ThisCountryBoy.com made its first official post one year ago today, November 18, 2007.  Since then, there have been over 250 posts and we are now being read almost 150 times a week.  For the regular readers - thanks for your support and for coming back week after week.  If you have thoughts and suggestions for improvement, please shoot me a line at: Contact@ThisCountryBoy.com. 

As a commodity trader, the parable of the master who divided up his money to three servants really strikes home.  To the first he gave five talents, to the second three, to the third, one.  A talent was a unit of measure for gold and silver which was roughly equal to a weight of one man (about 130 lbs), which in today’s value would be close to about $1.5 million dollars.No small sum.

The master is described as a demanding man.  One who reaps where he doesn’t sow - who expects his servants to work well, and serve him well.  But he also shows that he is generous for those that perform well.

The first man takes his five talents (about $7.5 million in today’s value) and trades with them and doubles the money.  For his reward, he is given more responsibility, wealth, and power.

The second man too takes his two talents (about $3.0 million in today’s value) and trades with them and manages to double the wealth as well.  For his reward, he is given more responsibility, wealth, and power.

The third man takes his one talent ($1.5 million) and buries.  For his efforts, or his lack of effort, he is thrown out into the street and the talents are given to those that proved they could manage them effectively.

Those are good management techniques.

The challenge is, it isn’t that simple.

It is not by coincidence that the word for talents has been passed onto us with another meaning.  In Greek, it meant scale or balance, in our modern thinking, it means the skills, the gifts that we have been given.

Our Master too is demanding - He demands that we serve Him well.  He demands that we serve each other well.  He demands that we work to bring about His kingdom here on earth.

And he still distributes wealth.

Each of us is given talents, though our talents are more precious then gold or silver.  They are the skills, the gifts, the thoughts, the very essence of who we are - they are our talents, figuratively and literally, they are still in some ways the measure of the man.

Each of us is called to use our unique gifts to serve our Lord and Master. 

This can be a challenge.

Society calls for us to conform, to follow the herd, to live the life of quiet desperation where we are to stand up and use our God given talents.  Society tells us to shut up and take our seat on the bus.

But we are called to use those gifts - if our gift is writing, do we write?  If our gift is mercy - do we show compassion and mercy to those who need it?  If our gift is preaching - do we speak our voice?  If our gift is leading others - do we take that responsibility in our hands?

Or do we choose to bury our talents in the ground?  Do we hide our light under the bushel basket of comfort and ease.  Do we live those lives of quiet desperation - know that the demanding Master is going to call for a full accounting on the day of His return…

As I experienced the joys and surprises of Cuba this last week, I also met and interacted with many different people.  Government officials, cleaning ladies, beggars, taxi drivers, ladies of the night, students, waiters and waitresses - a whole menagerie of people from a huge range of educational backgrounds and understandings.  It was important to remember the lines from Paul’s letter - we are all temples of the living God.  We each are a house for the Lord, the foundation was laid down by Christ, and we build the rest with our actions, with our deeds.It would be easy to judge each one of those people that I came into contact with - living in a communist country, seemingly little faith, in some very dishonorable professions.  But where would that leave me?

In the end, I too am a temple of the Lord.  How do I fair in that department?  I am a sinner.  I’m overweight, don’t take care of myself like I should, and yet I too am a temple of the Lord.  Yet I am called - no I choose every time I go to receive the Eucharist, to be a temple, a residing place for our Lord Jesus Christ.  He abides with us and in us.

We are called to be that temple - to be that light on the hill shining for all to see.  To be a beacon of faith for all those that need it - to be a glimmer of hope in a dark world.

In the end, each of us are part of something much bigger.  Something much more powerful.  We are part of what Ezekiel prophesied about - about the temple that poured forth water and refreshed the land.  That watered the desert and made fruit trees grow.  We, each one of us believers in faith, are stones in this temple of light and hope.  In addition to being a Holy home, designed by our Father (but that we care for on this earth), we are also part of a larger body, a larger temple of faith that can move mountains, bring faith to the faithless, bring waters to dry lands - make the world anew.

Yet none of this possible or necessary without the ultimate Temple - that of the triumvirate God in our Lord Jesus Christ, who came to earth as man, but as God as well, and who sacrificed Himself for us upon the gibbet of the cross.  They destroyed His earthly temple, the residing place for God here on earth, and rebuilt it - raised it, raised Himself, from the grave three days later.

