Breath of Fresh Air

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Dust unto Dust

The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

-- G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

Get Holy or Die Trying

 

“These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;
they have washed their robes
and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”

 

Now go to Mass!

Remind Me Always

Faith

"Remind me always that you have a plan for me, greater than I could ever imagine."

Hope

"Bring me light from where I thought it was dark..."

"It's hard to recall what blew out the flame, it's been dark since you can remember..."

"Hope has a way of turning its face to you, just when you least expect it."

Love

"You really shouldn't say "I love you" unless you really mean it. But when you do, you should say it a lot, because people forget and it's good for them to get reminded."

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in the wrong but rejoices in the right. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

~Corinthians 13

Advent: Week I

Subtitle: How God's Really Good About Telling You What You Need To Hear When You Need To Hear It.

Today I walked into Mass feeling frustrated and disoriented. There's so much in my life that I'm not excelling at, that I want to happen now, events and situations that I want to occur instantly. My perpetual impatience was getting the better of me again. I went in, thinking: "How long, God? Why does everything in this life take forever?"

I was wrapped up in my own self-pitying interior monologue, when the priest started his homily with the sentence: "We are here to engage in subversive activity." I snapped out of my trance and paid rapt attention from then on-I was intrigued. What subversive activity were we engaging in exactly? His answer: Advent. Essentially, his homily was about the absence of Advent in our society. Our American society is in an obesity epidemic, yes, but the real epidemic, the root of all these problems, is the epidemic of perpetual adolescence. We have lost all sense of self-control, of self-denial, of delayed gratification. We have to have whatever we want and whenever we want it-a.k.a. NOW. We have an awful difficulty telling ourselves "no" or even "not now, later."

Clearly, he continued, a culture that has this attitude has no use for Advent. And a culture that lacks the foresight to look to the good in the future, even when the present is glum, lacks hope. When he said that, the sadness of our current cultural situation struck me. How awful and how true-our culture is a culture that lacks hope. We grasp onto whatever immediate pleasure we can because all too soon the moment will pass and we'll be left empty again. Human beings simply can't live hope-it's human nature to always be able to look down to the end of the dark tunnel and see that light. Our culture has lost the light of hope-we're lost in the darkness of the tunnel. What an awful idea-a life void of hope.

As I listened to these words, I realized they were exactly what I needed to hear. My own outlook had been sadly lacking in hope, trust, or any sort of virtue besides adolescent impatience. God's timing is the best timing, and although it may be difficult for me to always follow, He knows best. Thus, my new Advent resolution is to join the subversives, and cultivate an Advent-like attitude of patience, trust, and hope. Engage in subversive activity: celebrate Advent!

Countdown to Christmas Day:

22 days

This Madcap Existence We Call Life

How do you quantify the unquantifiable, and reduce the unexplainable to a rational equation?

Martha Beck is Harvard-educated, brilliant, and married to an equally Harvard- educated and brilliant man. At the outset Expecting Adam, neither Martha nor her husband are religious, although both were raised as Mormons. They had agreed that "it was a very good idea to abort fetuses with birth defects." But when Martha becomes pregnant with a Down's Syndrome baby, whom she names Adam, she's not so sure about things. It doesn't help that her entire world has been turned upside-down with inexplicable events and miracles large and small since Adam's conception.

Precisely because Beck refuses to be pigeon-holed by either right or left, Expecting Adam continually turned me on my head while I was reading it. Beck can write (when describing her complete lethargy and weakness at one point in time, she compares herself to "Popeye during the Great Spinach Shortage"). Simple statement. I enjoy, I tremendously enjoy, reading the work of people who can write. Beck is witty, sharp, and sarcastic. When she experiences any negative or shallow reaction to Adam's existence in this world, she roars with all of the fury of a mother bear. Yet she makes it abundantly clear that it is Adam who has taught her what life really consists in: the ability to slow down and enjoy the world, not to be caught up in what society classifies as the necessities of life, to truly appreciate the wonder of this mad existence that we lead.

