Two Fingers To Death: On Siberia, Sedes, and Schism

"I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but your blessedness [Pope Damasus I], that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark of Noah will perish when the flood prevails" (St. Jerome, Letters 15:2 [A.D. 396])


One of the nice things about being on break and off from work for a week is having time to, well, waste. Exhibit #1: trading an hour of my time on the couch watching a young British man build a cabin in the woods out of shipping pallets with his dad...one nail and plank at a time. No words, just sawing and hammering. My son loved it. I couldn't believe I watched the whole thing from start to finish. (6.5 million views on YouTube, btw)

The rabbit hole that is Youtube then suggested to me a documentary about a woman who lived in the taiga of the Russian wilderness as a hermit for seventy years. Sounds about up my alley. A film crew spent two days traveling by river to document her life. One of four children, she had been living alone for the past twenty seven years after the last of her family died. Her mother starved to death in the sixties. The woman's name was Agafia.

She would not accept bags of flour that had a barcode, because barcodes were a sign of the Beast. "Worldly life is frightening," she says, "If Christians sing worldly songs, they're doomed to eternal suffering. Same for music. Everyone who enjoys dancing creates infamy."

Ok, this was kind of interesting. She seemed of sound mind, yet lived in some of the harshest conditions on earth, alone, as a sixty nine year old woman, with a large tumor on her breast, surviving on potatoes and turnips, fish from the stream, bread, and bark. Her hands were gnarly from chopping down trees and stripping branches for the goats, starting fires with flint and tinder, and carrying pales of water.

But I didn't understand her faith. She was obviously a Christian believer, and I just assumed she was Russian Orthodox.

"My father's ancestors were true Christian believers. Ever since Prince Vladimir brought Christianity to Russian lands, our faith has been passed from generation to generation."

That faith, I learned later as the film progressed, was the faith of the "Old Believers" or "Old Ritualists" which can only be understood in a historical context.

In the 17th century, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Nikon, desired to unify the liturgical discrepancies between the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches and made heavy-handed (and, arguably, sloppy) ecclesiastical reforms. Old Believers, as they identified, rejected the reforms and clung tightly to what they saw as the original expression of the true Faith. Agafia describes this perspective in the film:

"Christ died on the cross for the whole world. He descended into Hell to free the righteous. But Patriarch Nikon went back to Hell to confer with Satan. So he introduced new laws. He was...the ultimate Satanist. He abolished the two-fingered sign of the cross handed down to us by Christ himself, changed books and church dogma, exterminated all our priests. They tortured Old Believers and imprisoned them."

With the State backing the reforms, they anathematized the old rites and books and those who still used them. Old Believers were arrested and executed, and those who fled went to Lithuania, Ukraine, and Romania. Others, like Agafia's family, stayed in Russia, and hid in the Siberian wilderness to escape persecution.

Agafia seemed to belong to the more extreme and ascetic Bezpopovtsy grouping of Old Believers, who were largely priestless (in contrast to the more moderate conservative Popovtsy faction) and believed the world had fallen into the hands of the AntiChrist. "Only those Christians who hold on to the true faith of Christ, commit good deeds, repent and pray to the Lord for forgiveness will receive God's mercy," Agafia tells the camera crew, filming her praying the Psalms in her dark and crowded cabin. This passing on of a faith in isolation, sans priests or ecclesiastical lineage, seems to be the Orthodox equivalent of the Kakure Kirishitan in Japan, who were also forced into isolation due to persecution in the 17th century and who emerged with a deformed faith barely recognizable to Catholicism:

"With their Scripture forgotten, no real creed, and no catalogue of doctrines, the practice of this religion has evolved into a narrow fidelity to ancestral rituals.

"This is the only thing they have the ceremony," Whelan said. "That becomes their dogma. You have to do it right, you have to say the prayers right, or it won't have power. In the absence of other things that most other traditions have, this becomes the thing you've got to be true to."

"I do think that they are religious men in their own way," she said, that their prayers are directed toward God.

A tiny Catholic Church on Narushima attracts a small congregation, but the Kakure Kirishitan priests are not interested in joining it. Although they probably understand intellectually the relationship between Kakure Kirishitan and the Catholic Church, Catholicism to them remains foreign and removed.

...In the last two priests the universal religious struggle between the conservative and the liberal. One priest, in being correct to the past, is blind to the realities around him. The other, attempting to make the ritual relevant to those who don't truly understand the tradition, makes compromises that dilute the best of what had been preserved."

In a largely Protestantized country like the United States, it may be hard to understand the interconnectedness of ritual and dogma that the Eastern church has always held, that church rituals had from the beginning represented and symbolized doctrinal truth. Old Believers felt that such seemingly innocuous changes as using three fingers instead of two to make the sign of the Cross, or translations that altered pronunciation, struck at the heart of their faith, and they would rather go to their death than deny Christ, who was Truth itself. The famous personification of this in the Surikov painting of the exiling of Boyaryna Morozova (considered a martyr-saint among Old Believers), being carried away by sled while holding up the iconic "two fingers" in defiance.

I found the history of the Orthodox Church in Russia interesting, as I wasn't super familiar with this period in history. We tend to get tunnel vision as Westerners and Americans and Catholics, so it's good I think to peak out from time to time to get some perspective. What I saw in this documentary, as peculiar and specifically geo-religious as it appeared to be, tended to reinforce the general anthropological struggles of religion and religious expression: conservative vs progressive, traditional vs reformed, true vs schismatic believers. It happens in all the world religions: Sunnis and Shias in Islam, Orthodox and Reformed Judaism. Buddhists of the Mahayana school use the pejorative term "Hinayana" ("Lesser Vehicle") to describe Theravada (Traditional) Buddhism, a term Theravada Buddhists would find offensive.

In our own Church, we have a Pope that some on the extreme end think of as an Anti Christ and not validly elected. The issues of today are different yet similar to the struggles of Agafia and her family: Sedevacantists who believe there has not been a validly elected pope since Pope Pius XII was elected in 1958 due to the embracing of the heresy of modernism.

We have heard of the "Spirit of Vatican II" Catholicism (the kind of mirror that reflects this heresy of modernism and botched, sloppy, jarring roll-out of universal liturgical reforms for the world to see) being in contrast to the actual documents of the Second Vatican Council. Catholics would call sedevacantists schismatic on the grounds that they do not accept the authority of the Pope (whether Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and I, Pope Paul VI, or Pope John XXIII). No authority=no Catholicism.

A sedevacantist may counter that the Church forfeited that authority in its embrace of heresy, and the seat of Peter being vacant is a sign of the times for true believers, or which they would count themselves. They did not leave the Church; the Church left them. They are willing to suffer and endure in defense of what they see as the Old Faith, the True Faith, before it was corrupted.

So, these things are nothing new. "Bad" popes are nothing new, and schism is nothing new. Desires for an authentic orthodox expression of faith and reforms of reforms as a way of getting to the "heart of things" apart from ritual and dogma (Protestantism) is nothing new. It can be viewed historically, yes. But for the believer (or, in some cases, for the new convert trying to navigate these choppy ecclesial waters), these are highly personal and important things. A believer like Boyaryna Morozova would rather be tortured and exiled to Siberia than use three fingers instead of two to make the sign of the cross, while another Christian believer might have no problem re-baptizing a new member of their congregation in accordance with their norms of belief.

I suspect Agafia's story is a mix of Russian fortitude, admirable stubbornness, dogmatic integrity, and religious fervor. For a foreigner watching from their computer screen thousands of miles away in the comfort of a heated and air conditioned dwelling, who may have skipped church to do some shopping or stay in their pjs, it may be an anthropological curiosity. But it also presents us with the questions: what is the true Faith? Are we willing to die, be exiled, live cut off from society, to preserve it? Does it really matter whether we use two fingers or three in rituals like the Sign of the Cross? Who has the authority to interpret scripture, proclaim dogma, and excommunicate? What makes one Catholic?