We have this mystical hierarchy of temples build by and for our Lord.  Confusing, revealing, profound - but what practical advice can we take from this?

I believe we are called to do two simple things.

First - we must preserve, protect, and do the best we can with the temple that we are given, our bodies.  Like any building, we must do the maintenance that it requires.  Moderation in our lifestyles, leading a healthy life, keeping ourselves pure.

Second - we must work to build that temple of our Lord here on earth.  We are called to be active participants in building it here on earth.  In our churches, in our communities, in our daily lives, we must seek to draw all together into the home of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Simple, not easy, but things that are absolutely necessary to grow in our life in the Spirit.

I live in a cracker box neighborhood.  House after house for miles in either direction of me on the same sized lot, with a very similar house - either a one and a half story house or a one floor ranch - and most of them were built about the same time too - post World War II as the great migration from the rural areas of the country to the cities took place.The wall of my house is about 10 feet from my neighbors.  I wave at them as they come and go - or as we work in our respective back yards or man our respective grills.  I know their names, or at least a rough idea of their names.  Their kids yell and wave at me with smile on their faces.

We live close to one another yet very far away.

Growing up, our closest neighbor was about a quarter mile away - across the road from our place.  To the east, the next place was about a half mile, to the west, you had to go over a mile.

The Gunderson’s, Hull’s, Otto’s, Yost’s, Bjerken’s (Gene and Gilbert), Pederson’s - they were our neighbors, but they were also people that we knew we had to take care of.  When the snows came, Dad would hook up the snow blower on the back of the John Deere 3010 and make the rounds, making sure that the neighbors drive ways were clear.

Halloween, we used to go to the neighborhood and get bucket of candy - it was more then a candy stop, it was a time to visit and talk.  Neighbors looked out for each other.

Our lives and our lifestyles have changed dramatically since those by gone days.  In the cities, the people that live on our street are still technically our neighbors, but they are nameless faces passing us each day.  In the rural areas, the distance between neighbors is growing greater with phone, and internet, and roads that can carry us farther and farther and technology that sucks more and more of our time.

But we have lost something in this exchange.

We link in with people across the globe, but we fail to help those in our own neighborhoods.  Our tolerance for different opinions wanes as we find we can find someone that shares our interest in ancient Chinese watercolors on line so our need to interact with our neighbors ten feet away goes away…why talk about the neighborhood school, or the streets, or the neighbor that needs help when we can talk about where our interest lies?

In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, we set our boundries - we can’t rake the neighbors leaves, or mow their grass, or shovel their snow - if we do it once, they expect it all the time.

But we are called to take that risk.

The good Lord told us that the two greatest commandments were to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our mind, and will all our spirit and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We are called to love our neighbor - to care for them in need, to lift their daily burdens, to serve them and love them as we love ourselves.  Regardless if we live in a dense urban world or the Spartan landscape of the Great Plains.  Regardless if our nearest neighbor is five feet or five miles (or more in some cases).  Regardless if they share the same interest or care about the same thing or share the same views.

In end, loving our neighbors as ourselves will help to drive us towards that greater love that resides with our Lord - in loving our neighbors, we will be guided to loving the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, and will all our soul.

Mom was always very active in the community.  One of the organizations that she poured herself into was Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL).It seemed like every Sunday was a meeting or a fundraiser, or some event that Mom was helping to coordinate.

The county fair, the annual craft sale, the various food stands and other functions run by volunteers to raise money for the cause usually had Mom and sometimes some of us kids in tow.

In her effort to end abortion, Euthanasia, and capital punishment, she was not alone.  There was usually the core group of people dedicated to making things happen and a wider range of people that could be counted on to supply labor or material as needed.

The activities were political in nature - not necessarily supporting any one candidate, but always the same list of priorities.  Working through the system to get the people elected that would support the agenda, doing letter writing and lobbying as needed, and making sure that people were thinking about the issues and seeing the dissenting view from conventional thinking.

It was a moral issue for Mom.  A child became a living, breathing, human at conception.  Ending it early was morally wrong.  A person on the verge of losing their life due to sickness and disease might still have thoughts, might still encourage others, was still a living, breathing human being and ending that life was unfair to that person and unfair to those that might come in contact with them.  An inmate on death row was still a human being - their thoughts, their actions, their repentance or lack of repentance might make others better people…and in the end, they are a living, breathing human being - and ending that life was morally wrong.

