Refining Dreary

Paul Gustave Dore, A Midnight Dreary

Having arrived nearly at its end, I am just now getting around to talking about Lent.  I haven't any profound meditations on the theological and liturgical meanings of the season.  Rather, I offer some insight into my own Lent.

Historically speaking, I don't like Lent.  It is long, and it comes at the most dreadful time of year when the snow has been around interminably, the skies remain a consistent, brooding, dull gray, and people having grown weary of the cold become listless and sulky.  Moreover, for the ten years during which I was in formation, Lent hailed the arrival of Seminary Evaluations.  Though a necessary evil, no one enjoyed the process.  "Dreary", I suppose, might describe how I have known the season of Lent.  This year was different.

As far as my own penances go, I adopted two principally.  First, I would get out of bed by 7:00 AM or earlier.  While this does not seem a sacrifice to most people I suspect, it was a major sacrifice for me.  I hate morning.  It is a deeply painful experience for me to be required to communicate with parishioners in the sacristy as I prepare for the 7:00 AM weekday Masses.  I am generally much better by the end of Mass, but prior, I am best left undisturbed.  This penance has proven a nearly total failure.

Second, in keeping with a months long argument I have been having with the Lord and the revelations I wrote about on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday, I decided it was time to take up arms against my vanity, swallow my pride, and ask for help in losing weight.  In the first week of Lent, I saw my dietician for the first time.  Though she forbade me from eating nearly everything I like most, this resolution has proven enormously successful.  Thus far, I have lost around twenty pounds, my mood (even before the early Mass) has improved tremendously, and I find a new joyfulness.

Likewise, I redoubled my commitment to my prayer.  My reflections the last time I wrote are connected to this action.  I find that the Lord is taking me more and more into the mystery of his own pierced heart.  There are times when I hang with him on the Cross, knowing full well his presence, but crying out with him, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"  These are what I can only describe as a hard consolation; they reveal the depths of love and are filled with a simultaneous experience of agony and joy.  My heart has been pierced, and to be a good priest, I must allow it to be pierced over and over again.

Arising from my prayer have come both a new and insatiable desire to be holy and a longing to sacrifice.  The latter of these is connected with my celebration of the Mass and with what I wrote in the previous paragraph.  Such sacrifice, I believe, will lead me to holiness.  For my people who read this, please remind me to be holy.  Don't let me off the hook.  I can do nothing for you if I do not attempt to be holy myself first and foremost.

In a new way, the Lectionary readings for the season of Lent have had profound meaning this year.  I have preached repeatedly on the need to use Lent as a time to tame our wills.  All that I have preached has been equally applicable to myself as to my people.  I seem to be listening to myself in a way that I had not always done before.

Holy Week and Easter now loom before me.  I will sing the Exsultet for the first time at the parish in Custer this year before baptizing (and confirming) my sister-in-law and my niece.  Easter promises to be especially glorious.

All in all, the Lord has been doing tremendous work in me this Lent, and it has been a joyful season full of hope, gratitude, and gladness.  These adjectives, I find, are much more satisfying than is "dreary". 

Won't You Stay

Over and over, I find myself talking of love, demonstrating that Christ on the Cross reveals love in its purest form.  "His love is selfless," I remind people.  He pours himself out freely, completely, faithfully, and fruitfully.  He holds nothing back for himself.  It has no desire to possess, to grasp, to take.  It only desires to give.  It is this same love that we find each time we receive the Eucharist, and each time that husband and wife reaffirm their wedding vows in the marital embrace.  It has no desire to possess, to grasp, to take.  It only desires to give

It is this same love, too, that a priest should express each time he celebrates the Mass.  I find, though, that my love is selfish.

As I climb the stairs toward my room each Sunday, I am filled with a deep sadness, loneliness, and aching.  I have spent the day with my people: Mass, Prayer Groups, Life Night, Confessions.  But, at the end of the night, they go home, and I wander to my room, wondering, "Do they know how much I love them?"

Sometimes I leave the rectory and go elsewhere, spending the evening with people, knowing that if I am tired enough when I return home, this longing to love and be loved will be numbed.  Sometimes I sit in front of the television until it has anesthetized me.  Sometimes I read until I can't keep my eyes open.  On my best days, though, I sit in my room and I wallow in the aching, wanting so badly to possess those whom I love, and knowing that were I to possess them, were I to be like them, were I to be going to their homes and families, and lives apart from me, I could not love them as I love them, for to be like them in that way would mean that I could not love them as a priest.

When last I wrote, I suggested that love will always wound us.  It always comes at a cost.  I suspect that I will pay for the love I find in Christ in weekly installments.

Jackson Browne seems to capture this sentiment in some ways.

