On the Sea

Well, we're back from Moosehead and the North Woods of Maine, and at the moment sailing over to Monhegan Island, 10 miles off the coast of Maine. The briny foam is churning, seabirds are screeching and circling behind our ferry. And I have a signal... Satellites. Wow.

There's been evidence of people fishing for swordfish off of Monhegan all the way back to 200 B.C. That's just crazy! Now it's a favorite spot for artists and poets, and those celebrating their wedding anniversaries ;)

Peace and Salty Air!

. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

"Let's just watch this day pass by."

This was my father the other day, summing up the mood for us as we began our first day in Maine. A lazy breakfast, lazy stroll through the harbor town of Camden, and a lazy evening at my brother's place, tucked away behind oak and pine woods in the little town of Washington. Cooking up steaks, watching Ella run around, and catching glimpses of goldfinches as they dipped and dodged through the tree branches beside the house.

But being lazy is hard work. Letting go of plans, not checking e-mail, not posting religiously to a blog (hmm), not looking at your cell phone every 15 minutes, is hard! Try it sometime!

"Ours is a time of continual movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of "doing for the sake of doing". We must resist this temptation by trying "to be" before trying "to do"." - Novo Millennio Ineunte, JPII

Pope John Paul II was and is the MAN. He recognized our restless itching to keep busy and tried to hush us, like a father rocking an anxious child to sleep. He spoke again and again of the One Thing necessary for wholeness in this world (it wasn't a cell phone, by the way). It was the art of listening, the gift of doing nothing, the capacity in all of us to, in the words from Paul Simon's new song "sit down, shut up, and think about God."

We're driving north through the woods of Maine as I write this (I know, a living paradox, but it's for you!) and the things that keep one busy are slipping past like the birch trees and boulders along this highway. No billboards, buildings, high-tension wires, malls or the madness of traffic. Just woods, rivers, mountains... I don't expect to have a signal once we hit Rockwood, but who knows.

There's a line from an Indigo Girls song that speaks of "days so still the beauty gives you pain." I'm hoping for that pain as we enter the great Moosehead Lake region for an overnight. To hear the "still, sad music of humanity" for a time, and to grow in appreciation of it. But the stillness is'nt just here in Maine. It's as close as the off switch on a cell phone, radio or television set. And mine is right.... here...

Deep Thought

Martin Buber once said "Solitude is the place of purification."

As I woke early today and sat out in the stillness of the morning, on the front porch of my father's cabin in these quiet Maine woods, I had a taste of it. Things get clearer when the dust of our daily movement is given time to settle. In solitude we can see...

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

The Heart of Things - Maine, The Way Life Should Be

Yes, it's a bold statement. Scrawled across many a t-shirt, mug and bumper sticker throughout this northern land: Maine, The Way Life Should Be.

Bold, but it's true.

At this very moment, the missus and I are heading NORTH (there's something mystical just in that statement!) A week in the balsam-scented, boulder-speckled, lake-covered hills and forests of Maine!. My dad has a little cabin in a little town that has a little post office where they always ask you about LIFE. And so we're going to those woods "to live deliberately".... for a week.

I've been taking this route north for nearly 20 summers now. Maine is a wild, burning blue sky with air so clean and crisp it must be taken in slowly and prayerfully, like meeting someone older than you are.

SPOTS IN TIME: Being nearly run over by a bullmoose, biking down a logging road (I was biking, clearly) when he burst out of the brush, nearly 7 feet at the shoulder.

Sleeping on the shore of Moosehead Lake, watching countless stars swirl in a great dance overhead, making their milky way through the heavens.

Cooking lobster in a massive pot, laughing until we were doubled over, waterskiing at sunset on a lake of glass, fingers tracing the water along the way.

Setting beaver traps in the dead of winter with a crusty old barber named Leon. The smell of fresh balsam as we peeled saplings for bait. Looking out over Ragged Mountain to the sea, to the lobster boats dotting Camden's coast.

Singing my "hymns to the silence" in the absolute stillness by Misery Stream north of Rockwood. Drinking in deep thoughts as they rose from that holy place, so far from the things of man.

Thoreau said we need the tonic of wildness, of solitude, so that we can discover who we are and how we relate. "Vacation time offers the unique opportunity to pause before the thought-provoking spectacles of nature, a wonderful "book" within reach of everyone, adults and children. In contact with nature, a person rediscovers his correct dimension, rediscovers himself as a creature, small but at the same time unique, with a "capacity for God" because interiorly he is open to the Infinite." - Pope Benedict XVI

So off we go, away from the things of man and yet into the very heart of being human!

