Life of Beauty and Terror

Taking a point from Walker Lemons over at 1001 Rules for my Unborn Son I went to the movies by myself (160) to see Life of Pi. I never read the book and I feel that just added to the experience for me. I always enjoy seeing a movie that even after 2 hours of sitting makes me feel that I need to sit down and think about it. Now you get to pay Tue price of me thinking about it:

It has been a while since I have seen such an artful film. I also am not a huge fan of 3D; I tend to feel like it is being thrown in my face and is gimmicky. This was not gimmicky. The art of the scenery whether meant for 3D or not were beautiful. The story was beautifully told. It was about the beauty of life and that part of that is pain.

Like the tiger beauty is both awe-inspiring and terrifying. It is a true sign of art to show us something both beautiful and fear inducing. This is what we see in ourselves. We can use our pain. It transforms us. That is the nature of beauty to resonate with the soul and cause it to swell and grow. Truth is contained within it and the truth is terrible. It makes us cringe. We hide from truth because while it may set us free it is an all exposing light. We see everything and we don't always want to see what was hidden. "He brought the evil out of me!" As I heard Pi scream that the tears welled up. Into the deep within the magnificence of exposing ones weakness shone onto pain and joy. Joy at life! But how painful is life! Life is growth and growth is painful. The light of truth alone can expose the weakness as strength, that to be great we must be small, to be beautiful we will be terrifying.

On this day as my brothers and sisters March for Life in our nations capital my prayers are with them. Recognizing the magnificent beauty of life but the terrifying truth of what it ,means to fight for it. No news will recognize you. You will be treated as monsters. But remain beautiful and terrifying and most importantly love the ones who will hate you for it. Because only that kind of truth can inspire loving honest dialog.

There are foolish reactive people on both sides of such arguments that would tear at each other until there is nothing left just as there are good people. We are the ones who refuse to look beauty in its fierce eyes. It is Like a flame, that hot harsh nurturing thing that we dare not touch but desperately need in darkness. An issue such as this is one that requires love in the resolution. I have no doubt of the love that exists on both sides of an argument and thus I have no doubt in the goodness of the men and women of both sides. Only by being truthful, beautiful, and terrifying can we all be carried through such storms. The tiger will keep us alive

Zombie Survival Plans and Our Declining Opinions of Each Other.

In the aftermath of another failed apocalypse and the current pop culture popularity of all things undead I have come to the conclusion that we do not quite like each other as one would hope. The Bad Catholic seemed to be thinking the same thing as I was around the same time because he recently posted on the same topic but a different perspective. I suggest reading his piece concerning Zombies and the end times. Don’t worry, I’ll wait here.

My thoughts towards the zombie apocalypse tend to focus on the same subject matter as what keeps me watching The Walking Dead: the people involved.

You can’t walk onto a high school or college campus without bumping into a male adolescent who has thought through every minute detail of his plan to survive the zombie hordes. (Never mind he still hasn't done his math homework.) I won’t lie I have several plans adaptable for various scenarios and climates. It was this realization that led me to my previously mentioned conclusion: we want to see each other as expendable when the going gets rough.

At the core of every zombie survival plan rests the not too often talked about truth: we would kill to survive and not just kill but kill the walking visage of our own friends and families. Sure they are just the reanimated corpses of our once loved ones but that is exactly what I want to drive at. Are we so willing to view our fellow man as fodder for our baseball bat/shotguns and chainsaw arms? I dare say it would not take long for us to lose our humanity in such a world. 

Ruminating further on the idea of zombie survival and the mental energy put into forming such plans leads me to wonder why we are so eager to view our world in such a way.  My theory: because it is easy.

It is far easier to think of ourselves when the fecal matter hits the rotating blades positioned to move air forward. I would say that those zombie plans are the result of our own existential laziness. Transcend the idea for a moment that we are not a solitary being but a part of some greater whole. How easy is it now to imagine the shambling horde comprised of our dearest friends? When a part of the whole is sick we are not called to turn from it and think only of ourselves. It is not the easy path to reach out to a broken part of the whole to fix it. 