For me that last part is the one that isn't a real struggle: you cannot be Catholic without the pope. You may be more austere in your penance, more sincere in your convictions, more virtuous in your service, and more astute in your apologetics. But if you don't have the pope, you are on your own.

Pope Francis is not my kind of pope. I find his words and exhortations ambiguous and confusing. I've been critical of him in the past in my own little world of preference and influence. I don't even doubt what I'm reading in Malachi Martin's "Windswept House" about the smoke of Satan entering the Church, as Paul VI warned.  But who cares what I think or prefer? He is still my pope. I cannot separate my religious expression from subjection to his authority as universal head of the Church of Christ.

To apostatize is not only to deny Christ but to deny the Faith. They are not separate, just as being Catholic and recognizing the Pope as the head of the Church are not separable. I have no real knowledge and no real virtue, no real suffering to my name, no beautiful liturgy to extol, and no real merit to bring before Christ when I meet Him at the Last Judgment. And I have no other ark to cling to in this life but the Church. I am adrift without her. So I will cling to that. Pope and all.

"There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering" (Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 43[40]:5 [A.D. 253]).

Free Indeed

Every fourth Wednesday of the month I drive to the local county prison with a Bible in hand. Although I obtained my clearances through the umbrella of our local parish, I make these visits alone. I leave my cell phone in the car, turn in my keys to the intake guard, and get my badge. I pass through the metal detectors and get swiped, lift up my shoes to make sure I'm not smuggling anything in, and then make my way down the cinderblock hallway, take a right, and wait at the green wrought metal double gate to grind open. When the first door closes behind me, the second one opens in front of me. When the second one closes behind me, I inform the guard at the control station, make my way to the chapel, and pray about what to share that evening.

I never know before I go, trying to remember that "the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say at the moment when you need them" (Lk 12:12). I also never know how many guys the Lord will send me. Sometimes I meet with as few as two inmates, and (on evenings like this week), as many as thirty. When the guard unlocked the doors to the chapel, the men just kept filing in until almost every seat in the metal pews was taken. I shook every one of their hands and asked them to have a seat, made the sign of the cross, and opened with a prayer of thanks and blessing over them, the guards, and for God to be made present among us in the reading of the Word.

I thankfully have enough freedom and leeway to approach my hour with them however the Lord see fit. Some volunteers do a kind of 'life-lessons' series, others may go over the Sunday Mass readings. Personally, I like to just expose the men to the Word of God by reading aloud, pausing periodically for any questions or discussions as they come up. For the past few months I had been reading from Romans, but after finishing it up last month, this past Wednesday I decided to read from the first letter of St. Peter. I am not a theologian or biblical scholar, so I keep any discussions relatively fundamental--sin, death, redemption, concupiscence, the Fall, the need to forgive our enemies, love, virtue, and our need for a Savior. One theme I keep going back to when expounding on the Gospel message to this particular group of guys is the freedom of the believer in Christ.

I've been off of social media for three weeks now. The uncomfortable and disorienting detox period has passed, and I feel a little like waking up after LASIK surgery--things are a little more clear, without the need for contacts. Deb checked me out a book from the library written by a former Silicon Valley pioneer of virtual reality titled "Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now." This particular author is on the left side of the socio-political spectrum, but as an insider who helped develop the kind of social networking sites we take for granted today, it was interesting to see how vehemently he felt they were doing harm to society and making slaves out of the unwitting consumers in a Matrix-like illusion of pseudo-connectedness. We are being used, and we don't even realize it. But there remains a power within that very consumer to opt-out--we still have free will to not participate.

The men and women "on the inside" can also feel like cogs in a machine as well, slaves to their circumstance and "the system." They are assigned numbers and ordered where to go and when to eat and watched by surveillance at all times. They know what it feels like to not be free. And yet "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34). "Do you see the connection?" I told them. "God gives us the grace, by baptism, to resist sin. He gives us everything we need in cooperation with grace and by faith to choose to do His will. And yet as we read in Romans, we 'do that which we do not want to do' when we sin. We read:

"Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor" (1 Peter 2:16-17)

"You can start today, right now. It costs nothing. It does not depend on your external circumstances.  No guard and no other man can take away the freedom you have in Christ, the power you have in the Gospel, the joy you have in doing good and resisting evil. When you suffer for doing good, as Peter says, don't be surprised. But it is better to suffer for doing good than doing evil."

It was weird to be just reading the word of God and expounding on the basic truths of Christian belief by the grace of the Holy Spirit (I just opened my mouth and He gave me the words) to a room packed full of more or less hardened men, men of all races and class, who were rapt, as if they had never heard such a thing. Many of the men suffered from addictions and bad habits which kept them in a cycle of recidivism. There is much going against them, especially when they get out. But though they were behind walls, they were free. They were free to resist or choose sin, they were free to retaliate or forgive, they were free to pray or ignore prayer, they were not slaves to their circumstances if they were believers in Christ because joy is a deep well that goes with you wherever you find yourself for the man redeemed and ransomed.

This is great power, I told them, the power recounted in Acts by our Lord when he tells the disciples "you shall receive power," the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). If you have this power, don't give it up or forfeit it by committing sin. If you don't have this power, this rock on which to stand, you can ask for it and the God of mercy will freely give it to you. If you are not baptized, be baptized, and receive the grace necessary to be saved, for "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit (Jn 3:5).

I was getting hoarse by the end of the hour, and closed with a prayer and the sign of the cross. He had given me the words, as nervous as I always am when I walk behind the gates without a plan or anything premeditated. It is a great privilege to visit these men inside and to simply read the Word of God to them. There is great power in the Gospel, a power that no man can take away from you. The man of Christ, whether in the world or behind bars, is a slave to God. He is free indeed.

Holding Worship Hostage

We attended Mass on Christmas day at a church that is not our regular parish, mostly due to schedule. It was our former parish, and there was a guest priest celebrating Mass whom I did not know.

We entered the church about fifteen minutes early, and the priest was greeting people before Mass. He asked our kids what what they "got for Christmas," did they like their toys, etc. Okay. We find a pew on the far side and Mass begins. "Whether you're an Eagles fan or a Dallas fan, local or traveling, divorced and remarried, you're welcome here." Okay. I was starting to get a little uncomfortable.

Pope Benedict noted that,“Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly — it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation.”

At every opportunity, the priest would find a way to interject some joke or personal observation about this or that that was outside of the rubrics of the Mass. Even right before the consecration, he did his own impromptu monologue about the Last Supper. The altar as a stage, the priest as the center of attention. Soliciting jokes and clapping for this and that. The homily making no reference whatsoever to Christmas, or Christ as Savior. My heart was hurting. The army of Eucharistic Ministers took their stations, and we got out of line. As much as the priest was profaning the Mass with his antics, his hands were still consecrated. Our family filed in the opposite direction and across the back, and received on the tongue from the priest as we normally do.

Although Canon law states that there is nothing sinful about a communicant receiving the Eucharist from an EM, it is my personal practice to receive only from the priest or deacon. EMs are supposed to be extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, used only when absolutely necessary, yet they have become standard in most Catholic parishes as some kind of lay participatory activity. I'm not going off on a tirade, but only to say I think in most circumstances they are not necessary and that the priest should be the only one distributing Communion. This was just one of a number of things that I just took for granted during my early years as a Catholic but didn't realize how far it was from how the Mass should be celebrated, because, well, that's just the way it was in every parish I visited, this kind of spirit of the 70's thing.

