Passings

In the article I read last week, a writer suggested that the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson signify "the moment when Generation X realizes they’re grown up.” They were some of the iconic companions that walked with me as I experienced childhood in the late-seventies and early eighties. To say that they were role models for me would not entirely correct; I had never been granted with the sufficient coordination to pull off a half-way successful moon-walk and I was strangely never struck with the driving ambition to solve crimes as part of a detective agency consisting of former models. But they were part of a constellation of witnesses presented to me through the small box in our living room of the dynamic possibilities for life… possibilities that seemed to extend beyond the everyday mundanities of going to school, attending church, eating your vegetables, and sucking at sports. But always were those possibilities—like Karl Rahner's understanding of God—were located past a horizon I could not see.

The unreality of Michael and Farrah's lives was not necessarily in question; that would come as reality college graduation approached while a constant stream of tabloid headlines regularly poked holes in the bubbles previously provided to us. But in a summer where I have been had a relationship with sickness and death (albeit at a distance) more than at other times of my life, seeing their end has been a reminder that I am now flying over whatever point I used to view as "over the horizon," whether or not I ever truly understood that point or not. And seeing that all of our horizons, no matter what happens in the space between looking outward and actually finding out what lies over the hill, end up in the same space.

I know that I used the term "fly over" just now, a term which connotates distance; with all of the philosophy that has been pumped into me over the past two years it is difficult not to look at this experience from an existential point of view… it's been a big eye-opener as to why the complaints about many priests is that they seem too removed from regular life. But I also can’t help but wonder if that is (in part anyway) where we're supposed to be as priests, caught somewhere between flying over the horizon and traveling the rough earthen ground with "everybody else," trying to remind those we walk with of the possibilities outside of the here and now. I know that that's a half-answer, but the temptation to stay above the fray can be strong… especially when one sees the end point.

Click here to read the MSNBC Article.

Old School Prayer

If you’ve ever seen the movie Old School, there’s a scene in which Will Farrell (the “John Belushi” of the group) has to debate James Carville in order to save the status of the thirty-something fraternity he founded with two of his buddies. Things aren’t looking good as he steps to the mic, but then he appears to be possessed by some foreign spirit and proceeds to go toe-to-toe with the former Clinton adviser on the economic issues presented and carries the day. As soon as the debate finishes, he gyrates again as the spirit that had carried him departs, returning once again to the lovable, ignorant dufuss he had been for the previous 90 minutes.

That’s the best explanation I can come up with for some of the prayer experiences I have had with the patients.

It’s not so much that I am a dufuss… Okay, I suppose that point could be argued. But because I tend to gravitate towards the “heady” side of religion I have wondered how I would do with spontaneous prayer. After all, when delivering homilies I like to have what I will say specifically mapped out and coordinated on deliberate x-y coordinates so that what I want to say comes across in the exact manner I want to say it. But the difference between writing and speaking homilies is that you have a lot more control of how the text comes out on the page… the difference between giving a homily and praying with a patient is that when giving a homily, you can use notes.

Well, it’s not like I don’t bring a list of ready-made prayers when I walk into the room, but at some point of the patient visit it is all about stepping aside, and letting the Spirit do its work. It’s the stepping aside part that I have always seemed to have trouble with in my own life, but here at the hospital I at least have more opportunities to practice that. When I’ve remembered to step aside, I have had the spiritual equivalent of winning a debate with James Carville.

The Buddy System

In college I was a member of student government, which often translated into people knowing my name without my knowing theirs. During those years, I learned to rely on something I called the “Buddy System.” It sounds glamorous, but all it really comes down to employing the use of the term “Buddy” whenever I would blank on the name of a person who was saying hello. In the world of college relationships where being casual is a value that is held in high esteem, it often seemed to carry me through many a social situation.

If it was not obvious before, hospital rooms are dramatically different environments; I am getting a sneaking suspicion that the “Buddy System” will not serve me as well here at the hospital as it has in years past. On more than one occasion, I have found myself utterly forgetting the person’s name when praying for/with the patient. Somehow praying for “Buddy’s” recovery and for God’s presence in “Buddy’s” life seems less… personal. I guess some theology could be developed that the use of such terminology that causes patients to view God as a friend who would not leave them hanging—after all, Kevin Smith introduced the idea of “Buddy Christ” in the 1999 movie Dogma—but something inside tells me that it is not the best pastoral practice.