The Little Prince

 

A common strategy in preaching, employed with parents who tend to stop listening when the homily begins, is to preach to the children.  Parents think this is cute, and they pay strict attention to see what  cute things Father is saying to their children.  Father, however, knows that this will happen, and so he says things that, while comprehensible to the children, are really directed at the parents.  It works every time.

Such, I think, was the strategy of Antoine de Saint-Auxupery when he wrote his famous novella for children, The Little Prince.  While in Minnesota several weeks back, J. Thorp had shown me a copy of the book that he intended to read.  I was paging through and decided I would need to revisit the text as I had not opened my own copy since my senior year in college.  Thus, after Dostoevsky, hoping for something lighter, I devoured the novella.  In tone, it is indeed much easier to read.  In substance, it is equally profound.

The work begins with the narrator, have made a crash landing in the Sahara Desert, attempting to fix his plane.  In the midst of this, he meets a boy who asks him to draw a sheep.  The man, after several failed attempts, draws a box and tells the boy the sheep is within. The boy claims that he can see the sheep, and thereafter, begins, piecemeal, to describe how he came to be in the desert alone.  He has arrived from his own planet where he lived along with a very vain Rose who believed herself to be unique in all of creation.  Eventually the boys leaves the planet and visits several others, inhabited by foolish men, before coming to Earth. 

On earth, he meets a variety of creatures teaching him valuable lessons.  Among them are a desert flower, a snake, and a whole bed of roses like the one he has left behind, and a fox who asks the boy to tame him so that the two might play together.  The fox explains to the prince that to tame him means "to establish ties."  He goes to to explain the nature of the ties established when one tames something:

If you tame me, it'll be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that'll be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat...

The prince tames the fox, but after a time knows that he must move on.   As he prepares to depart, he and the fox share this interchange:

And when the hour of his departure drew near—

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It's your own fault," said the little prince.

"I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you…"

"Yes that is so", said the fox.

"But now you're going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes that is so" said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."

And then he added: "go and look again at the roses.

You'll understand now that yours is unique in all the world.

Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You're not at all like my rose," he said.

"As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one.

You're like my fox when I first knew him.

He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.

But I have made a friend, and now he's unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You're beautiful, but you're empty," he went on. "One could not die for you.

To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you

–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she's more important

than all the hundreds of you other roses:

because it is she that I have watered;

because it is she that I have put under the glass globe;

because it is for her that I've killed the caterpillars

(except the two or three we saved to become butterflies);

because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled,

or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.

Because she is MY rose."

And he went back to meet the fox.

"Goodbye" he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox.

"And now here's my secret, a very simple secret:

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye,"

the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose–"

said the little prince so he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it.

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

You are responsible for your rose…"

 This, to my mind, is a masterful conceptualization of the meaning of love.  Love tames us.  It forges ties between us.  Love will always hurt us.  This, I think, is the truth of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Him, whose heart was filled with love for us, to show his loved, allowed that same heart to be pierced by a lance.  So too must we love.  So often we hesitate because we have been hurt by love.  We hold back for fear that our love will bring us to pain, but in truth, it is that same pain that becomes the surest mark of true love.  Pain is the cost of being tamed.  Would that all of us allow ourselves to be tamed by another.

I think of this today, having spent the afternoon with a family who made the difficult decision to discontinue life support for their 14 month old daughter.  The little girl had tamed them.  And, for all the pain, they are better for having been tamed. 

One is the Loneliest Number

The history of the Church is replete with pairs of saints.  Claire and Francis of Assisi; Benedict and Scolastica; Gregory and Basil; Cyril and Methodius; Perpetua and Felicity; Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier.  Even in our modern times, we see that there was a special relationship between John Paul II, who is to be beatified May 1 and Mother Theresa of Calcutta.  This pairing of saints, is not, I think,coincidental.  To live a life of virtue is to court loneliness.

I had not given this fact much thought until recently.  Though I almost constantly (and rightly so) exhort people to virtue, and though I constantly remind the kids in our formation program of the importance of swimming against the current, and though I admit to them that this is hard, I am not sure that I have ever given due consideration to the existential experience of loneliness that accompanies virtue, especially for high school students.

In about three weeks, I have talked to four or five high school students at some length about this fact.  Though the particulars of their experiences vary widely, a common theme accompanies each conversation.  They must choose between living as they know they ought and living a life that allows them to fit in.  This is about more than simple popularity.  At this point, most of these kids would be content just to have a true friend with whom they can be honest, who will be honest with them, and who strives after the same things they strive after.  More and more the are discovering that a life in Christ is a zero sum game.  It is all or nothing, and the cost can be very high.  The agony of this decision is particularly pronounced in the life of a teenager because he is also, at that point in his life, asking serious questions about his own identity.  The exhortation of Christ to let the dead bury the dead and to give up everything to follow Christ is now being realized in their lives.  A decision for Christ can feel as though it leaves them standing alone.