When Mass was over, the older couple in front of us turned around and asked us how we "liked it." My wife groaned inside, because I wasn't like her and would tell them what I thought. "Father so and so, isn't he great? He packs his church to standing room only," the woman said. I nodded and smiled, stating that I didn't appreciate words and impromptu interjections during the Mass, that it took away the focus from Christ and did an injustice to the integrity of tradition. I said it matter of factly without making a scene, and only because they asked so directly. They were completely taken aback that someone would not love such a performance, and were a little flustered. We wished one another a Merry Christmas, smiling, and left.

I was far from a bastion of orthodoxy in college and in my twenties, but the priest making himself the center of attention and treating the altar as his performing stage always bothered me. A lot. After our beloved campus priest was transferred to another assignment, and we were assigned a replacement, this happened with regularity. The new priest was like a thespian and treated each Mass as a performance. I noticed it again with another priest when I attended Mass in Philly where I moved a few years later; though he was more orthodox, he still seemed to set himself up as the center of attention on stage, so much so that I wrote a letter to him saying as much. At the "Catholic" college I worked at in my thirties, the nuns changed the words during Mass to make it "gender-inclusive" and I couldn't stand it. The words are not ours to change.

The parish we attend now seems to have a more concerted view of liturgical integrity. There are patins at Communion, an organ, and the architecture of the 200+ year old church supports a more reverent demeanor. There are still EMs, but we always sit where we can receive from the priest. Some of the altar servers are girls, which bothers me, but I guess you have to choose your battles. It seems, in my mind, an easy enough solution--there is an established altar rail. Even if it took 15 minutes longer, everyone could kneel on it and the priest could distribute Communion they way they do at the Latin Mass, with no need for EMs.

I brought it up to the director of Liturgy at the parish we attend and he said they need to take baby steps and something like that would be considered too radical. I'm not on the parish council or too involved with the politics of parish life, but am sympathetic to what he most likely has to deal with. As much as a handful of people are impassioned about a more traditional liturgy, there are just as many who are wedded to the spirit of the seventies and are pushing for greeters and guitars, and they make their voice and power known. It is a balance, I suppose, and it is bearable for us at our current parish. There are strings of orthodoxy sewn throughout the blanket, strings which are just holding us there, though I don't know for how long.

I don't quite understand where I am at, where I fall, liturgically. On the one hand, such liturgical abuse as described above during Christmas Mass feels like arrows in my heart, painful and embarrassing. And yet I'm not as far to the other extreme as someone moved to tears or having their breath taken away by the reverence of a traditional Mass. I can appreciate it and prefer it, and I think the disposition we have at Mass is in fact supported by the art, architecture, posture, and liturgy, but I don't have strong feelings about it as the be all end all.

I'm caught in the middle, it feels--our current parish is not as blatantly profane in their liturgical expression as some parishes, and so are impetus for ferrying to a more traditional parish is not as urgent as it may be for some. And yet, it is still built on what some might consider the faulty foundation of modernism, the Novus Ordo. In short, we are going to ride out the year and then pray about whether we are being called to a TLM parish or to stay and try to "bloom where we are planted." It feels like an extreme step, putting us in a seemingly "extreme" camp to which I'm not sure we would fit as a family, but I think we need to consider it is in prayer as what might prove to be a necessary option.

Merry Christmas (in pictures, from my son's notebook)

Jesus I trust in you

Bible

The Nativity

Jesus helps his foster father, Joseph

The Holy Mass

Jesus dying for our sins

The shepherd boy

St. Christopher ferrying a passenger

St. Padre Pio

St. Martin de Porres

Our Holy Mother, Mary

The Crib And The Throne

A few weeks ago my son and I stopped by our local Adoration chapel to pay the Lord a visit. I taught my son to drop to both knees upon entering in homage, and quietly pull up a kneeler. When we had prayed and felt it was time to leave, we again dropped to our knees and getting up, walked backwards til we were out of the chapel. I don't know where I picked up the tradition over the years, but I whispered to my son when he asked why we were walking backwards, "you never turn your back on a king."

As formalized as that habit can be when approaching and leaving the Lord's presence, our time in Adoration is often anything but a formal affair. It is a blessed chance to just sit and bask, or collapse in a heap, or pour out our hearts, or simply rest in silence. It is not good to be careless and slovenly, but nor do we feel the need to be overly formal, as if we were at a dinner party for distinguished guests. I typically kneel for most of my time, but when my knees feel like they are giving out, I sit. My prayers are not formalized in most cases, but just a baring of the heart and spirit, since "a contrite heart He will not despise" (Ps 51:17).

Humanity is the pinnacle of God's creation, and the Incarnation is manifestation of that glory. There is simply no creature like man, and there is no God like Christ. As co-creators in the divine work of creation, men and women given the charge to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28) and participating in the miraculously ordinary work of bringing life into the world, we are invited into the royal court, to continue to lineage of man. It is a great privilege and we give honor to God when we offer our own fiat, like Mary, to welcome life. Even (and especially) when the odds seem stacked against us.

You can see the light in the eyes of the elderly when there is a baby in the pew at Mass. It's a light of hope in what can seem like sometimes dark circumstances--dying parishes, violent streets, breakdown of families, defection from the life of a community of faith among the young. But there is something about babies that gives hope. Biologically, deep in our DNA, we know that our existence as a people depends on propagation. A society without children is a future without hope. We are already starting to see this sad state in many parts of Europe in childless PMs and heads of state, in barren or one child couples, in young people choosing other paths besides marriage and children. There is an air of enlightenment and being free to choose one's own destiny. But the older generation knows what lies ahead. A child is a light in a darkness, a glimmer of hope in an otherwise hostile and self-serving world.

People pay homage to ordinary babes in cribs of their own accord. They come baring collections of onesies and diapers, rattles and binkies, crocheted blankets and monogrammed plush dolls. There is something that keeps them from being able to do otherwise. When the child is a prince or princess, of royal lineage, even more so. When the child is the God of Eternity, of all Creation, the God of the Universe, made incarnate...it is almost unfathomable to conceive of.

And who is it that comes to give him homage? Three foreigners, Zoroastrians following a star, are the first on the scene, no doubt planting their knees inadvertently in a few choice animal droppings and clumps of straw. Otherwise he is surrounded by his Mother and foster father in a cocoon of protection, a brief respite from the refugee flight soon to take place with a bounty on the child's head, this threat to the king.

Paying homage to a King in a crib, one who existed before all time and outside of space, who crashed into history to save His people from their sin, but who had to suck at the breast, grow and learn for thirty three years before offering His life for us. Born in obscurity in humble circumstances, and the early years as a child lived in obscurity, should tell us something about the character of our King: He teaches us to prepare ourselves in obscurity, to be content with the circumstances we find ourselves in when it is His will that we are in them, and to accept weakness, helplessness, and dependency as a model for trust in our heavenly Father. We don't need to prepare lengthy speeches or elaborate material gifts to our Infant King as we would a head of state. We need simply to drop to our knees at the foot of His crib and marvel, that God would humble himself to become one of us. That his cries and coos are as much a divine logos as His prophetic words and enigmatic parables given a man in the prime of his life. That the milk of the Mother of humanity, the new Eve, would nourish the Divine Essence Himself in earthly flesh, and that without it He would fail to thrive.

There is something about being human that cannot compare to anything else, and there is something about the Divine that no human mind can comprehend. For God to become man is a mystery too great to understand.

But nobody tries to figure out a baby. You just love a baby, marvel and awe, stare and melt. This is Adoration at it's finest, homage at the foot of the crib, the throne. This is the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, coos, drools, and all. This is Life, the 'yes' of fiat, the nourishment of the womb, the tabernacle that every man should lay his life down to protect. This is the light in the darkness that gives the old people hope. This is Emmanuel...Christ with us.

Happy Christmas to you and yours.