By the second day, however, I began to notice a pattern. It is not as though I am employing a “checklist” mentality when walking into each room, but in that time in the hallway, it is sometimes difficult for me not to look at my census as a “To Do” sheet. And it was only the times when I set aside my “tasks” and prayed over the names of the patients I would be encountering that I remembered their names when it came time to pray. In other words, it was usually the times when I checked in with my “good buddy God” that I was able to go beyond generic nicknames.

Start Spreading The News

I have never technically been a New Yorker. Even though my parents both grew up in Brooklyn and I grew up in Northern New Jersey (the half of the Garden State that roots for the Yankees and knew Al Roker long before he moved downstairs to the Today Show), full membership into the Big Apple was always for me a distant beacon that loomed in the distance. It was not until I would be required to memorize subway routes in order to plan a regular morning commute could I hope to become a part of the club that understood Seinfeld on a deeper level.

But two weeks ago, I woke up to car horns and the magical smells of the breakfast cart five stories below… yes, I find ham and egg sandwiches magical. Later in the day I asked three different guys which place in the neighborhood had the best thin-crust pizza and got five different answers; on the way to suggestion number four, I passed by a bar in which the Yankees were playing… do you have any idea how long it has been since I have lived in a city that roots for the Yankees? And all of this “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” was happening in my new mid-town Manhattan address: St. Paul the Apostle.

I have been increasingly aware that I am at the halfway point of my formation towards priesthood: three years down, three to go. In the previous three years with the Paulists I have shopped in independent record stores in Berkeley, visited Graceland and eaten Barbecue in Memphis, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and eaten gelato in front of the Pantheon in Rome. In between these adventures I have been praying, studying, and discerning what the life of a priest might mean for me. And I include the last two words of the previous sentence intentionally: "for me."

There has been a somewhat charmed aspect of “unreality” in my formation thus far; an unreality I have certainly enjoyed but on some gut level know is not a basis on which to build a life of ministry. I make few apologies for maintaining an inward focus these past three years, if for not other reason that I want to have myself sorted out within this new life as much as possible before what is inside me is offered as harbor for many others. But I am also aware that I am ready to start having this new life be about others in addition to what adventures I have been blessed with along the way. As I said before, I feel like that as I begin CPE, the environment is moving from an “unreality” to a “hyper-reality.” But I also believe that this new “hyper-reality” is closer to what these years are supposed to be about.

Beautiful World

Spring Break in Berkeley: Part 2

I usually make a CD mix for long trips that attempt to capture the “theme” for the particular vacation. On a road trip through Arizona and Mexico, the mix featured “South of the Border,” “Rosalita,” with some Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers thrown in; the “Big Apple” mix for the 2006 weekend in New York was loaded with Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, and George Gershwin. So as the Spring Break trip to Berkeley, California approached, the iTunes was fired up and yet another digital heirlooms was created.

Because this vacation was partially an exercise in nostalgia, the songs selected leaned heavily on music I was listening to during my Lenten apostolate two years ago. Near the top of the list was “Beautiful World” by Colin Hay, a song that had been played over the airplane speakers during my first flight to Berkeley. It’s a fairly obscure number, but I had been listening to it a lot during my first year in seminary and hearing it over the cabin speakers at that particular moment served as one of the many reminders that year that I was not as alone as I had been fearing.

The original intent for this trip, in addition to visiting old friends, was to drive down the Pacific Coastal Highway. I had made a similar trip two years ago but because of scheduled meetings and community gatherings, a turnaround had to be made upon reaching Big Sur. On this particular trip, time constraints were not a factor; weather on the other hand was—seven days of stormy clouds appearing at the top of the weather.com page essentially washed away all ideas of a “Fast and Furious” adventure.

