On this memorial feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, doctor of prayer, it seemed appropriate to share a podcast my friend, Dr. Mario Sacasa, and I did on prayer. Dr. Mario’s podcasts are a treasury of wisdom, and I highly recommend them to all interested in the ways faith and reality intersect in hope: https://faithandmarriage.org/alwayshope/
He is a long time friend, colleague and inspiration to me and my family!
For my birthday, my daughter Maria, along with Mashley’s lead singer Ashley, did a cover of a song I have asked them for four years to record — Lenka’s Trouble is a Friend. I am a huge Lenka fan. Maria presented it to me on Sunday after I got back in town from a work trip. I was overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude.
I know they get lots of suggestions for songs to cover, so I have refrained from proliferating requests, but somehow in my imagination I always heard them covering this song. Using a super creative setting for the song, Maria recorded the guitar part earlier, loaded it into Ashley’s phone so she could sing with it and then she edited it all later. It took tons of time to practice, plan, record and edit. A labor of love!
The haunting words and minor key, the play on dark and light, the low percussive hum of the road noise, the harmonies, the rosary cross swinging, the falling phone and the final “slurp” all make it a supremely wonderful work of art for a man who loves, above all else, the beauty of the “broken form.”
Thank you my dear daughter and dear Ashley, women beautiful inside and out.
TØP accepting Grammy in 2017 https://www.mic.com/articles/167448/heres-why-twenty-one-pilots-stripped-to-their-underwear-for-their-grammys-acceptance-speech
This is a really odd post for St Maximilian’s feast day. No obvious link. But it’s what I wrote. And it’s the last piece I have to post for a while as the semester ramps up!
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When I recently watched the new music video for Twenty One Pilots’ song, The Hype, and I teared up.
Not exactly sure why I did, or why I am even telling you this, but here’s what I thought later — in fact, these thoughts came to me after I spent part of an afternoon with my daughter Maria and her friends discussing TØP lyrics. It was sublime. No, those young women are sublime.
The song and the video are about Tyler & Josh’s fierce struggle to stay grounded, as over the last 10 years they have skyrocketed to international fame. Fame brings with it myriad temptations to delusions of grandeur or to being crushed beneath the critics. In this song, they refuse to buy into the “hype” — good or bad — around them. But it’s not easy, as Tyler sings:
Sometimes I feel cold, even paralyzed
My interior world needs to sanitize
The song and the video take us down into Tyler’s interior world (heart and home), where he hopes to sanitize any contamination. Tyler, who finds solace in music and lyric-writing, takes us through a wild allegorical re-telling of the band’s rapid rise to fame (through the roof!), violent fall, purging, and the final recovery of firm footing where they began: in the humility of home with family and friends. With this return to the true center, a broken and scattered interior world is restored to right-order.
So it seems to me.
Why did this all move me? Maybe because I have such a deep reverence for people who achieve popularity and yet remain unfazed (or uncontaminated) by it. Who keep their priorities in order, and don’t sell their souls to gain the world. These also use their public status (in ecclesial or secular culture) to benefit and bring joy and good to others, not principally to feed their wallets or egos. I have seen how popularity can subtly (and not so subtly) change the mindset and motivations of good people, destroy their core relationships and quickly poison the good being done.
It’s also why Jesus hammered on His disciples about power, influence, talents, gifts being given for service. Along those lines, a mentor once said to me, “Whenever people praise anything you do, think immediately to yourself: How much God must love them to give me these gifts. Because your gifts aren’t about you. And when they criticize you, thank them for doing you a great service: keeping you honest.”
And friendship. Friends keep it real and are an anchor of life.
Oh the greatness of our crucified God-Hero, Jesus Christ, who redeemed power and influence by His cross, who faced criticism with courage and humility. He used His popularity with people and His rejection by the people as opportunities to serve, to lift us up, and to bring us back to the Father’s house.
TØP offers a message of depth and hope to an increasingly homeless and orphaned culture. I’m grateful they’ve chosen to not believe the hype. Which is why Tyler announced this summer they will be taking time off from touring so he and his wife can start a family.
