Back from the Thinking Space

Just to assure you I have been spending my time away wisely:



"Why did the scientists take their helmets off? I mean the air was breathable but bacteria.."



A year of fatherhood and four years of marriage are approaching fast. In this time I have found myself reflecting quite a bit to be both of those things: husband and father. Those who know me are indeed surprised I am capable to managing one of those roles effectively (subjective opinion).

I like to think I fall somewhere between Cosby and Red Foreman (not pictured due to dislike of having picture taken)



Always being one to draw inspiration and motivation from people who tend to say things better than me, I have become fond of reading advice or musings of other men on being a man. Those who know me will be surprised to find that I am a huge Tolkien hound. (I know, right?) His mastery with words in nothing short of inspiring and his spirituality shines through even when he doesn’t mean it to. When he does mean for it to then it is something that causes that feeling of hair-on-back-of-neck-standing-on-end excitement. In a letter to his son Christopher, J. R. R. Tolkien bestows advice to his son that is quite possibly some of the manliest advice a father could pass of to his son. (Rudyard Kipling’s If being staunch competition):

"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste -or foretaste- of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.

The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.

Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children - from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn - open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand - after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come."

These are the words of a father telling his son that life will not be easy, but there is a light within that darkness. Within the Holy Sacrament is found the union and fulfillment of all things. He is crying out “Son, if you love anything, love this, and you will love all.” Has anything ever been so powerful as Life and Death put before us in the same space? The paradoxical salvation of all mankind held within the single point of the Divine Miracle before us in the Mass? Love this and you shall know love! Love that is freely given and through this Sacrament that you love, that love is poured out into all that is fulfilled within it! Love one, love all. Save the cheerleader, save the world. There is no Spoon! No, it is all there within what comes to dwell within us!

The Eucharist is a spiritual and physical singularity. Through that Sacrament we experience a transformation to total fulfillment. The Sacraments are a single point in time where the divine infinite and the finite world collide and converge. I think of Paul Muad’dib Atreides in Dune Messaiah when he is blind yet can see all of the points in time around him converging on him and his actions.

 All the spiritual and physical world bends towards the glory, honor, fidelity, true way of all loves, and death found in that one Sacrament, that one moment of Love poured out, and the very same power that shattered Death and rose Christ from the dead.  

As a father I know that I cannot love my son perfectly. I know that I cannot be a perfect husband. I will strive for it and I know that through that love I find in the Eucharist I can certainly maintain it. I must therefore concede to the overwhelming love that God has for my family. Let it work through me so that my love becomes one with that unending wave of love that can only be described as otherworldly. Following this faith is not about being good, it is about becoming good. Transforming our very being from what is to what could be. Through that tranformation we become something stronger than we were before.

He goes so far as to tell his son “do something that stretches your limits.” Go to Mass with distractions! Face those things that disturb you and irk your senses. Find a Mass with music that is ghastly or a babbling homily to divert your attention from where it should be. What a challenge. Challenge Accepted! Could I do that? Could I push myself to focus on what I need to with so many distractions around? This exercise could inform so many other aspects of life. Do we know our target? How is our aim lately? All you new archery fangirls (Hunger Games/Brave anyone?) should get a kick out of that. Seriously, can we keep our sites on what we desire without distractions grabbing our attention? I hear “no” to this all the time in the form of: “Oh I don’t go to church I don’t like that priest/music/parish/.” If I am supposed to love the Sacrament as such, then does simply walking away when things aren’t right make sense? (hint: no) If we let ourselves be transformed by love then I would dare say it may get harder to walk away than stay.