The Open Church

Continuing the theme of conversion, I wanted to touch on the topic of locked churches.

I’m in Phoenix for the week visiting friends and attending the local FSSP parish while I’m here. It’s a small mission church and like most traditional orders is in the ‘not-so-nice’ part of town, with lots of homeless people around. 

Whenever I travel, I have found refuge in the church (small c) in whatever town or city I found myself. I also heard from at least two people recently who had experienced conversions that the ‘unlocked church’—where they could just go into to sit or pray or experience some peace and quiet away from the world—was the catalyst for them coming to Christ and his Church. Which is why the idea of the ‘locked church’ (esp during the days of COVID) seems like such a tragedy.

Now, I understand the pragmatic reasons for keeping a church locked during the day especially in the ‘bad part of town.’ But I can’t tell you the times I’ve visited an adoration chapel in the middle of the night during a crisis, or was relieved to find a church open in off hours when I needed it most. How many people have experienced the still silence and opportunity to quiet the soul when they most needed it as well.

I was talking to a woman at work who brought her three kids to register at a local Catholic parish so her kids could attend school there. She was curtly told by the secretary (those formidable gatekeepers of all things parish and sacrament-related) that they only did registrations on such and such a day and time and that she would have to come back then. Instead, she took them to the public school down the street and was welcomed in to sign them up. And that was that.

The locked church is metaphorical also for the ‘locking out of the wedding feast,’ the despair one can feel when the one place of refuge and solace is not open to them. How many, I wonder, have been saved by finding an open, unlocked church and, simultaneously, grace? Similarly, how many unbelievers were set on a new path just from a happenstance stumbling upon an open church? Even if it’s not masses of conversions, finding it made a difference to that one. Had they found it locked, the course of their life may have looked very different and found perdition, rather than the gates of Eternal life.

“Whatever That Is, I Want That”

 I was watching a beautiful conversion story this afternoon of a post-abortive woman who was homeless at age 16 and who had no exposure or knowledge of God or Jesus Christ. When she observed her daughter (who went to a Catholic school) kneeling at her bed and praying, this woman’s spirit was moved and she said to herself, “whatever that is, I want that.”

For those of us who have come to the Faith from the outside looking in, it often starts with a gnawing for authenticity, love, peace, and a well to draw from that never dries up. For me, it was encountering a largish Catholic family, with a picture of the Sacred Heart on their wall (the first time I had seen such an image of Christ), who knew their identity and had something I couldn’t put my finger on. It was something I wanted and didn’t have.

I think this is really the rootstock of many conversions. If God is a lover of men, he draws us to a foreign love by means of attraction. And peace, goodness, trustworthiness...these are attractive features of Love itself, seeking consummation in the soul it draws. When one tip-toes toward it, and eventually becomes inebriated by Love itself as a all-encompassing, tidal force mist, we realize what we have been seeking our whole lives without knowing it was there all along, wanting to be found.

Our Lady too is a “beautiful Lady.” She attracts us by her goodness, her maternal care, her peace. She is not harsh or unsightly. We want what she has—which is Christ himself, her own flesh—and she leads us to him by way of attraction. 

When we knock, God answers, as scripture says. He who seeks will find. Divine Love is not gnostic in nature, reserved for only a few. It makes itself attractive because virtue and goodness is attractive by its very nature and is true to that nature. It wants to be wanted, pines for completion—to give a restless heart rest, to make it whole. 

Sometimes we don’t know what we really, really want until we see it somewhere—as in a passing glance at the elusive peace a child seems to easily possess while kneeling at her bedside in prayer, or a family that loves one another. But that love and peace...it comes from somewhere. It attracts and draws one out, as in a honeymoon—slowly from the shadows, until it can capture it completely with a commitment to say ‘yes’ to that love, so that whatever that is, that thing we want...it’s no longer hidden but has just waiting to be found this whole time. 

A Too-Planned Life

Life in the COVID era has been surreal. Masks are a pocket accessory as much as a cellphone or car keys. Assuming conversations about whether one has gotten the vaccine or not yet has become commonplace in everyday conversations, the way someone may talk about getting a UTI or being on birth control as if it were normal. Then there's that moment when you don't know what to do when you would normally shake someone's hand. Like I said, kind of surreal. "Normal" life seems like a dream ago.

One interesting aspect of the pandemic-age has been in housing. In some aspects, there has been a predictable rise in people fleeing major urban areas (70,000+ exodus from New York City alone costing the city billions in tax renevue) as many employers have gone to remote work. Other people more prone to prepping long for land and neighbors miles away.

In another sense, though, there has been the curious phenomenon of COVID creating a surge in demand for 'tiny homes'. Some on wheels, where you might have a Murphy bed or a composting toilet. Nano apartments less than 260 sq ft in Hong Kong which sell for around $650,000USD have also been on the rise. 