Beck writes quite frankly about Adam's existence as a person before his birth. Neither she nor her husband deny the humanity of the unborn. This, coupled with all of the incredible things that happen to her during her pregnancy beg the question -- why hadn't she become "pro-life" by the time of Adam's birth? She admits that she's come to believe in the existence of the spiritual realm (it's hard not to when someone pushes you out of a burning building and a picture shows absolutely no one behind you), whether it's God, angels, cosmic puppeteers or invisible gremlins. She does offer the explanation that "I myself had suspended my disbelief in a spiritual realm and was stumbling daily over more and more evidence that my world was full of things rationalist science could not explain. But this made me feel better, not worse, about the fate of those who die young, including those who die as fetuses. Why should people who believe that life exists outside of mortal bounds be the very same people who are so obsessed with a fetus's 'right to life' on this messy little planet?"

It is because Beck remains an "outsider" of the pro-life movement, that her memoir resonated with me in a way that similar stories, told by wonderful and fervent pro-lifers, have not. I am not accusing these people of propaganda (on the contrary, I agree with them on nearly every count), but because Beck remains as mystified at the end as at the beginning of her story as to why exactly she kept Adam in the first place, her words carry a raw honesty that is often lost in the charged rhetoric of the abortion/pro-life debate.

Beck's story provided me with much fodder for thought, but ultimately the lessons she learned from Adam touched me the most deeply. One thing that I've come to learn over this past summer is the importance of appreciating the wonder of life, and all the beauty and miraculousness that God has placed here for us. Beck does not hesitate to admit that her own obsession with achievements and the perfect life were entirely upended by Adam.

"I was afraid Adam would slow me down, and he has. Not because he has required more care and time than a "normal boy" (he is the most helpful and least demanding of my children) but because the immediacy and joy with which he lives his life make rapacious achievement, Harvard-style, look a lot like quiet desperation. Adam has slowed me down to the point where I notice what is in front of me, its mystery and beauty, instead of thrashing my way through a maze of difficult requirements toward labels and achievements that contain no joy in themselves. Adam takes his joy straight up, in purer form than most of us can handle. He was the person who, at two years of age, spent enough time experimenting to learn that his four-month-old sister was capable of laughter, and determining exactly what would make her laugh. He is the one who goes into transports of delight over clean sheets, or packaged waffles, or batteries. He is the one who taught me to appreciate rainbows -- not only in the sky but also in lawn sprinklers and dish-soap bubbles and patches of oil. He is the one who stops, and makes me stop, to smell the bushes."

(caveat emptor: Beck is extremely frank about her views on abortion and contraception, almost to point of rubbing the reader's face in them. She also swears on occasion, but I found it to be understandable, if not excusable. There are also some slightly, but not horrifically, graphic descriptions of various medical complications from her pregnancy.)

Catholic Women of the World, Unite!

While spending too much time on the internet today, I ran across this interview with Harvard's 2010 Valedictorian, Mary Ann Marks, who entered the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist back in August. After spending the summer discussing femininity and our faith, she struck me as an example of both. It is also extremely interesting that, despite all the claims that the Church is misogynistic or that she stifles women, Marks is quite obviously a smart, well-educated woman who chose to accept her vocation -- she wasn't coerced or brainwashed.

The world could use more women like her. She is truly a strong woman of God.

(excerpt)

LOPEZ: You wanted to go to graduate school but discerned that God wanted something else. Why would you give up your free will like that?

MARKS: Part of the answer is that when Love asks you to be His spouse, you don’t quibble about the when and where. The other part is that anything worthwhile in life requires an ongoing, freely willed surrender of one’s freedom.

April 20th, 1999

Today marks the 11th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings. My dear friend and columbinus cast-mate called me late last night, after having spent the whole day holding back tears, and then finally being overwhelmed by them. She kept saying: "Why am I feeling like this? Why can't I let this go?"



There are so many people whose lives have been completely changed by the events that took place this day. And I feel disrespecful, in a way, saying that my own life has been changed by this day as well. I haven't lost a child, a friend, or a sibling. I haven't lived through blood-spattered halls and the sounds of gunshots, jeers, moans and screams. The pain all those people felt is something almost sacred, that I can't presume to even begin to understand or fathom. Their grief is something I can never feel.



