Bumping into God Again

by Grassi, Dominic

• ISBN13: 9780829415100
• ISBN10: 0829415106
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Loyola Pr

Summary

In three heart-warming books, Fr. Dominic Grassi celebrates the special moments of grace he has witnessed in his thirty years as a priest. In Still Called by Name, Grassi shares simple stores that reveal the incredible joy, profound awe, and overwhelming peace he finds in his vocation. His poignant and often humorous recollections restore faith and trust in priests at a critical time for the Catholic Church. In Bumping into God and Bumping into God Again, Grassi offers thirty-five uplifting tales of discovering God's presence in our daily lives.

Author Biography

Dominic Grassi is pastor of St. Josaphat Parish on the North Side of Chicago, where for almost fifteen years he has been making its motto, "A church to come home to," a reality for thousands of parishioners. A lifelong Chicagoan, he has served as an educator, counselor, athletic coach, retreat and vocation director, inspirational speaker, editor, writer, and friend

Table of Contents

Introduction	viii
Acknowledgments	xiii
Stories of God's Patience
Fishing	4	(5)
Toilet Paper Annie	9	(5)
I'll Never Know	14	(5)
Homeless Christy and a Father Who Holds Me	19	(5)
Flea-Bitten	24	(8)
Stories of God's Justice
Summer Dreams	32	(5)
Hardheaded	37	(5)
Striking Out	42	(5)
One Saint's Day	47	(5)
Visiting the Suburbs	52	(8)
Stories of God's Absence
Shrugging Shoulders	60	(5)
Yes, Miss Daley	65	(5)
Sandy	70	(5)
Lost in Muir Woods	75	(5)
Sorry, Stranger	80	(8)
Stories of God's Image
Made in Whose Image and Likeness?	88	(5)
A Mother's Love	93	(5)
Dad and the Hospital and Me	98	(5)
What's in a Name?	103	(5)
The Face of God	108	(8)
Stories of God's Order
On Being Someone's Last Hope	116	(5)
Long Walks and Pilgrimages	121	(5)
Fireworks	126	(5)
Fear of Smiling	131	(5)
Sliced Any Other Way	136	(8)
Stories of God's Word
What Sign?	144	(5)
Sign Language	149	(5)
Coins and Fountains	154	(5)
An Almost Empty Feast	159	(6)
Letting My Hair Grow	165	(9)
Stories of God's Gentleness
Love Is Not Blind	174	(5)
In Defense of Crying	179	(6)
Hero--of the Unsung Variety	185	(5)
The Healer	190	(5)
Angels and Buicks	195	(6)
Afterword	201

Excerpts

Introduction

 