A journal entry from a month ago:
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About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star. — Annie Dillard
I have to say that, for me, one of the bitterest curses of the smartphone is its power to distract from the beauty, surprises and annoyances of the real world. As we look down at our glowing screens, mediating a self-selected (or ad driven) reality, will miss the unruly, unpredictable epiphanies of earth, sea, sky or faces around us. And as we are repeatedly immersed in streaming Xfinity megabits per second, our minds dull, become impatient to the unhurried and un-swiped pace of life.
I try hard not to hate on smartphones. They offer immense advantages, obviously, and they are a staple of life now. My problems with them are my problems, and I know some virtuous users. But it becomes harder and harder for me to not grieve their negative effects. It’s been almost two years since I re-adopted a flip phone, after I realized in the smartphone I had met my match. I had been seduced by the allure of voice-to-text, seized by that low buzz itch to check news alerts, social media updates, search articles, look something up, listen to YouTube or Spotify — oh, and back to more voice-to-text.
I disliked who I had become. But there I was. Though I’d won the rationalization battle, I’d lost too much of my inner freedom.
That is, until the day my 92 year old God-inhabited mom, who had been trying to tell me something while I was screen-gazing, accosted me in a rare moment of impatience: “I’m glad I was born when I was. We didn’t have those things. We talked.”
I looked up and woke up.
A few flip-phone beneficial side-effects: My five senses reawakened to the world around me. My geographical imagination (without a phone GPS) rekindled and I rediscovered the wonder of getting lost and asking for directions. My attention span refocused and expanded. I’ve been reminded of the arduousness of meaningful communication. I’ve gloried more readily in fleeting moments that escape recording, and labor to have them inhabit my soul.
I really believe a new “Christian distinctive” should look something like this: We are the new radicals noted for strolling on a beach, sitting on a porch, walking in a mall, swinging in a park, waiting at a bus stop, standing in line at a checkout, exercising on a treadmill, eating in a restaurant, sitting alone at home, or (gasp!) driving a car … without once looking at our phone.
Yes, we are the Masters, and these are our phone-servants.
Tertullian wrote in the third century, “See, [the pagans say of Christians], how they love one another…” Maybe a new Tertullian will write in 20 years of Christians:
The pagans marvel about us, saying, “See how they love one another! At extreme length they dwell together without a device in hand or in ear. They live in the world with such serenity and attentiveness, even in silence and boredom. Have they gone mad?”
And among our number, maybe a new St. Francis can again arise, per Pope Francis’ vision:
Just as happens when we fall in love with someone, whenever St. Francis would gaze at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals, he burst into song, drawing all other creatures into his praise. He communed with all creation, even preaching to the flowers, inviting them to praise the Lord, just as if they were endowed with reason.
His response to the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that exists. His disciple Saint Bonaventure tells us that, “from a reflection on the primary source of all things, filled with even more abundant piety, he would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’”.
Such a conviction cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for it affects the choices which determine our behaviour. If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.
By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.
Stop, and try to see a Mockingbird dive…
“Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
I know I would.
I live vicariously through my wife, my daughters who direct, compose, play and sing music. Music lifts, stabs, frightens, inspires, motivates, expands, assaults, bewilders, delights, irritates me.
Secular and sacred music. I love them both, though I refuse to easily distinguish them into hardened categories. I agree wholeheartedly with Kenneth Himes’ assertion, “the sacred is the sacramental form of the secular, i.e., the sacred is the secular in its full depth.”
In the last few months I have tried to go nearly every weekend, in the evening, to Neutral Ground Coffee House in New Orleans. It’s eccentric, where local, national and sometimes international musicians perform music only a few feet away from you. Jazz, rock, blues, bluegrass, indie, country, to name a few of the genres. Their self-description:
Somewhere between the good and the bad, with a pocket full of good music and strange folks, lies the Neutral Ground in all its heavenly glory.
I get my hot drink and sit for an hour or two or three. Sometimes till midnight, sometimes one of my children joins me. For whatever reason, I find there I can pray as in few other places.
Pop Christian music rarely feeds my spirit, but secular music — with depth — frequently does. Always has, in a visceral way. In the music born of the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way suffer, I encounter Christ.
I beg God every morning to raise up exceptional secular musical artists, who find in their Catholic worldview worthy inspiration.
My daughters and I went to the Twenty One Pilots concert in New Orleans Wednesday night.
