Faith Witness to St. John the Evangelist Youth Group

October 17, 2021

Just Keep Dancing

• Introduction
  • I’ve always been a big dancer.
  • I know that may totally surprise some of you who no me well, but it’s true
• High School
• In high school the purpose of the dance was self-aggrandizement.
  • I was really good at attracting attention on the dance floor.
• Fortunately for me, a big part of that dance floor was the St. Louis CYO in Alexandria, VA
  • I first met the future Fr. Gould there in about 1979 when he was a seminarian assigned to St. Louis for the summer.
  • I was one of the leaders of the group, and I was really good at the dance steps. I was even:
    • On the Diocesan Youth Board
    • On committees set up by the Bishop
    • Asked personally by Bishop Welsh, the first Bishop of Arlington, to speak at a Convocation at the Bishop O’Connell High School on the Liturgy of the Hours
      • I didn’t even know what that was!
    • Very active in the Youth Encounter movement
    • Nominated as the Outstanding Catholic Youth in the Diocese of Arlington.
  • I knew I was anything but an Outstanding Catholic Youth
    • But I was a good dancer
    • I knew how to look the part.
  • But even if I didn’t fully grasp the meaning of the dance, I was on the right dance floor
    • I had good Catholic friends
      • Some of whom were missing the point also,
        • but at least they knew what the right things were, and
      • I was surrounded by the goodness in the Church

• Notre Dame
  • All that showiness in high school helped me achieve what is a dream for many of you here tonight – get into a great college.
    • In my case, the University of Notre Dame
  • I continued to be the big dancer, always good at the dance steps and always attracting attention to myself
    • I lived with a bunch of guys, who are still my closest friends to this day, in a big round turret room in the original dorm on campus
    • We opened a bar and called it Club 101
      • Every weekend, we had massive dance parties
      • Always with me at the center of the dance floor
    • One cool thing about Notre Dame though is there’s a chapel in every dorm
      • My friends and I went to mass every Sunday at 5 o’clock and then walked over the dining hall for dinner.
        • That was a very important anchor for me in college
        • It is so easy to get washed out to sea, particularly in a large secular college
        • So that, in retrospect, I can see how important it was for me to at least come back into port once a week.
      • But by far the coolest thing about Notre Dame was a beautiful Varsity swimmer who I met on the first day of classes
        • She was way out of my league.
        • When I found out she was in the choir at the Basilica, and that she sang at evening Vespers, I started going.
        • I had heard of it because it’s part of the Liturgy of the Hours, but that wasn’t why I was going.
          • I was going because there was a beautiful girl singing there.
        • Once again, I was missing the meaning of the dance, but at least I was on doing the right dance steps on the right dance floor.

Early Adulthood

• By far the most impactful thing that ever happened to me was that I ended up marrying that beautiful girl during my senior year.
  • There is no decision you will make that will have a bigger impact on your life than your choice of a life mate.
    • Finding someone
      1. who shares your Catholic faith,
      2. who shares your values, and
      3. with whom you can share a culture
    • Will make all the difference
    • Marriage is hard enough
      • If you choose a mate outside of those three compatibilities, you are choosing to make it even harder
    • As we went off the big city and my big career, I knew I had the right woman, I just didn’t completely understand why – yet.
      • I was dancing with the big dogs now, and I knew it.
      • But my wife kept having babies.
      • I remember when she got pregnant with our fifth, Daniel.
        • I was puzzled – and not celebrating.
        • I thought
          • “We have two girls two boys – perfect symmetry.
          • We’re checked off now.
          • My career is going great.
          • Let’s move to the next step!”
        • How silly I was in retrospect
          • How could I possibly imagine life without Daniel?
            • Or 5 and 6 kids after that, without Ceili and Connor!
          • But fortunately, I had myself a really good dance partner.
        • I work with entrepreneurs who are so focused on their companies, that they won’t let their wives have the families they dream of having.
          • And they say they love their wives.
        • How sad
          • And they won’t even realize they were on the wrong dance floor until it’s too late.

The Turning Point

• The futility of the dance I was doing in the corporate world became crystal clear when our company got sold.
  • I was a Vice President for a national uniform rental company in Culpeper that got bought-out by Cintas.
    • Maybe you’ve seen their commercials on TV
  • As the IT Director. I led the development and implementation of a totally new state-of-the-art computer system.
    • Then I built a new restroom service company called Sanis that was growing nationally.
    • I had assembled a great team, many of whom I still work with today.
    • It was a super-heady time for me
      • I was in the center of the dance floor and everyone wanted to dance with me.
    • But when Cintas came in, among the first things they did were
      • Replace my beautiful computer system with their own, even though it wasn’t as good,
      • Close all of the Sanis companies and roll that business into their uniform companies, and
      • Get rid of all of my key people.
    • How fleeting was glory
      • How quickly 11 years of work was replaced.
      • I was previously one of the best dancers in the company, and now no one even knew who I was.

