Gaps In Our Walls, We Need Others
What makes a community truly strong? In this inspiring reflection, Joseph shares how authentic brotherhood, strong marriages, intentional friendships, and meaningful relationships are the foundation of a thriving community. Through the powerful metaphor of “bricks in a wall,” this talk challenges men to strengthen the social fabric around them by investing in relationships that support, encourage, and uplift others.
MC: Adam Hohn
Presenter: Joseph Gruber
Deacon: Rick Freedberg
Brought to you By: The Knights of Columbus
Jackson Michigan & Surrounding Area Catholic Parishes
Queen of the Miraculous Medal: https://queenschurch.com/
St John the Evangelist: https://saintjohnjackson.org/
St Mary Star of the Sea: https://stmaryjackson.com/
St Joseph Oratory: https://saintjohnjackson.org/new-here/st-joseph-the-worker-oratory/
Our Lady of Fatima: http://www.fatimaparish.net/
St Rita: http://www.stritacatholicparish.com/
St Catherine: https://stcatherinelaboureconcord.org/
Audio Trasnscription
Good morning, gentlemen. It's good to be back. Shall we pray again? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Direct, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspiration, and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance, that every word and work of ours may begin in Thee, and by Thee be happily ended. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I don't know if anyone was wondering, but I was gone for about two and a half weeks, and where we went, we drove, myself and my wife, and our seven children, one of whom is still essentially a baby, and one of whom has special needs and quite like a baby, we drove from Michigan all the way to the state of Washington, to the northwest corner of the northwest state, and then we came back. Nobody. So what we did, we were gone for I think 15 nights, and all but four of them, we stayed under somebody's hospitality, other than a hotel.
We stayed in a hotel for four nights. Otherwise, other people were providing hospitality, and one of my friends in Spokane, Washington, who was willing to put up, myself and my wife, and our seven children, he looked at me on the way back, because we had already stayed with him on the way there, he looked at me and said, Joseph, you're insane. And he meant it with love.
And he meant it. So why did we do it? This is important. We did it because we were asked to lead a retreat for about 70 college students over on a place called Whidbey Island off the coast of Seattle, and so we led a retreat.
We gave four talks and participated in one panel, and we drove approximately 80 hours to do it. And one of the reasons we did is we said to them explicitly three things that my wife and I really want people to know. These are things you can't not know and still be alive, but there are things that we forget about, or we diminish, or we need to be reminded of, and that is that your life, that every life, every life, including yours, is worth living, is worth sharing, and is worth multiplying.
Your life is worth living, as Fulton Sheen would say. It's also worth sharing, and it's worth multiplying. We wanted them to know that because, especially in the Pacific Northwest, they don't think that their lives are necessarily worth living, and that's a problem.
They don't think that their lives are worth sharing. They think of themselves as burdens on other people and on the environment, and that's a problem. And they don't think that life is worth multiplying, which is also a problem because that means there's not going to be another generation.
So we wanted them to know that life is worth living, sharing, and multiplying. And I want to hone in on this sharing part, because I think this is really important. We stayed a bunch of different houses along the way.
Friends we hadn't seen in years that my wife called up and said, would you be willing to create space and time for us for one night to crash at your place? And friends opened up their doors, and they allowed us in. And we got to talk with them. We got to spend time with them.
Some of them we hadn't seen in seven or eight years. And guys, it was awesome. It was awesome to spend time with people that I had gotten to know at different points in our lives.
And we would ask them, what makes your town so good? Like, sell us on your town. Sell us on Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The selling points for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in case you were wondering, is that it's sort of in the middle of everything, which is another way of saying it's in the middle of nowhere, and that you can drive 80 miles per hour on the highway, which is another way of saying you can get out of Sioux Falls quickly.
But those were the selling points of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. My friend didn't have the highest opinion of Sioux Falls, apparently, which is okay. And we were reflecting on this on the long drive, my wife and I. What makes a place worth living in? What makes it worthwhile? It's not the speed limit, and it's not its proximity to other things.
It's not just the natural beauty. There's natural beauty anywhere you go, especially Montana. Especially Montana.