I will write about it soon, but the prayer I discovered in that concert is still with me now.
Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone — Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
Back around the year 2000, I went to a lecture series by Anglican biblical scholar, Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey. It was on the parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. During the second lecture, he discussed Jesus’ radical teachings on riches, poverty and generosity to the poor by reflecting on 14:12-13:
[Jesus] said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”
During his reflections, I wrote down copious notes, and later mixed them with my own insights that his talks inspired. This is an excerpt from my journal:
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As he was speaking about this text from Luke, Dr. Bailey incidentally mentioned, “I was talking to a Catholic priest in Lebanon who said, ‘You know, Ken, you can talk to people about how faith impacts politics or macro-economics, and they may get hot under the collar. But you can still be on speaking terms later. But talk about the demands faith makes on their sex life or personal wallets? My Lord! You’ll find yourself stepping on landmines and may not survive…'”
“Yet,” Bailey said, “when Jesus met Zaccaeus He, in a room full of other tax collectors and sinners, zeroed in on Zaccaeus’ overstuffed money bag. But notice Zaccaeus’ response: ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ THIS is salvation, Jesus says, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.’ In Luke it’s overwhelmingly clear that ‘being saved’ looks like wealth being transformed into justice and alms.”
Bailey further noted, “One of the most important functions of the earliest monastic communities in Egypt and Syria was to offer Christians living in the world a radical witness as to what economics might look like if Jesus laid hold of it. By their voluntary poverty, monks were to keep before the whole Church a sustained critique of lavish lifestyles, of possessiveness or envy or greed. Monks showed the joy of riches is found only in their potential to enrich many.”
Then he quoted the description of the early Christian community in Acts 2:44-45:
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
“And,” he added, “if you look at church history, when the monks get rich, the whole Church suffers loss.”
Then he said,
This Lukan logic has always been present at the heart of the Eucharistic Offertory, when the bread, wine and a tithe of alms are brought forward to the Altar of Sacrifice. One’s 10% tithe was never meant to be God’s “cut” of your wealth, leaving you the other 90% to do with as you please. No! Just like the bread and wine, the tithe signified handing over of all of one’s possessions and wealth, placing everything at the feet of Christ’s whole Body as a service of worship.
Yes, you can’t serve God and mammon precisely because the ‘and’ reveals each as a mutually exclusive competitor — some for God’s ends, but the rest for my own. However, you can serve God with mammon when you acknowledge all of it belongs to God, and so all of it belongs to your neighbors. Which are one and the same thing for Jesus.
Our life mission then becomes prudently placing all we have at the service of others, for the glory of God. The God of Jesus, that is, who ‘though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.’ (2 Cor. 8:9).
At the end of his riff, Dr. Bailey noted,
For the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel, the principle sign of salvation is detachment from riches. A detachment that opens one to generosity animated by love for the apple of God’s eye: the poor, orphan, widow, all who live at the margins of life.
But for Jesus, salvation is not simply frugality. Misers are the most frugal of all. Salvation means a frugality that enriches generosity because it is inspired by love. Which is why Christians should regularly subject their wallets, and the wallet culture they inhabit, to a regular Gospel audit.
I’m off to Confession now….[end of journal entry]
This week I have new projects to begin, so I will likely not post
Here’s the latest Ashley-Maria (Maria is my daughter) music video, shot by Maria’s sister, Catherine as they hung out in the girls’ bedroom on a rainy Sunday.
This song, more than any other they’ve done, made my heart overflow. Nah, explode. My wife and I adore Simon and Garfunkel. I wrote this as soon as I heard it:
beautifully blending
celestial sending
angels lending
limits rending
hearts ascending
heaven extending
harmonies friending
A friend of mine, who is a musician, texted me after watching it last night. She was the one I mentioned back in June who flew all the way from Chicago just to hear the girls perform at the Chicken Jam. Sui generis. Her words express so well my own enthusiasm for this performance:
I love that song! Now i m going to have to go back to new orleans to sing it with them. Such a great song for them becuz immediately reminds u of simon and garfunkel and their amazing harmonies, and then u realize that is the amazing kind of thing the girls are doing w/their harmonies–sophisticated musicianship made to look easy. i saw simon and garfunkel for their one reunion concert in central park–sort of a whim trip –and to this day so glad i went. It really wasnt til i heard this tho that i harkened back maria and ashley’s harmony style to theirs–such cool parallels. When the girls play central park i will definitely be there.