Fortunately, there was a Plan B. But before leaving for vacation, a visitor to the Washington house told me that if I was going to Northern California I just had to drive up north to get a mud bath. Because it wasn’t part of the original plan (and because “mud bath” never quite made any personal “bucket list”), I didn’t give much thought. However one advantage that mud spas had going for them is that they are indoors, so I hopped in the Dodge Charger and began the trek up north to Calistoga, California. When life gives you mud, go and make… mud-ade.

Get it??? “MUD-ade” instead of “LEMON-ade”??? Okay… I’ll stop.

According to the menu of the Sarafornia Diner, the name Calistoga came from Samuel Brannan in the 1840s. Originally from The Empire State, he came upon the natural springs of this place while exploring Northern California and it reminded him of the hot springs of upstate New York. Samuel determined that he would make this place the Saratoga of California… except he was a bit of a drinker, so what came out of his mouth was the “Calistoga of Sarafornia.”

Jon Stewart once commented on doing long, solitary car rides. At first, it can be really good because it gives you the opportunity to do some self-examination; “HHmmmm, maybe I really should drop a few pounds before the holidays.” But as the hours and the miles tick by, ideas for self-improvement eventually drift into “I’ve failed everyone who’s ever loved me!!!”

For better and for worse, I have always been able to spend long periods of time by myself. In fact one of the aspects of religious life I have come to relish is the presence of alone time… and one of the aspects of religious life that I sometimes dread is the presence of alone time. Even with my “advanced abilities” in living the solitary life, after a while my brain can start behaving like a three-year old that’s just discovered the pots and pans in the kitchen, with thoughts increasingly banging against my cranium (and each other) with the ferocity of a proton accelerator. It’s around those moments that Dame Loneliness secretly slips into the car… not immediately calling attention to herself but also not able to keep herself hidden forever; Dame Loneliness has a really big ass.

On this particular trip, the unwanted stowaway made herself known when I walked into the local Italian restaurant… and asked for a table for one. Nine times out of ten this does not bother me but for some reason this night was different. And it was over goat cheese ravioli that I reflected on the being I was over that one of my ongoing beefs with the Lord God Almighty (the same Lord God Almighty to whom I am currently in the process of committing my life nonetheless) is that His presence requires frequent reminders... that God’s presence is not obvious and in fact the majority of evidence seems more often that not to point to His absence rather to His existence. This condition is simultaneously the prerequisite and the bitch of faith.

I get back to the motel and flip on The Office. They were celebrating the Valentine’s Day Party at the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin and Michael Scott was lonely, engaged in his usual desperate search for a significant other. While I am canonically barred from following his example, I found myself in a place in life where I never thought I would be: identifying with the emotions of Michael Scott. Add that to the list of unexpected experiences from religious life. After The Office I started flipping the channels some more and landed on Scrubs; I figured that since I was going to be working as a hospital chaplain this summer, I might as well get some pointers.

After a few minutes, Colin Hay’s “Beautiful World” played in the background as Zac Braf’s problems came to some resolution, at least for that half-hour. And I remembered the moment two years ago that I heard the same song on the tarmac of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. I reflected that this too was an obscure moment to be hearing this song. And I was reminded that God does show care, but usually not in the ways I would prefer… the ways that fall within the limited sense of my own needs.

The weather had cleared when I woke up the next morning, so I decided to drive my Dodge Charger even further north into the mountains rather than head back to Berkeley right away. I was on vacation and there was no particular place that I had to be.

Checklist

Spring Break in Berkeley: Part 1

This past spring break I headed back to Northern California. I know, Berkeley is not exactly Daytona; there are no houses rented by MTV featuring free shows by Snoop Dogg and the tie-dyed culture seems somehow incompatible with wet T-Shirt contests. But the Cal Newman Center was the location of my Lenten apostolate two years ago and a part of me wanted to head back to the place where this life was newer than it is now, a time when I was still just wading into this pool called religious life… with both hands gripping the railing. And upon arriving in Northern California Peet’s Coffee was the first item on the checklist.

The checklist was an exercise in nostalgia: a list of the things I used to do, food I used to eat, and places I used to visit during that time when my only responsibility in life was to discern a life of priesthood in Northern California over an In N’ Out cheeseburger. But upon waking up on my first jet-lagged morning in Berkeley, it became obvious that I needed certain forgotten toiletries before coffee, so I made my way to the Long’s Pharmacy on Shattuck Ave. Yes, there was a Walgreen’s much closer to the house but… well, they don’t have Long’s on the East Coast and I was trying as local as I could be without flunking any blood tests.

