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7/2/2018

Old Bloggers Head Out To Pasture

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I was not happy with the limited posting I was able to do in June, and I feel like I left a lot of you hanging. One reason for the limited posts is several changes in my circumstances. Back in May I opened a free mental health service in the local Catholic Church here in my town. It is open Fridays all day, and in less than a month the available time slots were full. I am enjoying it very much, but I cannot do anything else on Friday, which eliminates another day I can devote to the Café. I continue to work Mondays at the Catholic Charities Clinic in Eustis, Florida; in fact, I will be driving over in an hour or two.

A second issue is the increasing demand for more reading prior to posting. There are several streams going at the same time which call for more research. Certainly, the Thursday stream on Luther and the Reformation is one; the nature of evil in the Monday Morality stream is another. This year I began commenting on the First Readings on the Sunday Mass, which meant a return to Old Testament studies, a discipline which is not one of my greatest strengths. When I started the Café four years ago, one of my goals was to introduce busy professionals to the best of new religious, catechetical, and theological works. This assumes reading the books first!

A third issue is retirement itself. Having turned 70 this year, I am finding that increasingly friends and family need contact and attention. Again, I am very pleased to become more involved in their lives, but this too devours the hours of the day. On the other hand, all the medical advice for seniors speaks of exercise and interpersonal interactions as means of maintaining a sound mind and a good spirit. This is a time of life to cultivate and enrich the relationships I already have, and perhaps engage in new ones. I know a fair amount of people who have outlived their friends and face their final years in an undesired solitude.

And, I am beginning to feel older. While I continue to be blessed with good health, I am no longer the young buck who could read till 2 AM. If I stay up that late, I will feel it the next day, like a hangover. When I was on retreat with the Trappists two weeks ago, I talked about all of this with a wise monk who reminded me that the senior population brings an example of transition and serenity, and he gently challenged me to stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
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I have no intention of discontinuing the Café, because aside from the pressures of brewing up new flavors frequently, it is one of the more pleasurable enterprises in my life. Realistically it is probably best to say that the weekly grind of each stream will be tapered back to two weeks instead of weekly. On days when I am on the road, like family reunions, I may post with more spontaneity and less pedantic. Old bloggers don’t die, they just reign it in a bit.

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1 Comment
Michael Lense
8/19/2018 09:53:08 am

Tom
Thanks for all the background information that leads us up to where we are today in this tragody. I know our answer is to pray but I often wonder how as Catholics will our Parishes survive. We know there will be more and more that will leave because of this. I know my own sister left the faith a few years ago for this reason. I know it’s not the Chuch and our faith and this happens everywhere in our world today but it is the numbers that amaze me in all of this. I had heard that the origional document from the Bishops I believe out of Dallas conference excluded the Bishops from being ‘investigated’ for this issue. I sure hope they open their eyes now and know that it is not just Priest but Bishops, Cardinals, and any other office that should be open to investigation and not by the clergy, there should be an independent investivagative committee that starts looking now in all areas of our country before the laity is hit yet again.

Michael

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  • HOME
  • MORALITY
  • SCRIPTURE
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
  • CHURCH HISTORY
  • BOOKS
  • LITURGY
  • ON MY MIND
  • The Boys of Aroma Hill-Callicoon
  • ABOUT THE BREWMASTER
  • CATHOLIC NOVELISTS and the BOOKS THEY WRITE
  • VATICAN II DECREE ON LITURGY STUDY