For our part, I have really appreciated having a little more space in our single family home--some extra rooms to escape to (no Millennial 'open concept' floor plan here in our 1950's split level), and without the need to constantly be cleaning and tidying up. 

Affordability may be part of it (though tiny houses are arguably a poor investment in terms of resale value and are more of a depreciating asset). But I think there's more to it.

Whether or not you ascribe to the idea of a global NWO, there seems to be an ideal of a more or less 'planned society' in the works. In Render To Caesar, I wrote, 

"Have you ever seen an architectural rendering? You know, one of those two dimensional stylized representations of a future reality that doesn't exist but SHOULD because it would be so awesome and would solve all of planet Earth's problems? Like a 200 story high rise that is covered with vegetable gardens, or a mixed-use space where young urbanites can live and work and play and shop in a walkable paradise? It doesn't exist yet, but 'build it and they will come.' 

I have an admission: I hate renderings. Why? I don't know. I just like life in the real world. I have a low bs threshold, and real life has a way of not always fitting into neat prescribed models. I remember watching Jurassic Park as a kid when it first came out and thinking, "this is a HORRIBLE idea!" And it was, in the end, as all the dinosaurs escaped or something and turned on people. Maybe it's my acute awareness of the Fall, not only the rebellion in my own life, but in the world in which we live, that is wary of such social utopias."

You know one thing that messes up best-laid plans (in the best possible way) and a perfectly manicured life where everything gets put away in its place, beds are flawlessly made, and everything serves a purpose and is kept only if it 'sparks joy'? 

Kids.

It's apparent that population-control advocates like Bill Gates see humans and future generations in terms of environmental liabilities rather than human worth and capital. In Children of Men, I wrote:

"We seem to almost be living in a science fiction novel today. 59 million lives have been lost to abortion since Roe vs Wade in 1973, and 1.5 billion worldwide since 1980. We manufacture human life in test tubes and freeze or destroy embryos, bank sperm, take a morning after pill to terminate a pregnancy after contraception fails. Governments enact policies to limit children to 1 per household and force sterilization and abortions when citizens don't comply, while black market surrogacy is thriving. Human life is commodified and exploited by merciless systems of production, and traditional nuclear families are in the minority. Meanwhile, Europe faces a population disaster due to plummeting birth rates, the economic implications of which are starting to be realized.

In short, we have taken human life for granted, and there will be a price to be paid.

A quote from the film that stayed with me was when Kee's midwife reflects on the beginning of the infertility crisis in 2009, when people stopped getting pregnant and giving birth. "As the sound of the playgrounds faded," she said, "the despair set in. Very odd what happens in a world without children's voices."

Admittedly, I do watch a lot of tiny house videos and things on YouTube, because I like learning about construction. Almost without exception, those enamored with the idea are single women or young couples sans children; additionally without exception, they have pets which they treat as children. 

I saw this meme once on social media. It was brutally jarring and uncomfortable, but I think it speaks a savage truth about how future generations are holding up and actualizing their ideals of a planned life:

I appreciate simplicity. I appreciate, to a degree, a minimalism in owning things and what we bring into our home (that often alludes me, despite my best efforts). What I appreciate most, though, is what most upends all of that: my children. And not just my children, in the possessive sense, but the children we have brought into the world (or, rather, that God has brought into the world using us as the co-operators in that plan) for the world's benefit. Not just "going forth and multiplying," as the Lord commanded (yes, commanded) us to do. But forming them, sacrificing for them, so that they can actualize the kind of world we as Christians see as the ideal. Which is completely at odds with the focus depicted in the graphic above.

Maybe the thing about COVID and all it brings with it is the unsettling sense of uncertainty and upending--when the pendulum swings, and in a vaccuum of faithlessness, and where the vaccine is the new secular Eucharist, people want more control, not less--from the top (the "global elites") on down to the couple that's okay with doing number 2s in a sawdust bucket toilet and owning two sets of dining utensils and living in 150 square feet--as long as children--the enemy of a planned future--don't come along and mess it up. Or if they do, that they factor in seamlessly to the well-manicured 'plan for life' they have laid out for themselves.  

It's one thing to have to live in a shoebox-type living situation by necessity in parts of the world like Hong Kong or Japan, or the slums of Calcutta. Millions of people do. But here in the West, the vast majority of us have the luxury of choice and space. The tiny house phenomenon may be a fad but it's a curious one and I think tells us about what those attracted to it prioritize. There is a happy medium between McMansions and cottages-on-wheels. It's where we find ourselves as a family, and happily so. We have room in our home and space in our hearts for children, for guests, for mess, for the (thankful) luxury of not having to be constantly cleaning and tidying and putting things away. 

