Leaving the Family - Lent Journal (Sunday Lent II)

The LORD said to Abram:“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolkand from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. (Gen 12:1)

I wonder if Abram's father, Terah, was disappointed when Abram left with Sarai. Do you think his heart broke when he heard the news? Do you think he tried to convince Abram to stay, not knowing the LORD or understanding this calling?

I wonder if Abram felt a sense of belonging in his community. He was 75 years old; he and his wife had no children to carry on the family name - do you think he carried that as a mark of shame? Is this yet another example of God speaking into the longing and emptiness of unfulfilled dreams?

I have always been struck by the way that the Holy Spirit moves in the lives of those rejected or abused by society - the marginalized; the weak; the needy; those who suffer tremendous losses; those who identify as LGBTQ. They just have this close and intimate connection with God, born out of a need to find comfort in a God who is not part of this world that can seem so cold.

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In the few years I spent in the LGBTQ community, I met dear friends who had been rejected by their own families. Those whose families acted as if they were dead, or acted as if they should be dead, out of a sense of shame. Some had to walk away from those they loved, and find their own sense of self-worth and belonging elsewhere. The loneliness of not having a home, of being told that some part of them made them wrong or bad or simply "less than".

I'm sure it took tremendous courage to walk away, tremendous hope to trust that they deserved to find people who truly cared, and a confidence that they did in fact deserve unconditional love, no matter what. It also brought out an incredible compassion and empathy. I know when I was lost and felt so empty, I needed them. To be frank, I miss them all terribly because each and every one of them brings such light and goodness into the world.

Despite our differences of opinion, the people who have found homes and belonging in those spaces are worthy of such respect and awe for persevering through so much, trying to find the promised land. Beyond which, they too are beloved children of God and deserve the dignity afforded them, simply for existing. This is the case for those who remain faithful within the Church, and those who have found themselves on the outside due to rejection, hate, and too much bad blood. I hope and pray that they find themselves back home, because we (the Church) need them on so many levels.

My Son - Lent Journal (10/40)

This afternoon I was spending time with my son, and I found myself realizing that there are things he's just not good at.

I think it was somewhere between playing Frisbee and playing pool with his friends - really, it's most physical activities; I was watching him struggle with doing things his friend was talented at. What really surprised me was my emotional reaction. I wanted to step in and turn it into a teaching moment for him. I wanted to fix it, and help him get better.

I wanted him to be better.

As his father, I feel a deep responsibility to help my son discover himself, and with that comes expectations that I know I need to let go of, but it's so hard. I want him to be the very best of everything, and while I know that is more than a bit unreasonable, I can't help but look at him and see incredible potential.

I think I take it too hard, but I will confess to feeling responsible for my son's difficulty: with individual activities; skills; life in general. And I know that ultimately I'm not in control, and he will grow up one day and become someone altogether different from what I would ever anticipate.

There are going to be areas where he fails; where he shows no interest in something I think he should enjoy; he's going to make mistakes and some of them won't be easily redeemed.

As a divorce dad, it breaks me knowing I'm already not there every step of the way. I am immensely aware of the areas where I let him down, the memories that aren't being made. The bike he hasn't learned to ride, the ball he hasn't learned to throw, the vacations he hasn't been on, the fishing he's never done (although I've never been fishing either; I didn't say my internal guilt-trip was altogether rational).

I'm not there.

It breaks me, knowing that I won't be able to be there every step of the way. Not having the assurance that he will be okay. I guess we never do have that, and a certain painful death of parenting is coming to understand that you have been entrusted with guiding a human person along the way, but that God is in charge. God gives them to you so that you can become a saint, just as much as you can support them in their own pilgrim's journey.

My son can't throw a ball to save his life. That's okay.

Actually, let me do one better: that is an integral and meaningful part of the story God is writing in his life. In his biography it will say that his inability to throw a ball somehow made him a better person, or glorified God in some subtle way I can't anticipate or comprehend, but it will be incredible in retrospect.

