Gospel, Homily and Coffee

Several years ago, a couple had a toddler; all beautiful and healthy, except for an undetected genetic disorder. At 18 months the disorder kicked in and within 2 weeks he died. His parents were devastated. A community gathered around them, a funeral home offered services for free. The parents then began a project to raise awareness and funds towards this disorder. My one grandmother, born over 100 years ago, married my grandfather, and were married for around 50 years. During most of that time, my grandmother never learned to drive. She let my grandfather do all the driving. However, as they got older something changed, and they decided she needed to learn. So she did, but mostly she had grandpa drive. He died suddenly of a massive heart attack. She was devastated. She mourned. Then she started driving on her own; going out with friends, visiting. She enjoyed it and for almost 20 years she lived a new independence. A young man got caught up in a lifestyle that eventually l...

Life will have great trauma at times. We will face those moments when everything gets disrupted: Serious illness, loss of job, broken relationships, death. What will we do? What actions will we take? What will be our reaction?  Death certainly causes a lot of stress and chaos. We deal with emotions at the passing of someone we love, then almost immediately we need to take action; paperwork and arrangements. In our minds and hearts those, messy with lots of questions of why? How? Yet daily life also throws us twists and turns. Life never goes according to our plans on our calendars. There is construction that makes us late for work or appointments; kids get sick; that lack of planning by someone else that now becomes an emergency on our part; emails and then opening the wrong email and then IT needs to get involved; the boss who lays extra work on our plate; the employee that does not perform well; etc It is interesting to watch people react to that as well. We can witnes...

Good Morning all, and welcome to “Control Issues Anonymous”, aka the CIA. Hi, my name is Bob, and I have control issues. And I would assume all of you have them too, one way or another. And we are all looking to control our control issues. Control issues; when we strive to make sense of our lives, the lives of others and the entire universe. Control issues, when we strive to make everything happen according to our own wants, wishes, and desires. Control issues; when our fears are so great, and the only way we can get through our day. The symptoms of control issues? Persistent, hacking anger; low level depression; lack of joy in life; annoying fear that everything will collapse; dependency upon absurd conspiracy theories; strained relationships; an inability to make choices; an amazing ability to overthink; too much time on the internet looking at cat videos, or other means in an attempt to forget how miserable we are….  I fully admit to having control issues and I like to th...

Love is amazing. When we fall in love, there is that initial rush of wanting to give our attention to the other. And when there is that mutual look into each other’s eyes….wow. On TikTok last weekend a person went viral; Whiteyy18. Briefly, Tiktok is a social media platform for videos. People post videos doing and saying all kinds of things. Then others can take these videos and add their own content. So this guy Whiteyy18 is a 21 year old white guy, Canadian. He lip syncs to songs, a lot from the 80’s. Whiteyy, or William, is a good looking young man; great jaw line, perfect teeth, green/blue eyes, and a kind of 80’s haircut. Think Rob Lowe from his younger days. And what he does in these short little videos that have garnered attention is his eyes. He winks and he looks into the camera, and he has this charisma that makes one think he is looking right into you. NOW the viral part is that women of a certain age swoon over this, and make their own videos showing in a funny way ...