The Holy Spirit offers: A beautiful interior

		Notes from the  Vicar General  Msgr. Paul J. Swain

One of the pleasures of visiting the Bishop O'Connor Catholic Pastoral Center in spring time is driving through the flowering trees that line the entrance way.

Although it has been a little cool this year, the trees are bursting with purple/pink blossoms. They give the aura of majesty and lift the spirit.

Last week during a spring storm, one of the trees, its branches laden with blossoms, toppled over. Examination showed that while there was the appearance of health on the outside, the tree was weak on the inside, the wood soft and moist. The beautiful exterior hid the interior decay, which inevitably resulted in its destruction.

Exterior appearance may mislead

We are a culture that tends to judge value and beauty based on the exterior. Appearance aids and cosmetic surgeries are billion dollar industries, while many do not have the basics to live healthy lives.

Impressive financial statements are concocted while earnings of workers and investors are lessened. Slick publications and glitzy television shows preach instant gratification, which often demean others. Promises of miracles that will extend our lives justify embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, at the expense of others gifted by God with life.

We in the Church can get caught up in the exterior. To hold people's interest, liturgies can become entertainment rather than prayer and worship. Devotions and social causes can become ends in themselves rather than ways to respond to the call of Christ.

This week we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of God coming to dwell within us. The suggested instruction in the Rite of Confirmation challenges us to live externally the gift of the Spirit we have received internally:

"The gift of the Holy Spirit which you are to receive will be a spiritual sign and seal to make you more like Christ and more perfect members of his Church . . . You must be witnesses before all the world to his suffering, death, and resurrection; your way of life should at all times reflect the goodness of Christ.

"Christ gives varied gifts to his Church, and the Spirit distributes them among the members of Christ's body to build up the holy people of God in unity and love. Be active members of the Church, alive in Christ. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit give your lives completely in the service of all, as did Christ, who came not to be served but to serve."

Spirit's gifts bring strength

Grounded in the love of Christ, we can call upon the Spirit to strengthen us as we confront what the secular culture urges us to do, to seek, and how to behave.

The Spirit offers the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They can bring us perspective beyond appearances, the patience to endure our temptations and crosses, humility that allows us to trust in God's plan, and the hope won for us on the decidedly "unbeautiful" cross.

As we age and experience, our exteriors will change, no matter what new miracles may be advertised. When we "topple over," may it be said that there was a beautiful person, not because of how we looked, but how we allowed the Holy Spirit to nourish and guide us.

School voucher opponents:
Still seek argument that works

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

If some lawmakers were as diligent in finding a solution to the state's fiscal woes as they are in trying out new excuses to kill the Milwaukee parental choice program, the budget conference committee would have finished its work long ago.

Instead, like Jason in search of the golden fleece, voucher opponents have meandered about the legislative landscape suggesting one excuse after another for quashing the program.

Initially these opponents argued that the voucher program would harm the diversity of Milwaukee's schools and steer children to schools that were not accredited. But then the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau debunked those arguments in a study of the program.

Anti-voucher forces

Last year, legislators tried to kill the program on the grounds that it siphoned school aids dollars from rural districts to Milwaukee. That argument collapsed after another non-partisan agency, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, reported that the Milwaukee school district would receive an even larger share of the school aid pie if the voucher program were terminated.

Undaunted, the anti voucher forces are now attempting to use Wisconsin's revenue shortfall as yet another pretense for terminating the program. As they did last summer, they have proposed reducing the voucher available to families to such a low level that none of them could afford to take advantage of the program.

They have offered up two excuses for this latest effort. One insults the intelligence of anyone who has observed the budget process to date. The other turns Wisconsin's progressive tradition of doing more for the needy on its head.

A look at excuses

The first excuse for gutting the voucher program is that families who benefit from the vouchers must share in the sacrifices everyone else is making as Wisconsin repairs its broken budget. Of course the voucher opponents ignore the fact that most other programs that target aid to needy families have been spared the budget axe to this point.

They also fail to point out that no proposal to fix the budget shortfall cuts the planned increase in state aid to public schools. So rather than ask the needy children who benefit from the voucher program to share in the larger sacrifice, the program's opponents are really trying to impose a fiscal pain on them that no other K-12 student is asked to endure.

