On Neglecting To Pray The Rosary

 I dream very, very rarely...maybe a few times a year at most. But the past two nights I have woken up from disturbing dreams. And I believe they were messages from Our Lady to convey the importance of relying on her in the final days when it is grace alone that will give us the final perseverance needed to sustain our faith to the end to teach me a lesson on not taking it for granted.

The dream I had the other night I was at a party. Since I had just been to Phoenix to visit friends and we had a great big Catholic party, maybe it was on my mind. But this party in the dream was dark in its pleasure-seeking hedonism. There was no faith, no virtue--only the pursuit of dark pleasure. I realized I was grateful for my Catholicism and my Catholic friends that we could have fun without sinning, but that without faith, the temptation to sin and subsequent misery in the world today is formidable. Our faith is holding back the tidal wave.

On to the second dream. I typically attend First Friday and First Saturday Masses as a devotional practice. Unfortunately, do to circumstantial events, I was not able to make it to Mass this last Friday. I did make it to Mass this Saturday morning, but while I typically take time to pray the rosary and spend 15 minutes keeping Our Lady company while meditating on the Mysteries (as part of the devotion) before Mass, I was a few minutes late, and had to leave right after Mass, so I was not able to do so in church. When I got home, I was tied up with the kids, and also wiped out, falling asleep on the couch in the evening but not before setting my alarm for 11:30pm to give myself time to do so.

I hit the snooze button when my alarm went off at 11:30 and went back to sleep, waking up a few hours later. I headed up to bed and lazily scrolled some YouTube videos. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, "I should pray my rosary, even though I'm dead tired." But I didn't. I fell back asleep a few minutes. Just before 3am.

The dream that took place is as I recount it, now, at 4:30am. I was traveling for work, and at a recruiting event in another city at a kind of convention center. At some point there was a commotion, and I realized there were crowds of students who were seeking reparations for something. Everyone in the area had fear in their eyes. The crowd of students about eight across and twenty or thirty deep were making a kind of wave towards where I was; I figured I would go out and meet them and try to reason with them. There was a militant, merciless fortitude in their eyes when I got to the front of the wave. 

Eventually they forced me back to a dark part of the convention center. They wouldn't listen to anything I had to say, there was no reasoning. They were intimidating, but I figured were just students, what could they do. They were militant in nature, something between the Nazis and the Black Panthers. I couldn't figure out what to do and not knowing what they really wanted. There were large TV screens in the convention center. "Cut to London" one of them said, eventually tiring of my efforts to ask questions or reason with them. The TV screens appeared with the chaotic and fire-charred outside streets of UK police groveling on their knees before the crowd. It panned over to the right to another smaller group of police officers who were not on their knees, but on their backs. One by one, the members of the mob were taking giant bolt cutters....and cutting off the police officers legs who refused to submit to them, one by one, at the knee cap. "If you won't kneel to us," one of them said to me as I watched in horror, "we'll make sure you can't kneel at all."

When I awoke from the dream, it was around 4am. I realized it is Our Lady who promises to those who devote themselves to her through the First Saturday devotion, "I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation." And I had lazily and foolishly neglected to fulfill it for no good reason.

The martyrs for the faith relied on grace to persevere to the end. In the dream, the woke mob was cutting off the legs of those who resisted them (police officers, no less) without mercy. I have no doubt many of the Christian martyrs had suffered such or worse fates at the hands of totalitarian regimes of merciless persecutors. It's happening today in Nigeria, in China, in the Middle East. Our Lady has come time and time again to warn us of what is to come and to prepare us, in this life with acts of mortification and prayer. When we engage neglectful excuses not to follow her heeding, should we be surprised then if we do not have the fortitude (a grace of the Holy Spirit) to resist apostasy when the instruments of torture--or even our warm, comfortable beds--call us to deny our faith without resistance? Our Lord and Our Lady have also come to Muslims especially in dreams, and many have come to faith in Christ by way of messages to them in such states when their conscious states were not fertile ground to receive it.

The children of Fatima saw a vision of Hell--the fate that hides beneath the surface of this world for those who deny its existence and refuse to repent--and would have died of fright had Our Lady not been there with them. In my dreams, it felt like I had been given a vision of my weakness apart from Our Lady's assistance at the hour of death should I continue to neglect to heed her call and make devotion to her Immaculate Heart a priority. 

I have been so lazy, so slothful, so presumptive. When we were contracepting for years not realizing the peril we were putting our immortal souls in, it was Our Lady who finally stepped into our lives (by way of the Miraculous Medal) to wake us up and convict us. We consecrated our family to the Immaculate Heart of the 100th Anniversary of Fatima and made the promise to pray the rosary every day, a promise I have been neglecting to fulfill here and there out of laziness recently. Because I'm so slow to realize things on my own, I don't doubt our Lady was sending me a warning by way of these dreams that we will not survive the coming days without her aid. The grace of final perseverance, after the gift of faith, is the most important grace. Because as Scripture recounts, "the one who perseveres to the end will be saved." (Mt 24:13)

Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Kibeho, pray for us! And Lord, forgive me!

