Last February 1, 2020 I announced our 500th Daily Treat and Weekly Message. Today I am happy to announce our 1,000th Daily Treat!! How did we get from 500 to 1,000 when there are only 365 days in the year? When the pandemic hit, I decided to come out with a Second Daily Treat for the months of March, April, May and June. These prayers, poems, reflections and stories totaled 135 and were very well received. Which brings us to 1,000 today.
I REALLY WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!! WHAT ARE YOUR REACTIONS TO THE MESSAGES I SEND OUT EVERY DAY? Here are a few responses that I have received in the last month or so:
“Each time I read the Daily Treats for the Soul, I don’t think it can get any better, but then it does!” Kathy Kelley
“Another food for thought. A dinner discussion winner! Thank you!” Kathy Kasprowicz
“Well said…may this be the beginning of a reconciliation for America….We need it.” Vince Zarrilli
“With tears in my eyes I say: ‘Thank You’!” Paulette Schmidt
“I just wanted to say what a great reflection this morning. I have shared it with many people already on both sides of the aisle.” Mike Gabriel
“Thank you, Father Med. Deeply profound, meaningful, timely and insightful. I will be sharing this with my Small Christian Community group, my granddaughter and co-workers.” Diane Roisland
“We both read and discuss your messages, but I must admit, today you left us speechless!!! Jan. 8, 2021. ‘If I Were the Devil’. Somehow you managed to touch all bases and say all of the things that have been burdening our minds and discussions these past few months. Thank you, Thank you!” Ron & Gail Meis
“Thank you for your insight, wisdom and courage. Your words speak the truth we all know in our hearts but too often choose not to live in our lives.” Pat Lynch
“Your dailies have been amazing and thank you for each and every one I read every morning.” Lin Allen
“Simply beautiful! Thank you for your inspiration. Your writings are amazing.” Julie James Rohrbach
“I am eternally grateful for that post and I have shared it many times. It has truly changed my life. Keep writing and sharing “Treats for the Soul!”. You are making a difference in many lives. Jim Petterec
“Even being off your feet with your broken leg doesn’t make your message any less meaningful. Thank you for your gift of wisdom and caring.” Carole Merkel
I appreciate those who take a few moments to email me. It lets me know you are alive out there in cyberspace and my efforts are well worth all the effort.
Hopefully in the next month Treats for the Soul will begin presenting 2-minute inspirational videos on You Tube. A small team and myself have been hard at work writing, filming and producing these. This is very exciting!
I saw my surgeon on Friday, February 5th who operated on my broken left femur on November 24th. I have been in a wheelchair since I fell. He looked at X-rays and said that my femur is healed and I can go back to walking again! Great news!! This will happen very slowly with a walker. After three months I need to build up all of my muscle strength again. “Healed” is the best word I can ever hear! I especially love when Jesus says “Healed!” about my soul. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR PRAYERS!!
With all that is happening in our country today and with my being in a wheelchair for three months with a broken left femur, I cannot help but reflect on what the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead said when asked, “What is the earliest sign of a civilization in any given culture?” I and almost everyone else expected her to say it was a clay pot, drawings on a cave wall, a fish hook or a grinding stone.
Her answer was very simple: “A healed femur.” Mead explained that when she examined the culture of a civilization where the “law of the jungle” or the “survival of the fittest” reigned supreme, she never found a broken femur bone that had ever healed. In that type of culture it was every person for themselves, “Tough Luck” if you broke your femur. “Just lay there and die or try to get around on your own to hunt or fish with a broken femur. We won’t give you three months just to heal.”
Mead said that when she found a femur bone that had healed properly, it was a clear message that other people cared. Other people had to do the hunting, the fishing, the gathering and the cooking while the person’s femur healed. Margaret Mead stated her case clearly, “When I see a healed femur, I see evidence of Compassion, the first sign of a civilization, a civilization that will bloom and grow and become great.”
Would you believe this is the very last story I read on November 21st before I went to take my afternoon walk? Within the hour I fell and broke my left femur bone. These past three months I have watched and read about all that is happening in our country. What did I see missing in way too many people’s lives? COMPASSION!
I was getting loads of Compassion from my mostly Haitian nurses who were caring for me at Holy Cross Hospital. I saw absolutely no Compassion for the unfortunates coming from the “know-it-all talking heads” on TV and the many people I know who are just repeating their garbage word for word. What I saw and heard was “the law of the jungle” and the “survival of the fittest.” As Margaret Mead said, “WITHOUT COMPASSION, THERE CAN BE NO CIVILIZATION.”
I am more than thrilled that my femur has healed. But Oh do I pray for America where there are broken femurs of every imaginable type. So few people seem to notice or to care.
We wonder why great civilizations came an end – in Rome, in Latin America and in China. Jesus Christ along with Margaret Mead is telling us why they came to an end. Will we listen and transform our own self into a true person of Compassion?
Or will we listen to the “know-it-all talking heads” and simply think only of ourselves and not notice or walk by all the people with “broken femurs”, much worse than mine?
Again, my deepest Thank You for your many, many prayers!!
Fr. Med Laz
With a Healed Femur and trying my best to be Compassionate.
LOVE AND COMPASSION ARE THE HIGHEST FORMS OF INTELLIGENCE GIVEN TO US BY GOD!