The digits to the left of the decimal point were a lot higher than one would expect for assortment of deodorants offered; who knew that a pharmaceutical chain would take such blatant advantage of basic human needs so close to a college campus? But after getting over my moral outrage, I started looking over the selection; that’s when the label for Old Spice jumped out at me:

“Old Spice: The Official Scent of Confidence.”

Wow, that’s a bold claim... it’s certainly not a claim the people at the chili restaurant down the street could make. And even though it was the most expensive item on the shelf, faster than you can say “medicinal hemp should be legal!” my hand grabbed for that talc of salvation. No cost is too great for confidence… even on a seminarian’s budget.

Just having the Old Spice in my bag gave me a new determination in life, so I headed out the store and began my journey towards caffeinated refreshment at the old coffee shop I used to haunt. Along the way, I passed a familiar second-hand clothing store called “Mars;” the people of Berkeley are often referred to as aliens, so why shouldn’t they shop at a thrift store named “Mars”? But as I rounded the side of the building, I was reminded of the billboard the store features on the side of its wall. Two years ago, it read “I want Pluto to be a planet again.” I anxiously turned the corner to discover what the pearl of wisdom would be this time.

“We may be cheap, but we're not easy.”

At the Peet’s Coffee on Dwight Avenue there was a cashier wearing horn-rimmed glasses with an earring in her nose and a nose-ring in her lip. Do you know how long it has been since I have interacted with somebody who has a nose-ring, a pierced lip, and horn-rimmed glasses? Answer: too long.

The sugar-Free Chocolate Mocha on the menu caught my eye, so I asked the cashier for her impressions of the product. “They use Splenda with the sugar-free chocolate… it’s not good for you. It’s worse for you than real sugar. It’s not… natural.” It made me think of my sister who used to do advertising for the company that made Splenda. Going to her house was like walking into the lair of a Colombian Drug Lord, mounds of white powder everywhere.

In the Northeast “natural” really isn’t on the schedule… but in Northern California it is important to be natural. As a native New Jerseyan I cannot claim to know what being “natural” means, but in the Golden State the more natural you are the better off you’ll be, so I decided to be natural this particular morning. I asked the cashier if it was Okay for me to get the WHITE chocolate mocha. Despite years of the people from Hersey trying to convince everyone otherwise, the cashier did not suggest that white chocolate was unnatural.

Gazing out the window of Peet’s and sipping on my white chocolate mocha, I reflected on this morning’s message from Mars; “Just because we’re cheap, we’re not easy.” It struck me that a relationship with God is cheap… but not easy. There are times when it appears that Jesus has no idea what he is talking about when he says that his “burden is easy and his yoke is light.” Actually a relationship with God is often just the opposite of… Old Spice antiperspirant: easy, but not cheap.

As I reflected over all of the struggles I have had since my last cup of coffee in this place, I counted the number of times I was tempted to throw down the credit card on life and try to purchase “easy.” But then I remembered that I was just beginning a vacation in which my biggest decision for the day was whether or not to drive down the California Coast or to get a mud bath in wine country. At that present moment the world outside the window of Peet’s was going by in all of its tie-dyed glory on a rainy California day and while a thoroughly natural white chocolate mocha was kicking off a full week of no papers, no exams, no workshops. And then I thought that maybe Jesus had a point after all.

Homily for Feast of Angela Merici

Tomorrow is the feast day for Angela Merici and I was assigned in my preaching class to focus my homily on her life. I had to give this homily in class last week, but as it happens, I also have to preach at the house once a semester, so I thought that I would simply re-do on the actual feast day what I did last week.

Roger Merrill and Steven Covey talk about the different areas of we need to attend to in our daily lives in their book "First things First." As a student for the priesthood, it's funny how many gear shifts I find myself having to do. One for being a student (in which you are always behind on reading), one for prayer life (which when you a required to do it sometimes feels more like work than not), one for friends (and making sure that SOME of those friends come from the outside world), house responsibilities, ministry, etc.

