On April 27th, 2013, sixty Amigos gathered at St. Dominic's Church in SF to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Amigos Anonymous (see the article "Behind the Dream, A Dream" under the "Our Roots" section of this website for an accurate history of names and dates).
It was a wonderful day, starting with a Mass of peace and thanks . . . . a day filled with the joy of old friends coming together to share treasured memories. We heard from the Waltons about the ongoing work of the Fr. Joseph O'Looney Scholarship program, we heartily sang Mike McKenna's updated version of our Amigos Theme Song and listened to Dan's thoughts on this celebration of thanks on the 50th anniversary of Amigos Anonymous.
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DAN'S TALK
(Dan's talk was preceded by signing of the updated Amigos Theme Song lead by Mike McKenna)
Amigos Anonymous 50th Anniversary Celebration of Thanks
St. Dominic’s, San Francisco, April 27, 2013
by Dan Onorato
Our theme song reminds me of a story of an elderly couple, a little older than most of us, Lucy and John. Lucy and John were recently attending church services at The Villages. About half way through the service, Lucy took a pen and paper out of her purse, wrote a note, and handed it circumspectly to John. The note said: “ I just let out a silent fart. What do you think I should do?”
John scribbled back, “Put a new battery in your hearing aid.”
Hearing loss, aches, pains, knee or hip replacements, burning arthritis, all variety of bodily maladies—that’s become familiar territory for us. The punch line, for us, serves as a metaphor: how often we feel a need for a new battery, a recharging of our vital energy! I think when we leave today, after today’s celebration shared with old friends, we’ll feel that: recharged, the fire of our youth re-ignited—at least until we get home, sit in our favorite easy chair, and doze off.
In what we did as Amigos in the 1960s we experienced a profound grace—an awakening, a deepening of awareness, an initiation into a fuller and more meaningful way of life. For all we learned and for all the people who were an important part of our growth we are deeply thankful. That’s fundamentally why we’re here today: we’re filled with gratitude.
The words “grace” and “gratitude” both come from the same Latin word: gratia, which also conveys the notion of favor. Fifty years ago, more or less, we were favored with hearing and then accepting an invitation to go to Mexico to work with the poor. For most of us, certainly for me, I jumped at the opportunity for adventure. But in the inscrutable ways of grace, what started out as an experience appealing to our sense of youthful wanderlust and idealism became far deeper. By its very nature, grace invites us into further growth and connects us more closely to other people and a wider comprehension of life.
In Mexico our world started to open up. We were exposed to differences—to poverty, to Mexican people and their culture, to different ways of looking at life and at our own culture from a larger, more global perspective. The path of understanding we embarked on was not just intellectual. Far more important, it was and has been since then a deepening process of the heart, a feeling for others and their suffering and their perspectives that makes understanding, compassion, and appreciation more profound. We began to understand, in a paraphrase from Einstein, that the purpose of life is to constantly widen our circle of compassion.
Our Amigos experience and Fr. Joe’s promotion of the social gospel helped us bridge the chasm between Christ’s gospel ideals and the challenges of real life, here and now. We learned, as the Jewish sages teach, never to pray in a room without windows. We learned that the Holy Spirit speaks in the needs of others, and those needs become calls to action. We began to understand, as Martin Luther King wrote in 1963 in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” that goodness and a good outcome are not inevitable. Time is neutral. If we want to fulfill our invitation to be co-creators with God, if the “arc of the universe” is to bend “toward justice,” we have to lend a hand to do the bending.
We all know, with the scandalous economic inequality that undermines our democracy and the lives of millions of our fellow Americans; with Congress’s prodigal spending on wars and new weaponry and penny pinching reluctance to fund social needs; with the War on Terror’s gradual erosion of our First Amendment rights; and with global warming, increasing population, and rising consumption of natural resources threatening the future of our civilization and humanity itself—we all know we’ve got a lot of bending to do. This responsibility of service, as Marian Wright Edelman reminds us, is “the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life. . . .” But as we began to learn in Mexico, we don’t carry the responsibility alone, nor can we do everything.
