Jim Mayzik SJ Blog

Some years ago I was in a desert in Southern California, literally wandering around in the desert after my mother’s passing.  I had gone to the desert to come to terms with the monumental reality of losing a parent.

I was in a store on Essex Street on the lower east side where they sell T-shirts wholesale.  If you buy a dozen, they’re only $4 each, and I asked the guy behind the counter, an orthodox Jewish guy, what were the best ones. He brought me a shirt and I started to look at it, and he said, ‘don’t look---touch, feel it.  You gotta feel it to know what it is,” he said.  And so I didn’t look, I touched, felt it, and it was nice and thick and it felt, ummm, good.  “I see, said the blind man,” I said, and looked up at the guy.

Trapped on a mountain in a terrible snowstorm in the dead of night, one of the climbers reports his tentmate missing. Now they have to embark on a dangerous search.

Sometimes the cashier throws a rubber bar up the moving conveyor belt at the checkout counter to where you are tentatively standing.

Imagine a glass of water.  You don't have to imagine it, here's a glass of water right here in my hand. 

Welcome to Wegman’s Wild World of Weimaraners, where dogs bake cakes and lounge like royalty. Known to the world as the “dog photographer,” William Wegman has spent the past 45 years dressing and posing his canine muses in elaborate ensembles, finding whimsy in the absurd. His work is at measures droll and enchanting, evoking awe in audiences around the world. And, his pups have had their share of the limelight, making appearances on everything from “Saturday Night Live” and “Sesame Street,” to movies and galleries worldwide.

I was up on the roof of the Church of the Epiphany, looking for a pile of unused bricks that had been up there since who knows when. Like lots of things in the church, they were long forgotten relics of an earlier, more exciting time. 

A young hero has to embark on an epic quest to save a princess from an evil villain, all within an absurd short amount of time.

Every morning as I sit down at my computer to write a homily or check my email or read today’s news, I have a cup of Bigelow’s ultra spice Chai tea, my little caffeine wake-me-up to get me going for the day. 

PRAYING WITH THE IMAGINATION, A Four Week Program, following the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, and using Bibliodrama

Christopher Walken has branched out from his very successful acting career to pursue his true passion, creating artisanal coffee beverages and pastries, but be warned his concoctions have more than just meets the eye.

So there is this kid in front of me, all 17 skinny years of him, his curly hair all askew as he sat there on his hospital bed eating half of a cold English muffin. He’s describing to me how he had leapt out of the car when the father of his friend pulled over, trying to assess if they should do something for that ragamuffin woman walking by the side of the road.

I don’t know if you heard about the miracle that just happened. Did you hear about the miracle that just happened? I don’t mean the super blue blood moon from the lunar eclipse on Wednesday. 

Watch humans turn into fountains.  Silly,  but funny.

I had a long phone conversation the other night with a young man who was deeply upset.  He had left his home, and was staying with the family of a girl from his high school.

What if, says a small child to me this afternoon,
We made a poem without using any words at all?

Fr Austin and I were talking about getting something done—or rather, not getting something done because we were procrastinating—and we both suddenly uttered the phrase “I can’t think about that now, I’ll think about that tomorrow”, one of the great lines at the end of the classic movie Gone With the Wind. Scarlet O’Hara is faced with the unpleasantness of a major decision, a decision that could change her life, and she says that line, putting today’s decision off till tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.   

An intense and poetic ride down the highline of Bossons Glacier.  Mesmerizing.

We’ve got a sign outside the Church of the Epiphany in Manhattan.  It’s one of those glass-enclosed signs you see in front of many churches, announcing in white letters on a black background coming Church events, dates and times, the title of an upcoming sermon, that kind of thing.  The sign at Epiphany had gotten so old that it wasn’t used for a while, and when I arrived, I asked if I could fix it up and use it.  Fr Austin gave me his favorite phrase of approval: “Sure, knock your socks off.”