I don't say that to suggest that my life is more busy that other people's. I definitely remember life "on the other side of the ontological divide" and the many different directions pulls came from; in fact, when I get stressed I have to remember that I have a lot more flexibility of time then I did before in order to black the different hockey pucks that come flying my way.

But as a trick, I remember that Covey and Merrill talked about how frequently those different areas of out lives overlap. So with that in mind, I present here a homily that my community will be hearing for the first time... and my class heard last week.

---

Should anything ever happen to James Earl Jones, God forbid, I think I know somebody who could easily replace him as the announcer for CNN. Rick was a lector at the church I used to attend in Baltimore and he was well known for this rich, deep voice—we often used to joke that Darth Vader who was reading from the Old Testament—but he was just as well known for being a father figure for many in the parish. But it is this story the pastor if the church told me about Rick that still stands out in my mind.

A few years ago, both his wife and his mother were killed when the car they were driving was blindsided by an 18-wheeler on Interstate 95. And for once, the parish had the opportunity to reach out to Rick; the outpouring among the congregation had been tremendous. And after a few weeks had gone by, Rick wanted to address the place he called home. So after giving the announcements, Rick said “I know that you are all worried about me… and yes this has been a rough time. But I want you to know that things are going to be fine. Because God is my rock. God is my rock.”

I don’t know about you, but even though I’m a seminarian I find that kind of faith almost beyond my reach. And I wonder if there was a time when 17th Century Saint whose life we celebrate today might have felt the same way. Angela Merici is best known for founding the Ursuline Sisters, which formed one of the backbones of women’s education for centuries. But before all of those things, she was simply a young child who had lost almost all of her siblings, and then her two parents. And if that wasn’t bad enough, a few years later her last remaining sister died suddenly, which left Angela distraught for years because her sister had not received her last sacraments.

Now many of us today might not be able to relate to a theology that compares the power of the sacraments to the hand motions of Caesar in the gladiatorial arena—thumbs up or thumbs down—but for Angela dying without last rites meant great peril for one’s soul so she prayed fervently for her sister.

But in today’s reading, we learn why Angela’s fears were misplaced… because as Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading, we are family to God. “For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Eventually Angela Merici prayers were answered when she saw a vision of her sister in heaven, resting with the Saints. Because as Angela Merici loved her sister, as Rick loved his mother and his wife, as we love our own families, God loves us that much more... as family. And that is the Good news that we come to celebrate today.

[For more information on Angela Merici, click here]
[For the day's reading, click here]

Finish Him!

There is a new danger to my GPA. This was not my idea... I repeat, not my idea... but one of my housemates has brought something back from the holidays that could be problematic to my continuing education.

I have long resisted internal pulls towards the Sony PlayStation, Gameboy, or any device of it's ilk. Like shopaholics might have to keep their eyes focused on the center of a road when driving by Bloomingdales, I have tried to stay away. Plus, there is the additional "old school" element - when I was a kid, [please try to imagine an old-man-creaky-voice here] we didn't have controllers with twelve buttons and two joysticks... we had ONE joystick and ONE button... and doggone it we were grateful!

But some of the guys here in formation are from a different generation, guys in their TWENTIES, and they have brought a PS3 into the house... and along with it, the fighting game Mortal Combat vs. DC. I saw some of the guys playing the game upon returning from break game and my hand started to twitch—so I figured that if my hand was twitching anywhay, I might as well use the twitching to press some buttons.

It took me a couple of days, but I finally mastered Superman—the surge of power I felt when picking up DarkSeid with my "Up, Up, and Away" move and pounding him into the pavement was exhilarating. But after playing the game off and on throughout the weekend, I have noticed it beginning to affect my psyche; during Mass yesterday while listening to an especially boring homily, I had an overwhelming urge to reach for a controller so that I could zap the preacher with Superman's Heat Vision.

And a part of me has wondered if engaging in these games is not exactly congruent with my future career as a Man of God. After all, every match ends with a demonic voice shouting "FINISH HIM," not exactly the "turn the other cheek" model the Gospels attempt to uphold, so I was trying to think of what a Catholic Video Game might look like. Maybe Missionaries in the 1600s coming over to convert the natives? Hmmm... smacks too much of colonialism. Oooh, how about exorcist who could throw crosses at demons and shoot the possesed with a super-soaker filled with holy water?!?!!

