Category Archives: Musings

All these years later

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There is a documentary on the acting career of Tom Hanks that I recently watched. He really has an impressive portfolio of movies covering a range of characters. As a result I have been re-watching some of his movies that I particularly enjoyed. Just last week I watched “Apollo 13,” the movie versions of events that unfolded on the seventh crewed-Apollo mission during the spring of 1970. While the launch was successful, the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module failed two days into the mission. The crew instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17 – while the nation held its breath. Continue reading →

What am I to tell them?

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Today’s first reading continues the story of Moses’ encounter with God on Mt. Horeb. God has commanded Moses to return to the “scene of the crime,” – his own taking of a life and Pharaoh’s attempted infanticide. Moses asks a reasonable question, “When I go to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” (Ex 3:13). At this point God gave Moses His own personal name: “I AM WHO AM.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the children of Israel: I AM sent me to you.” (v.14). Continue reading →

The Burning Bush

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In the first reading for today we continue with the story of Moses who “was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian.” (Ex 3:1) Meanwhile “A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God.” (Ex 2:23) And God called Moses to be the herald of God’s help to the people. Continue reading →

Lifting up the lowly

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In today’s first reading we continue the story of the infant Moses. Pharaoh’s first tactic to enslave the Israelites did not diminish their numbers. The follow-on tactic was to demand that the Hebrew midwives kill all Hebrew male babies (but not female babies, Ex 1:17) as they are born. Ironically, Pharaoh sees no threat from Israelite females, yet it is females (the midwives) who are the very ones who begin Pharaoh’s undoing. The midwives’ vocation from God is to preserve and protect life. Pharaoh demands that they deny their vocation and kill. In the Bible’s first act of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance for the sake of justice, the midwives refuse to obey Pharaoh’s deathly command. They lie to the authorities, breaking the law for the sake of justice and life. They explain to Pharaoh that the Hebrew women just give birth too quickly before we can arrive (v.19). It is in this time frame that Moses is born. Continue reading →

From guest to enemy

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The first readings all week are taken from the Book of Exodus and follow Moses from his birth to the encounter with the burning bush and then leaping ahead to Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go which leads to a description of the Passover meal and its preparations. Today’s first reading picks up the story from the end of Genesis. The Israelites had achieved most-favored immigrant status in the land of Egypt. The Egyptians had welcomed the Hebrew foreigners from Canaan because they were family to Joseph who, even as a non-Egyptian, had risen to second-in-command next to Pharaoh Continue reading →

What is a homily?

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Today’s “Word of Day” from our friends at Merriam Webster is “homily.” You’re thinking, “well of course he is going to mention this – it’s right up his wheelhouse.” Interesting expression that: wheelhouse. The word “wheelhouse” has gone from a nautical term, to a baseball term, to a term that describes a person’s area of expertise. Continue reading →

A Succession of Awards and Not

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Apart from National Football League games, the series Yellowstone is the most watched show on television, consistently averaging more than 12 million viewers per episode. Yet, in its five years of production it has never been nominated for a single industry award in any category. In that same period, the series Succession has garnered non-stop awards and accolades. Succession’s highest-rated episode got only about a tenth of the viewers that a typical Yellowstone episode did in the 2022 season. All this despite that Yellowstone is only available on one source while Succession is available across a number of streaming platforms. Granted that award shows are critic-based and not view-based, but one has to wonder if this disparity has underlying significance. Continue reading →

Joseph’s Revenge

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In the sequence of first readings for weekday Masses, we have just made a huge leap from Jacob (Gen 28) to the end of the story of Joseph and his brothers (Gen 41). A quick synopsis of the story would include: his brothers, all older, were jealous of Joseph and colluded to sell him into slavery in Egypt. Long story, short, Joseph eventually thrives and serves as a chancellor to Pharaoh himself. A famine hit Israel and Joseph’s brothers came to buy grain. That all serves as background to our first reading today. Continue reading →

Blink

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In the blink of an eye, I decided to add another post to explain the word “blink” as used in  the previous post on the post Groups of Three. In the previous post I noted the use of the word “blink” by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent on the recent college admissions decision.

The word “blink” comes from the Old English word “blincan,” which means “to close or shut the eyes quickly.” It is related to the Old Norse word “blikna,” which means “to twinkle.”  Justice Brown wrote: “This contention blinks both history and reality in ways too numerous to count.” In the legal setting “blink” means to “neglect, fail to acknowledge.” She was arguing against the idea that the law must be colorblind.

I did not know that meaning and use of the word “blink.” But it gave me an understanding to one of my dad’s expressions which I always found intriguing but vague. He offered: “a blink is as good a nod to a blind horse.”  Or was it “wink”? Dad was rather flexible with that idiom.

Groups of Three

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While scientists have long known of the general problem known as the “group of three,” families have always experienced the problem. There is an old adage about kids that goes something akin to: one child presents the spoiled child possibility, two children begets the “mommy loves me best” retort, while with three children, one will be ganged up on by the other two. It is the third child which brings a new level of chaos to the family. Continue reading →