Since our experience in Mexico, many of us chose professions of service—as lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, church workers, and other workers—and we have passed on that example of service to our children and others. The fire ignited within us in Mexico has become a light for many. And many Amigos generously support our scholarship program in Mexico. In the global picture our giving scholarships to twelve students isn’t any big deal; it isn’t going to change the world. But for those twelve students, it’s a very big deal: it is helping to shape their lives and their future, just as our experience in Mexico shaped ours. So we’re thankful for the influence Amigos has had on us. We’ve been enriched beyond measure. We’ve experienced the truth of St. Francis’s prayer that “in giving we receive.” We’ve learned that “love is something is you give it away.”
And we’re thankful, finally and most importantly, for the people in our Amigos experience whose vision, commitment, example, and friendship have helped us grow and helped keep our group together and still active with our scholarship program. For each of us, that list might differ, but I’ll mention a few who stand out: Fr. Joe, Mario and Estelle Carota, Ron D’Aloisio, Nacho and Coletta Estrella, Dr. Florencio and Kay Leppert Cabrera, Rosalía Cabrera, Setsuko and Regis Amann, Jack and Donna Walton, Terry and Deci Dugan, Mike and Lupe Miller, Linda and Mike McKenna, and Mary Caye and Jerry Lagomarsino. Could we give those with us today a big hand of appreciation.
For most of us, the personal friendships we’ve been blessed with carry a life-long significance. A number of us have maintained close friendships in Mexico. All of us value our fellow students with whom we became friends. Some of those friends are to this day among our closest. In difficult times their presence, understanding, and insight have sustained us; in good times their companionship has enriched us with laughter and joy.
So today we are thankful for the grace of our friendships and of being together to celebrate our Amigos community. We have lasted 50 years, and it ain’t over till it’s over. So when this day turns into a memory, may we, in recalling it, hobble more contentedly into our aging; may we be open to the daily grace that invites us to ever deeper wisdom and love; and may we keep fresh our supply of new batteries, Energizers ad Every Ready’s.
And now, before we return to visiting one another, may we sing our hearts out in wanton gratefulness with ”De Colores.”
It was a wonderful day, starting with a Mass of peace and thanks . . . . a day filled with the joy of old friends coming together to share treasured memories. We heard from the Waltons about the ongoing work of the Fr. Joseph O'Looney Scholarship program, we heartily sang Mike McKenna's updated version of our Amigos Theme Song and listened to Dan's thoughts on this celebration of thanks on the 50th anniversary of Amigos Anonymous.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
DAN'S TALK
(Dan's talk was preceded by signing of the updated Amigos Theme Song lead by Mike McKenna)
Amigos Anonymous 50th Anniversary Celebration of Thanks
St. Dominic’s, San Francisco, April 27, 2013
by Dan Onorato
Our theme song reminds me of a story of an elderly couple, a little older than most of us, Lucy and John. Lucy and John were recently attending church services at The Villages. About half way through the service, Lucy took a pen and paper out of her purse, wrote a note, and handed it circumspectly to John. The note said: “ I just let out a silent fart. What do you think I should do?”
John scribbled back, “Put a new battery in your hearing aid.”
Hearing loss, aches, pains, knee or hip replacements, burning arthritis, all variety of bodily maladies—that’s become familiar territory for us. The punch line, for us, serves as a metaphor: how often we feel a need for a new battery, a recharging of our vital energy! I think when we leave today, after today’s celebration shared with old friends, we’ll feel that: recharged, the fire of our youth re-ignited—at least until we get home, sit in our favorite easy chair, and doze off.
In what we did as Amigos in the 1960s we experienced a profound grace—an awakening, a deepening of awareness, an initiation into a fuller and more meaningful way of life. For all we learned and for all the people who were an important part of our growth we are deeply thankful. That’s fundamentally why we’re here today: we’re filled with gratitude.