Rob

To The Hills

As my parents said when they were married, "divorce is not on option," I continue to say the same to the spectre of suicide that darkens the doors at the lowest point wondering if I will invite him in. My door is shut and barred. Yet reluctantly typing the word even I can anticipate sirens going off somewhere, emails composed, phones picked up, areyouallrights? offered. All things to be grateful for, even though there is no reason to worry about this.

Women are twice as likely to suffer depression than men, yet one fourth as likely to take their own lives. Women make more relational versus unilateral decisions, and feel more free to change their mind, and rely on interdependence and friends. Men value independence and decisiveness, and regard seeking help as a weakness to be avoided and success--even in suicide--an admirable 'seeing of things through.' 

I have head about the false (but in the moment, very real) peace and lucidity that comes when a person decide to ends their life. It is a counterfeit gleam of hope in an otherwise pitch black night. And it is mighty hard to understand how something as perverted as suicide might be regarded by a person in the throws of despair. The one thing to look forward to when there is nothing else. A coveted relief. "Ya gotta give 'em hope," the spectre procures. Even if it is a lie. 

But when that's not on the table, you have no other choice but to fight, even when you're strung up on the ropes. It's exhausting. I want to sleep til forever, and forever never comes. You just keep slugging through. 

My wife is in my corner. She can hold the bucket while I spit out my teeth and shoot water in my gums, and rub my wrist between her palms like she was trying to start a fire. I love her to life. But it's a wearisome pummeling. She holds me up, elbows locked under my armpits, takes me off the pole and binds my wounds. I scan the crowd for the Lord, to tell me what to do, to even just see his eyes, but he's nowhere to be seen. I'm sure he's holding me up, and sending angels, but I can't see anything; I can't see straight. I know He's there, I just don't know where. I'm too tired to call for him even, but lift my eyes to the hills and wonder from where does my help come. (Ps 121:1)

I heard a song the last time I was getting pummeled like this. I welled up for days every time I hear it. It's for the wives, the husbands, the loved ones who can't touch you without burning...the ones who you force to sit outside your bedroom door just so you know where they are, and they do, even when they can't come in, know they can't come in. But when the heat dies down and you're not yet consumed, they will test the walls, and step quietly across the embers to make their way to you. I will throw back my head, sleep the sleep of the dead, but I will wake up, and my eyes will see the love before me through the smoke and fog.

I will keep fighting, it will not be a TKO, I will take it blow by blow and if I have to play dead I will until the spectre in his pride prances his way out of the ring. I will keep everything to myself at work, dab eyes quick and unnoticed, hold it together. I will grocery shop, I will make conversations, I will live. Then my bride and my coach will pitch me up, load me into the wheelbarrow back to the locker room. Stitch by stitch, suture by suture, night after night, til death do us part. I can't pay them anything in my weakness when I'm pummeled like this. The only thing I can offer to retribute is to stay in the fight.

"I'm afraid of the space where you suffer Where you sit in the smoke and the burn I can't handle the choke or the danger Of my own foolish, inadequate words I'll be right outside if you need me Right outside
What can I bring to your fire? Shall I sing while the roof is coming down? Can I hold you while the flames grow higher, Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now? Can I come close now?
So we left you to fight your own battle And you buried your hope with your faith 'Cause you heard no song of deliverance There on the nights that followed the wake We never though to go with you Afraid to ask
What can I bring to your fire? Shall I sing while the roof is coming down? Can I hold you while the flames grow higher, Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now? Can I come close now?
Lay down our plans Lay down the sure-fire fix Grief's gonna stay awhile, There is no cure for this We watch for return, We speak what we've heard We sit together, in the burn
What can I bring to your fire? Shall I sing while the roof is coming down? Can I hold you while the flames grow higher, Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now? Can I come close now?"

Crista Wells "Come Close Now"

The Gift of Peace

This afternoon on my lunch break I went for a hike. The sun was out, and it was hovering just above freezing as I entered the woods, so most of the soggy path was still frozen. Ice crystals shimmered on the blades of grass.

I was so tired, so weary. The past couple weeks had been stressful for a variety of reasons, and something about the period of Advent, despite all my efforts for it not to be so, feels hurried, frenetic, accelerated. Being off social media had taken a lot of stimuli out of my life, and my brain had kind of settled, the way a new house's foundation settles after a few years.

I had nothing to document, nothing to share, and nothing to put out there. I wanted to be with the Lord without an agenda. I had no energy for formal prayers, novenas, and schedules. Walking alone in the woods, even if it's just for an hour, feels like a way to reconnect with where I had my first encounter with the Lord, in nature, in my helplessness and away from any social influence. A honeymoon of sorts.

I walked along and just quietly prayed, "Lord, be with me. Lord, I want to be with you." I stopped on a bridge over a creek and sat down to read the daily readings from my Breviary app. The birth of Sansom. The birth of John. Hairy men. No strong drink. Destined for solitude. A fox bounded through the thicket, a flash of orange leaping and darting. I walked along, hands in pocket, crystal breath. I had nothing to share, nothing to offer, nothing to document, nothing to come to the table with. My writing had dried up with the stimuli from social media, the constant ideas from scrolling and gorging on news and writing and insight. The air was still, the creek gurgled and belched, the tall yellow brush grass matted and wet like a mop of hair. There was no one around. I was alone, and I felt alone.

So much of what we do we do for show. What do you do when there is no one to show to, and when you have nothing to offer? You are both empty handed and standing before an empty auditorium. It's unnerving, but only because I had gotten so away from this place, from a core of being that isn't defined by externals.

Something is brewing. I am fighting some hard battles right now--against demons of acedia, depression, pride, vainglory, idolatry. I am weary, and I am weak. I come before Him empty handed to sit at His feat. He gives me rest. He nourishes my soul. But I am in need of healing as well. Something is being reborn, and only time will tell what that might be. In the meantime, I prayed one of my favorite psalms, sitting on the bridge, the creek gaggling and rushing on to nowhere beneath my feet, forgetting where it came from, and forgetting me too. I lie down to sleep, and peace comes at once. For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Answer me when I call, O God of my right! Thou hast given me room when I was in distress. Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.

O men, how long shall my honor suffer shame? How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies?Selah But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him.

Be angry, but sin not; commune with your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.Selah Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many who say, “O that we might see some good! Lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, O Lord!” Thou hast put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for thou alone, O Lord, makest me dwell in safety. (Ps 4)

Getting Back To Zero: What Leaving Social Media Taught Me About Myself and My Relationships

A couple weeks ago a Catholic friend I had met on Facebook, who had since left the social media site permanently, sent me a text nudging me to consider doing the same. It was just the nudge I needed. I had been active on Facebook for over a decade, and super active in the past few years--posting, interacting, and following. Prone to addiction, I noticed the patterns similar to other addictions I’ve had, and had been wanting off for a while, but was honestly scared. I had invested a lot and made a lot of connections with other Catholics that I valued. But it was my friend’s text and a Youtube video he sent me that made me, somewhat abruptly, deactivate my account and walk away.

I know I’m not alone in this “walk away” movement. A quick google search revealed top tech executives living by the mantra not to “get high on their own supply,” of the “sticky product” they developed and push, or let their kids near it. Millennials burned and hollowed out on the constant barrage of advertising and being manipulated are opting out, as if “real life” was a new kind of novelty. I’m almost forty, so I’m not moving to another platform like Snapchat or Twitter. Facebook was pretty much it for me. And now that it’s gone, I’m left wondering what to do next. Reading books? Handwritten letters? Watching sunsets? It seems ridiculous that simply getting back to zero can feel like such an epic accomplishment.

A quick search online indicated that people who were doing social media detoxes were waking up to a life of color and smells they never experienced before. The scales falling from their eyes, they claimed to be more productive, had more energy, less depression, and were more present to their surroundings.

None of that happened with me.

Prior to quitting social media, I was very productive. I would get up very early and write, or catch up on projects that I didn’t have time for after work. I was motivated and upbeat, energized by the rush of all the things I had going on. I had a small audience, and I was motivated by sharing things with people who were interested in reading what I had to share.