This loneliness, as heart-wrenching as it may be, is a good thing.  It speaks to a singularly profound longing that all of us eventually experience.  Though a bit fluffy, I appreciate the analogy provided by the person who first commented that there is a God shaped hole in each of our hearts.  This image evokes the truth that we each possess an aching to fit in, to be known, to be understood, and to be loved.  As beautiful as human love is, it is never quite enough to fill the God shaped hole.  Just as they are renegotiating all of the rest of their relationships, these teens are suddenly finding themselves on the harrowing path that leads them to solitude, and therein, the depths of the Father's love.  The pairs of saints that punctuate our history knew this, and they encouraged one another to keep on that path, even when they, like Virgil in Dante's Inferno, could no longer walk with their pilgrim friend.

This loneliness is why we need a Church.  In a Church, as a community, we encourage one another to keep moving forward.  Like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, we easily become terrified as we approach the precipice; we need someone like Sam to carry us to the edge.  We need someone to walk behind us who prevents us from turning back.  These kids are learning that intimacy with God is something that they must do alone.  But like all of us, they long for someone who will keep telling us that it is worth doing.      

Crime and Punishment

"Raskolnikov"

It is my firm conviction that one of the greatest penances that people must bear is to suffer the ongoing consequences of their sin.  In doing so, these consequences can have a purifying effect; the suffering incurred by sin has a way of making one holy.  It is for this reason alone that I can recommend Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.  Though a masterpiece in psychology and the spiritual life, it is simply painful to read because of its likeness to reality.

On Tuesday, I finally finished this piece of classic literature.  Having begun reading it and stopped two times previously, this was no small accomplishment.  It is not as though the book is too dense, or the ideas too complex, or the plot too slow that halted my progress.  Rather, in a way, the book is too heavy.  The author's portrayal of sin and self-loathing is too accurate.  True to life, Dostoevsky opens the novel with his main character, Raskolnikov, agonizing as he encounters the relentless temptation to sin.  Equally true to life, he incrementally justifies the sin in his own head, until he finally arrives at the decision to murder an old pawnbroker and then her sister who catches him in the act.  Seeing the plot progress, the reader feels as though he is suffocating, unable to convince Raskolnikov to turn back each when, with each passing epsidoe, he is provided opportunities for doing so.

Raskolnikov does not turn back, though.  In a scene as dark as any written by Tarantino, the two women lose their lives to an ax-wielding, impoverished college student.  This action occurs early in the book, leaving several hundred pages thereafter, each dripping with Raskolnikov's sense of alienation, self-loathing, his incapacity to love or be loved, and his paradoxical desire to confess coupled with a desperate desire not to be discovered.  Through all of this, Raskolnikov is physically ill, an outward manifestation of his inner turmoil.  With him, the reader has two desires: alleviate the guilt, but do not get caught.  As any sinner can tell you, though, nothing alleviates the guilt of a sin once committed except a good confession.  It is that moment toward which the entire novel spirals. 

Besides the sins of the main character, Dostoevsky introduces readers to the sins of several other characters.  Through them, one comes to see very clearly that no sin is private.  Sonya, a young prostitute, lives her life of sin due to the dereliction of her father.  Raskolnikov's sister finds herself engaged to a dreadful man in the hope that she might sacrifice herself for the benefit of her brother.  A stranger and minor character in the story, nearly goes to the gallows for Raskolnikov's crime.

Only in the last few chapters of the book does a glimmer of hope begin to shine.  Confronted by a lawyer convinced of his guilt, Raskolnikov begins to acknowledge his sin and to begin to suffer the consequences thereof.  This is the start of a long healing process.  Through suffering, he finds that he is able to love again.  Through suffering, he is able to begin to forgive himself.  Through suffering, he is able to let others forgive him.  In a word, through his suffering, Raskolnikov is able to find the truth of his own sin and depravity.  In knowing these, he finally comes to recognize the true depths of love.

This book is agonizing because it is true.  Too real are the emotions and thoughts of Raskolnikov.  Anyone who has undergone an experience of conversion will find himself resisting the book, screaming within himself, "I will not go back there.  I will not go through this again."  Punishment, one discovers at the end of this novel, has little to do with the suffering one endures at the hands of another.  Suffering of that sort would be easier.  Indeed, one often wishes that another would simply punish him so that his sin could be expiated.  Such is not often the case, though.  Instead, punishment is the real experience inflicted on himself of any man of conscience who has sinned.  This self-inflicted punishment is necessary.  It carries with it the possibility of salvation.  Like Raskolnikov, each of us must confront the truth of our wickedness and perversion.  We must suffer the consequences that such knowledge brings.  In doing so, we will experience love, and we too will love.  By this love, we will find salvation.  That is the mystery of the Cross.  

