Unclogging the drain

There’s a lot of construction going on downtown and apparently somebody made a boo-boo by cutting through a power line. Our entire office building went dark (as did a large portion of downtown Lincoln) and while the power was off for only ten minutes we’re still waiting for our networks to get back online. So while I wait I’m going to try to get this stuff that’s been collecting in my head and on scraps of paper into some sort of coherent form. Forgive me my bullet points.

• It seems I’ve become aware of a lot of death lately. People I know, people I don’t know, people who I don’t know but are known by people I know. From infants to teenagers to adults. Every one of them someone’s child. Every one of them leaving behind a grieving parent or parents. Death is a part of life…the great “circle of life” and all that. I get it, believe me. As a Catholic I believe I’m more acutely aware of it than I ever was pre-Catholicism and I’m glad my children don’t think of death as some foreign icky thing to be avoided at all cost. I wish I had more time to explain this now but unfortunately I don’t.
• Back to the recent awareness with death. A good friend of mine lost a son recently. He was in his twenties. Stacye is a writer and once some time passed she did as I knew she’d do: she wrote about it. And then did so again. And again. Beautifully in fact, and with the grace I knew she possessed. Naturally she has cut way back on posting things on Facebook and writing in general, at least publically. She may be keeping a private journal of her own thoughts. I hope she is. Because if I’m right she needs to write…needs to bring order to her thoughts and the swirling whirling emotions that have surrounded her in this time.
• Confession: I really hate writing. I hate it for the very reason stated above. Because I find myself almost hourly finding a subject to write about, some of them even interesting, that I want to share with others. But also that I want to share with myself and in some small way bring an order to the massive globstopper in my brain that seems to clutter up the place. I have to write it down as a means of eliminating clutter, and if I can help someone along the way by means of an understanding than it’s a bonus, baby. By placing it in the trash, or at times the recycling bin, I am able to keep it from growing out of control and stinking up the place. But damn it I wish it wasn’t that way sometimes. I wish I could just take something in by means of one of the senses and immediately let it go. But instead it ferments too long and then I don’t get wine. I get grape juice. And really crappy grape juice at that that leaves nothing but a headache behind. So I hate writing.

Not being able to write didn't work out so well for this guy.

• And that is precisely why I love to write.
• About the same time as my friend’s loss the dad I know across the street from our house also lost a child, his 16-year old son. I’ve written a little about it here. A few weeks later he and I were standing on his curb talking. While we spoke he kept glancing into my front yard where my two youngest were running and screaming and playing. “They grow up so fast, Jeff,” he said. And then he told me three things: “Play with your kids. Take them out for ice cream. Remember all of it.” And then he hugged me and went inside his house.
• Here’s what’s been marinating since he told me these three things. I am a steward of my children. I think all parents know this on some level. My oldest is 16, but I’m making a note to ask my friend Stacye sometime how she feels about it. My guess is that it never stops. As a Christian when talk turns to the principles of stewardship we mention three: time, talent and treasure. Time is another word for prayer; Talent is our service towards the Church and our fellow man; and Treasure is our tithing or monetary contributions towards worthy causes. So for weeks now I’ve been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and write a clever blogpost about what this father said to me, kids, parenting and stewardship. The closest I came was
  • Time = Remember all of it.
  • Talent = Play with your kids.
  • Treasure = Take them out for ice cream.
• Or something like that. Either way, I thought his advice was pitch-perfect. But I couldn’t seem to unclog the drain and write it down.
• In both instances, Stacye and the dad across the street, I failed to reach out to them. I don’t know why I froze up when it counted, but I did. I told myself that I’d give them time to get through the first few days and week or so of numbness and being overwhelmed by it all, including all of the visitors and well-wishers. After that initial rush we are left alone, and that is when we need someone the most. So I waited. And then I began to feel I’d waited too long. Then I felt uncomfortable for having waited too long and I certainly couldn’t call or talk to them then, right? I cannot believe how poorly I did at this. Fail.
• A little over a week ago this email landed in one of my inboxes: “Special prayers are needed for Kirk N. and Family (wife Tania, sons Jordan, Ethan, & Gabriel) as they lost their unborn baby girl Thursday night. May God fill their hearts with strength & courage during this time of extreme sorrow.” Almost to the second I got a text from my wife to call her. She’d heard the news too.
• I didn’t meet Kirk until last fall when he initiated a men’s Bible Study/Prayer program at our parish called “That Man Is You”. We met for 13 weeks in the fall, took a break for Christmas/New Year’s, and just finished up the 13 weeks of the spring “semester.” We met every Wednesday morning from 6:30 to 7:30am (“we” being around 50 men) and it has been a real blessing to us men and our marriages, relationships, etc. Kirk is a quiet, unassuming man who once you get to know him…well, let’s just say the well runs deep within him. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t say much, but when he does you want to listen.
• Kirk’s wife Tania had just entered into the Catholic faith at the Easter Vigil under two weeks ago. A week ago on Wednesday morning as our prayer group was finishing up I asked Kirk how the Vigil had gone. He smiled broadly and said it was fantastic and that the boys (in grades 7, 4 and 1) were all so happy for their mom. And in just a few weeks they would be welcoming their new daughter. Life was wonderful.
• Except that twenty-four hours later it wasn’t so wonderful. Having noticed that she hadn’t felt the baby move that day Tania went to her doctor. There she received the worst news any of us could receive. For reasons unknown her little girl had died. Sunday morning at 3am she was induced and delivered little Sophia Gianna Therese. Our pastor was there to baptize Sophia and mourn with the family. Gianna was the confirmation name Tania had chosen when she became Catholic just a week before. St. Gianna Beretta Molla, pray for them.
• I found a short, beautiful poem when I was writing this.
• Yesterday morning I attended the funeral Mass for little Sophia. Her dad and her grandfather carried her tiny white coffin to the front of our church where it rested on the tiniest funeral bier I’ve seen. I went early, so as to sit in the pew alone with my thoughts. I prayed the Office for the Dead from the Liturgy of the Hours. The last lines of the opening hymn are