I'm not sure what the future generations will look like in the "12...6...2...dog" projection, but it doesn't inspire confidence in a future that seems very much the opposite of 'sustainable.' In a too-planned life, there's no extra room in the inn, and not just in terms of square footage. We need room in our heart and lives for uncertainty (which necessitates faith); mortality (which inspires fear of the Lord); charity (which inspires virtue); and love and commitment (in marriage, which begets children). Or, as the wisdom of Scripture attests, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox.” (Prov 14:4)

Looking In From The Outside

This morning my three year old son came down stairs as I was on the couch attempting to read and pray. His mother was at work on her overnight shift and hadn't come home yet. I was looking forward to him crawling up on the couch with me and nestling in. He took one look at me and asked, "Where's mom?" After telling him she wasn't home yet, but would be soon, his face dropped and he immediately began to cry. I was the consolation prize. 

Moments like these have been kind of demoralizing to me as a dad. Like most dads, my weekdays are spent working. On weekends like this one, when my wife is working her shifts, I'm spent at the end of the week, and don't have much energy for doing things with the kids. Truth be told, they spend most of their time with their mom during the week homeschooling, and as a result are very close to her.

It can be a challenge these days to find my role as a father beyond just providing a roof over everyone's heads. Mothers provide something all kids need--time and attention, nurturing and instruction. As a father, I know I have a role to play in all that as well, and things their mom can't provide. But I've been defecting more. I go out to the garage to wrench around; I sit on the couch while my son plays Minecraft, not knowing how to interact with him. I feel like I'm losing them and squandering opportunities. The COVID era doesn't make it easier, but it's not an excuse either. 

Middle age is a tough time for dad. You're so focused on your career and managing things that time is at a premium. I try to balance having time for myself (time that my wife usually doesn't have as a luxury, admittedly), time with other men, time with my parents, time with my wife, time with my kids, time writing, and time in prayer.  

My wife was chastising me a bit last night for not being present with my kids when I have the opportunity. She's not wrong. She is a 'be-er' and I'm a 'do-er.' Every time I do have the opportunity to just 'be' I end up 'doing' something instead. Everyone knows that you can't substitute time together with other things and expect to have a healthy marriage. And the more time you spend with someone, the more you get to know them, and want to spend time with them. I feel like my kids pick up on that I am not as present with them as their mom is, and so they turn to other 'things' to fill the vacuum that I could be filling if I was more present.

The less time I spend in prayer, the farther I feel from God. The same applies to my kids. I'm in a funky season right now, where my biggest sins and temptations come from a spirit of sloth and acedia, and it can be very hard to counter. I'm somewhere between a post-war father who detaches and a Millenial who is an 'active, involved father.' My wife and I have a more or less traditional delineation of duties where she teaches and cleans, picks up toys and shuttles kids to appointments, and attends to household duties, and I work full time (though I do cook) so that she can stay home for the majority of her time. I'm not emotionally distant, and I think I do spend time with them when I am able, and do help out around the house. But I have the 'dad-disposition' of having a role, and not knowing exactly how it is supposed to play out.

What my wife does naturally--being with the kids, being present, etc--does not come naturally to me. The older my kids get, the more I realize my laziness as a father is costing me opportunities to connect with them. Time is a currency, and I'm spending it on frivolous things rather then what's important. It's no wonder my three year old doesn't want to crawl up on the couch with me, and collapses in dejection when he realizes he's stuck with me rather than his mom. Or maybe it's just a natural season at his age, and I shouldn't be so hard on myself.

A movie I watched years ago that I found strangely moving (to tears) was The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke. There's a scene where he's trying to reconnect with his adult daughter after years of not being there for her. "I'm just a broken down piece of meat, and I'm alone," he says to her. "And I deserve to be alone." 

There's an image I have, when I go out on the patio for some time to myself, of looking from the outside in while the rest of my family is inside. I've chosen to take time for myself, but I would be horrified if I tried to come back in the house and it was locked for some reason. Then you realize the place you really want to be more than anywhere, with your family, you're barred from, because of what you've chosen instead. I know it's just a moment but I don't want it to project as a future reality. Moments add up to days, and days to years, and before you know it if you're not careful, you can become a stranger in your own house.

No Country For Married Men

 If you've never had the chance to witness the film Into Great Silence, you should; it's a slow, thoughtful, intimate meditation on the everyday lives of the Carthusian monks of Grande Chartreuse monastery located in the French Alps. The filmmaker, Philip Groning, proposed the idea to the monks in 1984 and they said they wanted time to think about it. Sixteen years later, they said he could come and film. Groning spent almost three years editing; there are no commentaries, no dialog, no sound--just the everyday rhythm of the eremetic life lived in community.

