You Are Being Used

 Today I read Fr. John Hollowell’s post on his blog titled, "The Most Important Thing I've Written" about leaving social media and abandoning his smart phone. His post was the one I was going to write, pretty much word for word, when I deleted my Facebook account (which I've been more or less very active on for the past twelve years) two weeks ago. But I wanted to sit with the time off and reflect on it a bit before I wrote anything about it--which is what I'm doing now.

Fr. Hollowell is a solid priest with a good finger on the pulse. All his points in his blog are salient, and I think he was seeing the canary in the cave that something was amiss, as I have for the past year or so while only recently mustering up the 'courage' and, more or less, disgust, to pull the trigger and leave social media for good. 

"The Social Network" was the movie of how Facebook came to be. "The Social Dilemma" is the Netflix documentary exploring the darker side of social media from those who created it. All in all, the era of Facebook, Twitter, et al. is really a "Social Experiment," that perhaps started out with good intentions but failed to deliver on its promises and, instead, opened a Pandora's box where it was impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. 

You could make an argument the Second Vatican Council was a similar kind of well-intentioned (though that is debatable) ecclesial experiment in response to the changing times, but my knowledge of the history of the council is tertiary and more learned Catholic scholars have made the case better than I could here. So I won't make that case here, though I think there are parallels. 

On a personal level, my most vivid memories of a grand vision of emancipation which was swiftly usurped by the sober reality of "what have I gotten myself into?" was when I gave up my lease on a desirable apartment after six years and moved in a newly-aquired schoolbus which I had bought and spent a month renovating into a mobile urban hermitage. This was before the "Tiny House movement" was a big thing. I had noble aspirations of combining my Catholicism and desire for a quasi lay-monastic witness with a kind of eco-awareness and intentional living: reading and praying all day like a monk, living rent free and not having to work a 9-5, while living an unconventional life that, admittedly, garnered some local and national attention (My little escapade was featured in the Philadelphia Weekly, The Daily News, and MTV). 

What they didn't see was the day I moved out of my apartment, with all my belongings piled up inside, and drove around the corner to park it on the street because my solicitations for some private property to set up on never materialized. They didn't feature how I spent the night sitting crosslegged because there was no room to lie down, as a pounding rain crashed down on the metal roof, and I hadn't exactly thought out the bathroom situation. It was one of the darkest and loneliest nights of my life, sitting in the puddle of a dream that wasn't squaring with the reality of the so-called "lived experience" I then found myself in.

Back to social media, though. I think what was really starting to chaff me the past few months was feeling like I was simply a pawn, being given "free" networking access and programming to enjoy--a kind of adult sandbox to play in with other people of like mind as a means of placation while oblivious to the fact that I was more or less, like everyone else, being used. My data was being harvested. My interests were being fed back to me in the form of advertising. The notorious algorithms selectively dictated what I saw and influenced how I began to think. Multiple and nuanced vantage points began to fade away into a kind of digital tribalism. Like Fr. Hollowell, I thought for a long time, "well, I will use this for good." But as he says in his blog post, "the whole playing field is slanted, not against a particular political party or ideology, but slanted against REALITY."

In happens in other sectors in the Age of Tech: the promise of emancipation in the new "Gig Economy" from the shackles of a traditional 9-5--where you can "be your own boss, make your own hours, and work as much or as little as you want" with few barriers to entry apart from a smartphone, your car, and an app--has not lived up to it's promises. That hasn't stopped companies like Uber and DoorDash from benefiting--after all, they created the apps and shouldered the startup risk. They don't have to pay benefits and are not responsible for their employees because, well, they aren't employees, but "independent contractors." I suppose if you see it for what it is and enter into this agreement without expecting such protections, you can use them in the same way they use you.

The same goes for Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies. I'll never forget my wife being approached by a friendly young woman our age at our former parish who wanted to "connect." We were new to the parish and were happy to make some friends; that is, until we realized she was connecting with us as part of her network to sell essential oils. 