It was a moral issue that turned into a political issue.  Our legal system stated that a woman has the right to take the life of her unborn child.  Our legal system says that the state may take the life of an inmate.  The only way to change it was to push the system for a change.

It was a moral and political issue that was also deeply spiritual as well.  Mom’s sense of right and wrong had their roots in her faith.  She prayed about it.  She knew where her faith said she should stand on the issue.

In the end, she hated the thought that her beloved country law of the land supported and legalized the things that she abhorred.

But in the end, she never lost faith in either one.

The Lord said, “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

Our Constitution guarantee’s “The Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

But in the end, the two cannot be separated; the two co-exist in our souls, in our hearts, in our minds.

In the end, many of the social, and moral, and ethical issues of the day are driven by our conscience and our beliefs in right and wrong that come down to us from our Christian traditions.

Just as Cyrus, the king of Persia, was anointed by God to do his work, though he did not know God, and St. Paul tells us that we were chosen, though we were not chosen by our choice alone, so we must follow our hearts, our minds, and our souls to do the work of God here on earth.  We must discuss, argue, and discern to find his way.  We must vote, we must speak out; we must be active participants in our political process.

Mom didn’t know how her fight was to end, and she knew that she was just one little part of a very big effort and movement - one that she won’t see completed in her lifetime.  But she fought anyway.  She moved forward driven by the Spirit to change our world for the better - to make our world a little more Christ like.  She gave of her time, her talent, and her treasures to help bring His kingdom a little close to us.

If that is not rendering unto God, what belongs to God, I don’t know what is.

In addition to the standard barn and farm chores, there was a number of household chores that we graduated into.  Starting when I was six, one of my jobs was throwing out the garbage - the left over scraps and coffee grounds from Mom’s kitchen that would get thrown back into the woods.When I was eight, I added burning the papers to the routine.  All of the burnable refuse was put in the garbage and burned as needed.

I can remember one cold winter day, I was out burning papers.  It was cold.  To get to the burning barrel we had to walk past the area where we worked on equipment.  On an old barrel was a jug of oil.  As I was walking back up to the house, I walked over and tried to pick up the jug of oil.  The cold brittle plastic broke in my hands and oil ran everywhere.

I was scared.

When I went back into the house, I told Dad that I found the oil jug broken.  He asked me if I had touched the jug.

I said no.

He got angry.  He knew that an oil jug wouldn’t break by itself.  He also knew by my face, by my body actions, that I was lying.

The oil was not the issue.  Lying was.

I had a choice.  Tell the truth or lie.  I chose poorly.

When the good Lord made man, he gave them the gift of free will.  What has to be so frustrating to the Lord is the number of times that we chose poorly.

In the gospel, Matthew tells us that the Lord compares heaven to a great wedding feast where the people that are invited chose not to show up - or worse, beat and kill his servants.  They are given and choice, and they chose poorly.

As a result, others, perhaps the less of society, get to enjoy the banquet in their place.

Free will.

How many times do we face decisions in this life and choose poorly.  In small things.  In big things.

How many times do we reject the Lord in our lives.  In our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds.  We fail to follow his path, his way.  We chose not to come to the wedding feast.

My father had a very gentle answer to his young son who was obviously very upset - about the spilled oil and about being caught in a lie.

“I’m not upset about the oil.” He said, “I’m disappointed that you chose to lie instead of telling your father the truth.”

I learned my lesson that day about lying…but I pray that I’ve also learned my lesson on making the right choice in His plans.

Last week, I was pulling out of the church parking lot and was cut off in traffic.  I followed too closely, I tailgated for a mile or so.  I wanted that guy to know that he had cut me off, had not followed the rules of the road.  I wanted to make this guy pay.As I pulled up along side of him on the interstate, I scowled over at him…and he smiled sheepishly and waved at me as if to say, “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

Boy, did I feel foolish.  I had faced a choice.  At eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, after congratulating myself for saying good morning to the usher, holding the door open for a group of people behind me, and letting several cars pull out in front of me in the parking lot, I turned into a nasty monster once I left the sanctity of that church parking lot.

I had gone to battle with my emotions and lost.

Every day, we go to battle.