"I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown." 

(Rev 3:11)

Why We Don't Attend The Divine Liturgy

 (I feel I need to start this post with a disclaimer to preempt any teeth gnashing and tomato throwing and also make mention that I do not like liturgy wars. I have inadvertently started them in the past and I find they never end on a palatable note. As I heard a priest once note, "There's a difference between liturgists and terrorists--you can negotiate with terrorists." I'm not a liturgist, nor do I have a strong affinity for or knowledge in all things liturgical either. I realize it is a tender area that deserves respect and sensitivity to write about. This is meant to be a largely dispassionate account of our personal and particular reasons for attending traditional Mass in the Latin Church, despite my being Byzantine by rite, not to highlight any perceived deficiencies in one liturgy or another)

Before I became a Catholic, I attended the Divine Liturgy. Though most people coming into the Church or discovering the Eastern liturgy for the first time find it exotic and other-worldly, the liturgical Church of the East was my first exposure to Catholicism before I even had any interest in the theological truths of the Faith. In other words, it was familiar and, I should say, commonplace.

My father was born to a mother who was Russian Orthodox and a father who was Ukrainian Catholic. My father was baptized as an infant at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Philadelphia. When he married my mother, an Episcopalian, faith was a wedge--there was no agreement as to what my brothers and I were to be raised; we were baptized in the Episcopal church as infants, attended an occasional Sunday school lesson, but any formation ended there. To avoid disagreements and arguments, my parents would attend their respective churches separately, and us kids were free to go or not go (aside from Christmas and Easter, when we would attend one or the other church as a family). 

Because I was close with my father, I would occasionally 'tag along' when he would attend the Divine Liturgy at the Ukrainian Catholic church not far from our house on Sunday mornings. Incense, the gold domes and vestments and iconostasis, crossing yourself three times (with two fingers and thumbed joined) from right to left, bowing, standing (rather than kneeling), and the prayers--this was my first exposure to liturgy (though to my mom's credit as well, hers was a high-church Episcopal that would probably today very much resemble a Mass at an Anglican Ordinariate). When we would visit my dad's great aunt up in coal-country for a funeral or something, it was usually at a Russian Orthodox church. Even today, before communion, I have the habit of beating my breast three times by way of habit, praying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner. God cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned without number." Because I never formally switched rites (the only time it became an issue was when I was discerning a monastic vocation), I sometimes have slight guilt about not observing the Byzantine fasts (no dairy, eggs, etc). But strict legalism has never been my forte.

My 'backdoor entrance' into the Church by way of the Byzantine rite was part the heritage of my father, and part happenstance. When I went off to college, my dad gave me a list of religious services at the university and pointed out the Catholic Masses on campus. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I had a strong ransoming conversion around age sixteen that got me thinking about the eternal, desiring the eschatological, and starving for lasting happiness. I showed up at a Catholic mass in the auditorium on campus--I believe it was my first Roman Catholic Mass. I was out of sorts--I couldn't understand the casual dress or what was going on at the altar. When I eventually approached a Roman Catholic priest to inquire about becoming Catholic, I was told about RCIA. As it turns out, I had "missed the cutoff" for that year. Patience not being one of my virtues, I sought out a local Ruthenien priest who came to campus once a month to celebrate the Divine Liturgy to see what my options were. He agreed to catechize me one on one. 

The priest himself was delighted to have someone looking to join the Church, especially in the Byzantine rite. Though the catechesis was more or less solid, the priest himself was clingy and seemed emotionally stunted. I became his kind of 'poster-boy' and while most of my now-friends went to the Roman Mass on campus, I was expected to attend the Divine Liturgy. A kind of unilateral co-dependency developed, and though I was confirmed, made my first Confession and received my first communion, I began to distance myself the priest and the liturgy, and try to attend the Latin Masses whenever I could. Maybe it was a latent and delayed rebellion of the traditional liturgy that I was exposed to (but never raised in fully). Ironic that the Novus Ordo would be the 'exotic' draw.

What I did appreciate, and ended up trading in tradition for, was a kind of universality of the largest rite within the Church. Because I did not have a refined liturgical palate, this was acceptable to me at the time and, I suppose, a concession. When I traveled throughout the world over the years, "the Mass was the Mass"--whether we were sitting on tree stumps instead of pews in Haiti or in the grand expanse of Sacre Coeur, there was a universal commonality. This seemed important, as I had a heart for evangelism ("telling the other beggars where to find bread") and there is strength in numbers. For the next twenty years I would traverse through the gamut of liberal Catholicism.

 When my parents moved and my dad left behind the Ukranian church he attended, I would invite him to Mass with us in their new town. The Roman church had become familiar territory to me, but was unfamiliar for him. The Liturgy for him was, I realized, a nostalgic and familial affair. It was his connection to his father, who died when he was 21 and left a deep hole. Though I told him of a Ukrainian Catholic church not far from our house he could attend, he has not yet. I'm not sure why.