The same thing happened to us when a man from my bible study invited my wife and I out to coffee with him and his wife. So friendly, took an interest in us, asked us questions about our faith and family. After the second meeting (which we had gotten a baby sitter for, and driven half an hour to meet them), I surmised from the vagueness of his talk about his "mentor" and "opportunities for growth" and "financial security," that something was off. It turned out to be an Amway pyramid-scheme pitch. I felt completely used, and foolish. 

The same thing happened again with another long time friend from college who was recently out of work and approached me with a similar "good opportunity" pitch. It took me a good while to forgive, though I should have been more understanding that he was more or less a victim, not a perpetrator. 

I hate the feeling of being used. Hate it. And so it was with disgust and a sense of relief when I finally realized, after twelve years, that I was more or less being used by Facebook and the Zuck as a data mine, and I wanted no more part of it. I often wake up to things late. But I'm glad I woke up at all.

I find myself these days writing with greater frequency on my un-monetized blog here at Pater Familias, cleaning the house more, and, yes, staring at the ceiling sometimes. I'm generally sleeping better, and, embarrassingly, checking my email more (even when there's nothing coming through). I'd like to say I'm praying and reading more books and exercising more, but it may take some time to get into a new groove. Being bored, I'm finding, is a lost-art, but one I'm getting reacquainted with. My most creative periods, where I spent time thinking and dreaming as a teenager, was during those periods where I wasn't constantly having my attention hijacked by smartphones and Facebook because they weren't a thing then. I had paperbacks in my back pocket, and small notebooks where I would jot poems and ideas for stories, and sketches. 

It's ok to admit that some experiments were failures, both in and outside my own life. That could be true of V2 and the NOM, it could be true of tiny houses and population control and COVID lockdowns and, yes, social media. We might even find the "American Experiment" is one that eventually falls by the wayside, though I think that would be a tragic and irrecoverable, though not unprecedented, in the course of history. In my own life, I'm often waking up to things late, learning from my own failed experiments, and spending my time working my way backwards to the beginning of things. That's ok. I let myself be used for a while. Maybe I even benefited from it a little. As Fr. Hollowell wrote, "It isn’t like this snuck up on me.  I’ve been aware of this change taking place over time, and, in discussing this with brother priests through the years, have expressed that I know this is happening but that I consider it a cross that comes with the territory – a sort of thing to be endured.  And I’ve carried this around for 10 years but consider it time to step aside." 

Time to step aside and make up for lost time to learn how to get back to zero.

Only Stewards

In a parallel universe, it was always my dream to be an accountant. 

I don't know where I got it in my head that this was what I should have been doing with my life. I'm not a numbers guy. I had a disdain for all the engineers on campus (a large, engineering-focused state university) because my mind didn't work like theirs. I majored in Geography because I liked maps and the major only required 120 credits. I didn't do any internships and didn't specialize in GIS so I don't know what I could have done career wise. All I really wanted to do was write and bum around the country like Jack Kerouac in On The Road. Plus I really thought I was going to become a monk, so any worldly pursuits wouldn't matter anyway. 

After four years of working in social services after graduation, I felt acutely my lack of marketability. I guess I kind of idolized the accountants and engineers because I was jealous of them. They had stable, in-demand jobs and made good money, and I didn't. I had a bit of 'failure to launch' career-wise by the time I met my wife in my late twenties, as I was living in a school bus, going to graduate school for Theology, and not working. When I realized that making money actually had some practical benefits (you could support a family, for instance, which became relevant when we started having kids), I got resentful of my artistic sensibilities, even though they were the gifts God gave me. It was too little too late, or at least it seemed. 

Fast forward ten years. I'm not an accountant, but by God's provision I did land in a job that I worked my way up to after 12 years in the field, one which pays a median salary with benefits and which fits my aptitudes and I actually, admittedly, kind of like. And He has been so good in His provisions that even on my very average salary my wife can largely stay home with our kids, allowing me to provide in the way I always wanted to but never thought I would be able to do, and doing so debt-free.

I owe a lot of that to my father. He was a high school math teacher, but was always good with money and taught us from a young age how to save and invest. He still wears sweatpants with holes in them and does his own taxes; he isn't concerned with status or giving an illusion of wealth. His favorite book is "The Millionaire Next Door." He retired at 51, and has been living an unassuming comfortable life for twenty years as a retiree.

