Yogi Berra: the bard of his time

IMG_7781NEW YORK (AP) Some of the more widely quoted philosophy of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher who died Tuesday at age 90:

On his approach to at-bats: “You can’t think and hit at the same time.”

On selecting a restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

On economics: “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

On the 1973 Mets: “We were overwhelming underdogs.”

On how events sometimes seem to repeat themselves “It’s deja vu all over again!”

On baseball attendance: “If people don’t come to the ballpark, how are you gonna stop them?”

On a slipping batting average: “Slump? I ain’t in no slump. … I just ain’t hitting.”

On travel directions: “When you come to a fork in the road take it.”

On pregame rest: “I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4.”

On battling the shadows in left field at Yankee Stadium: “It gets late early out there.”

On fan mail: “Never answer an anonymous letter.”

On being told he looked cool: “You don’t look so hot yourself.”

On being asked what time it was: “You mean now?”

On being given a day in his honor: “Thank you for making this day necessary.”

On a spring training drill: “Pair off in threes.”

On his approach to playing baseball: “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”

On death: “Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise they won’t go to yours.”

On learning: “You can observe a lot by watching.”

On his team’s diminishing pennant chances: “It ain’t over `till it’s over.”

On the fractured syntax attributed to him: “I really didn’t say everything I said.”

Telling our stories

TheConfessionsSt. Augustine of Hippo begins his great work The Confessions with a question: “How shall I call upon my God and my Lord, when by the very act of calling upon him I would be calling himself into myself? Is there any place within me into which my God might come? How can God who made the heaven and earth come into me? Is there any room in me for you, Lord, my God?” (I:2) Continue reading

Being beautiful

jesuswarningFrom today’s gospel: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.

Hypocrite: a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs (Merriam Webster).  But then there is also the “goal” to appear beautiful on the outside and to be beautiful on the inside. The problem will always be what the eye beholds as beautiful.

A young man once came to a great rabbi and asked him to make him a rabbi.

It was wintertime then. The rabbi stood at the window looking out upon the yard while the rabbinical candidate was droning into his ears a glowing account of his piety and learning.

The young man said, “You see, Rabbi, I always go dressed in spotless white like the sages of old. I never drink any alcoholic beverages; only water ever passes my lips. Also, I live a plain and simple life. I have sharp-edged nails inside my shoes to mortify me. Even in the coldest weather, I lie naked in the snow to torment my flesh. Also daily, I receive forty lashes on my bare back to complete my perpetual penance.”

And as the young man spoke, a white horse was led into the yard and to the water trough. It drank, and then it rolled in the snow, as horses sometimes do.

“Just look!” cried the rabbi. “That animal, too, is dressed in white. It also drinks nothing but water, has nails in its shoes and rolls naked in the snow. Also, rest assured, it gets its daily ration of forty lashes on the rump from its master. Now, I ask you, is it a saint, or is it a horse!”

Seeing the Law

greatest-commandment2You can often read or hear that the Pharisees and their predecessors surrounded the 10 Commandments with 613 other laws – laws which strike us as odd when we encounter stories of Jesus healing on the Sabbath and the authorities respond quite negatively, challenging Jesus to keep holy the Sabbath.  In our modern and Christian sensibilities, we cheer Jesus on as he “battles” for the Law of Love expressed in today’s Gospel. Continue reading

Jumping Queues

New Boarding.Amazon is an interesting marketplace for buying books. They know your purchase history and based on algorithms they suggest different books they think you might like. Many of the recommendations make sense. Occasionally, I have to speculate and connect the dots. And every once in a while, the recommendations seem to come out of thin air.  Such was the case with the book, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Market.” Most of the time I just pass over such things, but there was something about the title that piqued my attention. Continue reading

Tipping our faith

Tipping_PointThere are little things that can make a big difference. That is the gist of the sub-title of Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book, “Tipping Point.” As Gladwell points out, it is the context, the people, the nature of the thing itself, and other factors, which contribute to a tipping point. Merriam-Webster defines “tipping point” as “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place.” Continue reading

Something about angels

City-of-Angels2I think most people know that the expression, “City of Angels”, refers to Los Angeles, CA. But did you know that the name is only the shortened form of the original city name, which grew up around one of the Franciscan missions? The original name of the pioneer town was, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula,” (in English, “City of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of the little Portion”). Both “Our Lady Queen of the Angels” and “the little Portion” are steeped in the earliest history of the Franciscan Order. For that we return to the 13 th century and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Continue reading

Caring enough…

Rescued_LogoIf you have read this column long enough you will know that I am given to wandering about the landscape of any variety and manner of things that catch my interest. One of my most recent wanderings was back to the world of Science Fiction. As you might have gathered from last week’s column and its reference to Isaac Asimov’s “Robot Novels,” there was a time when I could have rightly been called a “fanboy” for all things science fiction. At one point in time my library was filled with the works of John W. Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, and others. If you are familiar with the genre, you might notice this is an “old school” list. As time went on, there was less science, fantasy and, things-magical dominated the market niche. The quality of writing seemed to wane with the passing of the greats. My reading interests moved on to other works and other sensibilities. Looking back on it all, I think another reason was that the characters began to resemble action figures more so than human beings. I began to not care about the people in the story. Continue reading