IT SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE TO ME THAT there is a second volume of stories about my “bumping into God.” After all, my life has continued as before, as have my relationships and my ministry. Nothing has changed dramatically. What has proved surprising to me, however, is that people not only read the first volume but wanted more. I believe that’s because people are not so much attracted to my stories as they are pleasantly surprised to get in touch with their own stories as they read mine.
Early in life, as I listened to my parents and their peers, I learned what a privilege it is to be able to share stories with others. I am still telling my family’s stories, and my friends—being good friends—smile and nod agreeably as they listen for the tenth time to something that I feel is as fresh as Mom’s homemade bread. I would guess that they hear the enthusiasm in my voice and choose out of kindness not to shut me down.
Now I find myself quite often introduced as a “storyteller,” and audiences actually sit in front of me in rapt attention waiting for me to begin; they want me to tell my stories. What a privilege! What a gift! What a grace! What an opportunity for me to bump into God. I’m a lucky guy and I know it.
I am learning that stories beget more stories. For example, what sheer delight I felt when, during a question-and-answer session after a book reading, someone asked if the brother who was there in attendance happened to be the same  brother who hid me in my stroller under a porch when I was a child, a story I recounted in my first book. He was indeed the one. Fifty years later I felt totally vindicated as he blushed and muttered that this was how I had immortalized him. How was it that at signings where my other brothers were present (brothers who were not the guilty ones) I was never asked that question? It was a moment to savor and became a new story to tell.
I’m also learning that there always seems to be a deep vein of stories left to mine. A person’s memory is very much like a muscle. The more it is used, the better it will function. So we have more memories than we can immediately recall. At the same time, life goes on. And that provides us with additional opportunities and experiences. Our stories continue even as we are in the process of telling them.
Maybe all of this goes without saying. Of course our memories are full of untold stories, and of course we are making new memories and new stories every day as we go about ordinary life. But I am still finding it all amazing. My stories, as well as those of so many people I have encountered, have convinced me that God’s presence is right here if only we take the time to reflect on it. Here is an example.
After a very difficult week, I really looked forward to turning the clock back at two a.m. on October 31, which happened to be Halloween morning. The extra hour of sleep would be just what I needed. For days prior I had found myself in the kind of deep funk that leads me to seriously doubt the existence of a hereafter, much less a God to go with it. That’s a deep pit to fall into. The lethargy that followed would not even allow me to search for a sign. I was in no mood to bump into God. So God bumped into me, really hard. Should I have been surprised?
One would be tempted to say that in that “witching” hour when the clock gets set back and sixty minutes are repeated, time stands still. Isn’t that a really good definition of eternity? And it was at that time, or in the lack of it, that I found myself walking down the street in the rain, rudely awakened from a deep sleep and a warm bed. I was on my way to a nursing home to anoint someone I had never met. I was locked out of the facility, and it took a lot of muttering and my trying four different doors before I could find a way to get in. Once there, I did my thing. I gave the dying woman and her grieving daughters a blessing and headed back home. I stepped back onto the street at exactly the time that all the neighborhood bars closed their doors. So the streets were now filled with costumed revelers. There was a Dorothy fromThe Wizard of Ozwith very hairy legs and a mustache. I didn’t want to walk too close to her. Or him? A doctor in his green scrubs high-fived me. In fact, people up and down the street were smiling at me. They did not see a priest. I was just another costumed partyer. I looked a little better than a guy I saw who had tried to dress as a priest; he was getting into a cab with his princess girlfriend.
I ran the rest of the way home, feeling totally out of place and uncomfortable. Once back, I tried to sleep, but I could not. In that one hour, that hour when time stood still, that hour that mirrored eternity, I had been given a choice. I could either do what I do, and do it well, trusting in God. Or I could just parade around, hollow and dressed in some costume that I had no right to wear. No, I didn’t bump into God that night. God slammed right into me.
I realize that this introduction is starting to turn into a book of its own. It is very much like when Mom would set the table for unexpected guests, saying that she would just fix them up “a little something” to eat. Before you knew it, the guests and the table itself were moaning from so much food. And she would encourage them, saying “Mangia! Mangia! Eat! Enjoy!”
And so I say to you, “Mangia! Enjoy these stories!” But please, add some of your own. Tell them. Share them with others. Keep on bumping into God. And encourage others to join in with you. That is why I am offering these to you.

 

Stories of God’s Patience

 

God’s patience with us is in direct proportion to our limitations, our silliness, and our sinfulness. How ironic it is that we have tried so hard to surround ourselves with labor-saving, energy-saving, and time-saving devices and in the process have lost the skill and art of being patient with ourselves. If God can be so understanding of us, our challenge is to be accepting of the other person, whether a scam artist, hoarder of toilet paper, or wise bag lady. Fighting off a squadron of fleas or sitting by a lake with a fishing pole in hand, we have many opportunities to bump into God. We need only be patient.

“Or again, what woman with ten drachmas would not, if she lost one, light a lamp and sweep out the house and search thoroughly till she found it? And then, when she had found it, call together her friends and neighbors? ‘Rejoice with me,’ she would say, ‘I have found the drachma I lost.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing among the angels of God over one repentant sinner.”
~ Luke 15:8–10

 