For the first week after deactivating my Facebook account, I was lethargic. Whereas I would get up multiple times in the night (usually to check notifications or continue conversations on a thread), now I slept straight through. I was going to bed earlier (around 8pm) and sleeping pretty much through til 6am, when I would get up for work. With three young kids, I can’t remember the last time I slept 10 hours straight through the night.

My mood also seemed to be, let’s say, dampened...somewhere between a lobotomy and normalcy. I suspect this was due to the change in dopamine levels that were caused by my fairly intense use of social media. The likes felt good. The interaction with others was encouraging. I looked forward to hearing from people via Messenger and in comments. My brain chemistry in particular is pretty sensitive, and I have a tendency to latch on to those feel-good triggers that are inherent in addiction. Facebook feed scrolling is said to have the same effect on our brain as cocaine use. Every notification was a little surge of dopamine.

When I left, all that stopped, and pretty abruptly, and I was left with a bit of a crater-in-the-ground feeling. Disillusionment set in, a kind of Matrix-like disorientation. What was real? How had I gotten so hoodwinked and roped into something that didn’t seem to have my ultimate well being at heart? Who were my friends? When I started to engage more with Catholic friends online, I heard from my secular friends less and less. I don’t have too many Catholic friends in real life, so I was initially happy to be making connections in this way. After I stepped off the social media train, there didn’t seem to be a platform to support those types of connections anymore. So, they stopped too for the most part. Isolation began to creep in...if I had no friends that I interacted with in real life--secular, Catholic or otherwise--and I had no online medium in which to pseudo-connect...well, what did I have?

The worst thing is, the things I felt most abandoned in were the very things I probably had no regard for when someone I was connected with stepped off the social media platform. It was like they just simple ceased to exist, and I rarely thought about them again. I felt cheated, like I had traded something of value for something counterfeit. It was like an artificial sweetener. I guess I should have read the signs, should have known better, the way someone who trades their virginity for the promise of love must feel in the wake. You feel robbed.

I’d like to say I had more energy and focus to devote to worthwhile things, got more creative, but I just kind of retreated into myself. I was praying less, writing less, creating less, and talking less. My wife noticed the change, and we both recognized that things were probably recalibrating, and though it was hard now, it would be good in the long run. I was blinded to the depths of my vanity and self-esteem. With less stimulus (that I largely gathered from my newsfeed), I was left with less ideas and topics to write about, as these were typically the digital marinade that I steeped in. And why write about anything anyway without an audience? My ego was taking a severe beating on the ropes. Again, I knew it would be good in the long run, but I was getting pummeled while waiting to come up for air.

The withdrawal pangs were diffused rather than acute--that is, my loneliness didn’t stab like a knife in the gut, but was spread out over a few hectares of spiritual and mental acreage. I became lonely but simultaneously didn’t want to see anyone. I think I underestimated the power of not only the receptors in my brain responsible for anticipatory response and corresponding pleasure, but also the reliance on others for my sense of self. I was as honest and authentic as I could be online, and that honesty and authenticity itself was a kind of caricature of my own creation. It wasn’t inauthentic, but it was a kind of shell. I didn’t like what I was recognizing, things I were largely blinded to while immersed in social media.

The worst part is just feeling like a fish on a hook. These guys knew what they were doing when they designed these sites. Granted, using social media was a way for me to relax, to play with other adults in the digital romper room. I made a choice, and though it was “free” to use, I paid for it with my privacy and my attention that could have been better spent on other things, including my family. It’s made me resentful and distrustful, and while the withdrawal is not chemical in nature as with drugs or alcohol, it is still painful. I should have known--anything that felt as good and was as habit forming as Facebook couldn’t have been ultimately as good for us as it claimed to be. It was like hiding processed sugar in every meal we eat.

I don’t want to be one of those annoying people trying to be better-than and advocate for a wholesale exodus, or that anyone who uses these sites are worse off. This was a personal choice, I’ve paid for it and am paying for it still, just to get back to baseline. There were some upsides, some positives, but they did not outweigh the costs in my estimation. I am hoping my brain and attention span can heal from the binging scroll-fest I’ve been engaging in for the past decade. Casinos are sad places, in my opinion, places of isolation and synthesized compulsion. I was starting to feel the same way about my life as a Facebook addict. I am praying for healing now, and hoping I can find a new normal, some real life friends, and a reason to write again in the wake of this mini desert experience. I’m lonely...but I know I’m ultimately not alone.

Should I keep blogging?

Please comment, if inclined. I'm at an incredibly low spot of disillusionment right now. Thank you, friends.

Livin' Life

I was on the set of RVN TV in Cherry Hill Friday afternoon talking with Anne DeSantis about life and faith for her show "The Positive Side." We got to talking about my "ministry" and I explained I don't really have any kind of formal ministry, but that one of my favorite St. Teresa of Calcutta quotes was "If you want to change the world, go home and love your family." So, I try to take her sage advice and do that.

We have two exchange students from Mexico living with us--they arrived last week. Agreeing to having them stay with us was an intentional choice, though I had some apprehensions, because we literally knew nothing about them besides a name and age. We try to teach our kids Benedictine hospitality, to "treat all guests as Christ," and so we felt this would be a good opportunity to do just that, have Christ stay with us for a few weeks. Our home is our domestic monastery, where we "do" ministry--aka "life." We may be ripe for criticism for not being intentionally Catholic enough. We still have not made the recitation of the rosary as a family a daily habit, and I sometimes fall asleep before blessing the kids or reading them stories from scripture. We are not perfect, and we don't always live up to our calling, but it is at least intentional.

The two young men ended up being a real blessing--pleasant, respectful, and easy going (with big appetites). I drive them to campus every morning and we ride home together after work. We all have dinner together as well. Going from nervous to enjoying their company was a pleasant answer to prayer. They are learning English quickly, as well as American culture (this is the their first time in the U.S.) Last Tuesday I invited them to come to my 6am men's prayer group, with the caveat that they not feel pressure if they didn't feel comfortable with the idea. "Si, we will come," they said. And so we left the house at 5:30am that morning and they joined me with a dozen other men in prayer and reading scripture. Not only that, but they asked when we were going back next. We also invite them to (Spanish) Mass with us, and they said they would like to attend that as well.

St Paul VI said in Evangelii Nuntiandi that “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” What, then, is a witness? My favorite description is by the late Archbishop of Pairs, Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard:

“To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

Lumen Gentium, promulgated in 1964, talks about the kind of lay apostolate we find ourselves trying to establish:

"For where Christianity pervades the entire mode of family life, and gradually transforms it, one will find there both the practice and an excellent school of the lay apostolate. In such a home husbands and wives find their proper vocation in being witnesses of the faith and love of Christ to one another and to their children. The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the Kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come. Thus by its example and its witness it accuses the world of sin and enlightens those who seek the truth." 

Evangelization in this sense is not a technique or a memorizing apologetics, but making the Christian life attractive in a tangible way that is authentic and lived, not gimmicky or corporate. We learned the kind of affect simply being in the presence of another family living the Gospel can be thanks in large part to our friends Dan and Missy, who opened up their home and lives to us years ago. With four kids, activity schedules, and Dan's demanding job, their invitations to just hang out at their home were a practical privilege and nothing special or out of the ordinary. I wrote about their witness here. 

It was also the witness of a large Catholic family while I was in high school that was a large part of what drew be to become Catholic myself. I remember thinking to myself, "I want what they have," thought I didn't know that it was they had exactly. They were very ordinary, but their Catholicism was intentional and distinct, lived in simple ways like going to Mass every Sunday, family prayer, and having pictures of the Sacred Heart visible in the home. I don't even think they realized the impact they were having on me at the time, though I did get to tell Mrs. Pye over the phone twenty years later, to her pleasant disbelief. 