I shared that idea with somebody, enthralled by the creative imagination I was displaying... alas, the game already exists.

Maybe another game called "confessional" - where you listen to people and have to figure out the right amount of penances to give them. Give them too few and their soul is cast into damnation, give them too many and they run away from a burdensome church... might be a good virtual training for priests anyway.

A New Semester

Today I begin another semester at Washington Theological Union, and as it turns out, my last semester for a while. How the Paulist formation goes, you spend one year in the novitiate, then two years in school, followed by a year assignment in a parish (followed by another two years of school, a couple of ordinations sandwiched in... yada yada yada).

Christmas break was really great. Got to see a lot of old friends, hang out with family, reconnect with some old professors from my alma matter, but especially great was that I was able to get some quality "Uncle time" with my nephew and new niece. Especially the new niece - she's a little over a month old and spent a lot of time sleeping my my stomach... with the amount of social lunches and dinners I had been going to over the past few weeks, she had a very soft mattress.

I do have mixed feelings upon returning... after three weeks on the road, it is nice to not be living out of a suitcase and being able to sleep in my own bed. But upon walking into my room, I have to confess that I felt tired of being a student. Not that I haven't enjoyed school - in fact, that part of formation has been really good. It's been a lot like Batman Begins... just like in that movie you find out ho Bruce Wayne learned all of his fighting skills and where he got the Batmobile, the history and theology classes answer such questions as why we use incense during Mass (not only because of Three Wise Men, but because it was also used to sanctify the Roman Emperors before Christianity), what Original Sin is (actually a concept that didn't actually appear until St. Augustine in the late 300s and the meaning of which we are still developing today), and why there was a split between the Eastern Church and the Roman Church (A bunch of drunken Romans shouted "Tastes great!" during an eccumenical council, the Greeks always mindful of fitness responded with "Less filling!").

And WTU has been a very good place for me to go to school. I have had a lot of questions about my faith and have exhibited at times a more than skeptical attitude. For the most part I have gotten a lot of good answers from my professors who seem to encourage the questioning; at a lot of places, I suspect that I just would have been told to fall in line. Debate and discussion is welcome, and they seem to have a genuine commitment to making faith relevant to the modern world.

But at the same time, I am ready to be doing something; I getting a little tired of reading. Although during the break I picked up for the first time a book that my father gave me last Christmas; a leather bound edition of the first year of posts in "Kicking and Screaming." To read where I was two-and-a-half years ago while reflecting on where I am now was... I can't really describe it. It's not that I have all of my questions answered (FAR from it) or that I have totally signed off on this little adventure (but I have signed off on it a lot more than I had at the beginning), but...

It's like this - I got to a point at the end of my first year where I just said to myself that if God had called me into this life (and He did), then in order for me to leave God would have to call me out of it. I had been in enough bad situations before to know the difference between simply going through a rough patch and realizing that it is time to pack it in; I hadn;t had anything close to that in my time with the Paulists.

That and one other thing has kept me going; a few months ago, somebody asked me how things were going. I responded that I was still struggling with becoming a priest (with all of the things that priesthood might and would entail)... but that I loved being a Paulist. When I said that, it was one of those moments when I was simultaneously a speaker and a passive listener, a passive listener who knew what was being said was true.

A nun I know told me before I enetered that if I don't like formation, it is NOT what my life is going to be like; she also said that if I do like formation, it is NOT going to be what my life is going to be like. While I am enjoying my studies and I am sure that it is good for me to be challenging myself emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, at some point soon I will want to do something real. I love the guys I live with, but sometimes around the breakfast table when someone is arguing that a particular viewpoint is Pelagian and another is Pantheistic.... I mean, with the economy tanking, people losing their jobs, wars going on, people are seriously going 15 rounds over the nature of a being that at the end of the day is unknowable?

It's fun for a while, but if this is all it is at some point I am going to be tempted to start returning Natalie Portman's phone calls.