Duke

My childhood was punctuated by a parade of beloved pets.  I don't remember a time when my family was without a dog, and more typically, we had several of them.  Likewise, we had a curious assortment of cats, some of who0m lived in the house and some of whom lived without.  I recall having had rabbits for a while as well as a runt pig that lived very briefly.  Along with these were many lambs, a goat, several ponies, and bottle fed calves.  Most of these animals had exquisite names; one of the cats was Evinrude,* one dog was Rastus, and one of the bottle calves was Ephrem.**  On a recent trip across central South Dakota, however, couldn't help but call to mind Duke.

For a great deal of my growing up years, I didn't realize that the dog's name was Duke.  When calling him, my grandfather would simply say "Here, Dog," to which he generally responded.  As I recall, he was mostly a mut, but clearly has German Shepherd in his background.  

Family lore abounds with stories of Duke.  He loved to fetch.  My mother talks of how he would accompany her to softball practice and catch line drives in his mouth.  Dad tells of a time that he fetched wrenches while he and Grandpa were working on a tractor or something.  He also had a predilection toward rabbit chasing.  We owned a rather realistic looking plastic rabbit (the sort one might use as a decorative piece in a garden) with which the adults of my family would torment him by saying "Get the rabbit."  Ears alert, back stiff, and nose twitching he would look in the direction people pointed and prepare himself for a full fledged chase.  The plastic rabbit was just a tease, but he could give a real rabbit a run for its money.

 

Duke is long gone, but his reaction toward rabbits is one that I have seen in many dogs since then.  Whether it be Border Collies upon noticing livestock, or goofy house dogs chasing a stick the reaction is similar.  The whole body tenses with desire to run, to chase, and to capture.  Depending upon the situation, I have found this reaction comical or at times maddening.  Never had I suspected that it was a behavior that I shared with them until I was making my drive.

Looking across the snowy landscape on Monday, I saw hundreds of pheasants.  I spent most of that portion of the trip staring out the side windows, aching to shoot, to throw a rock, or to at least give chase and make them fly from me in fear.  I could do none of these things.  I had no gun and the season has ended.  The pheasants seemed to know this.  Some were pecking and scratching but most were simply standing there, mocking me, defying me.

I felt pretty awful about poor old Duke and all the times he tried to give chase to a plastic rabbit.

* His purr was like a motor. 

** There was always a danger in naming the calves.  One never knew when it might end up on one's plate.  Steak with a name has a way of sticking in one's throat.

Farewell to Youth

 

Dr. Kenneth Snyder, who served as my primary instructor in Church History while I studied theology, wrote on my Facebook wall on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, "I hope you took some time today to say farewell to your youth."

I read that comment just before turning off the lights and closing my eyes on the last day of my twenties.  I appreciated his humor and his good wishes, but I tossed and turned considering the fact that his comment had crystallized what I had been feeling in the days before my birthday.  Thirty is not old; I don't pretend to be aged and wise.  Yet, while young, thirty is really no longer youth.  That thought brought me to the verge of tears as a drifted off toward sleep.

I spent the days leading up to January 21 considering the manifold ways in which I had wasted my youth and had failed to accomplish so many things.  For instance, because I was afraid I couldn't do it or that I would not be good enough, I never really tried to be an athlete.  These days, I wish I would have.  I wish I could have overcome my insecurities, and just had the good sense to know that I would have had fun, but I was too worried that I might fail.  I wish I would have been less judgmental of my peers, and I wish I would have recognized then that the contempt I felt for them was just a mask for jealousy because they were doing things that I wanted to do, but that I knew were wrong.  I wish I would not have been jealous, held back as I was, by a noble but misguided ironclad moral code; I wish I would have recognized that a moral life made me truly free, and in that freedom, able to see in my peers the goodness with which and for which God had made them.  I wish I would have made them my friends as opposed to enemies to be defeated.

I wish I would not have been so proud.  I wish I would have been more willing to admit my ignorance and to seek help and advice.  Perhaps I would have learned to lift weights, or to use gym equipment.  I didn't want to look a fool.  Had I any humility then, perhaps I would have only appeared a fool whereas now, I find that I proved myself one.

I wish I would have learned more, and applied myself more.  School came easily, and all too often I coasted.

I wish that then I would have been willing to shoot, to hike, to fish, and to play.  These things seemed beneath me for some reason, the pastimes of rubes.  I wish I would have learned about cars and motors.  I wish I would have talked more about football and cheerleaders.  My pride insisted that because these were the interests of base men, they were beneath my dignity.  I wish I would not, for so long, have underestimated the dignity of manhood. 

I wish I would have dedicated more time to manual labor and work with my hands.

I wish I would have loved more.  I wish I would not have feared rejection.  I wish I would not have feared vulnerability.  I wish I would not have pretended to have it all together.  I wish I would not have wasted so much energy hiding my sins from others when I was really only trying to hide them from myself.  I wish I would not have been so afraid to be totally and radically honest.