I need to celebrate every moment of this dear child's life - the parts I see as good, and the parts I struggle with and want to change. The parts where he will be hurt ... I can't prevent them all, or even most of them, and that's okay too. Because while I can't be there physically in every moment, he has a Father who loves him deeply and desperately and will always be watching over him.

Gazing into the Palantir - Lent Journal (9/40)

An early post today (I'm taking a rest day from work; I'd like to get away from screens if I can) - I was reading The Two Towers this morning and came across this quote from Gandalf (emphasis mine):

"Easy it is now to guess how quickly the roving eye of Saruman was trapped and held; and how ever since he has been persuaded from afar, and daunted when persuasion would not serve. ... How long, I wonder, has he been constrained to come often to his glass for inspection and instruction, and the Orthanc-stone so bent towards Barad-dûr that, if any save a will of adamant now looks into it, it will bear his mind and sight swiftly thither? And how it draws one to itself! Have I not felt it? Even now my heart desires to test my will upon it, to see if I could not wrench it from him and turn it where I would ..."

Gandalf is referring here to the palantiri, seeing-stones, though insight into Middle Earth isn't necessary to understand the image Tokien is painting.


In the Judeo-Christian understanding of the universe, all of Creation - sun, moon, earth, stars, land, waters, vegetation, animals, humanity - is good, worthy of celebration and enjoyment. This is also the case with things humanity creates: we are capable of doing incredible good through our creativity. With all the emphasis on sin and corruption, we can easily forget that fundamental truth and jump straight to our need for redemption, but we always need to remember our original goodness.

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All that being said, we do also live in a fallen world. As good as creation is, all created things can be misused, distorted, and corrupted - this is an observable fact, setting aside the doctrinal assertions. Politics, sports, art, cuisine, religious institutions, schools, and families: even in just the past generation, we've seen ways that each of these can be twisted into something tragic and harmful.

But setting aside the wider societal questions ... what about in my own life? Do I really feel like I'm in control of my own actions? Or do I have my own moments where I gaze into the palantir - "constrained to come often to [the] glass for inspection and instruction".

We find ourselves almost serving created things - reflexively picking up our phones. Netflix. Sweets. Sports. News. Music. Alcohol. Pornography. The list is different for everyone, but we all know our list.

Most of these things aren't even inherently evil, and yet we can still end up addicted - making them the centers of our lives - and we might not even realize it has happened. On the other hand, we may notice it creeping in but feel powerless to fight against it.

To err is human, we say - because we accept that we aren't perfect. But I think part of it is that we know exactly what Paul is talking about when he says I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want (Rom 7:19). Setting aside the moral weight of the words good and evil, but we can still relate to the overall message - we push the snooze button for the third time; we watch that fourth episode on Netflix; we find ourselves consuming something, anything, to fill a void - a hunger that seems to be impossible to fill, and we end up feeling more empty than we started.

Eventually, we don't even find pleasure in these things - instead, we find that in a sense we have become trapped, unable to choose to choose what I really want, stuck in yet another rut, caught in chains we can't free ourselves from.

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I guess for today, I don't even want to present the hope for redemption (hint: it's Jesus), or Christian apologetics for why we have these insatiable desires (hint: we have been made to hunger for God) - I just wanted to lay out the problem.

Saruman was ensnared the moment he turned his whole attention to the palantir. The same is the case for us.

Getting into the "Good Place" - Lent Journal (8/40)

Last night I was starting to write about being at peace with imperfection. I'd like to continue that line of thinking tonight, because I think there is a tension here that needs unraveling.

On the one hand, we can become too self-satisfied - coming to a point where we simply accept ourselves, with no questioning as to whether we can (or should) grow. On the other, we can become overly scrupulous, focusing too much on our failures and beating ourselves up for not being better than we are.