In him all our sorrow,
in him all our joy.

In him hope of glory,
in him all our love.

In him our redemption,
in him all our grace.

In him our salvation,
in him all our peace.

• I find Catholic funerals much more comforting, and I suppose that comes as no great surprise. I do because like a proper Catholic wedding, the main reason we are there is to honor God. God is the center and the emphasis of the event. Not the bride or the happy couple. And not the honored dead. Of course, they are prominent and we are there to honor them and their memory, but the focus remains on God and our faith, whether within the Sacrament of Marriage and the union of the man and woman, or in the hope of joining Christ in the Resurrection.
• The readings, music, and homily by Fr. Johnson were perfect. I was a mess through the first part of the Mass but I composed myself and focused on the liturgy. That was a tremendous help.
• And then the three brothers processed to the front with the offeratory gifts before the Liturgy of the Eucharist while the pianist sang a moving version of Ten Thousand Angels. Cue water faucets.
• For some reason I thought back to when I was a teenager and my thoughts turned to funerals. I remember thinking that for my own funeral I wanted something angst-ridden like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas played at my funeral. Thank God that didn’t happen.
• And not just because of the crappy funeral music. But because I’m still, you know…here.
• If I were to choose now, I’d lean more towards having a slower version of this song played at my funeral Mass. That and a little Mozart for good measure.
• Kirk said a few brief words at the end of his daughter’s funeral about how much the family had appreciated all the prayers to give them strength to get through this time. He mentioned a quote by Saint Faustina that he’d read in her diary (a book I highly recommend as one of the pillars of spiritual reading). I wish I’d captured it correctly, but paraphrasing her she’d said “Sometimes God creates children for his own purposes.” Kirk said it brought him great comfort to think that perhaps that was his daughter’s role.
• While I can’t recall  the exact quote above, I did find this one from an early Father of the Church, St. Gregory of Nyssa:

Well, your child may have departed from you, but he has gone to Christ the Lord. For you his eyes have been shut, but they are opened to the eternal light: he is gone from your table, but is now added to the table of angels. The plant was uprooted from here, but planted in paradise. From the earthly kingdom he was transferred to the heavenly kingdom. You see what was exchanged for what. Are you sad because you no longer see the beauty of the face of your child? But this happens, because you do not see the real beauty of the soul with which he rejoices in the heavenly feast. How beautiful indeed is the eye that sees God! How sweet indeed is the mouth that is adorned with divine melodies!

• All of these events remind us that life does go on. It really is a big, and whole, circle. We’re born, we live, we die. We recently spent forty days of preparation for Easter, experiencing the triumph of Palm Sunday, and the agonies of Christ’s Passion. We celebrated the victory of Easter and the Resurrection, and thus began fifty days of celebration. Forty days to prepare for a fifty day party. I’ll take it. But even during the party there will be reminders that the struggle on this earthly plane continue. Since Easter we celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday, children have received their First Holy Communion, prayer groups continue as do weddings and funerals. We have mourned and we have celebrated. We continue to be the best stewards we can be. We are the Church Militant on earth, waiting to ultimately join the Church Triumphant in Heaven.
• Last thoughts: After the funeral I went home to change for work. The house was empty except for our beagle puppy Buster, so I took him out to the backyard to enjoy some sunshine before I had to drive to work. I sat on the park bench in the little garden area (a work in progress) while he frolicked in the warm sunshine, rolling around in the grass and soaking in every ray of the sun possible.
• While I sat there a squirrel perched in one of the tall evergreen trees in our fence line chirked angrily at Buster. And I mean this squirrel went off. I laughed out loud because years ago when we still had our first dog, Fenway, we rented a house that had a large oak tree in the middle of the small back yard where he would trap squirrels. They were climb down to the lowest branch possible and chew him out for treeing them. I love that memory. Looks like I’ll be hearing more of it (the chirking) going forward.
• Sitting on the weatherworn bench I make a note to myself to replace the wood slats. These are getting a little weak having been exposed to the elements for a few years. Twelve small pieces of lumber should do the trick. And then I decide it’s time to build the wooden arbor trellis over the bench, too. And thus a summer project is born.
• Is there anything more wonderful than working with our hands? For my money there is nothing more satisfying than creating or working on something in this manner. It’s almost divine. Maybe it is.
• Before going inside I decide to join Buster for a roll around the grass and soak up some of the sun’s rays. Why should he have all the fun? So I do. Therapy.
• I hate writing. I love it so.