Fishing

Once, on a warm summer’s morning, Mom shook my brother and me awake just as the sun was barely brightening the eastern sky. It was too early, but we did not even think of complaining as we did when it was 6:30 a.m. and we were being dragged from sleep to serve at early Mass. Toast, juice, bacon, and eggs scrambled in olive oil were waiting for us this morning. We tried not to look too excited as we gulped down the food, but we were in a real hurry. Once we finished eating, we gathered the lunches Mom had packed for us, the worms we had dug out of the backyard the day before, and the minnows we had bought from Van’s Bait Store on Belmont Avenue. Lots of the minnows were bellyup, but enough of them were still alive to guarantee some fun.
While I picked up my bamboo pole with its bobber and sinkers already attached to the line, my brother Tony grabbed his trolley line and stringer and tackle box. Off we went to the rocks of Belmont Harbor, located between the Nike Missile Base, which protected us from a Russian sneak attack, and the Yacht Club, which protected the rich from the rest of us. We were ready for a full day of fishing.
I was a neophyte fisherman, my brother a veteran who took fishing seriously. Even back then he was a person of few words. Still, I could always tell when he was getting upset with me, like when I’d start playing with the minnows or forget to bait my hook correctly. Tony, who had a five-hook trolling line with a bell and spring attached that signaled when a fish was nibbling, would be all set up, baited, and in the water before I could get my simple threepiece pole prepared.
He’d start to catch perch right and left, determining which ones to save on the stringer line and which ones to throw back into the lake. Occasionally he would land a rock bass after a terrific fight. My brother always knew exactly what to do.
Not me, not by a long shot. It would finally get to Tony when, for instance, I’d keep pulling up the stringer to see if the fish he had caught were still alive. Eventually he would yell at me and I would get quiet and just sit there, bored and halfheartedly holding my pole. At those times I couldn’t help but notice my brother watching the sun rise over the water and then leaning back and watching the clouds float by. I sensed that he was going off into his own world.
Later, when I was chasing a grasshopper instead of watching my pole, I got a bite that pulled the whole thing into the water. I panicked, not knowing what to do, until my brother calmly stepped onto the rocks and snagged it with one toss of a threepronged hook. Unfortunately, it turned out that my catch was a fat garbage-eating carp that I wouldn’t keep. My brother went back to calmly staring off into the distance. I grew even more bored, then very tired, and then hungry.
I broke open the sandwiches that Mom had prepared for us and wolfed down all of mine, not realizing it was only nine-thirty in the morning. My brother joined me, again without saying a word, just sitting there with one hand on the line and the other holding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Prudently, he saved half of his lunch for later. He knew it was
only nine-thirty.
By 10:00 a.m., I had caught a few fish, lost even more along with a lot of the bait, eaten my entire lunch, chased some bugs, and become totally bored. Clearly it was time to go home. My day of fishing, in reality less than three hours, was over. But my brother would have none of that; he was going
to stay.
Once I got home, I crawled into bed and slept for a few hours. After a real lunch at the right time, I went out in search of my friends, who I found playing in the alley, and joined them. It wasn’t until after five o’clock in the evening that I noticed Tony walking slowly home. His face was beet red from the day in the sun and wind. The stringer thrown over his shoulder was filled with perch that Mom would reluctantly clean and then cook to perfection. Tony was a true fisherman.
In fact, he and another brother still are. On occasion, they will spend a vacation on the water. Fishing has developed into a real sport and hobby for them both. But not for me. I always needed more than just to sit there and wait for a fish to make its move. And that is really the shame of it. I haven’t been fishing in decades, but something inside me believes that I’d enjoy it now. I’m just too embarrassed to learn how to do it.
I have a feeling that for my brothers and for a lot of other people who fish, one of the lures (no pun intended) of fishing is that once the line is in the water you have an excuse to sit and wait and do nothing else at all. Plus, you get to drink in the beautiful sights and sounds of the outdoors. Without the pole, there really is no excuse for just sitting there for so long a time. Only strange people sit and stare for hours on end.
What someone like me might call meditation or reflection or even prayer my brother simply calls fishing. Imagine how people would react if, on a warm day in the summer when the grass needed to be cut or the leaves needed to be cleaned out of the gutters, we said we were going down to the lake to stare or meditate or pray. They would think we were either lazy slackers or a little out of our minds. But if, instead, we pulled out an expensive, perfectly balanced, lightweight rod and reel and some exotic lures and announced that we were going fishing, people would quickly admire us for being so well-rounded and for having such a wholesome hobby.
Most of us could use a little time sitting, looking at the sun, feeling the breeze, and listening to the waves break on the shore. Fishing can be decidedly low-tech. It can be done while our thoughts melt into dreams and our hopes into intercessions. We can then find the quiet silence in the core of our heart and feel the great stillness that is there—indeed, the presence of God that is there. And if a fish happens to wake us out of that state, at least we will have something to show for how we spent the day.