In a word, I wish that when I was thirteen, eighteen, twenty-five, I had begun to understand the things about myself that only began to become clear in my twenty-ninth year.

So, it was a bitter pill to swallow as I realized that I would be saying farewell to a youth that I had seemingly squandered.  Thankfully, God's goodness is without bounds.  I can only recognize these things because of the clarity offered by hindsight whose expertise is limited to that which has already passed.  In other words, it is only because I have arrived at thirty that I can regret what I failed to do when I was eighteen.  Those things I wish I had done then, I realize, I can still do now but without the baggage (nor, of course, the same energy and physical prowess) of youth to accompany it.  More importantly, the pride which so hobbled my willingness to try then has been tempered.  At thirty (especially as a professed celibate) it is much easier to not give a damn about how foolish one appears. 

To not give a damn, I am coming to understand, is one of the richest graces of full-fledged adulthood.    

What Do They Mean by Choice

Today marks my thirtieth birthday.  I will have much more to say about that in a separate post.  Tomorrow marks the thirty-eighth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and throughout this nation, there are rallies being held to celebrate the freedom to "choose."  I am one of the lucky ones.  Rallies are being held to celebrate the fact that a full third of my generation and a full third of the generation behind me has perished at the abortionists' hands.  And the thing is, I know that I have mattered.  I have loved and been loved.  I have made a difference to people.  And I was a choice?  That is not pride speaking; it is a matter of fact common to all living people.  But, to NARAL and others, I was just a choice.  Maybe someday they can explain, what do they mean by choice . . .

This and That

God is up to something.  I'm not sure what yet.  Several weeks ago, two separate women asked me to serve as their spiritual director.  I thought perhaps they had been told to do so by someone else.  Nope.  Apparently the Lord had put it on their hearts to do so.  A week ago, I received the same request from another woman.  Last weekend, I also served (for the first time) as a director for a silent retreat.  That particular experience was really good.  Being a director was almost like being on retreat myself.  I'm not sure why God has prompted all these people to come to me, but he has.  I suppose the reason will become clear eventually

+++

My hatred of winter notwithstanding, I did find it rather amusing to join Deacon Nathan Sparks for an afternoon of ice fishing recently.  He caught one trout and let one get away.  I caught none.  Given the various ways in which one might go about catching a fish, ice fishing is likely to be the most uneventful while simultaneously demanding the most physical exertion.  I'm not sure I will make a habit of ice fishing, after discovering that it consists mainly in boring several holes in eight to ten inch thick ice only to stand around and occasionally prevent them from freezing over.

+++

When I went to Borders to use my holiday gift cards, I had hoped to find some material a little lighter and happier than what I generally read.  I failed.  Among my purchases were The Picture of Dorian Grey, The Idiot, and A Clockwork Orange.  By the end of the day I will have finished reading A Clockwork Orange.  I mentioned this to a parishioner recently who was horrified.  Apparently it was a very offensive film.  I can see why, the book is written in the first person, and the fifteen-year-old narrator (Alex) employs a fictional slang that anesthetizes the reader to the horror of the acts the narrator perpetrates.  One is never necessarily sure that what one thinks is happening is actually happening.  The second and third sections of the book beg important questions about the nature of freedom and its consequences.  It is definitely an interesting read, but not  necessarily bedtime reading for the faint of heart or squeamish.  It was my habit in major seminary to read some good old tedious Russian Literature as a way of coping with the winter.  Perhaps the same will work in Rapid City.  Next on the agenda: Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

+++

Of all the hateful games in the world, Buck Euchre must be the worst.  I learned this game over the Christmas break, and I have played it at least once a week since then.  I don't especially like it, as it takes forever, and winning seems to have little to do with skill.  Moreover, it is the kind of game that requires the losers to pay the winner.  It is not gambling.  It is more like a tax on the stupid.  I commented to those with whom I played last night that playing the game leads me to believe that I have to buy my friends, as they seem uninterested in learning a different (cheaper) game.  To my own amazement, I finally won a game.  I am inclined to never play again.

+++

A man at the hospital asked recently invited me to his Church so that I could "actually worship God."  Perhaps he was trying to be funny.  Had I not been there to pray over the body of his dead mother, I would likely have had some very interesting things to say to him.  I am left to wonder why they called a priest at all.  I don't expect to be asked to do the funeral.

+++

As I was praying in the ER with this same family I mentioned above, the lullaby that announces the birth of a new baby throughout the hospital suddenly played.  The sun sets and the sun also rises.  Life goes on.

+++

All things remaining equal, Monday will mark my final pheasant hunt of the season.  I am terribly excited to go, this time with the priests in my fraternity group.  I am a little concerned about the idea of all of us carrying a firearm, but after several trips hunting with teenage boys, it is not likely to be more frightening.  So long as Winter cooperates, it will be a glorious day.

