Jim Mayzik SJ Blog

I was going through the aisles of CVS the other day, looking for an adaptor plug for some new headphones I recently bought. 

Googled the word “humility” the other day, and came across an article that included the following statements:  “My IQ is one of the highest…and I am a stable genius”.

We’re almost three weeks into autumn, but you’d never know it living in Manhattan. Up in Connecticut at the university where I used to live and teach the leaves are pretty much at peak: flaming yellows, reds and oranges, whole trees looking—from a distance—as though they were on fire, flaming wildly on the horizon. 

Someone called me an angel the other day at the supermarket because I had picked up a package that she had dropped as she was unloading her items at the cash register.

Friday was one of those days that has made our common life together so challenging. I know it was riveting television, but I chose not to watch the unfolding testimony that went on for hours. 

I wonder what Jeff Bezos is doing right now. He is the guy, of course, who founded Amazon about 25 years ago, and he is presently worth about 151 billion dollars, making him the richest person on earth.

The other day I turned on my phone and started to dial and didn’t realize that I had actually answered an incoming call—which I don’t usually do if I don’t recognize the number.

Last weekend was Labor Day, summer's last hurrah, a few days for one more hot dog, another beer, a ride on a roller coaster, a walk on the beach.

I had my first helicopter ride on September 4th, 2001. If you have ever seen a movie or TV show that has aerial shots of New York, it was probably the work of my friend Al Cerullo. 

So the school year is about to begin!  This coming week all the kids at schools in Manhattan will once again be spending their days inside a building that was designed to help them learn, filled with lots of people who want to help them grow up, teaching them practical information about themselves and about the world. 

There was an article in the New York Times yesterday, written by a parishioner of a Catholic parish in Atlanta.  Last Sunday he received national media attention when he stood up in the middle of the homily, as the priest was speaking about the sexual abuse report from Pennsylvania, saying that the Church had to change.

I got home Wednesday night from a short vacation with my sister and her family in a remote mountain lodge in Vermont.  We were blessed--and I do mean blessed-- to be without any phone or internet service. 

A few years ago I was blessed to work with my students on a feature film about three brothers seeking their future in South Dakota in the 1880’s.  Filmmaking, like all art-making, is a pilgrimage of sorts.

I passed a newly-born calf on my walk today.  He tumbled headfirst out of his mama’s black and white body, and was immediately attended to, properly washed by her rather large and not-so-gentle tongue. How she learned to do that, I have no idea.

Early this morning I was greeted by a seagull, flying, oh, 30 feet above me.  She was hovering, apparently effortlessly, held aloft on a soft cloud of invisible air, and yet following me in the snail pace of my terrestrial walk.

I almost lost my guidebook for the Camino today.  As I was leaving the small pensione where I stayed the night, I didn't notice that I dropped the book right outside the building.

I'm drinking a not-so-big glass of water after a fairly long and exhausting walk. My water had run out towards the end of the day's journey, and I was sooo thirsty, and I literally dropped everything at the door of my room at today's destination and ran into the bathroom to fill a glass of water and gulp it down.  But the glass was tiny, so I had to fill it up again and again to finally quench my thirst.  

What are they thinking?  I'm referring to the many horses I have encountered along the Way, who almost always are standing stock still, looking at nothing in particular.

When I was a boy--maybe 7 or 8--I got into trouble with my parents for wandering around an abandoned factory near where we lived.  "Don't you ever go back there, again," my mother said, "it's dangerous." 

When you begin the day of walking, you are refreshed from a night’s rest and fueling, and no matter the weather, you are filled with optimism and eager anticipation of what is to come on the journey.