***

Plunger to the face image source.

Good Friday with The Man in Black

Two songs from the Man In Black, plus Psalm 88. The first song has been a favorite of mine for the last several years and never fails to make my eyes moisten. I thought of it today while praying Psalm 88 earlier today in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Psalm 88 is a lament in which the psalmist prays for rescue from the alienation of approaching death. Three times the psalmist issues a call to God and complains of the death that separates one from God. The tone is persistently grim. In both the psalm and the song above, a man is taking stock of his life and is not happy with what he’s made of the gift he was given. He has hurt people…himself…and God.

Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils;
my life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb:
I have reached the end of my strength,

like one alone among the dead;
like the slain lying in their graves;
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand.

Christ of St. John of the Cross, by Salvador Dali (1951)

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me:
I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends
and made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned, I cannot escape;
my eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
to you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grave
or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark
or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me, Lord, I call to you for help:
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?

Wretched, close to death from my youth,
I have borne your trials; I am numb.
Your fury has swept down upon me;
your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,
they assail me all together.
Friend and neighbor you have taken away:
my one companion is darkness.

The second Cash song is one I’ve sung myself many, many times. I’d not heard this version before today, and seeing the video transported me back to my grandmother’s living room in South Dakota where this and similar songs were always heard during Sunday visits (she was a devout Lutheran). She had 8-track recordings of The Statler Brothers, and hearing them sing backup on this song made that memory more vivid on this Good Friday.

I realize this is all pretty grim and dark. Today is, after all, the blackest day in history for a follower of Christ. But Sunday is coming…

***

For more information about Dali’s painting, visit here.

Balloons and Candles

Dressed in my parka, hands stuffed into my pockets I walk the path through the park a few blocks from my home. A third of the way through the park I veer off to my left, across the grassy field and towards the line of trees. Once through the other side there emerges in front of me a small grassy hill which I climb under the moonlight and stars. And once I reach the top I am able to look down into the ravine where I see the flickering light of candles, one hundred or more, held in silent, shaking hands. I stand there, an outsider, not sure whether I should go down. I do, descending into the bowl-shaped ravine and stand several feet outside the circle of people and notice for the first time that many are wearing blankets over their shoulders. It seems that few of them are adults, but mostly teenagers are present. Hearing no sounds I turn back to my left to continue up the other side of the bowl and towards what appeared to be a makeshift shrine of sorts, with many candles blazing on the ground in the grass. There are two balloons there, held in place by strings tethered to the ground.

I approach and recall that this is the slope that my kids and I will ride our sled down at high speeds when the heavy snows of winter come. Many times I’ve wiped out, the sounds of my grunts meshing with the laughter of my boys as they look down at my sprawled form from their perch at the summit.

There is no snow here today, the foot of snow we received two weeks ago having melted away in the warm, sunny days of the past two weeks. Now there is only brown grass. Brown grass. Balloons. And candles. There is one other shape that I can now begin to see due to the fragile light of the small candles. An easel stands here, holding a large black and white photo of a smiling face. I recognize the face of my neighbor’s sixteen-year-old son.

It is the face of a boy who took his own life a few days ago.

I can’t stand here long, because in looking at him I see my own son, also sixteen, and I begin to sob. Standing here I remember the loud, innocent laughter and shouting as both boys played together when they were eight years old. We had just moved in across the street and they were playing with this boy’s older brother. All three were laughing the laughs of lazy childhood summer days.

That was the last summer our kids played together. Our sons moved in different circles socially, each with their own friends in this larger city. But I watched the comings and goings of this child as he grew into a teenager. Troubled, it seems, and carrying the weight of his own demons who finally drove him to make one last and desperate act.

I take a last look at the smiling face of my neighbor’s dead son and walk again to the bottom of the bowl, silently I pass the teenagers, friends and fellow students of the boy, and walk back up to the top on the other side. And here I stand, silently looking down, my hands in my pockets, praying for them all.

Dear God, let his pain be gone and his soul at peace. In your divine mercy, I ask for forgiveness for this child of yours who was so confused and burdened by the pressures of this life that he felt there was no way he could continue.

Lord, hold his family in your arms and lift them up during their time of need.

Please support his dad, a good man, grieving his son far too soon.

Lift up his brother, who lost his mom a few years ago and now his brother. Be his strength and help him to be strong.

Dear God I pray for his grandmother, in whose house they all live. She’s seen so much pain come to her son and his family. Please help her in this time of need and going forward.