+++

My new chest waders arrived a few days ago, but with no boots.  I will need to purchase something that I can wear on my feet while wading.  Any suggestions?  Now all I need is for the snow to melt, and no trout will be safe from me.  I am certain of it.  It is going to be a great summer.

I Hate Winter

I wrote previously about truly enjoying the freedom to celebrate Christmas and other holidays with my parish and then celebrating them with my family.  That remains true.  Winter, in her devious scheming*, however, seems to persistently attempt to derail my plans.  That is, at the root, the reason I hate winter and believe that it is an evil resulting from the fall of man.  Given that this is my blog, I shall now elaborate at some length defending this otherwise irrational position.

As I have noted, winter has a way of interrupting the most well-laid of plans.  The last three days serve as a prime illustration of this point.  My family, unable to gather for Christmas proper, finally agreed that we would gather for our own celebration December 31 and January 1.  For that reason, I was able to enjoy a glorious Christmas Day and several days thereafter.  Knowing how deceptive Winter might be, I kept an eye on the weather, but was thrilled to discover, as the time of our family gathering neared, that it appeared that the weather would cooperate.  Sunday predicted scattered snow flurries for Friday, as did Monday and, on the site I was checking, Tuesday.  Apparently the site I used is unreliable, though, because that same Tuesday my mother called to inform me that my youngest brother would not be able to come until later.  He was concerned about the until then unforeseen blizzard that was to arrive Thursday and continue howling through early Saturday morning.  I was, as one might imagine, unamused (my mother can offer a more detailed account of this fact).

As predicted, the wind and snow set in on Thursday.  At some point my mother called to tell me that my next younger brother and his family were braving the wind and snow and were making their way to the ranch.  I wanted to do the same, but thought it unwise.  I would hopefully still be able to get there on Saturday.  Trying to make the best of the situation, I went to Borders and bought some new books with Christmas gift cards, and then enjoyed the company of several seminarians and their parents who came to the rectory for dinner on Thursday evening.  This was followed by a ridiculously long evening of playing cards at the neighbors' house, and a lengthy excursion into one of the new books before going to sleep.  Setting my alarm clock for 10:00 AM, I relished the knowledge that I would get a full eight hours of sleep.

My phone rang at 7:30 AM.  "Both of your brothers are here," my mother announced to me cheerfully after I had scrambled around trying to find the damned phone and croaked a greeting.  "They said the roads were fine."  "That's nice," I responded.  "I am going back to bed.  My alarm is set for ten.  I will talk to you then," I assured her in a most pleasant way (again, for the details, consult my mother).  At ten, I arose, called home, and foolishly decided to make the trek to the ranch with assurances from my brothers that the roads had been good when they traveled them.

Locals can attest to the fact that Rapid City has a most ingenious snow removal system.  Apparently, each vehicle that passes over the snow filled streets necessarily takes a small quantity of snow with it when it passes, thus rendering actual snow removal equipment almost unnecessary.  This system works so well that I am inclined to visit the person responsible for the city's snow removal and punch him in the nose.  After being nearly killed in town, I finally made it to I90, and gave thanks to God that the highway was mostly clear.  That is one benefit of a strong northwest wind.  The snow never has a chance to accumulate on the interstate.  Occasional white-out conditions notwithstanding, the roads were pretty decent, and I arrived home to join the Christmas celebration already in progress.

Winter lost this battle, but it was only one of many in which we have engaged.  As it stands, the score is decidedly in winter's favor.  Last year's Christmas trip led to a most pleasant interlude wherein I patiently awaited the arrival of my father's four-wheel-drive pick-up to drag me from the ditch less than ten miles from home.  As I waited, I could not help but recall a similar experience from several years earlier on the entrance ramp leading to one of Minnesota's Rest Areas when I had to be winched out of the drifted snow by a tow-truck.  More than once, winter has forced me to cut short a school break so as to be sure to arrive back on campus ahead of the weather.  Likewise, winter regularly prevented my leaving school for vacations at the planned-upon time.  Moreover, winter and I have many shared memories of treacherous trips made from Wall to Red Owl along the Elm Springs road, a variety of cow related events in the bitter cold, and a truly dreadful day spent falling down at Terry Peak.  Winter has repeatedly placed me in the position of having to decide if an event should proceed as scheduled or not.  Rightly or wrongly, I would feel responsible for the accidents of a person coming from or going to an event I should have canceled. 

For me, fond memories of winter are hard to come by.  I can intellectually acknowledge that I had fun in the winter and in the snow as a child, but these memories conjure no wispy feelings of nostalgia as do others.  Instead, the season suggests manifold ways in which I might go careening to my death.  Even writing about winter, my stomach knots a little, my teeth clench, and when I stop typing to review what I have written, my hands clench.  With the lack of sun, the bitter cold, constant lethargy, a bleak world view, and the promise of doom always on the horizon, I simply cannot look out my window to a blanket of fresh snow and marvel at its beauty.  Instead, I swear.  That always seems to get the day off to a good start.