It's not the natural beauty. What really makes a town worthwhile, what really makes a community worthwhile, is the strength of the social fabric. When the social fabric is thick and strong, people want to be there, people are known and love, people know and love other people, that's the kind of community what people want to move into.
That's the kind of community that people want to be part of. And when the social fabric is threadbare, when there are patches, or when it's in need of patching, nobody really wants to be there. Nobody wants to put forth the effort to make repairs to a social fabric that just isn't quite strong enough to hold people.
So today I wanted to talk a little bit about how to repair the social fabric, how to build up the social fabric here in Jackson. And to do that I'm going to switch metaphors. Fabric, I don't think any of us are seamstresses or tailors, fabric is probably not the best metaphor for you guys.
So I was thinking what we could think of is our community as a wall. And each one of us is a brick. Some of us look more like bricks than others.
But we are all bricks in a wall. And the wall, gentlemen, is maybe not as strong, maybe has more gaps than we would like. So what are qualities of a wall? Well if you notice, this is like so very basic that's going to sound stupid when I say it, but you have bricks on the bottom and then bricks above those next to each other and then bricks above those.
If you have those things, you have a wall. If you're lacking in those things, you no longer have a wall. You might have a pile, you might have each individual brick on its own, but it's not really a wall.
So for a wall to be a wall you need bottom bricks, bricks side-by-side, and top bricks. And gentlemen, the same thing goes for a wall as goes for you and for me. We need people that we can rely upon, people that we can depend upon.
We can call those our bottom bricks. If there aren't men that we know that we can rest upon, men that we know that we can rely upon, we're not actually participating in a wall anymore. We need men beside us who are going through similar things as us, who are participating in life shoulder-to-shoulder with us, these side bricks.
If we don't have those, we have gaps, and I think a lot of us, we can feel the gaps beside us. And then we need bricks on top. We need to live in such a way that other men know that they can rely on us, they can depend on us, they can receive from us what we have received from other people.
That just as we have depended on other men, other men can then depend upon us. And then we can look at our own life and say, am I participating in a really strong wall here, or is my section of the wall filled with gaps, or am I just a brick kind of floating in the ether, dependent on nothing, nothing dependent on me, not touching anyone, not being touched by anyone else. And we all go through moments where maybe we do feel like we're solitary bricks.
But I just want to toss it out there that it's actually possible, it is possible for the wall to get stronger. Just as it's possible for a wall to get weaker over time, it's possible for a wall to crumble, for holes to appear, it is also possible to strengthen it. So, these three kinds of relationships, hopefully as I went through them, you could think of men that you've relied upon, men that you see as your brothers, men who you see as going through similar things as you, and men you know who can come to you, who actually do come to you from time to time.
Hopefully you can think of that. Now some of you might be thinking, Joseph, what you're describing is just a family, right? That's what a family ought to be, where you have parents who are reliable, where you have children who can rely upon them, where you have brothers and you have sisters who can go through life together. And yes, to some degree, that is what a family is.
And if you have an extended family, and grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and cousins, and nieces and nephews, yes, that is part of it. But here's the reality, is that if your top bricks, bottom bricks, and side bricks are all and only family members, then you're not actually strengthening the rest of society, you're just strengthening your family. The family is not meant to be its own thing in isolation.
That's one of the reasons why you don't marry your cousin. You actually have to go outside of your family to find a wife. That's one of the goods of marriage, is that it knits together families.
Like if the Capulets and the Montagues, if that thing had actually gone off without a hitch, and Romeo and Juliet actually did get married, that could have done quite a bit. It was a tragedy. It didn't work out for them.
But that's one of the things that marriage can do, is that it can knit together families. So yes, in an ideal world, you would have parents that you've been able to rely on, and brothers and sisters, and children, nieces and nephews. But even in an ideal world, you would have more than that.
Even in an ideal world, you would have a larger community that you're participating in. Okay, you may ask, what would I be looking for in these relationships of the bottom bricks, the side bricks, and the top bricks? One thing would be time. If I don't spend time with someone, and I say they're a bottom brick, I'm not actually relying on them.