My nieces and nephew have an expression they use: "Livin' Life." For example, my son fell on his bike and ripped his pants and got a cut on his knee. "He's just livin' life," they would say. Meaning, life is what you do and it's not always neat and tidy, and that's okay. It's the authenticity and willingness to share you life, I think, that matters and what people notice. We are nothing special, just passing on what we've learned ourselves as a family.

But that's the really the point, isn't it? Our faith is incarnated in our daily life because God Himself in the person of Christ was incarnated as a man into his particular Jewish culture, into a particular family with an ordinary occupation. He went to weddings with his friends, broke bread with them...the ordinary stuff of life. And our daily life is what people and can relate to most. So our attempts to make our family and home a domestic monastery of welcome respite is both a practicality of having limited time and opportunities, and also an intentional response to being a witness to the Gospel in the way we are called, and we thank Him for the opportunity.

No One Wants To Be A Fool

When we were growing up, we would go out to dinner as a family occasionally. My dad was pretty frugal, and so we were never allowed to order drinks or sodas with our meals, just waters. I always figured it was just a way to save money, but years later I learned there was more to it.

When he was a waiter in Atlantic City in his early twenties, he told me, the maître d'hôtel would tell all the waiters to push the drinks--alcohol, sodas, coffees, juices--because that's where their largest profit margin was. I don't know why it stuck with him, but the way he saw it, the people ordering drinks were unaware they were being used, getting fleeced in a sense by people just trying to extract maximum profit from them. And so from then on, my dad never ordered anything but water in restaurants. He refused to be used and treated as a fool that didn't know any better, since he felt he now did.

This may be an extreme example, but I think the fear of looking foolish, the fear of being used, runs deeper in our psyches than we give it credit for. And it is unique as well. I have absolutely no fear of public speaking, for instance, whereas this may be crippling for others.

I didn't get a car until I was twenty nine, and never drove much prior to that. I biked most places, took the bus and train, and got rides with friends in high school and college. I lived in the city at the time, and driving was a hassle and a little stressful when you didn't do it a ton, but with my job I needed it to visit clients. I was dealing with a good deal of anxiety at the time, and I found that the fear of looking foolish in public was at the root of this anxiety. It was the fear of not being able to do or perform something that everyone else took for granted, like driving a car. I also had this fearful scenario that played out when I had to park in parking garages, a kind of claustrophobia, that the lever would not go up and I would not be able to get out and cars would be lining up behind me and honking and I would be trapped for all eternity and ashamed. It was an irrational fear, but it was deeply rooted in that fear and shame of looking foolish.

The more miles I logged, the more comfortable I became, and the fear eventually subsided. It's been replaced periodically by other fears, but none that are debilitating. They usually have the same root--I don't want to be a fool. My dad's approach to this when it came to finances was always being in control and being savvy, never being in a position of being taken advantage of and always having more than he needs.

For me in this life, my main concern is how to live the Gospel. But when you are living the Gospel fully, there is an element of foolishness there that is unavoidable. Rather than being ashamed of the Gospel (Rom 1:16), Paul owns and relishes in his status as a fool and in the foolishness of the Cross (1 Cor 1:18; 1 Cor 4:10). It is not something to be squirmy about, but to embrace with gusto.

I think being married has helped with a sense of comfortable security, that I can be myself and not be rejected, and that has built confidence in a willingness to look like a fool in many other things, including being a fool for Christ. My wife knows many of my deepest secrets, and has seen me look like a fool in many situations. She's still here. She gets it, and gets the Gospel.

I mentioned earlier the issue of looking foolish is at the root of many fears, but I have also experienced being a fool by being taken advantage of. A few months ago a young man from my men's group called me after I had sent out a prayer request for more opportunities to provide for my family. He said he had a partnership opportunity I might be interested in, and would my wife and I like to meet him and his wife for coffee to discuss the matter more? I said sure, sounds great! There was a friendly vagueness to his answers when I asked him what kind of opportunities he was talking about. He met together on two occasions before I realized that I was being roped into a multi-level marketing Amway ponzi scheme. But they were so nice! It didn't get to any point where I committed to anything, but I felt like a fool, used and foolish. I felt completely betrayed, and did not trust myself or my insights for a while after that.

We must be willing to take chances when it comes to living in obedience to Christ, and be willing to look foolish for his sake. Because his will is often opposed to that of the world, as it is written "Friendship with the world is enmity with God," (James 4:4). I think the more you look like a fool for His sake, the more you get comfortable with it. It's scary for most because it is so unfamiliar. the though that we will lose friendship with the world and no one with flesh and bones will stretch out their hand and take their place. That is faith, the hope of things unseen. In God's economy, not looking like a fool, looking like we have it all together, counts for very little. And so let's be rich in the things of God, take a chance, and be fools for Christ, having little regard for the things of this world.

Quis Sum

There is a story I came across years ago about a Westerner who asked the Dalai Lama what he thought about self-hatred. "What's that?" the Dalai Lama asked his translator. He thought it may have been a mis-translation, as he was genuinely unfamiliar with the term. When the person who asked the question explained what she meant by the term--talking about the cycle of self-judgment, guilt, and unproductive thought patterns--the Dalai Lama responded incredulously, "How could you think of yourself that way?"

The way I often find this playing out in my life and mind today comes by way of comparison. As the old saying goes, "compare yourself to others and you become either proud or vain." Both are sinful states, and so should be avoided, and the best way to do that is to not compare yourself to others.

And yet what often happens is I will see someone well versed in philosophy or theology, someone more analytical and dispassionate than myself; someone in a good career in which they are able to provide well for their families because they majored in something marketable; someone who is private and reserved and slow to speak...and I think to myself, "why can't I be more like that? More like them?" I come face to face with my own character and flip it on its back, pinning it to the floor, and set to accusing, "Well aren't you a sorry excuse. Why do you have to be this way? You talk too much. You need to work on such and such. No wonder you're losing friends with how you are." So on and so forth.

The thing is, I'm not unique in this reasoning, I don't think; anyone can do this. No one can be all things all at once. St. Paul warns against such tendency to compare and envy with regards to spiritual gifts:

"Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines." (1 Cor 12:7-11)

He goes on to encourage the Corinthians that they are part of one body, though different parts. The gifts given are given as God sees fit and in accordance with his good pleasure, and that such comparisons between one another with regards to gifts is as ridiculous as saying the body should be composed of one organ only:

"Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body." (1 Cor 12:15-20)

Satan, the Father of Lies, is sometimes referred to as the "Great Accuser." This is a telling description, because when it comes to self-loathing and self-accusal, he is a master. To the extent that we allow ourselves to take part in in, we take part in his work.

I was thinking about all this while listening to Dr. Peter Kreeft, the formidable professor of Philosophy who converted to the Catholic faith from Reformed Protestantism, this morning speak in a recording in which he was asked who his spiritual heroes were. He mentioned both Aquinas and Augustine, and was quick to point out that Aquinas himself held Augustine up and referred to him more than any other figure in his writings and philosophy. The two were very different though, Augustine being more of a poet and Aquinas akin to a scientist. Augustine wrote with beauty, Aquinas wrote with the utmost clarity. Augustine refers often to himself and his past, while Aquinas has been described as a kind of angel looking down at a battlefield from above and telling you exactly what is going on and how the battle is playing out. But, Dr. Kreeft makes the point, "they are thinking the same thing. They are, as Chesterton notes, two opposites doing the same thing."

Now, I'm an Augustinian at heart. I tend more toward poetry than philosophy, towards the subjective than the objective, and towards beauty more than clarity. And yet it is the Great Accuser who plants the weeds of comparison, whenever I come into contact with great objective, rational, philosophical contemporaries and think, "why can't you by more like them, you lout? Why are you always writing willy-nilly with yourself as the subject? You're not smart. You're too passionate, too open. Shame on you." 