In the end, though, I hate winter because, when encountering her icy grip, I have no control.  I know that the notion of control is but a facade, but, as with so many other things, I am loathe to relinquish my knuckle whitening grip on a plan and its outcome.  Without control, I must give leave to God to do as he will, and even after many years of trying to do so, and after telling so many others in the confessional that they must do so, I find that I am frequently unwilling.  Usually God is polite and he asks us for things.  Winter, more than any other season, though, is a show of force on his part.  He stops asking us to abandon a false sense of control.  He just takes it.  It is a lesson as bitter to me as the winds that blew for the last three days, and the lesson becomes no less bitter with the passing of each winter.

At the end of a rant like this, one will doubtlessly ask, "Why are you in South Dakota?"  It is a fair question, and I have to admit that at this time of year, I find myself asking the same question sometimes.  Here, however, is home and the Devil you know is better than the one you don't.  And besides, when one hates winter as I do, there is nothing more glorious than Spring.  We are only 108 days from May 1.

* I have a rather bizarre friend who insists that he has the power to command the snow at will.  He apparently acquired this power after having his own vehicle problems on I90 during a terrifically cold winter's day and having walked a good distance for help.  He tells me that he "communed with Lady Winter" that day, and she has given him special powers which he is able to exercise by performing a ritual he calls the "snow dance."  He is only half- joking when he tells me these things.  Anyway, because he makes constant reference to "Lady Winter" (a lady in the same way that Typhoid Mary was a lady by my estimation), I find myself automatically assigning feminine pronouns to the season.      

Brief Thoughts on Christmas So Far

Winter makes me tired.  I wonder sometimes if I have seasonal affective disorder.  So, as I write, even after having slept well last night, and having napped well today, I am still worn out.  Today, however, it is a good sort of tired.

In the last week, I have hosted two Christmas parties, shared Christmas in the homes of four parish families, celebrated four birthdays, held my new niece, celebrated three major Masses (and sung the prefaces for two of them), eaten prime rib twice, lobster once, and caviar for the first time (it is alright, but not exactly the sort of thing that I can see myself craving), sang all of my favorite Christmas Carols, seen innumerable people that I have not seen since summer or longer, and been hugged by a vast array of people.  I have very clearly been among family, even though they are not the family with whom I grew up.  And they have worn me out. 

Besides all this, the kitchen counter is covered with cookies and other sweets, and we have a very nice selection of wine to accompany dinners for a while.  People have been exceedingly generous to me, and I plan to be exceedingly generous to Cabelas.

To top it all off, I will see both of my brothers, their wives and children, and my parents on Friday when we gather for our two-day Christmas celebration.  I will celebrate Mass with them, give them gifts, and receive their gifts as well.

And in all of this, I am filled with an overwhelming sense of peace, of love for my people, and thanksgiving for the God who became man so that he might make all men like God.

 

For many years I was something of a Scrooge, but these days, I must admit it: I love Christmas as a priest. 

What is a Boy?

I am not in the habit of simply copying and pasting the writing of others on this blog.  But I really enjoyed this post from The Art of Manliness. The following, written in 1945, was recently republished there.

What Is a Boy?

By Alan Beck
Between the innocence of babyhood and the dignity of manhood, we find a delightful creature called a boy. Boys come in assorted sizes, weights and colors, but all boys have the same creed: to enjoy every second of every minute of every hour of every day and to protest with noise (their only weapon) when their last minute is finished and the adult males pack them off to bed at night.
Boys are found everywhere—on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerate them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them. A boy is Truth with dirt on its face, Beauty with a cut on its finger, Wisdom with bubble gum in its hair and the Hope of the future with a frog in its pocket.
When you are busy a boy is an inconsiderate, bothersome, intruding jangle of noise. When you want him to make a good impression, his brain turns to jelly or else he becomes a savage, sadistic, jungle creature bent on destroying the world and himself with it.
A boy is a composite—he has the appetite of a horse, the digestion of a sword swallower, the energy of a pocket-size atomic bomb, the curiosity of a cat, the lungs of a dictator, the imagination of a Paul Bunyan, the shyness of a violet, the audacity of a steel trap, the enthusiasm of a fire cracker, and when he makes something he has five thumbs on each hand.
He likes ice cream, knives, saws, Christmas, comic books, the boy across the street, woods, water (in its natural habitat), large animals, Dad, trains, Saturday mornings and fire engines.
He is not much for Sunday school, company, schools, books without pictures, music lessons, neckties, barbers, girls, overcoats, adults, or bedtime.
Nobody else is so early to rise or so late to supper. Nobody else gets so much fun out of trees, dogs and breezes. Nobody else can cram into one pocket-a rusty knife, a half eaten apple, three feet of string, an empty Bull Durham sack, two gum drops, six cents, a sling shot, a chunk of unknown substance and a genuine supersonic code ring with a secret compartment.
A boy is a magical creature—you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can’t lock him out of your heart. You can get him out of your study, but you can’t get him out of your mind.
Might as well give up—he is your captor, your jailer, your boss and your master–a freckled-faced, pint-sized, cat-chasing, bundle of noise.
But when you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams—he can mend them like new with the two magic words—”Hi Dad!