If I'm not spending time with them, I'm not actually receiving from them. Maybe I have in the past, but if I can't think in the last month, when I've gotten together with them, when I've seen them, when I've actually relied upon them, maybe I don't have as many bottom bricks as I thought. Same thing with side bricks.
If I'm not actively choosing to live life with other men, maybe, just maybe, just because I see them from time to time, doesn't mean I'm actually spending time with them. Same thing with top bricks. Just because I'm available for people to come to ask me questions, or ask for help, or ask for guidance, or counsel, just because I'm available doesn't mean that I actually have people who are relying upon me.
So there has to be not just time, it does have to be time, but it also has to be a kind of intentionality, a desire to pass along life, or to live life with others. So if that's not what's going on in your interactions day by day, week by week, month by month, where you're not actually intending to live life with other men, or to pass something good along to other men, or to receive something good from other men, then maybe, just maybe, there's an opportunity here to build up the wall around you. How? How do we actually find top bricks, side bricks, and bottom bricks? You're in a good place right now.
Well done. Two thumbs up. You've found other men who are willing to get up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, so they could have... They could, well, get up at 6, get here by 7. You're right.
I was up at 5.30. Right. You guys are awesome. You guys are incredible men.
This is something you have to realize, is you are surrounded right now by incredible men. I don't want to build up your egos too much, so that's all I'm going to say. But you're in the right place.
The question is, what do we do with that? If we find men who are going through similar stuff as us, we should recognize that, maybe even name it. And then we should try to spend time with them. If we find men who we value their wisdom, their years of experience, we should say that.
We should say we want to benefit from them. If we find men who maybe are looking for some guidance, we can invite them. All three of these things, in fact, invitation is the key.
To invite men to spend time with us. If we haven't made an invitation in the past week, or received an invitation in the past week, that might mean something. And if you feel like it's all on you, good.
That might mean that you'll actually do something about it. So, invitations. We have to make invitations.
People don't have to say yes, but they can't say yes unless we make an invitation to spend time with them. Hi Kevin. We should also recognize that other men might not be used to living in a community with a stronger social fabric.
Which means they might not even know that they need people to live life with. That they need people to rely upon. That they need people to rely upon them.
And so when we make invitations, men might not immediately see the need for it. They might not immediately see that there is a good in making invitations and receiving invitations. So don't be discouraged.
Be willing to make an invitation more than once. Maybe set a goal for yourself. I want to invite this guy over the course of this summer.
I want to make ten invitations to this guy that I respect to get coffee. And maybe, just maybe, by the tenth invitation, we'll get a cup of coffee together. Or, I know this guy.
He's going through a rough time. I want to be there for him. I don't really know what to do, but I can offer my time.
To make invitations. To say, I'm just going to make ten invitations. Ten invitations for him to come over for a meal.
Over the course of the summer. Ten invitations to come over for a drink. For a bonfire.
Ten invitations. We are unused to living in a community that is strong. We're very used to living in isolation.
A few years back, I don't know if any of you remember this, but a few years back, there were some people going around saying that maybe we could just live in isolation for maybe just like two weeks or fifteen days or maybe longer. And they said, a little isolation isn't going to hurt anybody. And then, obviously, the two weeks became longer and longer.
When was that? Something, something. What was it? Like video, co-video. I don't remember.
Doesn't matter. But people wanted to convince us that we didn't actually need other men. That we didn't actually need community.
That we didn't actually need to spend time with one another. And a lot of people have internalized that in the last few years. And it's all the more incumbent upon us, if we're willing to get up at 6am and come to something at 7am on a Saturday, you are the men who are going to strengthen the fabric of this community.
You are. If it's not you, then who? Another final note. This doesn't just go for men.
How many of you are married? A decent number of you. I'm married as well. In case you didn't tell, it was with my wife and our seven kids.
It wasn't with my concubine. It's not just men needing other men. Let me be very clear.
Marriages need other marriages. Marriages need good marriages. We need married couples who are stronger than us, more experienced than us, who have lived through more than us, that we spend time with.
We need that. We need other married couples who are going through the same kinds of things as us. If you've got little kids, we need to find other married couples who are raising little kids.
When we lived out in Bellingham, Washington years ago, my wife found this woman who was older than us. They had their three kids. They made certain reproductive decisions because they didn't know any better.