This is a text I sent last week from the Houston airport to my wife, children and some other friends.
Supreme moment of digital age disconnection: woman runs to greet a teen boy (seemed like she was an Aunt), and as she embraces him tightly and verbalizes her love for him and marvels @ how much he has grown, behind her back he is scrolling on his screen looking at his Instagram. Breathtaking.
The woman had been excitedly talking to someone near me for some time about a relative she had not seen in years. She kept saying, “It’s been so long, I wonder if he’ll even recognize me.” I assumed she would be meeting him when she landed wherever she was going, but suddenly she jumped to her feet and ran toward this 15 or 16 year old boy who had walked up to our terminal. “Seamus!” The energy from her voice electrified the air, catching the attention of lots of people and generating lots of smiles and “awws.”
But, as I happened to be leaning against a post right next to them, I noticed the details of what I described above. She squeezed him for a good thirty seconds, rocking side to side as she repeated, “I love you! I love you! You are so big! I am so happy to see you again! Thank God! It’s been too long. How have you been?…” I could see him scroll the Instagram posts up, “liking” pictures in rapid succession.
Yes, I knew I should turn my head away from this private moment, but that stunning sight seized control of me.
After they strolled off together, I sat down to take that all in. Someone next to me must have noticed my reaction, and said, “Yeah, I know, I saw it too. Sad.” I said, “Yeah. More like, unreal.”
Unreal. That’s it. We need an asceticism, a virtuous discipline that places technology at the service of ordo cartitatis, “the order of love,” attending first to the neighbor nearby, to the priority of real relationships grounded in the immediacy of real presence. Virtual reality should flow from and lead back to the reality that soaks your clothes in rain, makes you shiver in the cold or warms your heart in an embrace of love.
My wonderful and gifted colleague, Dr. Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, said once in an interview,
Out gadgets connect us but our screens can make us forget that on the other side there is another person there, a full, embodied complex human being. Communication toward communion keeps this in mind and forges true encounter.
That’s what was missing. And in the presence of the bodies of others, screens should pass away in favor of face to face, embrace to embrace, I and Thou.
My daughter Maria, about six years ago, was desperately trying to get my attention as I was working on my laptop in the dining room. I was writing a blog post (maybe on effective parenting? lol). As I typed away, looking intently at the screen, she repeated with antiphonal force, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” I quipped back several times in a sharp tone, “What?! Say it, child!” But she would each time resume her antiphon. Finally after half a dozen times, eyes still fixed on the screen’s dim glow, my exasperation got the better of me and I shouted, “What! Say it! I’m listening!” She said back, in a low voice, “But your face isn’t.”
That slayed me.
Since then, any time I am tempted to stray my attention away from the person I am with, and toward a gadget, I can hear Maria’s haunting words sound in my head.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. — 1 Corinthians 13:12
I received this postcard in the mail from a seminarian yesterday, and on the back of the card he indicated this quote made him think of me. If this is all people say I did for them as a teacher or writer or friend, it would have been enough.
Also, how can I sufficiently extol the virtues of a young man who takes time to send a handwritten postcard to a professor? In such times, such borders on the heroic.
Back in 1989, when I was studying at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, I took a course on the Jewish Talmud. I remember one particular class when the Rabbi who taught the course was excitedly describing the fiery passion students of Talmud have as they debate the right interpretation of Talmudic texts. “Their passion” he said, “is rooted in their love for God and Torah.”
To sharpen this point, he quoted the well-known 20th century Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.
He added, “Their love was itself driven by wonder before the majesty of the Lord. If you have wonder, you already possess everything to be known. Like the acorn already possesses the full grown oak. But if you have no wonder, you possess nothing. Only the dead acorn.”
I felt like my brain exploded in that moment, and said to God within, “I want that.”
Like begging for the gift of prayer, I begged for wonder. “O you who are Wisdom without measure, grant me your eternal appetite for knowledge! O Source of all that is to be known, permit me to know all with you!”
And to wonder, like this:
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree. — Joseph Mary Plunkett
Or like this:
Neal Obstat Theological Opining 