In our thoughts and in our deeds, in what we say, in what we do not say, we make choices on a daily basis that impact ourselves, impact our fellow man, and impact our world.

We often don’t think about these battles.  In they end, they seem kind of short and have more too do with the people around us then they do to us.

“I wouldn’t have tailgated that guy if he wouldn’t have cut me off.”

“I wouldn’t have yelled at that customer but he wouldn’t listen.”

“I wouldn’t have made fun of that guy if he would have undersood.”

These are all examples of little things that we react too on a daily basis.  All things that we have a choice in - all times when we confront challenges in our world, in our lives, and in our hearts, and we make the choice on how we respond.  Do we meet fire with fire?  Do we defend our turf against interlopers?  Do we sin in response to ignorance?  Do we sin in response to an intended slight?  What choice do we make as our heart and head answer the questions that face us on a daily basis.

In our daily lives, we face the choice of sin or not to sin, to understand or to stick to our ignorant ways.  To love, or to hate.  Every day, we face sin.  Sin in our world.  Sin in our country.  Sin in our heart.  How we respond, how we live our lives is the measure of who we are.  We are not perfect.  We will fall into the snares of the evil one, but as we seek to live the life closer to our Lord, may we remember the words of St. Paul:

“Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,
by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
make your requests known to God.
Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious,
if there is any excellence
and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

Everything in my background taught me to be a rational man.  Growing up on the farm, things lived and died.  Work had to get things done.  Think through things and do the rational, right thing.

In my education, the scientific methods were drilled into my head.  Thought, reason, rational answers were behind all things.  Nature was beautiful, complex, and explainable.

Sometimes this process didn’t work so well when mixed with my families strong Catholic faith.

Even today, I suffer crises of faith.

Last night, I was at Christian music festival, which is outside of the realm of my usual comfort area.

Faith is generally a private matter.

Here were people clapping their hands, waving their arms, singing along in worship and praise.

All of a sudden, my faith waivered.  As a rational man, how could these people be acting this way?

I ran through all of the old arguments.

Think of all of the miracles and wonders over the last two thousand years that have been attributed to people of faith?

Rational me: Yup, same people that believed in dragons, believed that the earth was flat, and that the sun moved around the earth.

Think of the stories of the Bible.

Rational me: Yup, stories written down years after the fact by people that were trying to build up their following.

Think of how one man (the Son of God) changed history without leaving a small radius around his hometown?

Rational me: Not identical, but similar to the founders of most other major religions.

Think of all of the people that have truly believed and have followed the Christian lifestyle.

Rational me: Yup, but also the large number of people that allowed themselves to be caught up in Facism, Communism, Nazism, and every other major political, economic, or religiously zealous organization.

How could our souls live on as our bodies rotten in the ground?  Are we that different then mere animals?  Don’t we have the same or at least similar animal instincts?  How do we know that there is anything waiting for us beyond this life.

Once all of the arguments were made, I was left naked and exposed to bitter winds of dispair.  There was not hope.  We are but dust.

But the last refuge is always the soul.  For soul doesn’t forget.

The soul remembered the encounter on the road as the hand of God reached down and grasped my soul that cold, rainy spring day four days before my mother passed away.

The soul remembered fighting with the devil that hot summer morning when living in Champaign, IL.

The soul remembered the words spoken at just the right time when my heart needed them most, when all seemed lost, and the one passage struck home and welled up the strength so that I might go on.

The soul remembers.

I felt restored.  As the concert came to an end.  The crowd as asked to sing our national anthem, and as we did, I, like a child, or a heretic would do, I dared to ask God for yet another sign.  Not knowing the time or the place - and knowing that signs are rarely what we expect - I was resigned to be patient and sleep an uneasy sleep as doubt continued to lap at my mind.

As we drove away in the midnight hour, a shooting star, so bright and seemly so close flashed directly in front of our car.

Was it the sign?  Was it the wonder I dared to ask the Lord for?

My faith said yes.  It was not as dramatic as the other encounters.  It was nothing out of the ordinary.  It was something that can be explained by science.

But it was also something - with all my years under the clear skys of norther Minnesota, looking up and asking questions, I have never seen before.

Faith, in the end, is a difficult thing.  It is believing in the unknown.  It is rationalizing something beyond our feeble mind can understand.

But our soul knows.  Our soul remembers.

I get frustrated easily.