I've wondered why we haven't either as a family. Our men's group took a "Sunday Field Trip" there a few weeks ago for the Diving Liturgy (I didn't attend, for whatever reason, maybe because it's not unfamiliar to me) and the priest was welcoming and excited to have newcomers exploring the Eastern liturgy. Though our parish home is now a diocesan Latin Mass parish, I am at least comforted that we have the SSPX, the FSSP, and the Ukrainian Catholic church all relatively equi-distant. 

But when you're making a home, I have to take my wife and family into consideration. My Filipino wife never really took to the Divine Liturgy, though she has attended it with me occasionally while we were dating at my dad's parish. Any Ukrainian heritage I have I don't feel particularly feel attached to. I don't speak the language. Though the liturgy itself is beautiful and full of 'smells and bells,' there is a nationalistic element to it (pierogie festivals, Ukrainian dance nights, old ladies who speak the language) that I just don't identify with. Ethnic 'ghetto' is too strong a word, but you get the idea. 

One thing about the Eastern liturgy I have grown to appreciate in retrospect, however, is that (like the Latin Mass) it appeals to male sensibilities. There is nothing effeminate or embarrassing about either Orthodoxy or Eastern Catholicism, and for that reason I would have no qualms about attending the Divine Liturgy over the Novus Ordo. From observation, there is also a subtle 'fluid' or relaxation (not casualness) I've noticed (again, in retrospect) to the liturgical posture of the priest when compared to the tight and focused precision in the Latin Mass. (Dr. Peter Kwasniewski notes these differences in liturgical expression in Let Latins Be Latins and Greeks Greek: On Remaining Faithful to Distinctive Identities (New Liturgical Movement) and here ("The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo--Two Brothers and a Stranger")

Where we "take refuge" in the Church is kind of like who you marry--there's no 'one reason,' but an amalgamation of factors and personal histories that goes into attraction. I dated a lovely Catholic girl in college who for all intents and purpose would have made a lovely wife. But the timing never seemed to work out with us, and that's really all I attribute it to. And thanks be to God. I have Latin friends who have found a beautiful refuge in the Byzantine Church and its rich liturgical tradition. 

For us, for whatever reason, we have made our home in tradition and in the West. I'm not sure I can go back to the Novus Ordo. Though one of these Sundays, I'm might just to have to get St. Nicholas to remember where I came from. For old time's sake.

You Have Ten Fingers

 

Twenty years ago while I was in Haiti, walking along a dusty road to Hinche, I came across two boys next to a bicycle. I asked them in broken French what was wrong, and they pointed to the snapped chain. Taking a closer look, I told them with an air of confidence, pas bien--no good. They would need a chain tool to repair it. I fiddled with it for about ten minutes while they patiently watched, eventually throwing up my hands in exacerbation. One of the boys stepped in, placed the link on a stone, took another stone in his hand, slammed it down on top of the link to set the pin, set it on the chainwheel, and rode off. Pas mal. I always remembered that humbling encounter of third-world ingenuity. 

In China, where Christians are regularly jailed for worshiping under a Communist regime, not having access to Bibles does not stop them from imbibing the Word of God. When they have no access to the physical bound text, they have small scraps of paper with scripture verses written on them and commit them to memory before they are confiscated, because "they can't take what's hidden in your heart." 

I turn 41 next week, and middle-aged malaise has set in. I'm heavier, and groan-ier. I used to eat whole cheesecakes without gaining a pound and biked across the United States in my twenties, averaging eighty miles a day. Now I'm proud of myself when I go to the Y once a week and swim more than 30 laps. I felt good when I went though, because for once I pushed through the myriad of excuses I come up with on a regular basis and just. did. it. Though the motivation may have been disgust with myself and a desire to change, the satisfaction of doing something physical lasted throughout the day. It even lasted into today, when I went for a (albeit, short) bike ride and even pushed it into the big ring for a bit near the end.

Even if I didn't have a pool to go to, or a bike to ride, I could just as easily do push-ups and sit-ups in my bedroom with no equipment needed. Often it's not the equipment we lack, or the tools we don't own, but the drive that's missing. And it seems to scale in direct proportion to what we have, and not what we don't.

When I undertook a brief trial in 'mini-retirement' in my late twenties (essentially being in between jobs for a couple months), I thought I would take the time to write a book. I had a whole writing studio set up--and hardly wrote a thing. 

Even now, working largely remote for the past year, I realized how much I don't need from my office--file cabinet and papers. Essentially, I can do all my work with a laptop and a kitchen table. Even the mouse I use is ancillary. 

When we consecrated our family to the Immaculate Heart a few years ago on the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima, my wife and I and I committed to praying the rosary every day. And for the most part, we have kept that promise. Every now and then I will neglect it--either from tiredness or forgetfulness--but it's not often. When I do let my guard down, chinks in the armor often develop slowly and perniciously. 

The rosary is a spiritual tool, a weapon--but it's not just fancy crystal or amber or even humble wood beads strung together. The physical "scripture on a string" can aid us in meditation, but it is not ipso facto necessary. If we leave it at home or neglect to carry it with us, there's nothing--except our inner excuses--keeping us from using what we do have--our ten fingers--to pray. 

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. 

  

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.