Personally I struggle with the latter, because when I was younger I think I settled too much. But this isn't about me, it's about all of us. The tension goes much deeper than this, it comes to the heart of the Christian faith and the core question - does God love me, or doesn't He? And if He does, why do I need to do anything? How seriously do I need to take Christ's imperative - Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48)? Or his admonition - Go, and sin no more from now on (Jn 8:11)?

We need to remember what God's promises to us are - what is being offered through Christ and his Church.

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The past generation or so, the wider culture has reduced questions of Heaven and Hell to a sort of merit-based system, where "if you are a good person you go to Heaven when you die".

But going one step further than that, if Heaven is just a reward for good people - it would be entirely incomprehensible for an all-loving God to punish anyone for all eternity in Hell. What would be the criteria? And how could He be called all-loving while also condemning anyone to that? Do we really think anyone is that bad?

Perhaps more pressingly, what would make Heaven good and pleasant, especially for all eternity? If it was just the final reward of those who are "good", it wouldn't be all that different from this life - we wouldn't suddenly become better people, and none of us is perfect.

One of the fundamentals of Christianity seems like bad news at the outset - You can't earn Heaven, and you would never be good enough to make it there on your own. The reason for this is that Heaven isn't just "the good place people go when they die". Rather, Heaven is the realm where God IS, who is all perfect and is the source of all that is good in the entire universe (not just our origin, but also the one who sustains us all even here and now).

According to this understanding of Heaven and Hell, Heaven is being in the presence of the eternal Creator of all that is good, where Heaven is an existential reality that is absent God.

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That may have seemed like a tangent from the original question, but here's the link - we can't remain in the presence of sheer perfection without burning up. It's like flying into the sun, we just aren't made to handle the power and the heat on our own. As I said - we can't get to Heaven on our own. Instead, we first need to be made like God - receiving God's Divine life into our very being. To do this involves a process of purification, the way metal is refined in a fire.

To become like God is not something we can attain on our own; Divinity is a higher existential plane that we can't reach, and it's not just a matter of "climbing the mountain". Instead, we have to receive the Divine life from God by being brought up into that higher plane. All humanity was elevated to that privileged position when God became Man in the Incarnation, but - from a Catholic perspective - we now need to do our part, working with God in the capacity that we can.

The surest way to receive God's Divine life is in the Sacraments and a life of prayer, but there are no guarantees - we can throw it all away by turning away from God, the way a mirror loses its brilliance when it turns away from the light-source. Turning back towards God (metanoia - "repentance" / "thinking again") requires a painful effort of learning to seeing that our sins actually hurt ourselves, and keep us from being loved by an all-loving Creator who desires to elevate us much higher than we deserve.

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Which returns us to the original question: how do we reconcile loving ourselves exactly as we are with the need to be confronted with our failures?

Simply put - God loves us, and being outside time, knows all that we will ever do (rather, He knows all that we will ever have done across the span of our lives; we are the ones who choose to do what we do). That is the case now, that was the case when God became Man in the Incarnation, that was the case in the Crucifixion when Jesus freely chose to pay debt we owed that we could never pay, that was the case in the Resurrection and the Ascension when Jesus showed us our eternal destiny.

So there is no question of God's love, and we must see ourselves in that same light - for our own sake. Furthermore, we need to come to understand God's love and the extent to which we depend on Him. This takes humility, which for many of us means we need to be confronted with our failings and weaknesses when we aren't living in-step with Him. To seek the cure first requires realizing we are ill.

At the same time, we are being offered more than just forgiveness for our failings and weaknesses. We are being offered the capacity to actually become better, by God's grace!

But He's not going to force it on us. Which means we need to actually turn to Him and ask for the Gift that is already on offer. Once we accept the Gift, we then find an increased capacity to be like God - which is to say we are able to live in total self-emptying love.

That's the hope and the promise, anyways.

Late Nights - Lent Journal (7/40)

The past couple nights I've been up later than planned. Part of that has been because of this blog (or rather, because of trying to stick to my commitment). If I'm being totally honest, part of that has been distractions.

