Blog Posts - trish hermanson

The Truth about St. Patrick

3/16/2018

I don’t mean to make you Irish cry in your green beer, but here’s the shocking truth about your patron saint: Patrick wasn’t Irish. He was English. And in Patrick’s story, the Irish aren’t the good guys.
     In the fifth century, Patrick was captured by the Irish from his English home and hauled off to become a slave, working as a swineherd.
     Patrick, a lackluster follower of God, prayed for his freedom and escaped. He fled and made it back to England to be reunited with his family. Gratitude!
     He would have happily stayed there, but a dream rocked him: babies in Ireland pleaded for him to return to tell them about Christ. He couldn’t shake off the dream, so he received monastic training and traveled back into the country that had once enslaved him, according to historian Bruce L. Shelley (“Church History in Plain Language”).
     A touching story, yes, but what’s it got to do with us?
     What if Patrick’s story is our story? What if something has taken us captive so we’re in a pigsty of trouble? Things like bitterness, or compulsions, or pleasures?
     That’s happened to me. Like Patrick, I cried out for divine help. Escape came, and I threw off chains of hurts, habits, and hangups (as Celebrate Recovery puts it). Gratitude!
     I’m not Irish, but I happily claim Patrick as the patron saint representing deliverance from whatever enslaves us.
     Because who wants to stay in bondage?

(Photo by Nheyob, own work, [CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0], via Wikimedia Commons, at Saint Patrick Catholic Church, Junction City, Ohio)

Is My Life a Great Story?

3/9/2018

Ever compare your life to a great story? I have.
     By “great story,” I mean one that I don’t read; it reads me. It plunges me down the mine shaft of my soul, hands me a pickax, and demands I chisel at the dross until I uncover treasures. It reveals secrets I don’t know about myself, or something I know but feared to face.
     A great story seduces me, then abandons me on its final page, leaving me bereft. Yet its memory enables me to rise, still mourning, and re-enter life with a sturdier stance.
     A great story asks me whether I’m making a great story of MY life. Am I embracing both love and sorrow, adventure and solitude? Do I stay in the safe village, or do I sometimes venture onto the road of risk?
     When I reach my final pages, will I have forgiven myself and others for mistakes along the way?
     And even if I don’t understand all the twists and turns in the plot, will I shout a hearty “thank you”?
     That’s a great story - and a great life.

Barbara's Trip from Woodstock to Foodstock

3/2/2018

She was one of those ’60s people Joni Mitchell sang about, a child of God walking along a road that led to Woodstock. Seeds of goodwill from attending that music festival planted in Barbara Moore’s soul.
But they lay dormant for years, squelched by life in the corporate fast lane. Then Barbara asked herself what she really wanted. “To get back to the garden.”
She learned that more than 200,000 children struggle with hunger every day in Colorado. Some receive free or reduced-cost school lunches. But on weekends, they may go hungry. In one family, the kids play a guessing game: “Who’s going to get to eat this weekend?”
     Barbara went into action, and Jeffco Eats was born. Volunteers bag food items and transport them to schools for students to carry home for the weekend.
     Meeting needs doesn’t have to come through an organization. One woman I know watches out for latchkey kids on her block, helping them with loose bike chains. A grandfather runs errands for his daughter so she doesn’t have to haul her preschoolers around. A group of women knit hats for homeless teens.
     The world’s needs can overwhelm me. But I heard a man say, “Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is to stop praying only and to start doing.”
     Good advice. So I’m part of Barbara’s brigade, filling bags with meals for hungry tummies. We’re transforming the idealism of Woodstock into the reality of foodstock.
     Because nobody should be forced to guess who gets to eat this weekend.

Why I Fight for Peace

2/23/2018

Within walking distance of our home, I stop at the front porch of a woman who survived the sinking of the Titanic because I’m trying to figure out how to survive my own shipwreck.
     Molly Brown built this summer cottage to escape a disaster other than the Titanic - the hassle of her modern life. From her home in downtown Denver, Molly would travel two and one-half hours by horse-drawn carriage along a dirt road to her lodge, a pastoral retreat near the banks of Bear Creek.
     Fast-forward one hundred years, and Molly’s haven is no longer placid. On two sides of what is now an events center, four lanes of suburban traffic whiz by. A strip mall with a convenience store sit across the street. And this is my neighborhood.
     But it’s more than the congestion of city life that rattles me. It’s the stress of 24/7 news and phone alerts and texts and social media. They’re all good communication tools, but they can be toxic, even addictive experts say, leading to never turning off.
     Most of us don’t have the luxury to build a getaway as Molly did. For me, it's crucial I create a time and space for a sanctuary at home, even if it’s only a chair, a lamp, and a cup of tea. Otherwise, the cares of the world - and of my world - run me over.
  How do you create your refuge?

The Curse of Olympians

2/16/2018

One stumble at the Olympics cost American figure skater Debi Thomas the gold, but it’s her stumbles since then that have been more costly.
     Considered the best African American skater in history, Thomas carried home the bronze metal from Calgary thirty years ago. She also captured gold, silver, and bronze in World Championships. And all this while studying at Stanford University. Medical school followed for Thomas, then licensure as an orthopedic surgeon.
     Fast forward - Thomas has divorced twice, lost custody of her son, let her medical license expire, declared bankruptcy, and moved into a bug-infested trailer in the Appalachians. What happened?
     Olympian mentality, she says.
     Her commitment to perfection led to her being frustrated with the performance of medical coworkers. She couldn’t get along and never lasted more than a year at various institutions. She started her own practice, only to watch it tank. As for her skating medals, she told the Washington Post they’re stashed away in a box somewhere.
     So this week as I watch Olympic figure skaters with their flawless Salchows and Axels, I’m reminded that performance isn’t everything to snag a gold medal in life. It’s learning how to carry on when the spotlight turns off. How to live with imperfection in myself and others. How to be a team player.
     In a beautiful twist of history, Thomas, who lost her gold medal with a stumble, is now promoting the sale of gold as an economic hedge. She’s picking herself up, as we all need to when we stumble.
  Lest we fall under the curse of the winners.

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