Back to Faith and Family

• Fortunately, I still had the girl of my dreams, and my still growing family.
  • 9 of the 12 had come.
  • My family and Saint John’s were the two constants in my life through all this.
    • We’d been sitting in the front row for years so the kids could be occupied by Janet Winston, then Janet Walbroehl, playing the guitar with her brother Carl.
  • I started my own businesses with some of my key guys back at Sanis
    • But now I had a little more perspective.
    • Thanks to my wife and my good Catholic friends
    • I started to better understand the meaning of the dance
  • At this point, my older kids were starting high school, and my wife, with incredible wisdom, directed our family to Seton School in Manassas.
    • I decided to get involved by volunteering
      • To teach my kids high school math classes, which I did until 2012, and
      • To coach the swimming team, which been doing for going-on 21 years now.
    • The Catholic Community at Seton was the perfect dance floor for my family, but it was also the perfect dance floor for me.
      • I was suddenly surrounded by people who understood, not just the dance steps, but also the dance.
      • And I saw the impact a man’s sacrifice can have on a kid who is trying to figure it out.
      • I started to internalize and then teach some of what I had learned from two great men – Deacon Bernie Ragan and Pope John Paul the Great
    • The things I had been surrounded by all my life were starting to make more sense.
      • And my Catholic faith became the framework that gave me such clarity.
      • The world made sense now because of my Catholic faith.

Lessons from Deacon Ragan

• I thought of the lessons I learned from Deacon Ragan, for whom the Deacon Ragan Pavilion is named
  • He always told me that he did not believe God would have to judge us
    • He believed that we would judge ourselves first.
  • That when we look into the face of God,
    • It will be like a little child who knows he’s done wrong,
    • Looking up at his mother
      • Ashamed and sad that he’s disappointed her.
    • That suffering is something we would want to endure so that our soul would be cleansed for the beatific vision.
      • Even suffering on earth.
    • Such an easy concept intellectually – but how hard it is to internalize.
      • Suffering is a blessing?
      • When offered up, it cleanses our soul so that we can stare into the face of God with joy?
      • Really?
    • But have you ever heard a clearer explanation for what you observe in your lives every day?
      • People suffer.
      • Some of those evangelical preachers that preaching their Gospel of Prosperity just don’t any sense to me
        • Just look around our world – it is so obvious.
          • We will not always be prosperous and free from suffering, but that can be a great gift!
        • No wonder it is so easy for some to lose faith and wonder why an almighty God allows anyone to suffer
      • Our Catholic faith has given us the answer all along.

Lessons from Pope John Paul the Great

• I thought of the lessons I learned from reading about Pope John Paul II
  • Who became Pope when I was in high school.
• He calls it the Law of the Gift
  • Responsible self-giving, not self-assertion, is the road to human fulfillment
  • Karol Wojtyla’s favorite lines from Vatican II says, “Man finds himself only by making himself a sincere gift to others” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 24).
  • Radical Personal Autonomy is not the key to happiness.
    • Some of you may hear the opposite at school or from your friends every day.
    • The key to happiness is total self-giving.
    • It’s this desire for Radical Personal Autonomy, and I use the word radical intentionally, that leads us to justify things that should be otherwise impossible to justify, like:
      • We can end another human life so that we can live our lives as we wish
    • Paradoxically, I have realized that sacrifice was the key to happiness
      • So many of us, including me sometimes, live our lives as if our purpose is to avoid discomfort
      • If we want to get to heaven, we should be embracing discomfort!
    • It changed the whole way I thought about Fatherhood
      • Fatherhood means rejecting the prison of selfishness.
        • It means being conquered by love
      • Fatherhood means to give birth in acts of self-giving
    • Once again, our Church had the answer to life’s most perplexing questions, all I had to do was accept it.
      • After years of dancing with the Church and with friends in the Catholic community, it finally sunk in:
        • The meaning of human life is found, not in self-assertion, but in self-giving.
        • It’s not all about me!

Conclusion

• You won’t find me in the middle of the dance floor much anymore.
  • Even at my kids’ weddings, a dance with bride and a dance with my wife are about all you’ll get out of me.
  • I mostly confine my dancing at such events to a big rocking chair with a 50-ring cigar where I give gratitude to God for:
    • my beautiful wife,
    • my beautiful family,
    • my wonderful friends, and
    • and the beautiful faith that explains it all
  • A bunch of you here may just not quite be feeling it yet.
    • Even if that is true, just keep dancing! .
    • Just keep doing the steps the best you know how,
    • Because at least you’ll be doing the right dance steps on the right dance floor, and
  • If you can stay on the right dance floor dancing with the right people, I think you’re going to find:
    • That eventually it might all start to make some sense
    • That will be a whole lot happier here on earth, and
    • That you will ultimately be invited to the big dance to which we all aspire.