Toilet Paper Annie

 

I don’t like changing names in my stories, but I guess I will in this one. While I don’t think “Annie” would mind if I properly identified her, others in her family would not sense my genuine affection for her and might become upset at me for making her story public.
I never knew Annie’s husband. When I met her, he had been dead for a number of years, leaving her alone and frightened. It seems that her husband had taken care of everything—all the details, all the money, all the bills. Without any children to step in, Annie found herself left to deal with life on its terms and with no one to protect her.
Annie’s husband had been a good provider. But despite the numerous insurance policies, the paid-off home mortgage, social security, and other bank accounts, Annie lived in dreadful fear that she would one day be broke and forced to live on the streets. So she began devising all sorts of ways to save her money.
To save on electric bills, Annie stopped turning on the lights and using appliances. Her brothers and sisters would come by her house and would sit with her in a living room that grew darker with every visit. Annie began to water down the wine she would serve them, and pretty soon it was only warm tap water in their glasses. Needless to say, they soon stopped coming by to visit.
Every Sunday, Annie would stand in church and run her hand over a plaque on which her husband’s name was listed as a donor to the centennial campaign. Parishioners who felt sorry for her soon learned that any attempt at kindness, such as mowing her lawn, would evolve into a daylong commitment; she would beg to also have her windows washed, screens put in, and so forth, with never an offer of compensation or thanks.
Annie had an absolutely incredible knack for knowing when the church was having a function that involved food. With her large, sad eyes she would beg and beg until whoever was in charge of the event would let her in. It could be a thank-you party for festival workers, a cake and ice cream party after First Communion, even the Men’s Holy Name Society Christmas Party. There would be Annie, filling her plate, her mouth, and her purse simultaneously.
Nothing was safe. Food, condiments, paper plates, and utensils would make it into her pockets. A few people would shake their heads self-righteously. But most did not begrudge her what would probably be her sole meal for a day or two. They were kind and patient with her. And this was fortunate for Annie. Some helping agencies in the area had banned her because she was so quick to pocket anything and everything.
Once, Annie joined a group of parishioners who went caroling on a cold December night the week before Christmas. The music director had kindly given her a small handbell to ring during the singing. Annie had a marvelous time. She endured the cold because the caroling would end with cookies and hot cocoa at a parishioner’s house. When we got there, the food had not yet been put out, so Annie began to literally stamp her feet in anticipation. She suddenly spied a cut crystal bowl filled with exquisite looking hard candies. With a lightning grab, she had put three of them in her mouth before the shocked and frightened hostess screamed out from across the room that they were not candies. They were Italian glass pieces made to look like candies. Her husband had just brought them back from Italy. Annie quickly spat them back into the bowl. We never knew what the hostess did with them after the carolers left. But she did make sure that Annie went home with a shopping bag full of real sweets.
I’ll tell you how Annie got her nickname. Every Sunday morning the bingo workers would come to me and complain that there had been no toilet paper in the women’s washroom in the parish hall. This happened week after week. And week after week the janitor was blamed for not doing his job. And week after week the janitor insisted that on Friday afternoon the last thing he did before going home for the weekend was put a roll of toilet paper in each stall and an extra roll next to it.
Early one Sunday morning before the hall was opened for bingo, I checked. And I saw that there was indeed enough toilet paper to satisfy the needs of a small town for a week. So I waited for the hall doors to be opened for bingo. Sure enough, Annie was the very first one to come in, wearing her tattered red cloth coat flat at her sides. I watched as she walked into the bathroom and then came out five minutes later, her coat bulging as if she had just gained a hundred pounds. I sent someone in to check the women’s bathroom. Not a sheet of toilet paper was left. Mystery solved and nickname given: “toilet paper Annie.” It stayed with her until her death a few years later.
I wonder what her family found in Annie’s home after she died. It was so sad that she wasn’t able to enjoy what she did have. Sometimes I wonder what more we could have done for her. But her family got angry when anyone tried to help her, suggesting darkly that everyone was always after Annie’s money. And that just wasn’t the case.
At Annie’s wake, as I looked at her tiny body at rest in the coffin, I was sorely tempted to get a roll of industrial-strength toilet paper and tuck it in the corner of the casket for her trip home, not to make fun of Annie, but as a reminder to God of how patient and kind most people had tried to be to this poor, sad lady. It’s not that God needed a reminder to be patient with her. I suppose it would have been a way to let God know that we all loved Annie. We knew that now she was at peace as she was welcomed patiently into God’s loving embrace.