I begin to softly pray a rosary beneath the moon but am interrupted as a group of the kids place themselves by the boy’s photo and begin to talk. They want to say a few words about him and invite others to do the same. I listen as these kids go through the motions of their grieving and witness their struggle to make sense of the senseless.

Jesus, lift up and guide these children here below me. Sad, confused and hurting. Help them to see that life is not this dark, and that here beneath the night sky there is a moon reflecting but a small piece of that light. Let them know that there will be a sunrise tomorrow and the sun shall once again warm their faces if they turn towards the light.

Lord let them turn to your light, and be warmed by your loving embrace.

My prayer ends and I turn to begin the walk back towards the tree line, into the park, and towards home. The cars that lined our small street all day to bring words of comfort and hot dishes of food are now gone. Inside is a family immersed in their grief. As I walk into my driveway I resolve to pay my respects tomorrow and in the days to come.

Lord, let me reflect your light somehow and warm their faces. Make me your instrument.

Eternal rest, grant unto him O Lord
and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May he rest in peace. Amen.

A Memoir of Love and Loss: Wish You Were Here

My inspiration to begin writing a blog is a woman I first encountered a decade ago on the interwebs. When I first read Amy Welborn at In Between Naps two things struck me. First, she was prolific! My God that woman wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I don’t know how she found the time. But more than that she was wonderful. To write that much and keep it interesting, entertaining and thought-provoking? I didn’t think it was possible, but there it was right in front of me each day, or several times a day. Remember, this was over ten years ago. Blogs were still a relatively new thing for most of America and only beginning to come into their own. I enjoyed reading Amy and she became a friendly voice to sit with each morning over coffee when I’d read her during a morning break in my day. Because of her I discovered more voices such as Jeff Miller over at The Curt Jester, and Elizabeth Scalia aka The Anchoress. I still read both regularly and you can find them on my blog roll to the right. She was the inspiration for what a few of us who own Catholic blogs refer to as the Welborn Protocol when it comes to blog comments. I admit I’ve never had to enact it as I don’t garner too many comments. But by golly if I ever grow big enough I will.

About a year or so after I started reading Amy at IBN she started a new blog named Open Book. This is where I thought Amy really grew as did her audience. At IBN I witnessed the care and interaction that occurred between Amy and her readers in the comboxes. At Open Book it progressed even more. Amy was having a conversation with us instead of just talking at us. Her family was growing and she continued to author many Catholic books for her publisher Our Sunday Visitor Press.

In 2007 she made the decision to change again and began to blog at Charlotte Was Both. While her first two blogs were the reason I decided to begin my first blog over at Blogger, it was CWB that cemented my desire to begin anew at WordPress. Her husband, Michael Dubruiel was himself a prolific author and blogger. I found myself reading him as well. While I was writing a series of forty 1-2 page bulletin inserts on the Mass I used one of his books as a resource. Michael and I exchanged a few emails during this time as I had a few questions for him. He was more than courteous and helpful.

Three years ago today Michael died. His obituary is here. It was sudden, unexpected, and occurred while he was exercising at his gym. Within seconds on that fateful morning he was gone at the age of 50. Amy had recently left Charlotte Was Both to begin writing for a brief time at BeliefNet. Her pieces about Michael’s death are archived here. From her example I learned many things and cried many times along the way. I’d never met either of them, but I felt as if I knew them personally. Thus is the power of the internet and our ability to connect in a shared humanity.

Next week Amy’s latest, and perhaps most personal book will be released. It is a book I’ve had on my wish list for months when I first learned about it late last summer. Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope is a story about Amy’s trip to Sicily with three of her children, taken five months after Michael’s death.

Her journey through city and countryside, small town and ancient ruins, opens unexpected doors of memory and reflection, a pilgrimage of the heart and an exploration of the soul. It is an observant and wry memoir and travelogue, intensely personal yet speaking to universal experiences of love and loss.

Along the narrow roads and hairpin turns, the narrative reveals the beauty of the ordinary and the commonplace and asks stark questions about how we fill the empty places that a loved one leaves behind. It is a meditation on the possibility of faith, one that is unflinching, uncompromising, and altogether unsentimental when confronted by the ultimate test of belief. This book is not only a well-told memoir, but a testimony to the truth that love is stronger than death.

There is a Kindle version as well so I haven’t decided the form in which I’ll purchase this book. I’m in between books right now but have long planned to read Amy’s when released. In the interim I’m re-reading Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. By next week I’ll be reading along with Amy and her children and visiting with old friends and bittersweet memories.

A Profile in Perspective: Garvan Byrne

I know I tend to talk a lot about keeping things in perspective and some may tire of it. Before you do get weary of the subject however, I’d like to introduce you to Garvan Byrne. A boy who at 11 was more of a man than I am at four times that age. He is one of the best definitions of faith I’ve ever seen.

Below is the eight minute edited version. It’s worth your while to watch the whole interview: Part One, Part Two and Part Three. I enjoy watching him draw and talk about his love of art, in particular Snoopy, in Part Three.

