May 8 - Baccalaureate Mass

BELLA698

 “Making Your Bucket List Now”

Rev. Ronald Knott

May 8, 2015

Hold to deliberation and planning. Then you may go

your way securely and your foot will never stumble.

 PROVERBS 3

Over the Christmas holidays last year, I watched the 2007 movie, “The Bucket List,” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It’s about two terminally ill old men on a road trip with a list of things to do before they “kick the bucket.” 

In one of my very favorite scenes, they are both sitting on one of the pyramids in Egypt. Morgan Freeman’s character says to Jack Nicholson’s character, “You know the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven…the gods asked them two questions. Their answer determined whether they were admitted or not. “Have you found joy in your life?” “Has your life brought joy to others?”

Today, I want to talk to you about making your bucket list now, not wait till you are at the end of your life. If you are going to answer the two questions from the movie, in any degree of certainty, you must develop a plan and work that plan starting now – even if you have to make revisions along the way. To paraphrase an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

Hold to deliberation and planning. Then you may go

your way securely and your foot will never stumble.

I believe in this practice so much that I actually wrote a book on it for the graduating class that I teach at St. Meinrad Seminary every year. It is called PERSONAL GROWTH PLAN. In that transition class, I challenge them to proceed into priesthood with the end in mind. I ask them to tell me where they would like to end up, spiritually, financially and psychologically when they get to my age. I remind them that if they want to end up there they need to start planning even before they graduate.

As part of the financial section of their personal growth plan, I give them each $100 to open their Individual Retirement Accounts and tell them not to trust the Church or anyone else to take care of them when they are old – even if other people are “supposed to” take care of them in the future To show them how right I am, I refer to a February survey of priests’ retirement plans that reveal that a majority of US priests’ retirement plans are underfunded. I try to get them to see that they could be left stranded after a lifetime of ministry, unless they act now – forty or fifty years out!   

It has been said that most people, who reach 65 or beyond, look back on their lives with regret. They wish they had set their priorities differently. It is a fact that choices made today, whether bad or good, follow us forever, one way or another. As far as that goes, not to choose is a choice! If we want a better tomorrow, then we have to start making better decisions today.

Graduates! Not every fairy tale story that begins with 'Once upon a time,' has a 'Happily ever after….’ ending. J. K Rowling said this: “There is an expiration date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” Our lives are the sum result of all the choices we make, both consciously and unconsciously. If we can control our processes of choosing, we can take control of more aspects of our lives. There is a certain freedom and exhilaration that comes with being in charge of ourselves – but there is also awesome responsibility!

“Have you found joy in your life?” “Has your life brought joy to others?”  If you are going to be able to answer those questions with conviction – forty, fifty or sixty years in the future - now is the time to start. Our first reading, from the Book of Proverbs, offers us a guide. It tells us to “hold to deliberation and planning,” “they will be life to your soul,” “you may go your way securely, your foot will never stumble,” “when you lie down, you will not be afraid” and “when you rest your sleep will be sweet.” 

More is required for success that merely “meaning well.” We have to have a plan and we have what it takes to bring it to reality. In speaking about discipleship, the passage from the gospel that we read tells us that if we set out to build a tower, we need to first sit down and calculate the cost to see if we have what it takes to finish it. Otherwise, after laying the foundation, we might wake up and realize that we do not have the needed resources to finish. Success is more than a good idea, a sincere wish or even a valid college degree.

I have often pondered what is it about certain people that makes them successful in achieving what they set out to do and reach their greatest potential? Is it luck? Do they have better connections with people of power and influence? Does God have favorites? I don’t think so! I believe they have two things: singleness of purpose in where they want to go and the disciplined personal habits that will take them there. Success requires that we have perfect clarity about what we want, constant vigilance to stay on task, regular reevaluation along the way and personal discipline to bring it to completion. One Native American Elder made this wise observation. "Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time." When someone asked him which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed the most."

Graduates! The truth of the matter is this! It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us! We were created in the image and likeness of God. We are temples of the Holy Spirit. We are light and salt to enlighten and give savor to the world. We are set on a hill to be seen. We have been given talents to invest. We are called to find joy in our lives and bring joy into the lives of others.  Nothing else is as important as these two things! Nothing! If we get these wrong, we have indeed failed at life no matter how far we go!  

Hold to deliberation and planning. Then you may go

your way securely and your foot will never stumble.

