To Serve Man

It's been a part of my New Year's resolutions to try to post on here more often.  But...  Well, you can see how often I've added since January 1st.  Not a good start.  So, I had a post started for today, full of ideas and inspirations -- all about the virtue of service to God and our fellow man, and how our fallen human nature tends to fall into the same error as Lucifer and our First Parents, and say, "I will not serve!"

I wanted to talk about today's Gospel and Epistle and how they speak to that issue.  I had a plan to illustrate the point I've been trying (over and over and over) to make to my children about how important it is to serve -- to be of service.  There's so much whining and complaining when a job needs to be done around here. And, heaven forbid anyone do something he's not told specifically to do. And the children procrastinate and complain, too! (Har Har!  It's really all of us!)  Anyway, the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany's lessons were made to order for the problem.  We  see Jesus' and Mary's example of charity at the Wedding at Cana (John 2, 1-11) in the Gospel, and in the Epistle (Rom 12, 6-16), St. Paul tells us to "give in simplicity" and "love without pretense..." along with a lot of other really good recommendations for our behavior.  Lots of good antidotes in today's Mass for the churlishness and laziness that goes on around here.  I wanted to elaborate and elucidate and illustrate and....  Wax poetic...  But, it's not in me.  I just can not write these days.  No matter how good the material,  I just could. not. get. it. done.

 But, well... Hey look; check it out.  After fiddling fruitlessly with pictures and poorly worded paragraphs for over two hours, all I needed to do to finally get this post out (such as it is) was: walk away from the computer, eat some vinegar potato chips, have a glass of iced tea, text back and forth with number five son, Dominic a couple times...  then come back, delete the whole doggone muddy mess I'd started, and write out the whole basic idea  (sorta),  in what? Three or four run-on sentences?  And fifteen minutes.  (Can you tell?)  Anyway,  I think this may be a breakthrough for me.  Succinctness through laziness. Or frustration.  Or  because I really must go now; I can tarry no longer at the computer.  And I strongly suspect nobody is reading this, anyway.

So, sigh....

It's Sunday night.  Dan's back at his job in Nevada 'til Thursday; the children are in bed; the Sunday night dvd is done and there are pillows all over the rec room floor behind me; Paddy, the tailless cat has fled the back of my chair in search of cozier digs in somebody's bed and Sarah-dog is lying predictably right in front of the stairs -- but I'm gonna leap over her here in a minute to go to bed. I'll be serving God and family (and, incidentally, me!) by getting a good night's sleep.  We have a busy day tomorrow, and I'm pooped.

But, before I say goodnight...  I'm left with the odd fragment of randomness that keeps coming back to me as I ponder the virtue of serving.  Remember that Twilight Zone episode: To Serve Mankind?  Every time I say or write the words "to serve" I think of this:

"It's a COOKBOOK!"



(If you have a hankering  to see the whole episode, go here -- or you can find it on Netflix, I think...)

Nuh-night, y'all! And God bless.