My father is the only person I trust for financial advice, and we talk regularly about money. It has never been a taboo subject in our family; quite the opposite actually. It was always talked about, mostly in terms of options, and so my brothers and I inherited a wealth of financial literacy without the undue burden of emotionalism that often surrounds the subject. 

Money and finances is, admittedly, a bit off topic from the usual scope of my blog, which tends to keep focused on topics of faith, family, and religion. But when I came across a statistic recently that sixty percent of Americans don't have a $1,000 in savings to cover an unforeseen emergency and that the number two reason for divorce in this country (infidelity being number one) is money problems and money fights, it seemed relevant to at least bring up the topic. Things I have always taken for granted--like basic budgeting, living within your means, etc.--were maybe not so common after all. 

I've been reading financial blogs since blogs became a thing; my favorite ones are the ones that have a personal, human-centered focus, rather than strict (and boring) dollars-and-cents. J.D. Roth had a blog called Get Rich Slowly that was personal and honest, though admittedly I stopped reading it a couple years ago when I realized he wasn't actually all that good with money. 

I also used to read Mr. Money Mustache before he became big, and appreciated his frugal and pro-bike focus, but again lost interest when his posts were more focused on left-leaning environmental ideology. 

I came across one called Frugalwoods recently which is FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) focused and written by a millennial couple homesteaders; once again, was turned off though after they featured a Reader Story post by a couple where the husband was asking how best to fund his gender reassignment surgery and the commenters were largely supportive. 

One of the most competent blogs I've come across is Financial Samurai, though it's hard to relate to as the author (based in the Bay-area of San Francisco) and his target audience are high income earners with multi-million dollar portoflios who think you'd "probably be ok" making $300,000 a year. Though I've learned a lot from this particular blog, it's like another world, and I always leave with a little apprehension that we're not in a good position because we don't have millions of dollars stacked up as the author purports one needs to be in a good financial situation. 

A proverb that has always resonated with me is Prov 30:8-9: "Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." My average/median salary provides for all our needs with careful budgeting, allows us to save for emergencies and retirement and provide for others in need, and does not bring with it the 'mo money mo problems' stress that some high income earners endure while keeping us from the stress those in poverty regularly endure (like which bills to pay this month, or whether there is enough money to pay for gas or medicine). We sleep well at night, and that in itself is something of value not to be taken lightly.

Because I've never earned a high income, I've always had to be somewhat resourceful with what I did have (my wife always tell me, "I prayed for a husband who was resourceful, not rich"). This means adopting frugality as a way of life from the time I started working at age 12; learning to budget and being cognizant of what is coming in versus going out each month; forced saving; buying used everything; learning to cook from scratch; being content with little things like an occasional latte or ice cream cone or vacation. Developing 'human capital'--connections with other people and investing in friendships--also has an intangible benefit and value that may be underappreciated by strictly "by the numbers" accountant-types. At this point in my life, I have cut back on side-hustle ventures, because time is a currency too, one that has value especially as my kids are young. I realize we don't really need a lot, and 30 years of living frugally has set us on a course where we are not threatened with lifestyle inflation. It also allows us to help cover bills for families we know who are going through periods of struggle and to support our local parish, which is a blessing for us as well.

I'm always encouraged when I see Catholic families open to life with large families on modest incomes, because it shows what is possible with faith and careful stewardship while poking a hole in the high-income blog thesis that you need x,xxx,xxx amount to live. Though initially I was taken with the idea of Financial Independence and Retiring Early, the fetishization of the FIRE movement among DINK Millennials who seem sympathetic to left-learning, anti-life causes is enough to make me rethink this "movement." I am at a point when I actually like my job and enjoy working, and see it as a grace and blessing, not a curse. And who wants to retire at forty anyway? Even if I could, it wouldn't take me long to get bored with it, especially if it is just self-focused on leisure and maximum pleasure. 

I think what it comes down to, what everyone is really wondering, is "how do I be happy?" Happiness is really contentment with a sheen. There are miserable millionaires and miserable people living in Section 8 housing. There are also happy wealthy people and happy poor people to the degree that they are able to see past their immediate circumstances to what really matters and gives us lasting happiness--living for God, and living for others. Working hard and breaking through adversity and bearing crosses also has its own rewards and lessons, just as those diagnosed with terminal illnesses often learn from their cancers what life really means, what is really important--lessons they may not have learned without it. Sometimes a change in perspective is all we may need to see the world, and our circumstances, differently.