Thomas Merton wrote in The Silent Life (1957) about the 'charism' (if you might call it that) of the Carthusians and the guarding of solitude above all else: 

"It is a spirit of solitude, silence, simplicity, austerity, aloneness with God. The intransigeance of the Carthusian's flight from the world and from the rest of mankind is meant to purify his heart from all the passions and distractions which necessarily afflict those who are involved in the affairs of the world-or even in the busy, relatively complicated life of a cenobitic monastery. All the legislation which surrounds the Carthusian, and has surrounded him for centuries like an impenetrable wall, is designed to protect his solitude against even those laudable and apparently reasonable enterprises which so often tend to corrupt the purity of the monastic life."

I actually wrote to the Carthusians (Charterhouse of the Transfiguration, the only Carthusian monastery in the United States, located in Vermont) thirteen years ago in a horribly brash and self-assured petition to discern a vocation with them. I don't know if they every responded (I recall they did, but I don't have a record of the correspondence to confirm). If they didn't, it was probably for good reason.

In working primarily from home for the past year of Covid, I've gotten a small taste of the 'monastic cell' in a strictly worldly setting. There's an old adage from the desert fathers: "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." 

What have I learned in the "cell" of my office (which is usually alone at the kitchen table, or a small desk in the bedroom when I need to hide from the kids), working the secular equivalent of Evagrius weaving baskets and then setting them all on fire at the end of the year to learn detachment?

I have an incredibly long way to go, and am very far from my true home. 

Pride, acedia, laziness, vanity, lack of discipline, and, most especially, a lack of inner peace are all my time alone at home have revealed to me. 

Solitude, silence--these things are sweet to a someone at peace. It is a marinade for a soul called to it, that longs for it, relishes in it. For the person not at peace with themselves, silence is unsettling, and solitude disconcerting. But in and of itself, it is only acting as a mirror to the soul, neutral and reflective.

Merton continues in describing the antidote to literal insanity that comes with such solitude for the soul not well disposed to it: 

"The Carthusians have been preserved not only by their rigid exterior discipline, but by the inner flexibility which has accompanied it. They have been saved not merely by human will clinging firmly to a Law, but above all by the humility of hearts that abandoned themselves to the Spirit Who dictated the Law. Looking at the Carthusians from the outside, one might be tempted to imagine them proud. But when one knows a little more about them and their life, one understands that only a very humble man could stand Carthusian solitude without going crazy. For the solitude of the Charterhouse will always have a devastating effect on pride that seeks to be alone with itself. Such pride will crumble into schizophrenia in the uninterrupted silence of the cell. It is in any case true that the great temptation of all solitaries is something much worse than pride-it is the madness that lies beyond pride, and the solitary must know how to keep his balance and his sense of humor. Only humility can give him that peace. Strong with the strength of Christ's humility, which is at the same time Christ's truth, the monk can face his solitude without supporting himself by unconsciously magical or illuministic habits of mind. In other words, he can bear the purification of solitude which slowly and inexorably separates faith from illusion. He can sustain the dreadful searching of soul that strips him of his vanities and self deceptions, and he can peacefully accept the fact that when his false ideas of himself are gone he has practically nothing else left. But then he is ready for the encounter with reality: the Truth and the Holiness of God, which he must learn to confront in the depths of his own nothingness."

My vocation is marriage, as it has been for the past ten years. Such relationships are less hidden than a monk in his cell twenty three hours a day, but that one place where married couples enter into that place is in the bedroom. In some ways, the intimacy of the bedroom is where one enters into the "great silence" of marital love where bodies speak to one another without the need for words; perhaps one of the few times in our day in which we can communicate in such a way. 

But as any married couple knows, the fruit and vitality of the martial embrace is not isolated to the act itself as in a vacuum, but draws its health from the days and weeks preceding it in the everyday communions and interactions throughout the day. Sexual intimacy serves as the barometer for the health of a marriage. One can't ignore or neglect or fail to love one's wife all morning and then expect sublime communion in the bedroom in the evening. 

It is not realistic to expect a married man to behave as a monk, or work out his salvation in the same way a Carthusian would, though it may have appeal at times. St. Paul made it clear that the married man would be concerned with other things--how to please his wife, the affairs of the world. That it is better not to marry. But it is the vocation I was called to. After ten years of discerning monastic life, it became clear that was not my path. If it was, maybe I would relish the solitude, have opportunities to serve in other ways and enter more deeply into silence and all it affords. 

Instead, I find myself snapping at rowdy kids and trying to work an honest day in front of a laptop so I can pay our bills and keep a roof over our heads. When I do have time alone, I squander it watching Youtube videos or frittering around in the kitchen eating whatever I see. I have no abbot, no rule, no guide, just my conscience, which has been chaffing me lately at the sins bubbling to the surface from my time alone in my secular cell within my domestic monastery at how far I am from that divine home, and how far I have to go and how far I have fallen, and how muddied the waters of my mind and soul are versus the crystal clear lakes of pristine wilderness. Silence and solitude is a great teacher, but it's only a mirror.