And we'll have some fun board games too, in case it rains. Let's hope I can still blog it up there!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

Poets Today's first reading and the gospel from today's mass got me thinking (and I didn't even have my morning coffee yet). Jeremiah is asked to rise up and go to the potter's house. So he goes. He watches the potter do his stuff for awhile; his callous hands working the wheel, shaping things from wet clay. Sometimes it works out, other times it crumbles, but he keeps working with the clay. A light goes off in Jeremiah's head; it's like us in God's hands. Then in the gospel, Jesus, working from similar observations of his surroundings, talks about a net fishermen have thrown into the sea, collecting fish of every kind. "When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets." It's like the Father embracing and drawing all of us and what is in all of us into His Heart. And He sits with us on the shore and we discover just what is good and just what we need to throw out of our hearts. Stop, Look, Listen - the big, bold words from our children's books were not only helping us to read, they were telling us the three most important commands for us to grow as human beings! There are some people I believe in this world who are watchers and listeners. They see things others don't see. They stop, and they do the double-take. They delve beneath the sacramental skin of every encounter in their day, and beneath every person and thing that encounters them. They are poets. As Cardinal John Henry Newman once said "With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event." This is not easy, but with a real openness to grace and self-discipline, it works! And it should be the work of all of us. Where today can I Stop, Look and Listen? No day is void of life or meaning or an encounter with the Divine. Let's knock with a poet's heart, and the Door shall be opened.

Deep Thought for the Day The Internet causes billions of images to appear on millions of computer monitors around the planet. From this galaxy of sight and sound will the face of Christ emerge and the voice of Christ be heard? For it is only when his face is seen and his voice heard that the world will know the glad tidings of our redemption. This is the purpose of evangelization. - Pope John Paul II

Beware of the Good Stuff!

Here's a life story that would make an excellent movie: St. Ignatius of Loyola. (I would vote for Jim Caviezel to act the part). Born in 1491 in northern Spain, he was the baby of 13 children. At the age of 16, he worked as a page for Juan Velazquez, treasurer of the kingdom of Castile. As a member of the household, Ignatius was often at court and fell into a deep attachment towards all it offered. He was a gambler, a womanizer, and loved a good deal of swordplay when the occasion fell on him. He would actually walk around dressed in fighting array, wearing a breastplate, sword, etc! During a battle against the French, Ignatius was struck in the legs by a cannon ball. It wounded one leg and broke the other. As he was recuperating over those long months, he asked for some books to brush away his boredom. Romance novels, knight's tales was what he really wanted. But in the castle of Loyola, all he got was a copy of the life of Christ and a book on the saints. With nothing else to do, he began to read them. And that was his undoing. Once Ignatius tasted the eternal joys of heaven, he felt his heart being redirected to true glory and the deepest peace; the things his heart was really made for. He was "ruined for life" - the passing life of fame and pleasure the court offered anyway. In the immortal words of Milli Vanilli, "When you had a taste of paradise, back on earth can feel as cold as ice." (yes, that was Milli Vanilli) The lesson, then, my friends, for all of us: Beware of the Good Stuff. Watch what you read! Look out for those unsettlingly good books that can fall into your lap and lead you away from the surface, the frivolous, the passing pleasures that distract us. If you want to keep yourself comfortably shallow, stay away from the good stuff! And just so you know which are the worst ones, the real speed bumps that can slow down our life in the fast lane where it's fun fun fun, here are some of the more dangerously excellent worst best books ever that can ruin your life of comfort and security: 1. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (oooh so deadly!) 2. Space Trilogy, by C. S. Lewis (caution, this "fictional" adventure will alter your view of the universe forever, and who wants that to happen?) 3. Anything by Peter Kreeft (he makes way too much sense!) 4. The Lord of the Rings (subtle and poisonous, you'll never see life the same way! Aaagh! I can't stop reading it myself) 5. On Being Human, Essays by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (this one is chiefly responsible for my own downfall into interior peace and joy) 6. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton (don't even crack the binding on his stuff, or you're done) 7. The Poetry of Gerard M. Hopkins 8. The Poetry of Jessica Powers So be warned! Remember what happened to Ignatius! And to that frivolous young man from the fourth century, Augustine, when he stopped for just a moment's breath to heed a voice that whispered "Take and Read, Take and Read." Look what happened to him! We can't be too careful. Thankfully, there's always... television.