To that end, I think God has really given us a great grace as stewards to be "in the middle"--not too full, and not poor. Our kids get excited when I bring home ice cream or when they get to pick out yo-yos from the Dollar Store or when they get to make memories on a weekend camping trip. It doesn't take much. We have time together, without undue stress from finances; we have our health; we live like kings really, with hot showers and a roof that doesn't leak, cars to drive us places, and flush toilets. Though I'm always mindful the words of our Lord that "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted," and that our times of happiness and contentment now are not a reason to shun them, we recognize that all good things come from Him. And so if He takes them away, we will continue to praise Him. If He allows us to enjoy them now, we enjoy them for what they are without hopefully getting too attached to them. We're not ultimately in control. After all, we are only stewards. 

Hiding Behind Labels

 I've been thinking about the way we refer to ourselves in the public sphere in relation to our faith. It's common for people to say, "I'm Catholic" or "I'm a Christian." On the surface level, this is accurate. We are Catholic, and we are Christian. There is a collective identification here with a faith tradition and modus of belief. But there's something missing.

These are a kind of 'hitch the boat' labels that can allow for a passivity in responsibility. Combine that with the oft-touted, "I'm Catholic, BUT [I don't believe x, y, z teaching." Or, "I'm Christian [because my parents are]" and there can be a discomfort in adopting it for ourselves. 

Though I don't fully ascribe to it's philosophical theology, Christian existentialism (in the vein of Kierkegaard) demands a wholly committed and subjective sense of radical responsibility for our moral choices. This did have an influence on me early on in my conversion because it squared with my experience--being ransomed in love by a benevolent God who took pity on me in my abject state and offered me the promise of eternal life and freedom from slavery, sin, and death. In turn, I wed myself to the Bridegroom and pledged myself to follow Him wherever He went.

In the public sphere, Catholics and Christians are often seen by the world as a collective force to be dismissed and largely ignored, because they can be. They may subscribe to a kind of Moral Therapeutic Deism that doesn't hold much value in terms of spiritual currency. They will often acquiesce to the cultural norms around them without resistance. They may still think cultural Catholicism (when was the last time someone described themselves as an Irish Catholic?) has some kind of weight or legacy today. 

Does this describe you? If you are reading this blog, my guess is, "maybe not." 

So, I have a proposition for you: the next time someone asks you what your religion is, or why you pray before you eat, or why you go to Mass on Sundays, or why you can't affirm x,y,z perversion, answer it this way:

"I am a disciple of Jesus Christ."

The early apostles were Catholic (and Jewish, of course). They belonged to the Body, the Church. They were considered followers of "the Way" in the early sect days. They were "Christ-followers." All these things are true. But to live in the post-Christian era today, where "religious people" suffer the temptation to cling to a kind of Catholicism that may no longer exist in the near future as a kind of ineffective inoculate against the cultural tide, we should stand firm and unabashed in our commitment to the one we follow, the one to whom we belong. 

We stand before the King at our personal judgement alone, and every moral decision we make when there is no one else to lean on or hide behind, has eternal consequence. Therefore, it seems fitting to adopt this plainly radical moniker when questioned about why we live as we do and resist what we resist. As it says in Scripture, "if we die, we die to the Lord." (Rom 14:8). We do not say, "it we die, we die to the Church." We belong to Her by nature of our baptism, but she exists because of the Bridegroom. He is who we are living for.

And so, consider it. When someone at your work asks why you're not taking part in x training, or when your neighbor asks why your kids don't go to the local school, or when your parents ask you why you do the things you do, try answering, simply, "I am a disciple of Jesus Christ." It puts the onus on you--not the Church or your cultural religious heritage--to live up to that label. A disciple must be worthy (Mt 10:38). You can be "Catholic" or "Christian" without taking up your cross. But you can't be a disciple without doing so. We are part of the collective, Catholics and Christians, yes. But disciples first. Like other disciples world-wide, we follow Christ to His death in order to be worthy of Life. If that doesn't mean something, I don't know what does.  