They had a deeper enlivening of their faith later on, this husband and wife. They realized they couldn't have more kids but they missed out on an opportunity so they started fostering kids and taking kids in. They had two little girls right around the age of my oldest son.
My wife was like, I respect this woman because she has more experience than me and she has lived through more than I have and she also has little kids the same age as my little kids. She would spend time every week she would either go to her house or have the woman come to our house because it was a two for one. It was somebody who was more experienced who was also going through the same thing.
It was a bottom brick who was also a side brick. And you can have those two for one sometimes. But we need couples who are going through the same thing as us and then we need to also pass on the wisdom and the experience that we have received as hopefully happily married husbands and wives.
I'll just tell this quick story. When we were visiting Bellingham a week or so ago two weeks ago I was talking with a friend that I hadn't seen in eight years and we were talking about marriage prep and how he didn't remember anything from marriage prep other than the only thing he learned from marriage prep guys the only thing his one take away for the sacrament of matrimony the one thing that he learned in the Catholic Church getting ready to get married the one thing that he carried with him is that it's not actually all that practical to take showers with your wife. That's it.
That was the only thing he learned from marriage prep. But after he got married him and his wife got invited over to another couple's house and every month or so this couple would invite them over they had been married for like 10 or 15 years and all they did was just invite them over for a meal and he said I got more from meals with them our first couple years of marriage than anything from marriage prep although the marriage prep thing was good enough. That was pretty solid advice.
I thought it was solid advice. So if you're married if you and your wife do not spend time with other couples around your own state in life where you're grappling with the same kinds of problems where you have ailing parents that you're taking care of or kids who are reaching the teenage years or you just became empty nesters if you don't have other couples that you're spending time with who are actually pursuing a good and holy marriage that is also weakening the social fabric because here's the thing you're not actually a brick the real brick in a community is a family and the family is made up fundamentally of husband and wife so that's actually the brick if you're married, you and your wife you are a brick and so your marriage needs to be around other marriages it needs marriages to rely upon marriages to go through life with and marriages that can rely on you it is for your good and not merely for your good but for the good of all of society and so if you are a single man if you are a widower or not yet married you do need men in your life if you are married, you still need men in your life you need men who are more experienced going through the same stuff as you and then less experienced you need that and if you're married, you need couples who can be the bottom bricks, side bricks, and top bricks for you my wife and I on our drive we came up with a list of some of our bottom bricks, side bricks and top bricks here in Jackson because to be honest staying in different towns all across the country being hosted by friends that we love dearly and haven't seen in years we were like well, maybe we should move maybe we should go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota after all, you can go at 80 miles per hour in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and that sounds really appealing sometimes but no, we went through our list of who we knew in Jackson who were our bottom bricks, our side bricks, and our top bricks and we got excited about Jackson again as we came home we got more and more excited to be back because there is strength in here there are gaps but these are fillable gaps gentlemen could you imagine if Jackson were the kind of place that people wanted to move to not because of the speed limit not because of its proximity to other things but because of the strength of the community could you imagine if people bragged about Jackson because of the strength of the social fabric could you imagine and here's the thing it cannot be until you actually have the men in your life the couples in your life that you need we need these and Jackson needs us to have them as well it's not just for you but it is also for you and to that end we're going to take a couple of minutes before we go to small groups you have these little quarter sheets on your table with pens and take a few minutes and just don't show this to anyone this isn't to be turned in just spend some time thinking as a man who are the men I rely upon who are the men going through the same stuff as me who are the men who can rely upon me and then if you're married also include who are the couples we spend time with that build up our marriage who are the couples that are going through the same stuff as us who are the couples who can go to us when they're having a hard time and if you find that there are gaps in your wall write down the men and the couples that you wish filled those gaps and then do something about it because you can do something about it alright for prayer we're also we're going to say three Hail Marys so let's say three Hail Marys and then get to working on this and then we'll have a small group discussion In the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, Amen Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Holy Mary, Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Holy Mary, Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Holy Mary, Mother of God Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, gentlemen, I'll give you a few minutes, and then we'll have a small group discussion.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