Wednesdays I pick my son up from school and we get the afternoon / evening together, before I drop him off at Mom's house at 7pm. We've been doing this every Wednesday the past 4 years, and I love the opportunity for some normalcy in our life. It's been nearly his whole life that he's been doing "Mom's house, Dad's house", so in some sense this is his normal; but I don't think I will ever get used to it.

Looking forward to the future, I don't know exactly what is coming up. My girlfriend and I have hopes as to what direction things are going, but God is still working on healing my self-doubts - both as a father and in whatever other vocation I'm called to. The annulment process was long (more about that another day), but it completed a couple months ago; I'm not married. It's a relief to know there is the possibility of a future as a husband ... I hesitate to even use that type of language, for one because my girlfriend and I aren't there yet and I don't want to put any words in either of our mouths - nor do I want to jinx it.

I worry about my consistency in sticking to plans, and about what life might look like. I've lived on my own most of my adult life, other than the 3 years my ex and I were together (again, this is not a pressing matter; but it seems I will find any opportunity to be anxious about the future). And, there is a certain freedom in being alone. I'd still much rather be with my son every day, of course ... but would I actually be good to live with?

When you're growing up, you have this image that your parents have it all figured out; they have everything put together. When the life you are born into is all you know, you look past the little messes and somehow you just don't see them. Now that I'm older, I see my life and I know there are things I don't take care of that I feel I should be. I'm not nearly as organized as I'd like, and every so often I mess up or fall or just generally fail to care for myself the way I should (e.g., not getting enough sleep from being up too late).

I know I'm hardly unique in these challenges, but I'd like to be better than I am.

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In any case - it's late, and I was just about to start typing about Fr. Jacques Philippe and his book, Finding and Maintaining Peace, and how it relates to my thinking. His basic premise is - if we truly believe God loves us, is in control, and is the source of all goodness (both in the universe and even within me), then the Father allows me to have any failings that I have, for some purpose. He could simply give me the grace to make me perfect in an instant, but He chooses not to do so ... it is up to me to come to peace with this fact, while also still acknowledging my own free choice in those decisions and mistakes I make, repenting, and if necessary confessing them.

As much as I'd love to wrestle with that more tonight, I badly need sleep. So that will have to wait.

What You are Worth - Lent Journal (6/40)

Tonight we're talking about Jesus's agony in the garden at Gethsemane - specifically, the mystery of what happened in the garden while He was alone. [1]

I imagine Satan visiting Jesus in the garden to torment Him on the night of Judas's betrayal.

He shows Our Lord a vision of all the wickedness, cruelty, and malice of humanity in a single instant: past, present, and future. He sees the Crucifixion and all that leads up to that; the twelve abandoning him; the scourging and mocking; the false trial; watching His Mother witness all of it.

In this vision, Jesus witnesses the worst of who we can be - war and abandonment; racism; sexism; slavery; the Holocaust and the horrors of the 20th Century.

Jesus is then led through all the heinous acts done by those who will be members of His own Body, the Church, even cruelty done in his name. He watches one scandal after another. He sees the divisions over the past 2,000 years - the splitting of East and West, the Protestant fracturing. Sexual abuse by the clergy. The faithful leaving the Church, apostatizing and denying Him as Simon Peter would do that same night. Those who remained in the Church falling into apathy, no longer caring about the Good News.

Satan reminds Jesus all that will come about because of His sacrifice - albeit indirectly, and not by His hands, but of course the Enemy leaves out that detail. As Jesus is taking all this in, weeping and tortured by all that will happen, He collapses under the weight of all that misery and evil.

At this point, the Accuser calls Jesus to task and declares that He is a participant in all this madness, enabling - or at a minimum allowing - all this to take place.

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Finally the Devil, feeling pleased and satisfied with Himself, glances over at a defeated man covered in sweat, blood, and tears - God Incarnate, experiencing the full burden of all the madness brought about by the Fall.

He leans over and whispers - 

Is it worth it? Are they really worth it?