Staving The Slow Slide

 Incrementalism, as the term is used in the realm of government, is the method of achieving massive changes in public policy by implementing slow changes over time. We often wonder how such obviously outlandish things as allowing biological men to compete in women's sports or use women's locker rooms make their way into law, as anyone with common sense would recognize this an absurd and dangerous proposition. But the trojan horses were brought into courtyard much prior to this, and often by way of this kind of incrementalism (as one example).

There is a parallel term in the field of moral theology, that of gradualism (or gradualness, as used by Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio) as it relates to the pursuit of positive moral virtue. Both terms are really two sides of the same coin in different spheres--not necessarily ill-conceived and holding a degree of neutrality, but the general concept remains in the adage: "if you want to boil a frog, turn up the water slowly." 

While the acquisition of virtue is usually a lifetime endeavor and typically comes slowly over time, the decisions we make sometimes do require the 'stepping over a line' in the temporal life to move from one stage to another--the way one jumps into a pool, being no longer dry on land, but wet while submerged. 

A few days ago the Church celebrated the feast of St. Anthony the Abbot. One of my favorite stories of this great father of monasticism was upon hearing the words of Matthew read in the church, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me" (Mt 19:21), he immediately walked out of the church and sold the three hundred acres of land he had inherited from his parents. Not long after (upon hearing the words of our Lord in Mt. 6:34), he set off for the desert to begin his eremitic life. 

I heard a vocation director (I believe) once say that the first thing he asks about with men thinking of leaving the priesthood or formation is, "what is the state of your prayer life?" Putting aside legitimate instances of thoughtful discernment in this direction, in many of the cases of men wanting to leave they had gradually, and over time, stopped praying.

But people don't just stop praying or lose faith overnight typically. In keeping with the theme above, it's usually a gradual introduction of acts of the will contra to the pursuit of virtue (that is, the hard work of virtue) that take it's place, be it worldly and sinful, or simply, absent of positive value. 

Take a practical example: I went to the Y yesterday on my day off to swim. In stepping on the scale in the locker room, I was slightly unnerved to see that I'm coming close to 190 pounds (and I assure you, it is not 'all muscle'). At my fittest, I hover around 175. Have I been fasting? No. Have I been exercising regularly? No. Have I been eating truffles after dinner most every night since my wife brought home a large bag of them? Yes. We don't go from 175 to 190 (or whatever) in a day. 

We recognize this work in the moral law with regards to to the "sins which are not unto death" as recounted in 1 Jn 5:17; that is, venial sin, which weakens the state of the soul and increases the danger of falling into mortal sin. This is why it is good habit to confess venial sins regularly, so that the soul is cleansed of the thin layer of soot that darkens the intellect and makes us more susceptible to sinning more gravely. 

The devil is a master of introducing into the mind and will the gradualness of sin. Remember his ultimate motive: to lead a soul away from God by any means necessary. A missed prayer, a snuck piece of meat or candy during a fast, a laxity in spiritual reading in favor of something more pleasing to the senses, a harboring of a grudge or impure thought. He doesn't want us to wake up and realize how far we have drifted from home like a piece of wood at sea from shore, lest we set off like a prodigal son back to the Father's house. The more gradual, the better. 

The way I have always described concupiscence--our propensity to sin--is by way of natural example: drop a leaf in a flowing creek and it follows the path of the water. To go the other direction in, say, a canoe, you have to paddle, and disproportionate to the force needed were you not working against the current. In other words, it's hard to be good--not because we were made for the Good, or that we were created in God's own image and called "very good," but because of the Fall. We live with those inherited consequences and spend most our lives countering spiritual entropy. This is why the Way is narrow, not wide, and why few find it (Mt 7:14).

Mother Teresa--as it was revealed later in her life--dealt with the darkness of loss of faith for years, but persisted in the exercise of the will to charity despite her loss of consolation, and was made a great saint in her persistence and fidelity to what failed to provide spiritual or material comfort. She did what she was called to do, whether she felt like it or not, and was painfully sanctified as a result. She 'trusted the process,' so to speak.

