By Msgr. Steven Ferrari
“GIVE IT A REST!” angrily yelled the almost comically-clad older woman. “Give it a rest! Oh, I suppose you’re gonna call the police!” she continued to harangue me.
All I’d gently said to her was that her two dogs should be on a leash as they were being walked in Central Park. It is the law.
“You must be a joy to live with!” she replied. I remained silent, too dumbfounded to even think of a response.
I was birding in the park with an out-of-state fellow birder-friend during the fall migration season. We were intent on seeing as many bird species as we could in one of the best birding ‘hot spots’ on the Eastern seaboard. More than 200 different bird species are regularly spotted in Central Park. I’ve seen close to 150 of them. The two dogs that trotted past us, unleashed, followed some 20 feet behind by their owner on this warm, sunny day, were a distraction and a nuisance, frightening away any birds in our vicinity.
Yet, much later, reflecting upon the woman’s insistent mantra about my ‘giving it a rest,’ I have begun to discover that my attempt at ‘correcting’ her has led to a correction of me and my behavior and way of thinking. Perhaps I need to let up a bit, not to be so intense, and relax a bit more.
Familiar as I may be with 12-Step Program slogans, such as “Live and Let Live,” “First Things First” and “Let Go and Let God,” etc., “Give It A Rest” does indeed make a great deal of sense.
In this hectic, over-technological, harried life we live in the second decade of the 21st century, we often lose sight of the bigger picture, of what really matters in life. Must I ‘sweat the small stuff’ so frequently? Need everything be perfect, or ‘practically perfect,’ like one of my heroines, Mary Poppins!?
Many things and circumstances in life are not worth over-reacting to. There’s enough to concentrate on that is truly of importance in God’s sight without wasting time and effort, especially mental and emotional, on the minutiae of little or no consequence.
Although ‘the devil is in the details,’ God is in the large picture. Indeed, God is the whole shebang. And God is in charge, not I.
God has a plan for me, for all of us. If I let go a bit more of my own volition, that plan may become a bit clearer, and thereby, a bit more attainable. So, as we near the end of the challenging season of Lent 2017, I am adding “Give It A Rest” to my daily mantras.
Msgr. Steven Ferrari is the pastor of St. Teresa’s parish, Woodside.