The Flight from Failure to Redemption

This morning at The Catholic Thing I read a piece by Ashley McGuire about writing that really struck home. She writes:

As a little girl, I found it infinitely frustrating that I could not fly. Sure, people can fly in planes, but we can’t fly. It took me a couple of decades to gradually discover that, in fact, humans can fly. Writing is flying. Flying looks like this: keyboard before you, wrist arched from the weight of an eager index finger hovering above a letter. Any letter. Lower and click. And you’re off!

Suddenly you are restrained by nothing. The stars are letters and punctuation. They collide into fantastic supernovas. Your imagination has an engine. Eventually you are pulled back in as everything comes together on a page, leaving ink smudges on your fingertips or crisp black lines on a bright screen. The sweet assurance that your flight was not a dream.

McGuire’s right, and in those moments when the flightpath is clear there are few things as exhilarating as the transfer of lucid thought to paper or screen. Ah, sweet lucidity.

I’ve been in a rut lately when it comes to writing. Last week it seemed my plane would never come out of the clouds. This week I couldn’t coax the plane away from the gate let alone taxi down the runway. This isn’t to say I’ve tried. I’ve written more than one rant or screed but have stopped halfway through them all. I was unable to keep on any discernable path and they all just meandered through the narrative. And what was that narrative? The anger and sadness that is the state of things at Penn State. When I first heard about the grand jury report on ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike In The Morning on my drive to work last week I could hardly believe it. I felt sick to my stomach. So naturally during a slow part of my morning I read the actual grand jury report. And then I walked outside to a bench at the corner of 13th & O Streets and sat in the autumn morning sun to catch my breath, trying not to throw up. Like many people I suppose I then read too much…too many commentaries and articles and opinion pieces. I tried to write my own. I failed, because my indignant and righteous anger kept my shaking hands from conveying any coherency at all to my keyboard.

The targets of my disgust were of course the alleged perpetrator of these crimes, as well as those who covered for him including the head football coach himself. I tried to write about assigning blame to anything I could: the worship of football, the promotion of deviance in our culture, and on and on.

And then there was of course my main target: Mike McQueary. I still have to pause while typing to ensure I stop myself from going off into the narrative weeds once more. Instead of pouring all of that bile onto the screen I am choosing another path.

I know how the Penn State community as a whole feels. Not those who covered this up. Not the few hundred morons who were rioting when Joe Paterno was fired or chanting his name in blind allegiance at the PSU/Nebraska football game a few days later. I’m talking about the over 44,000 current students and over 500,000 alumni and supporters of that university. I know how they feel because I, and a billion other Catholics, lived through it a decade ago. We are still living through it.

We know what it’s like to have the name of the institution to which you belong dragged through the mud because of the actions of horrible men living a double life. We know what it’s like to be further horrified as the scope of the coverup by other men in a position to put a stop to the crimes are exposed. We know what it’s like to dread another day’s newspaper, or the cable news, or the internet, as the wound continues to grow and to bleed. We know what it is to be “guilty by association” even though we had nothing whatsoever to do with the crimes.

It is known to Catholics as The Long Lent of 2002. It has taken a decade to even begin to heal. In time, Penn State will heal as well, but there is still a lot of poison that needs to be expunged from their wound.

We know what it is to continue to be ridiculed and scorned by those with an agenda. To be the butt of jokes. Penn State will learn this as well. It will not be fair. But it will still happen. It does not change who you are as a person. It does not define you or your institution.

There are similarities. Last week we learned of university officials who covered for Sandusky, and we saw students gather around the statue of Paterno and chant and riot. A decade ago, for every bishop who engaged in covering their backsides there were parishes who gathered around Fr. Soandso when his disgusting crimes were uncovered and saying they would stand by him through his unwarranted persecution.

To those of us who will be so quick to condemn an entire university or group of people, whether Catholics or Penn State, I suggest you say to yourself what I finally said to myself a few days ago: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

When I began to realize that my hatred for a man I’d never met and a man I only knew through a damning grand jury report was burning so white hot that I was losing sleep, that phrase came to me. For while I’d desperately love to believe that had I stumbled onto the scene in the locker room showers that McQueary did I would have become Instant Chuck Norris and dispensed justice, I can’t honestly say that because I wasn’t the one who did. It’s too easy today to be a combox warrior on the internet, thump our chests with braggadocio and SHOUT IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS WHAT WE’D HAVE DONE. But we don’t know. Because it wasn’t us. People do weird things in shocking situations. When an evil is exposed involving someone we don’t know, everybody is so sure that they are a hero who would have beaten the living hell out of the accused and dragged his sorry ass to the local police station. I hope I would have.

In the blogosphere comboxes we are all Dirty Harry. Sadly, history has shown again and again that what the combox warriors say they’d do and the reality of what they do are two different things.

• After sleeping with and impregnating Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, David ordered his commanding officer to put Uriah in the front of the battle and have the soldiers draw back from him so that he would be killed. The commander did nothing. He and David failed.
• When he cried out that he would never deny his Lord, and yet denied him three times before the dawn, Peter failed.