This thoroughly exhausted man, Jesus of Nazareth, finds one final reserve of energy; blinking through tears, He looks up at Satan - the one who abandoned Heaven an eternity ago and suffered his own Fall - and simply says:

Yes, even if it were only a single person I would still suffer this gladly.

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Beloved - the extent to which you are loved is unimaginable. You could plumb the depths for thousands of years and you wouldn't scratch the surface. Jesus says that you are worth His own death, and that is only the beginning of what He says. He says you are worth all the ugliness that has ever happened and ever will happen - all of which Our Lord took on and received in the course of an evening. Even knowing and experiencing all that you have ever done to personally betray Him [2], He says you are worthy of that love.

Of course, so is everyone else, which is such good news, but also - how do you live up to that? Can you love others the way that Jesus loves them? Can you see their worth to the extent that He demonstrates it? Can you see the full magnitude of how you are loved? Can you stand up for that dignity in all those you meet - especially those who seem the most unworthy?

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[1] We don't know the fullness of what caused Jesus's agony, so this is simply my interpretation. I would invite you to meditate on the mystery and see where the Spirit leads you as well.

[2] I can appreciate if you are uncomfortable with the suggestion that you have betrayed Jesus. One helpful suggestion is to meditate on the question: what would I have done if I had been in the garden that night? Would I have been arrested, tried, convicted, and crucified with Jesus? Or would I have run away as well?

Authentic Masculinity - Lent Journal (5/40)

So the topic of the day is authentic masculinity.

This is to be contrasted with (what the culture has coined) toxic masculinity, but which would be better understood as false masculinity. The connotation seems to be that certain toxic behaviors and attitudes - simply by being performed by men - are seen by our culture as masculine behaviors. My Dad linked me to a Washington Post editorial the other day that seemed to make that assertion ("masculinity is always a performance; the more performative it is, the less healthy"; "No presentation of masculinity ... is a salubrious thing. It’s all toxic." [1]).

My suggestion here - and I am hardly alone in making this suggestion - is that authentic masculinity has nothing to do with pride, power, aggression, or emotional repression. That garbage needs to go and has no place. Instead, authentic masculinity is concerned with living a virtuous life. [2] 

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With that in mind, I wanted to put together a quick list of male behaviors and attitudes that all can be authentically masculine. I hope the take-away is that there is a huge variety in what it means to be masculine - and none of it is toxic.

• Appreciation for poetry, art, and music

• Love for ballet, dance, and gymnastics

• Love for the outdoors: hiking, mountain climbing, exploring

• Love for the outdoors: gardening and picking flowers

• Joy for competition, but always concern for fairness and being a good sport

• Courage - choosing to do the hard thing, knowing it will cost something

• Strength of any form - interior or exterior, though exterior strength is meaningless without interior

• Weakness and vulnerability

• Friendship and community - a realization that we need the support of others

• Compassion, empathy, and tenderness

• Humility - Not having all the answers, and am not the center of the universe

• Prayer, which goes hand-in-hand with humility - the realization that before God, we all receive life

• All four forms of love - eros, agape, storge, and philios

• Care for the poor

• Concern for the environment

• Love for children

• Cooking, cleaning, and folding laundry

• Having short hair

• Having long hair

• Having no hair

• Having a beard

• Having a mustache

• Having no facial hair

• Being secure enough to not be concerned with fitting the mold
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It's late tonight, but I wanted to try to get this out and stick it out. So this was more of a bullet-point list than an essay. I'm realizing I need to start getting ahead and have some sort of a plan, rather than deciding each day what to write about.


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[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-is-macho-buttigieg-is-stoic-who-wins-the-contest-of-american-manliness/2020/02/20/8b8b290a-5411-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html


[2] I'm definitely not trying to assert that masculinity is in any way better than femininity, or that femininity isn't also about the virtuous life. Authentic femininity is also about virtue, but as far as I can tell the big distinction is whether it is done by a man or a woman.