And yet, it is one of the great mysteries why God gives us the gifts, talents, personalities, and dispositions He does. The Devil will attack this good reasoning and good purpose by inverting it, through the thoughts I just described, to work against that great diversity God delights in. In addition to being a Great Accuser, the Devil is also a Great Homogenizer. He doesn't care who you are or what you do, as long as he gets you to turn away from God. Sin is boring, because it has at its root the same thing: a willing turning away from our Creator. He will use whatever means necessary to get us to do that, to loathe our very being and creation, because he hates himself and wants us to be like him.

It can be a very hard work to accept and love who God created us to be. I am not Augustine or Aquinas. I am not Padre Pio or John Bosco or Anthony of Egypt. I am Rob, and I have been created for a purpose: to love God, to know God, and to serve God. This is what I teach my eight year old son his purpose is as it relates to our Father God, our Creator, as it comes straight from the Baltimore Catechism. Sometimes we forget these basic fundamentals and need to revisit them, the "Beginner's Mind" of faith. What's good for an eight year old is not too good for us as well.

Because I still find myself in a more melancholic state these days, my cognition and outlook has shifted slightly, a kind of refraction that sees from a different angle. Sometimes this can have the benefit of tempering a kind of naive optimism, or bringing a deeper awareness of mental and emotional struggle. In doing so, I am often less judgey, more forgiving of others faults, because I see them so clearly in myself.  In that sense there are some benefits of this dampened state.

But to the extent I begin to hate myself because I am a foot rather than an eye, or a poet rather than a philosopher--well, this is a twisting of things by the Great Accuser to take the focus off the Creator and the gifts He has given us for His purposes. If he can get us to envy by way of comparison, or to encourage vanity by the same token, he has made headway in coaxing us away from the Source. As we move farther away from the source, the farther we are away from love, from warmth, from familial acceptance, and so we are set up for self-loathing, depression, and coveting.

We can't be who God has not made us to be. We can only be ourselves, and we will work out our salvation in fear and trembling wearing our own shoes, not someone else's. He has given us all we need to achieve that, but in accordance with those gifts that were meant for us. Every saint is unique, but every saint is also themselves, their best selves as it were. It's a good reminder I can so often forget. Be the person God has created you to be, and do it well. As St. Catherine of Siena said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

I’ve Hated Our Dog All Her Life. And Now She’s About To Die

When my now-wife and I first met ten years ago, we both had our “lists” in hand of what we were looking for in a potential spouse. She was looking for someone who loved God, was resourceful, generous, and, forgiving. I was looking for someone I could be myself with, who was kind, who would make a good mother, and who didn’t have a dog. I was adamant about that last point. She got everything she wanted. I got three out of four.

Now granted, my wife wasn’t an over-the-top animal lover. She just figured she was going to be single for the rest of her life--a doting aunt to her nieces and nephews, and a dedicated nurse, but that meeting someone who was Catholic and single seemed like such a far out prospect, she figured it was as good a time as any to adopt a pet and settle in to being single. We met a few years later, got engaged after five months, and married a year later. The dog was in one of our wedding pictures outside the church. My wife had requested the neighbor walk her over to pose with us. I moved into her small town house and the three of us started our lives together.

We spent our Saturday mornings getting breakfast in town and going to the dog park so she could run around. She was a puppy at four years old, with a lot of energy to burn. She would sprint from one end of the enclosed pasture to the other, and had a long tongue that would hang out when it was hot and she was panting. She was standoffish from the other dogs and wasn’t interested in being social. For my wife’s birthday I painted a picture of the dog, laying in the grass, her paws crossed one over the other like the lady she was.

The dog was a wiley opportunist, with no manners whatsoever. I learned early on that one could never turn their back on her while there was food out on the table, because as soon as you did she would rise up on her hind legs, place her two front paws on the table, and quickly lap up every last morsel from your plate.

We had one child, then two, and life in our little house starting getting fuller. We moved to a bigger house with a yard, and had another baby. Because I loved my wife, I made every effort to love her dog. I dutifully walked her in the freezing cold. The terrier in her made her sniff everything. My wife is so patient, when she would walk her she would let her sniff to her heart’s content. I would impatiently tug on her collar to hurry our walk along so I could get back to my life.

There was the twice-a-day humiliation that every dog owner is accustomed to and takes as matter of course, but which I absolutely hated, and that was picking up the poop. Every morning and every evening, I would get the plastic bag and stuff it in my pocket. She would pace around back and forth looking for the perfect spot, sniff to confirm, and commence in making the deposit on the grass. I would lower myself to her level, put the bag over my hand, and pick up the soft pile of waste trying not to gag. I would then quickly tie tight the bag and carry my little swinging souvenir for the remainder of the walk to eventually deposit in our trash can. In the later years I would do the math in my head of how many poops I had picked up (2 poops a day times 365 days a year times 10 years equals something I don’t want to think about).

As the years went on, my resentment slowly grew. I tolerated her for my wife’s sake, but was cold and indifferent, and referred to her jokingly as my step-dog. I didn’t grow up with pets besides the occasional goldfish or gerbil. My parents had a dog aptly named Mona when they were first married and I was a baby. All I remember was she went to the bathroom in the house pretty regularly, and didn’t do much else. I was indifferent and didn’t understand the affinity for animals that many people who had grown up with them had. I resented having to make arrangements for the dog when we would go away, or having to load her up in the car when we would go to my parent’s. She shed everywhere. So much hair.

Every month I would buy a 40 pound sack of food, “Lamb and Rice,” at my wife’s request. I would schlep it over my shoulder and haul it into the house from the car. It was her favorite. One time I got the wrong kind of food and the dog didn’t eat it. I hated serving the dog and her needs, the money we spent on her, the arrangements that had to be made, the hair, every time she messed the house, threw up socks, ruined the hardwood floor, walking her, picking up the poop. My list of grievances goes on. I started calling her the Toyota Corolla of dogs--she just keeps going and going, racking up the miles.

When she especially tried my patience--whether it was the incessant barking, coming downstairs to puddles of urine, or losing my dinner to her opportunism--I was mean to her. I yelled at her, called her names, ignored her, was rough to her, and regarded her with contempt. I looked forward to “retirement,” the day I wouldn’t have to deal with these things anymore, as horrible as that sounds. My confessions oftentimes involved my mistreatment of and animosity towards her. I was no Saint Francis, that was for sure.

But my wife; she loved the dog, had genuine love and affection for her. Not in an inordinate way, treating the dog like a child or anything like that, but just as a reflection of my wife’s character--patient and kind, caring and loving. When I would see her softly petting the dog under her neck, just like she liked, or brushing her hair, I had twinges of remorse for how I treated our pet in contrast over the past ten years.

Lately, she has been having trouble getting up the stairs, and has been falling as she has gone down them. It seems as if her joints have gone bad. Like i said, I don’t know much about pets, but I think that is a bad sign. She is twelve years old, which I guess is old for dogs. I know this because I have asked my wife and googled on more than one occasion “How long do dogs live for?”

The morning of Thanksgiving, she couldn’t get up the stairs. We have started taking her out the side door for walks. It was an especially cold morning, and when my wife came back in from walking her she was crying. “Suzy can hardly walk.” My son knew something was wrong. He had asked me last week when she had fallen, “Is Suzy going to die?” I didn’t want to lie to him and tried to be tactful, but blundered when I got existential and said, “Everyone dies at some point,” which made him understandably upset. He had lived with the dog all eight years of his life since birth, and couldn’t imagine life without her. She was a part of our family.