There are too many to list, not all of them biblical of course. German citizens living in towns near death camps. The Chinese populace who walked by the crumpled form of a two-year-old little girl who’d been struck not once, but twice, by passing cars before dying at the hospital. We all fail every day on a massive scale.

Yet redemption can and does come despite all the shame and failure. David and Peter both redeemed themselves mightily. Despite the sneering and the dismissals by its critics the Catholic Church is doing the same. I’m choosing to pray that Mike McQueary, and others at Penn State, somehow do so as well.

The Fall was the result of a simple formula: Pride, disobedience, death. That formula is still at work today.

For those of us blindsided by the events within the Catholic Church, we reminded ourselves that our faith is in Christ Jesus, not in His human messengers, sinners all. When our attention is diverted from the message to the messenger, the object of our faith is obscured and a whirlwind of emotions threatens to upend the foundation of hope we have in Him who saves.

Through it all my foundation never changed because He does not change. I learned long ago to not put my blind trust in men or confidence in man’s princes. I won’t pretend to know who or what the half-million PSU member family puts their trust. It does appear that for too long they put it in men, and in particular one man. A football coach.

“There but for the grace of God, go I.”

The Longing of Saints

I wanted to write something about today being All Saints Day but was stymied. Drawing a blank last night and this morning during a break at work it wasn’t until I went to noon Mass at St. Mary’s to be present at the Communion of Saints that an outline came into focus.

During the Mass readings I hear the responsorial psalm from Psalm 24. We repeat the response four times: Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

Soon after I hear today’s Gospel reading. It is from Matthew, the famous teaching by Jesus known at The Beatitudes in which he teaches:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”

Later, I walk forward, hands folded at my chest. Fr. Dietrich holds the host before me saying “The body of Christ.”

“Amen,” I respond and tilt back my head to receive the source and summit of my faith on my tongue. Making the sign of the cross I walk back to my pew to kneel while the host dissolves on my tongue. I pray the Amina Christi, a prayer from the 14th century:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within your wounds hide me.
Permit me not to be separated from you.
From the wicked foe, defend me.
At the hour of my death, call me
and bid me come to you
That with your saints I may praise you
For ever and ever. Amen.

I repeat a line: That with your saints I may praise you. I thought of how we are all called to be saints. Each and every one of us, called to live the best lives we can. Called to be merciful. To be clean of heart. To be peacemakers. To be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Called to rejoice when faced with such persecution for a great reward in Heaven. One of mine will surely be a reunion with my unborn son who is waiting for me.

Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

Adam Udai

These thoughts stayed with me as I enjoyed a warm, sunny walk back to my office under a clear, blue sky. While settling back to my desk with my lunch I read a headline about remembering a terrorist attack on an ancient church in Baghdad  a year ago. This is a church founded by St. Thomas (the doubting apostle) prior to his journeying into India. Once thriving and responsible for so much missionary good in the region and the world, it is yet another community of Christians facing extinction in their ancient homeland, much like the Copts in Egypt.

On October 31, 2010 Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked Our Lady of Deliverance Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad during a Sunday evening church service. The terrorists shot at parishioners and set fire to their explosives, ultimately killing 58 parishioners, including two priests. The youngest victim was Adam Udai, aged 3, who pleaded with one of the terrorists to “please stop” and cried out “Enough!” before the terrorists put a gun to his head and murdered him.

Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

This morning in the Office of Readings for today, I had read Saint Bernard’s words: “The saints want us to be with them, and we are indifferent. The souls of the just await us, and we ignore them . . . we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. . .  We should not only want to be with the saints, we should also hope to possess their happiness.”

These words come back to me while I read the accounts of little Adam’s pleas and the ordeal that I’m ashamed to admit I’d forgotten about. I do grow indifferent. I do ignore the examples set by those who came before me or who are among us still. I can wallow too much in the trials and tribulations of today and forget to keep my eyes on what lies beyond this world. I profusely mourned the loss of our son Nathan when it happened almost a decade ago, going through the classic grieving process. Especially anger. I was angry for my loss as much if not more than for his. His pain was over while mine continued. I read the stories of children like Adam and become angry. But we are not called to be angry. For it we are, where does it end? When you have examples of those who gave up their lives for their faith (History is full of them. There were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than the previous nineteen combined.) you learn to draw strength from their example. I strive to possess their happiness. They are members of the Church Triumphant. I am still a member of the Church Militant. The Ecclesia Militans. My, and our, struggle continues. We bear witness like the brave Christians of Iraq do in the video I’ve attached at the end.

While writing this piece I peek ahead and see that during Vespers tonight will be read this prayer and intercession: “You gave the martyrs the strength to bear witness even if it meant shedding their blood: make Christians faithful witnesses to your Son. – Lord, bring us salvation through the intercession of the saints.”

Lord, we are the people that longs to see your face.