If you forgo deliberation and planning and if you fail to develop the personal disciple that goes with it, you could find yourself at my age being one of those million “could have beens, might have beens and should have beens.”  The real losers will be those people who get to the end, still blaming their parents, still blaming the times they lived in, still blaming the system that was so unfair to them or whatever other excuses they can come up with! The truth of the matter is, you have planning to do and choices to make! You can affect the outcome of your life by creating your bucket lists now and practicing the discipline it takes to work through that list - without lame excuses, without whining blame and without lazy shortcuts. As the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus said, “God loves to help him who strives to help himself.” You can accept or reject that help.

Graduates! In short, you have been given a good education. You can use it or lose it. Ultimately, your choice comes down to this: you can run with the big dogs or you can just sit on the porch and bark!

May 3 - 5th Sunday of Easter

Bellarmine University

“Interconnected and Interdependent”

Rev. Ronald Knott

May 3, 2015

I am the vine, you are the branches.

without me you can do nothing.

John 15

Am I imagining it, or am I just an old cranky man? Is there a growing attitude of people who think and act as if they live on this planet by themselves, displaying a total disregard of how their behaviors affect other people, displaying an attitude of “I am going to do what I want and I don’t give a hoot how it affects you or anybody else”?

Recently, I am finding my anger level hitting the boiling point when I see people throw garbage out of car windows, roll down their car windows and turn their car speakers up so loud it that it rattles the windows of my house, carrying on loud cell phone conversations in public places, letting children run wild in grocery stores and restaurants, trashing public facilities and vandalizing public art, just to name a few.

This excessive individualism is, no doubt, a reaction to an over-emphasis on the common good, when individuals felt crushed and controlled.  It’s the age old story of running off both sides of the road, trying to balance the good of the community with the good of the individual.

This is a very old problem. It goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve.  According to that story, at the end of creation God, humans and the animals lived in harmony – interconnected and interdependent. As a colorful Baptist preacher said at one of my graduations, “In the beginning, God was happy being God. The animals were happy being animals. Human beings, however, were not happy being human beings. They wanted t be God one day and animals the next!”  Adam and Eve were tempted to believe they could do without God. Their children, Cain and Abel, were tempted to believe that they could do without each other. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” With this, we see the sin of denying our interdependence begin, a sin that has been repeated in a myriad of ways ever since. Interdependence is the recognition that we are responsible to and dependent on others. To deny it is a sin. Interdependence recognizes the truth of our dependence and independence and weaves them together in a delicate balance.

The scriptures are full of stories emphasizing our interdependence.  Today’s gospel presents us with one of many. In the gospel today, Jesus gives us the parable of the vine and the branches. The Father is the vine grower, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches.  Just as Jesus and the Father are one, we are one with Jesus.  “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”  We are interconnected, whether we want to recognize it or not. As Celie, in the movie “The Color Purple” put it, “It ain’t easy trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.”

Saint Paul has many more examples of our interdependence. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.”  “Everything is lawful, but not everything builds up. No one should seek his own advantage, but that of his neighbor.” “Avoid giving offense, whether to Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit but rather that of the many, that they may be saved.”  “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, through many, are one body. Now the body is not a single part, but many. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.”  No part of the body can say to another part I don’t need you!

The Kentucky motto is “United we stand. Divided we fall.” This could be the motto of our country, our church, our parishes, our schools, our marriages, our families and our neighborhoods. It is the message of our scripture today, as well as all of Scripture.  Some people advocate personal freedom and independence as the ultimate good; others advocate communal responsibility and interdependence as the ultimate good. Interdependence recognizes the truth in each position and weaves them together. It is only when people choose either independence or dependence, only, that we get into trouble.  We are both independent and dependent in a delicate balance. We are interdependent! We are interconnected and we need each other. No man is an island, but part of the main. As John Muir, the famous conservationist put it, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” 

This is a timely message for our country and our church. In both worlds, there is a meanness and a “them versus us” kind of attitude that make enemies, winners and losers, rather than partners of each other.  We have even found out recently that we cannot even do without the “illegal immigrants” who pick our vegetables, clean our hotel rooms, roof our houses, landscape our lawns, nanny our children and dig our ditches. We have found out that we cannot do without Middle Eastern oil or clothes from China. We have found out that we cannot do without people in places like India when we try to get our credit card bills straightened out or our computers fixed.. We are finding out that we cannot even keep our parishes going without priests from Africa, Poland and Central America. We are not as independent as we think we are. In fact, we are becoming more interdependent than ever, thanks to modern communication and travel.

“A branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine.” This is true spiritually as well as socially.