The words “grace” and “gratitude” both come from the same Latin word: gratia, which also conveys the notion of favor. Fifty years ago, more or less, we were favored with hearing and then accepting an invitation to go to Mexico to work with the poor. For most of us, certainly for me, I jumped at the opportunity for adventure. But in the inscrutable ways of grace, what started out as an experience appealing to our sense of youthful wanderlust and idealism became far deeper. By its very nature, grace invites us into further growth and connects us more closely to other people and a wider comprehension of life.
In Mexico our world started to open up. We were exposed to differences—to poverty, to Mexican people and their culture, to different ways of looking at life and at our own culture from a larger, more global perspective. The path of understanding we embarked on was not just intellectual. Far more important, it was and has been since then a deepening process of the heart, a feeling for others and their suffering and their perspectives that makes understanding, compassion, and appreciation more profound. We began to understand, in a paraphrase from Einstein, that the purpose of life is to constantly widen our circle of compassion.
Our Amigos experience and Fr. Joe’s promotion of the social gospel helped us bridge the chasm between Christ’s gospel ideals and the challenges of real life, here and now. We learned, as the Jewish sages teach, never to pray in a room without windows. We learned that the Holy Spirit speaks in the needs of others, and those needs become calls to action. We began to understand, as Martin Luther King wrote in 1963 in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” that goodness and a good outcome are not inevitable. Time is neutral. If we want to fulfill our invitation to be co-creators with God, if the “arc of the universe” is to bend “toward justice,” we have to lend a hand to do the bending.
We all know, with the scandalous economic inequality that undermines our democracy and the lives of millions of our fellow Americans; with Congress’s prodigal spending on wars and new weaponry and penny pinching reluctance to fund social needs; with the War on Terror’s gradual erosion of our First Amendment rights; and with global warming, increasing population, and rising consumption of natural resources threatening the future of our civilization and humanity itself—we all know we’ve got a lot of bending to do. This responsibility of service, as Marian Wright Edelman reminds us, is “the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life. . . .” But as we began to learn in Mexico, we don’t carry the responsibility alone, nor can we do everything.
Since our experience in Mexico, many of us chose professions of service—as lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, church workers, and other workers—and we have passed on that example of service to our children and others. The fire ignited within us in Mexico has become a light for many. And many Amigos generously support our scholarship program in Mexico. In the global picture our giving scholarships to twelve students isn’t any big deal; it isn’t going to change the world. But for those twelve students, it’s a very big deal: it is helping to shape their lives and their future, just as our experience in Mexico shaped ours. So we’re thankful for the influence Amigos has had on us. We’ve been enriched beyond measure. We’ve experienced the truth of St. Francis’s prayer that “in giving we receive.” We’ve learned that “love is something is you give it away.”
And we’re thankful, finally and most importantly, for the people in our Amigos experience whose vision, commitment, example, and friendship have helped us grow and helped keep our group together and still active with our scholarship program. For each of us, that list might differ, but I’ll mention a few who stand out: Fr. Joe, Mario and Estelle Carota, Ron D’Aloisio, Nacho and Coletta Estrella, Dr. Florencio and Kay Leppert Cabrera, Rosalía Cabrera, Setsuko and Regis Amann, Jack and Donna Walton, Terry and Deci Dugan, Mike and Lupe Miller, Linda and Mike McKenna, and Mary Caye and Jerry Lagomarsino. Could we give those with us today a big hand of appreciation.
For most of us, the personal friendships we’ve been blessed with carry a life-long significance. A number of us have maintained close friendships in Mexico. All of us value our fellow students with whom we became friends. Some of those friends are to this day among our closest. In difficult times their presence, understanding, and insight have sustained us; in good times their companionship has enriched us with laughter and joy.
So today we are thankful for the grace of our friendships and of being together to celebrate our Amigos community. We have lasted 50 years, and it ain’t over till it’s over. So when this day turns into a memory, may we, in recalling it, hobble more contentedly into our aging; may we be open to the daily grace that invites us to ever deeper wisdom and love; and may we keep fresh our supply of new batteries, Energizers ad Every Ready’s.
And now, before we return to visiting one another, may we sing our hearts out in wanton gratefulness with ”De Colores.”