It seems we always have something to be frustrated about.  I remember when I was in second grade and was moved from the “advanced reading” section of my class to the “regular reading” section of my class.  I was ashamed.  I was embarrassed.  But I was also determined to do better.  In hindsight, it was one of the best things that happened to me.

When I was in high school, farming kept me away from a lot of things my senior year.  During most of my high school years I was on the track and field team, but my mother’s illness forced me to drop out the middle of my junior year - so instead I focused on other activities that fit my schedule better and managed to serve as the president of our local FFA Chapter, Band, National Honor Society, and the Speech team. 

When I was looking at graduate schools, the University of Illinois was an after thought - it was going to be NDSU for sure, or maybe Purdue.  But I went to look at Illinois as a favor to a friend and a professor.  Am I ever glad that I did for that experience was a life changing one and gave me more confidence then ever in my ability.

It seems sometimes when we get doors slammed in our faces, when the paths we take lead to dead ends, when we are dejected, humiliated, and sometimes flat out defeated - that is when we realize those moments are the crossroads that lead us on to better and bigger things.

Sometimes those moments are hard to see.  We pray and we pray asking for the big sign, the large miracle to point us in the right direction and are disappointed when it never comes.  We forget to look to the small things - the things in everyday life.

The Lord points us in the right direction.  Sometimes not with the big sign, sometimes not with the firm hand, sometimes, it is like Elijah on Mount Horeb and the Lord comes to us in the small whispering wind.  Sometimes, it is like the the apostles in the fishing boat in the storm and the Lord comes to us walking on the waters - in a way that his apostles never would have guessed.

It happens like that for us too.

At some of my lowest, loneliest points in my life, I have felt the loving hand of God reach down and give me support.  Sometimes it is in friend that provides comfort.  Sometimes it is a stranger that provides a kind word.  Sometimes it is that warm feeling that you get letting you know that everything is going to be already.

In the end, our God is alive and active among us, sometimes as a whisper in our hearts and sometimes walking across the chaos of our lives daring us to walk with him.

Growing up, we weren’t poor, we just didn’t have much money.

There was a big garden for fresh vegetables in the summer and ample canning to get us through winter.  There were 30 head of dairy cows that were milked twice a day, so there was always a good supply of good milk.

The feedlot was filled with the youngstock, heifers and steers.  The heifers to replace the cows.  The steers for market or our dinner table.  In addition, there were usually a couple of pigs in the small pen in the lean-to.  There was never a shortage of meat.

Some how, some why, our folks managed to raise five kids and send them all off for higher education, not with a lot of money, but with a good sense of hard work, common sense, and values.

As I went out into the world, it always amazed me that regardless how bad things seemed or how dark the days, a ray of light would shine down.

When they were ready to kick me out of school for failure of payment, my brother gave me a $200 loan.  When I got a flat tire in the middle of the night on a desolate highway, the next car was a highway patrolman who held a flashlight for me.  When I needed comfort and advice, there was usually a friend around to grant me comfort and counsel.  When my soul was at its lowest, there was a word or comment that usually roused me out of my spiritual desert.

Call it fate.  Call it destiny.  Call it creative thinking or coming to conclusions.

Or call it one more example of the love of our Lord.

Now, I have heard two different interpretations of the story of the loaves and fishes in my life.  The wonderful words from the gospel where Jesus served over five thousand people with five loaves and two fish.

The first was that through the blessing of the bread the fish, he performed a miracle where the bread would not run out, like manna in the desert.  A holy and recognizable miracle.

The second is a little more practical.  This massive group of people wondered out into the middle of nowhere - most of them would have packed something to eat.  But it was their food, not to be shared.  All of a sudden, they see Jesus giving a blessing and handing out his food.  Out from their packs and clothing came the meals they had prepared for the journey to share with the people around them.  So in the end, those five loaves became twelve baskets of scraps.

The first explanation certianly sounds like something that an all knowing and all powerful God would do.  But the second is no less miraculous, no less difficult, for instead of simply snapping his fingers and multiplying loaves and fish, it required a conversion of heart.

As we live our lives, may we too feel this miracle of the loaves and fish.  May our hearts be opened.  May we give without regarding the cost.  May we be the wheat, the bread, the gift.  May God’s grace and love fill us and act as a beacon so that regardless of anguish, distress, persecution or all tribulation, we may never lose sight of the undeniable - and undying - love of our Lord.