And you Christians of Iraq, when sadness fills your soul and you do not see a future, look upwards, to the God of Heaven and Earth, and remember well who you are and let the world know!

We witness with our lives, so that the world can see what is happening to us, so that those who have plugged their ears and those who have shut their mouths will speak about who we are. We are the Christians of Iraq!

Violations Against Sensibility

So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?”– Theoden, King of Rohan. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Indeed. What are we to do in the face of such blind hatred? The kind of hatred that results in the senseless and vicious murder of a Jewish family? As horrific as the crime is, almost as awful is the slanted reporting in our own media.

A cousin of hatred is ignorance. This is another trait that I would love to see wane in the land. But as long as we remain as divided along partisan lines as we are I see no end in sight. If the past four weeks should have proved anything to us it’s that rational thinking is not a trait of the hyper-partisan. How else can one rationally reason with people who scream that democracy was hijacked while they run away and essentially “break” the representative democratic model that has worked for over 200 years? Up is down and black is white in their twisted realm of logic. And all while threatening the lives of their opponents, their families and businesses who support them. The “New Tone of Civility” indeed.

Then there are people like Anne Moser who are attempting to frame the loss of their public union’s collective bargaining privileges as somehow equivalent to a human rights violation:

“The frustration from the defeat will be channeled elsewhere. Wiping tears from beneath her dark rimmed glasses, Anne Moser, 47, who works for University of Wisconsin Madison’s science-based Water Library, said, ‘People know that violence doesn’t get you anywhere. The attack the Republicans have made is violent and a violation of human rights. It is an attack on the middle class. We teach our children to follow rules and to sit and the table and work it out, but that certainly hasn’t happened here.’ And so she and her allies may seek there revenge elsewhere: in a court of law or, most probably, in a polling booth.”

The boldface emphasis is mine.

The incredible stupidity of that statement is breathtaking on its surface. Comparisons of the governor to Hitler, of Wisconsin to Egypt, and on and on only served to show the complete idiocy of these people to the world. To her and those like her that are cluelessly and with the utmost hyperbole shedding crocodile tears over their basic human rights being stolen I would like to make a few introductions.

Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet. He is the Afro-Cuban physician and democracy leader who has been in the Castros’ dungeons for a very long time. His models are Gandhi and Martin Luther King. George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom which he was unable to show up to accept.

Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina. He is a Cuban prisoner of conscience, near death on a hunger strike. If he had been a hunger-striking prisoner in apartheid South Africa, he would have been on the cover of every magazine in the Western world. But no one — trust me, no one — cares about Cuba. Except to the extent we want to make a little money, go sip our mojitos, indulge in underage prostitution . . .

Said Musa

Said Mufa. Musa was one of about 25 Christians arrested on May 31, 2010, after a May 27 Noorin TV program showed video of a worship service held by indigenous Afghan Christians; he was arrested as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy. He converted to Christianity eight years ago, is the father of six young children, had a leg amputated after he stepped on a landmine while serving in the Afghan Army, and now has a prosthetic leg. His oldest child is eight and one is disabled (she cannot speak). He worked for the Red Cross/Red Crescent as an adviser to other amputees.

He was forced to appear before a judge without any legal counsel and without knowledge of the charges against him. “Nobody [wanted to be my] defender before the court. When I said ‘I am a Christian man,’ he [a potential lawyer] immediately spat on me and abused me and mocked me. . . . I am alone between 400 [people with] terrible values in the jail, like a sheep.” He has been beaten, mocked, and subjected to sleep deprivation and sexual abuse while in prison. No Afghan lawyer will defend him and authorities denied him access to a foreign lawyer.

Any and every human being who is imprisoned, abused, or tortured for the free and peaceful expression of their faith deserves our support, but Musa is also a remarkable person and Christian. In a letter smuggled to the West, he says, “The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, they did sexual things with me, beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head.”

He added a thing much more important to him, that they “mocked me ‘he’s Jesus Christ,’ spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. . . . Please, please, for the sake of Lord Jesus Christ help me.” (View the full letter here)

Mufa, thankfully, was spared execution and released on Feb. 24.

The Fogel Family of Itamar. ***WARNING***: this link contains extremely graphic photographs of the crime. The surviving family members requested that the photos be released in order to shed light on the brutality of this horrific hate crime against humanity. There is a video as well that I will not watch. The pictures were enough.

And then, when the news of the crimes hit their streets, the bastards celebrated by handing out candy.

Shall I go on, Ms. Moser? I could chronicle for you scores and hundreds of sex trafficking victims. Or the increase in the murder rate of Coptic Christians, priests, nuns and schoolchildren in the Middle East and around the world. Sadly, I could.

Moron.

Honestly I feel as if the left has collectively lost its mind. But of course it’s not just those on the left. For though the spotlight is brightly shining on the stupidity and moral vacuousness that is the left at the moment, the cockroaches on the far right remain ever vigilant as well. The pendulum will swing, and they will scurry out of the darkness as well.

Which brings me back to Theoden’s question: what does one do when faced with such hate and evil?