The second rationale for cutting the program is that the amount of the voucher in the Milwaukee program is greater than any of the other experiments across the nation. As they do so, they ignore and implicitly repudiate the Wisconsin legacy of doing more than other states.

Going extra mile

In years gone by, Wisconsin's leaders were proud of the fact that we led the nation in things like unemployment insurance and worker's compensation or that our public assistance safety net provided more help to needy families. More recently we took pride in the fact that fewer of our citizens lack health insurance than is the case in other states.

It is striking that the very people who defend other chords in Wisconsin's safety net should now take the position that going the extra mile for needy school children is an approach to be shunned.

It appears that the political descendants of people like Roosevelt, Truman, and La Follette have traveled far indeed.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

Witness power and beauty of spring:
A time of re-birth

		Grand Mom  Audrey  Mettel Fixmer

Since our daughter, Elizabeth, has moved back home, our lives have taken on new dimensions we never dreamed possible at our age.

Autumn colors of our mums and burning bush were brighter seen through her eyes, and winter less dreary when she added a sunroom to our home. She is a young 49, in love with life, devoted to helping people in her practice as a psychotherapist, and capable of seeing beauty in everyone and everything.

I guess you could say that these nine months of Elizabeth at home were a kind of gestation period. We were truly in for a re-birth in spring.

'Drunk with spring'

"Mom, I am simply drunk with spring!" she exclaimed this morning at breakfast.

Why was I not surprised? Every spare moment she is outdoors exclaiming over the beautiful colors of my tulips or excitedly watching my rosebushes leaf out. Elizabeth is every gardener's dream companion, because she doesn't hesitate to get down and dirty pulling weeds with a vengeance.

Like me, she is a tireless shopper of garden centers and seed catalogs. She had little trouble convincing me that we needed still another garden plot for growing vegetables. Yesterday we joyfully watched as a strong young man came in with a rototiller and dug up another 150 square feet of sod to expose more lusty virgin earth, just begging to be planted.

Now we are both, mother and daughter, happily engaged in planning our vegetable garden. We are busy attaching little sticky notes in pages of gardening books. We are going to bed at night with gardening magazines. And we are anxiously awaiting Saturdays when we can attend the bigger Farmer's Market in Madison.

My husband, who grew up in a gardening family, would love to help if his legs would permit, but settles for being our cheering section and promises to pick the raspberries and tomatoes when they come, and to groan with appreciation at the fuller flavors of "homegrown."

Working in the garden

I have a friend who, when we were in the child-bearing age, was told by her doctor to relieve stress by working in the garden. "Getting down and digging into the earth with your bare hands is good for the soul," he said.

I wish someone would have told me that. On the other hand, it was a wonderful surprise bonus to get upon retirement, to be able to explore the wonders of nature and to think that it had been there all along, just waiting for me to notice.

Our other daughters, too, are accomplished gardeners. Kathi has shared her peony bushes and strawberry plants with me. Kris and I have been splitting seed packages and sharing her rhubarb for years. And Mother's Day always brings me the latest in garden supplies from all my kids. I'm so glad that they have all come to their appreciation of nature earlier in life than I did.

One of the things that we did share with all our children early in life, however, was a love of words. They are avid readers, ferocious debaters, and as one first grade teacher told us about our eldest, "He argues like a Philadelphia lawyer!" Many of them enjoy writing and some have even published.

Church like a bulb

Elizabeth often thinks in metaphors. For that reason I was not surprised at her recent comment at the dinner table. We were discussing the news with which the world is being bombarded these days: the pedophile priests, that tiny minority that has managed to overshadow the great majority of good and holy priests. The pall that they have cast on the church has made us all so sad.

"But I was thinking the other day after communion," said Elizabeth. "The church is a lot like a bulb that lies deep in the earth. We have to do our share to keep it weeded, to root out the ugly weeds, to cultivate the earth around it, so it can grow and bloom again in all its beauty. Everyone has to work at this, not just the clergy. It's the responsibility of the laity too. And who knows? We may be on the verge of a new springtime of the church."

I'm thinking: We are warned not to cut down the spent tulips and their foliage, but to leave them there to nourish the bulb beneath. A little rotting nourishes the bulb so it will grow again, more beautiful than ever.

Hmmm! Now there's a thought. Let's hang on to that.

"Grandmom" likes hearing from other senior citizens who enjoy aging at P.O. Box 216, Fort Atkinson, WI 53538.