Detachment

Several stories of the past week have struck me as having an important central moral in common. At least this is how it occurs to me.

About a week ago, a devastating tornado ripped through central Florida unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, and destroyed a whole swath of homes and just about everything in them. On the news reports throughout the next day, I kept hearing people who lived through it and now stood where their home and belongings were blown to smithereens, say how grateful they were, how blessed they were, that they were alive. Nothing else is that important, they said.

A day or two later, my mother told me that one of her good friends was out to dinner the night before with some of their friends, and her house burned down while she was out. “What?!” I exclaimed. This sounded so impossible and horrible. It had been on the local tv news and my mother saw it before her friend even knew. The woman saw all the emergency trucks and crews on her street when she returned that night, and discovered it was her home that burned down. It started in a basement gas pipe, and had it happened later in the night she may have not made it out. Her circle of friends immediately surrounded her with support and care. Mom and I talked about how little our belongings really matter, ultimately. Life is precious and love is stronger than anything.

A day or so after that, I went up to New England to visit my father in the rehab center he was taken to after an injury, and on the first afternoon there we had a long talk. The place is connected to a nursing home, and my father is friendly with the staff and residents there. He told me about a man who had been agitated and complained loudly and disturbed other residents, and had to be moved to another room. The next day, he passed away. Dad said when they took the man away, he watched and thought about how unimportant the things were that had agitated this man just the day before. 

We talked about my grandmother, who spent much of her nursing career giving tender care to the dying with the steadfast and reassuring presence of someone who respects life and believes its natural progression leads to eternal peace.

A couple of days later, the news broke that Anna Nicole Smith died. And just about ever since, tv newscasts have been filled with cycled and recycled film footage of her strikingly flamboyant appearances and lifestyle. At least, that’s what it’s looked like, though I think she was desperately unhappy. They talk about all the money left in her estate and all the people fighting over it. But this woman whose body we keep seeing flashed across our screens is an eternal soul, and that wealth doesn’t mean a thing.

So, what’s up with all this? It keeps rolling around my thoughts, and I’m thinking about the importance of detachment. Lately, I’ve been doing this periodic check on whether I’m using time wisely or wasting it, whether something is getting to be a bigger deal than it should.

Then today, we had a special event to attend in Chicago for the launch of the Champions of Faith. Some big athletes and people in the sports world were either there in person or on film — ‘there’ being Soldier Field, home of the Bears. Virginia and Patrick McCaskey were there, they being the family of Bears — and NFL — founder George Halas. They just returned last week from Miami and the Super Bowl.

Juan Pierre, former Chicago Cub and current Los Angeles Dodger was there. Jack McKeon, who managed to take the Florida Marlins to the 2003 World Series, was there on a recording. And if you go to the above link, many of those MLB superstars were there on film. All of them were part of Champions of Faith not because they were famous, but because their fame gave them a popular voice which they used to honor God as the most important power in their lives. The rest only mattered as much as it served a greater purpose.

Before that Soldier Field event, we went to Mass at St. John Cantius in Chicago. The Gospel was the ‘sermon on the plain,’ as Bishop Thomas Paprocki explained in the homily. Here in Chicago, he said, we’re known as plain talking, and that’s what Christ was in this sermon. “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.” The message was blunt, said Bishop Paprocki, about detachment from things that bind people to the world.

This reminded me of a great little book I’m reading (again), “Abandonment to Divine Providence.” It’s about utter simplicity and surrender, to God. How’s this for simplicity: “We need know nothing about the chemistry of combustion to enjoy the warmth of a fire.” What it’s saying is that things are only as important as they were made to be, and not as we make them out to be.

Things “must be…used with total detachment, as if we had nothing though we have everything.”

Works for me, when I let it.