As we approach the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, it is apparent to me how much my personal discipline has drifted--not into 'red-alert' territory, but enough that I need my own personal "Great Reset." The Church in Her wisdom gives us the season of Lent to get back on track, to renew the external disciplines we need to make the work of virtue in cooperation with grace possible. These are tangible, concrete, act and will-driven exercises to stave the slow slide that concupiscence lubricates within ourselves. It makes things harder for us, not easier, because it is not by ease and leisure that we find our ultimate happiness (if in doubt, ask any movie star or celebrity), but in God, whom we grow gradually forgetful of when we replace the pursuit of virtue with the things of the world, which is of enmity with God (Ja 4:4). 

We know the disciplines are working toward their intended purpose when we begin to love virtue for its own sake, rather than hate it for what it demands, just as a runner no longer loathes putting on his shoes and hitting the pavement but becomes accustomed to it and does it as matter of course. As I find time and time again, it's easier to keep disciplines up when we don't fall off by way of the 'little things'--the excuses, the concessions, the rationalizations. I guess this is just human nature. This is why Lent is forty days, not four or fourteen. It can take a little time to hit a stride and correct waywardness of habit, and the season as taskmaster ensures we see it through to the end. It always seems to come at just the right time, too--when it's needed, and as an antidote, to counter the spiritual entropy we find ourselves mired in because our own self-appointed disciplines have become too easy to ignore. Lent is the spiritual medicine prescribed by Holy Mother Church from the outside to stave the slow slide and bring us closer to home, which is where we really, in our heart of hearts, ultimately want to be. 

Second Generation Catholicism

 My father in law is a first generation American. About ten years ago I read his life story in a self-published book written for the extended family in which he describes growing up dirt poor in the Philippines under the harsh tutelage of his father (his mother had died when he was young). He would gather snails and coconuts and prawns, but also managed to obtain a scholarship to attend UP to study medicine. He came to the United States with my mother in law in the early 1960's, where he began his residency in New York in the field of gastroenterology. They bought a house in the suburbs, and raised a family. His was a laudable but also relatively commonplace story of those immigrated for a better life and future. 

Like many immigrants, my in laws did not want their kids going through the same hardships they themselves experienced and provided admirably for their needs, including Catholic education K-12. Despite twelve years of Catholic schooling, my wife never really had an encounter with the living Christ until her thirties, right before her and I met. All the formal schooling and religion classes, in the end, only amounted to head knowledge. It was through a lifelong Protestant Christian friend's prayers and encouragement that she began to really have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," whom she encountered in prayer and reading the holy scriptures. In fact, just prior to us meeting, my wife was "dating Jesus" for a year after a long-term relationship ended. She did have a sense, however, that she wanted to remain Catholic rather then attend a non-denominational church. 

I think my wife and I really connected on our first date at a coffee shop because we had both had those "personal encounters" with the living God and recounted them to one another. It was alive and well in our collective memory, and we drew from those past encounters with the Holy Spirit; in essence, we knew God was real because we both had experienced Him.

Whereas my wife's parents sent her to Catholic school to more or less transmit the faith (it was never really talked about or taught at home), my faith generated from the latent roots of my infant baptism in a Episcopal church and by proxy to my father's attendance at the Divine Liturgy, but without teaching and without ever having been confirmed or having received the Eucharist. It was an authentic and real encounter in the wilderness at age sixteen that I recognized, by grace, the fundamentals of my condition--a sinner aware of his inability to save himself and his need for redemption and meaning. I was lost, and was found. I formally became a Catholic a couple years later at the age of eighteen.

As a convert not raised in the Faith, I feel like I am a "first generation" Catholic in practice. Like my father in law who knew the stakes and what it took to get to America for a better life despite the odds, I recognized that I was saved by grace but had to search out it's confirmation, learning the faith by my own volition and continuing to believe because I knew, empirically, that it was true.

The other night I was laying in bed talking with my son, who wanted to join me. He had been having doubts about God--how do I know He really exists? What if when we die there's 'nothing there?' My wife and I have been very intentional about teaching and passing on the faith to our kids, while recognizing they have not had those same adult experiences we have of coming to know the Truth first-hand. They are more or less taking our word for the fact that God exists and that we should live lives of virtue, that our citizenship is in Heaven, and that this life in the world is not our final home. Which, it occurred to me, is maybe why my son was struggling with doubt. Something I know innately, he only knows by way of word-of-mouth. His is a second-generation Catholicism.