Read more: http://artofmanliness.com/2009/12/19/manvotional-what-is-a-boy/#ixzz18a7gWaXL

Flashback

I recently had a flashback.

Almost immediately upon my arrival at St. Paul Seminary, I began to hear talk of a program called Clinical Pastoral Education, otherwise known as CPE. From all accounts, CPE would be one of the most torturous processes I would be required to undergo in my theological career. CPE, in a nutshell, was the program in which we would spend an entire summer functioning as hospital chaplains. As part of this process, we would gather regularly with other Christian seminarians also operating as chaplains, and we would share our feelings about our experiences, whereupon we would be viciously attacked by angry, man-hating, militant, feminist, lesbians (this is not an exaggeration).

Needless to say, I was less than interested in attending any such program. As I would often find over the course of the years, however, my desire to avoid such a thing only reemphasized my need to do so in the eyes of my formators. So it was that beginning on Memorial Day, I took up residence at Christ the King Parish in Sioux Falls to begin my ten week stint as a hospital chaplain.

As I expected, I hated the experience and I believe that those who perpetuate this program should be tried for War Crimes violations. Nevertheless, the time spent in the hospital was actually pretty helpful. I got used to the sounds and smells of the sick and dying, and I developed a certain familiarity with some of the medical lingo. The dreadful part, however, was to be experienced three or four days each week when my CPE classmates and I gathered for didactics (I still don't know what this word means). The group was comprised of four men and two women, among whom were three Catholic and three Lutheran seminarians. At each gathering, one of us would be required to present a type-written verbatim interaction with one of the patients we had recently encountered. From these, apparently, we were supposed to be able to discern all of the horrible fears and character flaws of one another. Luckily, we didn't have any angry, man-hating, militant, feminist lesbians in my group. From the reports of my classmates, however, I ascertained that it would have been during these verbatim reports that, in any other group, we would have been attacked.

All in all, I found these events to be a superb waste of my time. Once in a while, we would learn a technique that would help us minister more effectively to other people. Mostly, however, we spent several hours a day emoting. I found it excruciating.

Even more tedious was the weekly meeting with Peter. Peter was (is, I assume) a British expatriate who was also apparently an ordained minister for the United Church of Christ. Over the course of the summer, I would come to discover that the UCC does not necessarily believe anything, and they seem to be comfortable with that. Peter looks uncannily like a monkey with rounded ears protruding from the side of his head, and tufts of whiskers on his cheek bones from where he forgets to shave. I actually witnessed him place an entire handful of dried fruit in his mouth once, only to spit it back into his hand after nearly choking. From week to week, we were required to visit him individually in his office and present to him a "significant incident report," wherein we would describe something that had happened in the past week and why it was significant to us. He would then lecture to us for the better part of an hour leaving us utterly baffled because he made no sense. God forbid, if in the course of a week, nothing especially significant had happened. We were in a hospital after all, with tragedy all around us. How could something significant not have happened. So, as with my peers, I found myself exaggerating some rather mundane hospital interaction in order to make it seem significant while meeting with Peter. I was not disappointed when my ten weeks had expired, and even as I write, I find that I harbor certain vestiges of resentment for having been forced to participate in so ridiculous a program.

But, CPE is not the point here.

Last week, I was standing in the hospital waiting for the elevator and thinking about this blog and what I would write, when suddenly I realized that I was looking for a significant incident. I chuckled to myself, but not in the, "Oh What a Happy Memory" way. It was more in the "Hell Has a Special Place for Those Who Perpetuate CPE" way. That thought makes me smile even now.

From the mouths of infants and babes

Last night was the last night of Middle School Formation until after Christmas Break.  I arrived in the Church Hall to have dinner with the kids following Mass and found myself seated with a group of seventh and eighth grade boys and girls.  This sort of combination often amuses me, if only for the unadulterated awkwardness between the kids.  Last night was funnier than usual however.

The conversation at the table was about annoying songs (of which there are apparently a great many these days) which play repeatedly on the radio.  I made some comments about similar songs from when I was their age, but the conversation suddenly made an about face, and we found ourselves discussing the flat screen television that hangs in the rectory's living room.  One of the kids asked the person who brought up the topic, "How do you know that?  Are you stalking him?"

I responded, "There's a song about that too."

One of the boys looked at me oddly and replied, "Did you say that you are stalked by a fat Jew?"

Middle Schoolers . . . .