a scope I will enjoy for many years!!