As members of the Body of Christ we are called to view our brothers and sisters as just that, our brothers and sisters, we should not be so eager to imagine the shambling horde of expendable meat sacks ripe for bludgeoning, as obstacles to our survival. I seem to think that the best hope for survival in a zombie scenario would be selflessness. Sure that may be the death of us all but at least we would go out as humans with dignity, not just another lifeless face in a horde of selfishness.  

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.



The Shadow Proves the Light

Humans like to feel good. Humans like to feel happy. Humans are silly creatures.

There is a difference between living joyfully and feeling happy. Joy springs from the well of the divine, from our hearts. Happiness is a reaction, and can be shaken. Joy is a cause. All too often are we torn from happiness by some great cataclysm of life but it is in our darkest times that we are never closer to the Light.

Darkness and despair is a tricky subject to tackle, but here in the Easter season we are to be joyful at the victory of Christ’s Sacrifice and what happens when that feeling fades? Ol’ Clive Staples had it right as he described the Christian life as a series of waves that rise and fall. We have an experience and it elevates us to an almost manic state of happiness and elation in the light, and then we and dipped back into shadow as we come down from that mountain, like Moses returning from meeting God only to come back to his people worshipping a cow. We all experience this of course. The funny thing is we tend to know that good times do not last forever but we tend to assume the bad will. It is our nature to yearn for those feelings of happiness and to see beauty in life again and so when the going gets rough we tend to chicken out.

I find myself thinking should we be just as grateful for dark times in our lives? They do provide opportunities for growth and to strengthen ourselves. The truth is the dark and hard times should be uplifting. The shadows cast on the wall only prove the source of light. The bad things that happen in this world can leave us broken and weak but all we have to remember is that it ends, that we can see it through. 

We have such a richness of faith, and the Sacraments that provide us with such grace to lift our hearts out of darkness but we must act. Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” gives us the image of a man standing between two images: A frozen lake and a snow filled woods on the darkest night of the year. I see every one of us in that image; standing between God’s endless forest and Hell’s Frozen Lake in the darkest hour, contemplating the journey ahead. 

Our Dark night of the Soul comes to an end eventually but it always seems like Winter in Narnia: “Always winter but never Christmas.” We can see each other through a harsh winter. We can Love our neighbor and our enemies. Like campers in the cold night in the wilderness we are drawn closer to the light of the fire. I believe we can stay joyful in the dark times and that is what makes the love of God shine in the world. We should be grateful for our winters because we are never closer to God or to each other. Eventually, somewhere in Narnia the snows start to melt, the sun breaks the clouds, and you might even hear sleigh bells in the distance. (Dibs on the Sword.)

Also give this song a listen: Even the Winter by Audrey Assad

Easter: It all leads up to this.

      I love the Easter Triduum. The symphonic rises and falls of the Liturgical Year reach its great Crescendo at the Vigil. Easter makes the entire year a meaningful journey. If the Annunciation was the moment the Universe held its breath, then Easter is when it exhaled. It is because of Easter we have the Church and Her Priests. We have poetry, art, music and all inspired things that profess the beauty of this world magnified and made ever more beautiful by the victory won by the Resurrection.  I love that moment, when we hear the Gloria for the first time in weeks at the Vigil, that hair-standing-on-end moment of loud happy praise of the Glory of God. The bells ring, the lights turn on, and we see the Kingdom of God revealed before us. It is as if we are opening our eyes to a new world of hope and victory. Easter gives everything we do purpose. Every action small and great done by the Church is given a deeper purpose and meaning through Death’s Defeat. Without Easter, Christmas would just be another birthday.