She splayed out on the kitchen floor and rested her head on her hands as we gathered at the kitchen table. She looked weary, her eyes droopy, and had lost weight over the past couple years. When we realized that these might be the last days for the dog, my wife cried and my son cried and my daughter got sad and the baby laughed and we all hugged as a family. I was feeding the baby oatmeal and looking at the dog at my feet. My eyes started to well up, against my will. I was so mean to her, so cold, for years. I saw her as a burden and nuisance. I thought of myself as a generally okay person, but when it came to the dog I was like an abusive stepfather. And now she was going to die, probably any week now. She would be gone, and I would “get my wish.” No more walks in the bitter dawn. No more stooping down to pick up poops. No more buying gigantic bags of food every month. I would have my retirement.

But it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good to have hate in your heart, whether it’s towards a dog or a human being, a stranger or a family member. It’s a mirror being held up to see one’s reflection, how you treat the least of these. And regret is a bitter final pill. It says in scripture that you should settle matters with your adversary while you are still on the road to court. While they are still living, though, there’s always that opportunity to reconcile and make amends. I don’t know how to do that for our dog, but I’m going to try in these her final days. For my wife who lovingly adopted her and gave her a home, to my kids who have only known life with a dog, for myself who can use a challenge to love when it is hard. And for Suzy, so that when her time comes, she at least knows she is loved by every member of her family. Every last one.

When You Start To Slip

Last week I submitted an article to my editor for my monthly deadline, and he didn't want to run it. He had good reason. The salacious and jarring title, "I've Hated Our Dog All Her Life. And Now She's About To Die" should have been a tip off, as it was out of character and not fitting for a Catholic publication. It was a reflection on regret, how burdensome a life lived of not forgiving and treating others poorly can catch up to you, and a warning not to live that way. In my case, it was not being nice to our dog all her life but merely tolerating her, seeing that ugliness in myself, and being filled with sorrow that is in her last days. I knew what I wanted to express, but it came out all wrong. I am no St. Francis. I am no saint, period.

I totally understood, and submitted another article in it's place. What was weird was I didn't see anything wrong with what I sent him initially. Why would anyone want to read such a thing? Why did I write it? He used the word "depressing" at one point to describe the article, and it jiggled a little synapse and tipped me off to the fact that I was probably, once again, going through a depression myself.

I had taken a break from Facebook from the past week, which has always been a good time of refreshment and refocusing. It's also been a busy month, so I could use the time for better purposes. This week, however, rather than refreshment, I have felt an incredible loneliness and isolation. Life goes on, the film continues to roll, whether we're in the movie or not. We leave a job to retire or move on, and someone steps in to fill our roll, typically seamlessly. We lose someone we love, and we still have to wash the dishes and clean the gutters.

The startling thoughts--like second-cousins who smell an inheritance, or long lost relatives coming for a visit on their drive cross county--tasted blood in the water, and started to circle. "Who are your friends? Who can you really turn to? No one, that's who. You have no one. You are alone. If you died tomorrow, who would notice? Matter of fact, why don't you think about that. Your family would take it hard, but they'd get over it. They'd forget about you to. Nothing stays constant. Love is not forever. People move on." Et cetera.

Having worked with an competent Cognitive Behavioral Therapist years ago, who was treating me pro bono at a local clinic when I wasn't working, I recognized the thoughts and was able to rely on that training some to detach and objectify them. My thoughts are not me. I am not my thoughts. Present the evidence. Disprove their assertions. Thank them, and decline their invitation to consummate.

Have you ever been in a relationship or marriage in which you didn't trust the other person? Didn't know whether they were cheating on you, or lying to you, or putting on a smile but secretly inside you they don't like you very much? You can't quite put your finger on what it is that's off, but it's not comfortable, like living with an impersonal stranger in a co-dependent arrangement. You can't trust your mind and you can't live without it either.

That's what your mind becomes during depression: an uncomfortable stranger, someone you live with but don't trust. You need it to function, but it doesn't have your best interest at heart. Your thoughts become fuzzy, skewed, like driving while wearing someone else's glasses. Somewhere along the way, the inner-narrative has changed, become more negative, more condescending.

Grief is triggered by loss, typically, and it is a natural response. Depression, on the other hand, can be triggered by a myriad of events, both external and internal. It is not natural but foreign, not the natural state of being, but a substitute teacher. It could be a betrayal, a feign slight, a misspoken word, an overblown reading in-to canceled plans. And yet, in the throws of it, you are quite convinced that the veil has been drawn back and you are seeing things as they really are; reality has been inverted. Rather than life being a generally pleasant, worthwhile state with occasional downturns, the gray pall is actually what life is, throwing you a bone with a few scraps of ephemeral pleasure just to keep you from throwing in the towel completely.

I'm not a tough guy, but I have worked up some grit over the years. The cycles of depression in college would have been enough to warrant dropping out of school today, but I refused to. Even in grad school in my mid-twenties, when it hit and I was virtually immobilized as a result, barely able to eat or speak or move, my mom would drive to my apartment and pick me up, take me to my summer seminar class, and wait outside for me to finish to take me home. I did end up taking a leave of absence for one semester, but graduated with a 3.8 GPA after five years of part time study. At one point, in a state of mania, I sent the entire theology faculty a rambling grandiose email loosely related to my thesis. The chair of my department was kind--he recognized I was sick. But I made it though, and I prided myself on the fact that my illness did not get the best of me in school or in taking my life either.

But it wears you down. Now with a family, responsibilities, and work, it's like trying to wade through molasses. I just want to lie down and close the door. But I can't. I can't talk to anyone at work about it--whatever people tell you about the "stigma" going away is not always true--and so to take sick days and try to explain what's wrong is not always prudent. In up cycles, I take on a lot, and can sustain it normally, but in down cycles it becomes burdensome and exhausting.

The hardest is when it comes to friends. I don't feel like I have people who I can rely on. I hate needing people in my life, and yet I am so dependent on them for my well-being; I'm more social than I give myself credit for.

And yet, I too have not been a good friend. I know from dealing with depression that people who are depressed can be exhausting to try to help. No amount of convincing that are loved or that things will get better will change their mind in the thick of it. All you can do is love them and sit with them in the dark. But loving takes work, and I don't have it in me always in my selfishness and bravado. Until you are the one that needs a friend. But who has time for that? And who knows what to say? So, it's a Catch-22 of isolation. And so you go in your room and close the door and lay down and just...stare.

But you have no choice but to keep going on, fighting the force working against you. Once during one of the most difficult times, when I had had to resign from a job because I was a liability in my illness (I was working as a counselor at a juvenile detention center), I was driving home after informing my supervisor, feeling like a failure. As I drove, a line of Sycamore trees emerged lining the road, and I could feel a weight on the accelerator and having to put all my energy into not veering right, into the trees. It was if I was wrestling the steering wheel with someone else. I arrived home exhausted from the struggle and collapsed on the couch.

My dad knows. He has been through it, and walked with me through it. At my parent's house ten years ago, during an especially dark and heavy bout of it, He would take me out for walks. It would take me 2 hours to walk half a mile. I shuffled like an old man, the hood of my canvas Carhartt jacket pulled around my face, my beard long, my hair long, my boots scraping the sidewalk like a derelict. He was patient, and waited for me ahead. Little things like that were good to do. They gave some purpose to an otherwise existence devoid, in my mind, of purpose.

When you need it most, prayer can sometimes be the least comfort. It is not a Dark Night of the Soul. I hate when people refer to depression in that way. Dark nights are for saints who put God above all else and can't live without Him. At my most depressed, I am good for nothing, totally helpless. If I am abandoned, it only confirmed my suspicions that nothing lasts. But that does not draw me closer to God in such desolation, or if it does, I will only see it in the rear view mirror, one day. In the moment, all I can do is stare, grit my teeth, tell my thoughts to go to hell, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. But at least it helps to know that I am in it, and trust the evidence that chances are, it will pass in due time. Like everything else that doesn't last.