Last night I found myself praying over this question as the sheer weight of all of this settled onto my shoulders. That was mistake number one on my part: taking on a burden that is not mine to carry. Nevertheless it was there and I experienced the two common reactions: anger and despair.

Anger and Despair
I have had to ban myself for a month from commenting or saying anything related to unions to friends online because I’m at the point where I just want to scatter buckshot wildly in all directions, casualties be damned. The people who cannot see what is happening in Wisconsin and elsewhere due to their blind loyalties to these union thugs are beyond hope to me. At best they are blindly loyal; at worst they are dishonest liars.

Jesus is often referred to as a “man of sorrows”. There are times when I find myself too engrossed in the news and can begin to identify with Him. On a much smaller scale, mind you, but enough to get a feel for it. Do I wish I could shut off my empathy switch and my humanity at times? Yes, but ultimately no. To shut that part of me off would render me on par with those who broke into that sleepy Jewish household at night and slit the throats of a three-month old baby girl and her father, and stab in the heart a 3-year old and 11-year old before brutalizing the mother. No…painful as it can be I’ll keep my empathy thank you very much.

I found myself on my couch last night alternating between clenched fists of righteous anger and sobbing with eyes stung by tears. “How do you do it Lord?” I asked. “How do you get through endless scenes like this day after day for centuries? It’s all too much.”

I wasn’t looking for an audible reply but decided to calm myself before bed with the tools He had given me through the Church. Because I could not afford to let the sun go down on my anger. I did not want “tears to drench my bed” (Psalm 6:6). No, before I went to bed I knew I had to find some sort of solace.

For Lent I am making a concerted effort to pray a rosary each day. Usually I pray it myself but last night I listened to the version of the Glorious mysteries by Vinny Flynn and Still Waters. I had purchased the CDs some years ago and when I finally bought an iTouch I added them to my playlist. They are probably the most listened to tracks I have.

Just before shutting off the light, I prayed the Office of the Dead.

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat eis.

I gave up my anger. I threw away despair. I decided to fight.

Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spíritum rectum ínnova in viscéribus meis. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Taking my cue from Tolkien I remembered another scene from the LOTR trilogy. It’s one of my favorites. Hope is kindled.

I choose Hope.

To be continued in time…

Mother Standing

Stabat Mater (“Mother Standing”). On this day in which we remember Our Lady of Sorrows we also remember and honor the unique suffering, pain and strength of mothers everywhere.

Bill Donaghy wrote an excellent reflection on Catholic Exchange this morning.

I think about the many images taken from recent news stories, where the young are slain through meaningless acts of violence, or natural disasters strike, taking little ones away. I think of the strength of mothers. Strong for their families, for their young ones. But in this awful place of suffering, what do we do? When tragedy falls upon us, like structures of steel and stone, and we feel we cannot bear them, what is our position?

So often we ask the question “Where was God?” Where was He in my pain? Why did it come to me at all, or to those innocent little ones? In the gap left by that question of questions, “Where was God?”… a Mother stands. At the contradicting crossroads, where life and death meet, in the tension of that suffering that wants us to give up or give in, to despair or to hope, a Mother stands.

A Zenit article on the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady.

A beautiful website containing the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows as well as gorgeous imagery is here. It includes the Latin to English translations of the Stabat Mater which will help those who don’t speak Latin understand what’s being sung in the video below.

There are many versions of Stabat Mater to choose from on YouTube. I chose Palestrina’s.

The Countersign

Today was one of those days where every bit of news I read seemed to be bad and sad. I read of the slaughter of hundreds of Christians in the Nigerian village of Jos by Muslim fanatics, who macheted and shot and burned people fleeing in the night, many of them aged 0 to teenagers. Of predictions that this will be an even bloodier century than the last was by way of martyrs whose only “crime” is being a follower of Christ. And then I read of Father Rick Machette.

I would offer excerpts of this article, or pull portions of it out in order to entice you to read it, but honestly it’s so overwhelming I don’t even know where to begin. This long and in depth article “Love Among The Ruins” about Fr. Machette and his life in Haiti, both before and after the earthquake that has devastated that land, is not for the faint of heart. It is horrible to read in places and if you click the link to view the photos even moreso. But if you look hard you will also find grace. It’s there, as it always is, amongst the cracks quietly shining it’s light in the darkness. As Fr. Rick writes, he strives to “repair the damage done…to make grace present, concretely, in our world.” He calls it the “countersign” to all the evil that seems to engulf this poorest of countries.

You have to look hard, and be willing to look past the evil and conditions so unspeakably foul that they are incomprehensible to us in America. But if you are willing to step outside yourself and do things you had thought yourself incapable of doing, you, too, will find grace in the cracks. It’s there. Don’t look away.

Fr. Rick had also just written a book Haiti: The God of Tough Places, the Lord of Burnt Men that is available at Amazon.com.

This morning I read a quote by Viktor Frankl that was never more true for me than today.

“The last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Fr. Machette, and many like him, live that every day. So can I.