But, without a doubt, Columbine has changed my life. columbinus was a show that changed me. I've been immersed in this story for over three months, and closing the show felt like coming up out of the water for a giant, refreshing breath of air. I was able to let go of the burden of the story; yet there's no way I can let go of the story itself. And I shouldn't.



There was one rehearsal, towards the beginning to the process, which was really difficult for me, and I broke down afterwards. We hadn't even started dealing with the Act II Columbine story, but I had just finished reading Columbine, by Dave Cullen (one of the reporters who covered the shootings), and I was so weighed down by the story. After rehearsal, I spent a good hour and a half talking with our awesome director and stage manager, and trying to find words to describe the feelings of grief that overwhelmed me. Then, on my way home, I stopped by the adoration chapel, and kneeling in the back, I looked up at the Eucharist. I realized I was sitting in front of the one person who had never let that story go; and He was still feeling the pain, the sorrow and the grief as acutely as He did that very day. As much as I was grieving for those 15 people, and as much as I loved them; He loved them infinitely more, and was grieving for what took place on April 20th. I realized that I could share all that sorrow with Him; He understood perfectly what I was feeling.
As a Littleton parent said: "There's no such thing as closure; they're our kids and we don't want to put them behind us." We don't always have to carry the burden of the story, but we can never let it go. Every single person deserves to have their story told-and never forgotten. It's the least we can do to try to right the wrong that was done to them.




There's a beauty and an awe in knowing there's a whole communion of people whose lives have also been touched by these events-who wake up on April 20th, knowing why this day is different from all other days. And now I'm a part of that connection.
We ARE Columbine.



We began columbinus in winter. We ended it in spring. Winter sometimes seems as though it will go on forever-we forget what it feels like to walk outside without freezing to death; feels like when the sun shines and the birds sing. By March, we begin to wonder if we'll ever see the spring. But spring always comes. Winter cannot last forever. Spring always comes.

That's the hope.





"We die many times and experience many forms of grief; but love...it never fails. "

"There are no words to convey how sorry we are for the pain that has been brought upon the community as a result of our son's actions. The pain of others compounds our own as we struggle to live a life without the son we cherished. In the reality of the Columbine tragedy and its aftermath, we look with the rest of the world to understand how such a thing could happen.
[...] We envision a time when circumstances will allow us to join with those who share our desire to understand. In the meantime, we again express our profound condolences to those whose lives have been so tragically altered. We look forward to a day when all of our pain is replaced by peace and acceptance."
~The Klebold family -- 4-15-2000



"Ever since that day we've been obsessed with moving on or getting back...so we've gone to gun control, the music, computer games, the school, the police, the parents...looking for someone to blame. But we always find ourselves back where we started asking the same question...

Why?"

I did that whole open-up-the-Bible-to-any-random-page-and-read-the-first-verse-you see-thing today, and received this little gift from God:


But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.


In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be an affliction,


and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of others they were punished,



their hope is full of immortality.(Wisdom 3:1-5)

When God Closes a Door

Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

(Psalm 127:1-2)

As any of us can attest, life can be an extremely stressful experience. College is no exception. So, when I came across Psalm 127 while studying for theology class, I couldn't help but wryly smile at the ways in which God chooses to speak to us. I certainly wasn't looking for a message from God, yet it still spoke to me in a unique way. This second semester has been rather rough for me in some ways, and it was an unexpected reminder of God's Divine Providence to read this passage of scripture.

I certainly have risen early, gone late to rest, and eaten the anxious bread of toil during my first year of college. Most days, God seems so remote that it is difficult to believe that even the smallest of circumstances come from His loving hand. Certainly, just looking back over the past few weeks, nothing special or extraordinary stands out; those weeks were just a series of ordinary, regular, often frustrating moments. How could the almighty God speak through such mundane and unpleasant messengers? And yet He does.

God may not speak to me via angel, earthquake, or burning bush, but each and every event of my tangled life points toward some greater reality. Unless the Lord builds, how can anything stand? Surely, if God took the care to bring me into this world, He will not leave me without a few directions on how to reach the final destination. Who am I to deny that God sends those directions through the most unexpected ways?