     Today is Holy Thursday. It is the beginning of our New Beginning. Today we remember the establishment of the Eucharist at the Last Supper: The climax of the Greatest Love Story in all of history. The moment we re-experience every time the priest places his hands over the altar; the moment when God, the Creator, chose to suffer for his Creation, a Creation that chose to commit deicide. God, who is Love, allowed his own creatures to thrust him so low so that He might lift us up out of the muck and filth. Our own propensity to brutalize and kill was used to facilitate our salvation. Today, we remember that God not only chose to do this once, but established a Sacrament through which this Sacrifice would be experienced again and again. This Sacrament, brings God to us, brings us into Him, and is the Source of all Love. It is the Love from which all other loves flow. When we receive this Love, we become the vessel through which this Love flows.

     We hear that we become living tabernacles. Consider that image. WE are the CONTAINER that is to carry Love into the world. In the most humble way I will say: we become the vessel which contains the Center and Source of Love, A vessel that All the Heavens and Earth bow to what is contained within. All Souls, great and small, Angels and Demons, Light and Shadow, must bend the knee to the Presence that is carried within us at that moment. We contain what the Angels and Saints love, and the Enemy and his demons FEAR: Love that shakes the foundations of the universe, Love that changes what love is. We carry Love that shattered Death’s finality, won us eternal life, and won us a victory to a battle that we fight today. We already have the outcome of the war. Love wins. Carry on.

I love Easter.

Scum and Villainy

DISCLAIMER: I actually like all of you. I do not think we are scum this the result of and for the purpose of introspection. END DISCLAIMER

Don't take this personally but I think we are all thieves and con artists.

See:

Note: You aren't this cool about it either...

 I am wholly convinced that we are committing highway robbery on a daily basis. Now I want you to put down the blunt instrument you are reaching for and stop looking up my address. Here is what I mean:

We are robbing God. It is not like we can help it but we are loved on a level that cannot be comprehended. This love is what we are called to imitate. (Christian? Christ-like?) Stop asking how we swindle God, I am getting there, in fact, here it is. God freely bestows his unending, unconditional grace and love upon us. What do we offer in return? How often do we haggle the buying price? Though, we are already bought and paid for. In His great Love for us did he not, in the ultimate act of humility, pay the greatest price for us? This is what we believe. Yet we still haggle and ask for a better deal, as if that were possible. Unconditional love, traded for a bit of conditional love here and there sounds good right? Were it you or I being offered that deal  I am certain we would have none of it! However, despite this He willingly takes the deal! Even as we are raking him over the coals he allows it because we are so loved! God takes our imperfect love and magnifies it. He returns our human love with so much more.

It is not only in this way that we find ways to cheat God. When we claim to follow God and fail to live up to what that means we are like thieving employees. We are the guys skimming off the top. We are cutting the corners here and there, testing what we can get away with. That always turns into more and more. We are reluctant to accept the difficulty of what is asked of us. Loving the world is hard. We want an easier way to do things so we always look for shortcuts, or the minimum acceptable amount of work. The thing is no one ever said this was going to be easy. Christ, the God-man Himself, said that it would actually be very very hard to follow in His footsteps. This is why it is ever more important that we learn to love each other. We carry each other through the hard times. Christian, non-Christian, it applies to all. We were asked to love like God to glorify God, BY LOVING OTHERS. That is never going to be easy.

Simply put God loves us, asks us to love like Him and put it to action. What is He getting in return from us?
Here we are in Lent and it is time to evaluate how we love. Can we ever be perfect imitations of Christ? no that is why we need eternity. Everyday presents the chance to make ourselves better than yesterday. In order to be efficient at this we must not just acknowledge our shortcomings but ACCEPT them. Embrace that truth "I am not perfect, i can always improve." Lent is for finding the corners we cut, and returning the 5 dollars we took from the register, and taking on the responsibility of being a true, loving, holy Catholic at a fair price. Otherwise we are nothing more than: (I'll let Alan Rickman take us home)

...an exceptional thief.