Like the wise virgins with their oil, you want so badly to give your children the lived experience you have had so that they "know the truth that sets one free," but by it's very nature, it is not something that can be transferred. Like character, you can only live it out yourself, not transfer it to someone else to put on like a borrowed suit. 

We can and should pray fervently and often for our children, that they may receive that grace that was so lavishly poured upon us and which we know the Lord desires to give to all those who ask for it, and that they might have a real encounter with the Living God. We should desire the consistent "both/and" so fitting for our Catholic faith of a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" as well as our religion with all its rich teaching and doctrine which allows us to live sacramentally and gives us a compass to navigate by.

It's difficult for me to navigate as a parent--if I put too much pressure on my son and panic at his reasonable doubts, there is the possibility of pushing him farther from faith. If I don't use it as a teaching moment and let him drift away on his own, who knows what kind of teaching he will find downstream in the culture. Knowing our children belong to God (and are consecrated to Mary and St. Joseph as well), I don't fear, but I don't always know how to direct things. As a first generation Catholic, I'm learning as I go! 

I also realize there are no guarantees that our children will persist in the faith. We pray and hope that they do and do everything we can to teach and prepare them while living it out ourselves with joy. But our children do not ultimately belong to us, but to God. We can only control them so much when they are younger, and they have free will of their own, the double-edged gift from God Himself, exercising it more and more as they get older. Life is not so easily controlled.

I do, however, pray they will encounter the Holy Spirit of God, which cut through me like a wind for the first time at a punk-rock show in a Church basement as a preacher prayed over the crowd on stage. It was an unlikely and unscripted place to have such a genuine and razing encounter. Maybe that's why the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as the "wild goose." I followed Him where He led, and He led me to the doors of the Church. I can only pray my own children encounter this God who saves in a real way, so that it's not just second-hand head knowledge we are passing down. I experienced every one of their births for the first time; but I hope to see them 'born again' in the Spirit so that they know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that He exists, that He is Truth, and that He is as real as the air we breathe.

"These Things I Remembered"

 I'll never forget the day my wife called me when she was going into labor for the first time. I was at a recruiting event in Annapolis when she called my cell and asked if I could come home. I packed up my table and told the people next to me, "Gotta go...we're having a baby."

She wasn't going into labor right away, so I wasn't rushing and still had a good four hour drive. It was late October, and there was a fog over the cornfields of southern Delaware as I made my way over the expansive Chesapeake Bay bridge and up route 13 through the Eastern Shore. I turned on the radio and Adele's "Someone Like You" was playing; to this day I can't hear it without thinking of that drive home before our lives became something else entirely, and only for the better, an audible mile marker in my memory.

I still have to ask my wife (as I did tonight as were lying in bed) what time our kids were born. The fact of the matter is, I'm not good with details; I remember the forests, the macro snapshots--like my drive home over the Chesapeake--not the trees. One of my favorite bands in high school was Hüsker Dü, which means "do you remember" in Danish. Maybe it is the years of being on psychotropic medication, but I can be like Guy Pierce in Memento at times--not quite short term memory loss or early onset dementia in any way, but a somewhat concerning inability to remember things. 

So, it's important for me to remember. I have to write things down. If I was ever deposed, it would be a nightmare, because I can't even remember what I did the day before sometimes, and would be an unreliable witness unable to remember dates and times. I rely on my wife for those things.

As we were talking this evening about our (well, my) recent plans to delete my one and only social media account--Facebook--in the next month, I went back and forth as to whether to download my ten years worth of posts, pictures, and conversations from the site to a hard drive, or whether to just take the nuclear option and leave like a ghost without a trace.

The fact of the matter is, I write to remember. I've spent half my life doing just that--in notebooks, letters, word docs, and, yes, blogs. My wife asked if I would print out my former blog to preserve it for our family as a kind of legacy, for our kids as well as her. It is, after all, an important part of what brought us together, when she read it before we met for the first time and felt like she was doing something she shouldn't. When I exported it to pdf, it was 900 pages long. For her, the physical copies are important. In a digital age, she likes leather photo albums. She saves Christmas and birthday cards. And so she wants the paper version of something she may never read again, but at least she has in physical form. 

When it comes to Facebook, though, I'm not sure a decades worth of posts and interactions is worth preserving--at least not in the same way that the memories and mementos I truly do cherish should be preserved. Social media by its very nature is fleeting--read one moment, perhaps generating a flurry of likes or explosion of comments, but quickly forgotten in the ether a week later. Many of the interactions are with perfect strangers. And underlying it is the unnerving nature of social media in general at fomenting division and tribalism, not to mention our own personal form of cancel culture. 

For a good while now, I have wanted to leave, and never had a good enough reason. With the alarming rise of digital censorship, the foreign influence of the CCP, and the fact that maybe, just maybe, this 'social experiment' is not in fact a good thing for us as a society--well, it took a while, but I think I have given what I asked for in prayer: an out. I've made some great connections (many of which I've developed in real life as well as a result of the site) and there will be a big part of me that misses it, but not enough to outweigh the robbery of my time and energy and the feeling of being, well, used by forces I would rather have nothing to do with. And so, I think I will be taking the ghost option of letting it lie as a chapter from the past, not one to be preserved, but like a house fire you were 5 minutes too late too.

I am beginning to read the Lamentations of Jeremiah. It is both a funeral dirge to the dead and a poetic lament to the destruction of Jerusalem and the desertion of God from the city on account of their national sins. Apt, wouldn't you say? So much of the Jewish experience lies in remembering--the Passover, the Exodus, the time before the Exile. You don't remember what you had until you lose it. 

We may find ourselves in the days to come echoing the Psalmist: "These things I remembered, and poured out my soul in me : for I shall go over into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God : With the voice of joy and praise; the noise of one feasting." (Ps 42:4). Will we look back and say, "Remember when we could go to Mass? Receive the Eucharist? See our brothers and sisters in the Lord--in the flesh?"? Will these be our Lamentations--that when the Lord was known, at our fingertips, we did not remember Him until it was too late? "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found" (Is 55:6). 

It occurred to me that though this has been a queer year to say the least, there have been some upsides--working from home has allowed me more time with my kids; my wife and I still managed to have some memorable date nights; we've all gone on hikes and played in the snow. And I've caught myself thinking at times that these will become the memories in the possibly very dark days ahead that I will want to preserve, that I shouldn't take for granted, because faith and family are the only things that really matter in the end. We will look back and say, "remember when we used to laugh in the kitchen? Remember when we would lie on the couch together and read? Remember when we would eat dinner together?" And it will seem like an age ago, like a mirage in a desert given what we are up against as Christian believers. 

We simply don't know what's in store for the future--but we can know our past, and preserve those memorial mental snapshots of life for the times when we need to remember. And to do that, we need to be attentive to the present, which is where there gestation of memory takes place, not distracting ourselves with fear of the future or gorging on news feeds or constant posting about this or that aspect of the political realm. We need to make space in our minds to preserve what is important, and not be afraid to do a data dump of the non-essential, as the apostles were told by our Lord, "Take nothing for your journey; neither staff, nor scrip, nor bread, nor money; neither have two coats." (Lk 9:3). 

There is a great (unscripted) part in the movie Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams is talking with the young Matt Damon about his late wife who died of cancer:

"My wife used to fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of wonderful little idiosyncrasies. She used to fart in her sleep. One night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up and went, “ah was that you?” And I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

But Will, she's been dead for 2 years, and that’s the stuff I remember: wonderful stuff you know? Little things like that. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about: that’s what made her my wife. Oh she had the goods on me too, she knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but they're not. Ah, that’s the good stuff."

He's right. That is the good stuff; the stuff otherwise that goes unnoticed. But it' also the most worthy of memory, because it's 'offline' so to speak. The moments that take place in the intimacy of a bedroom, or a car ride, or an impromptu dance party with your kids in the kitchen. We don't set out to make moments like that--like life, the best parts just happen. Just be sure to pay enough attention when they do. So you can remember.