Choices with Bastille, To Kill a King, Emily Wood and Friends

Watch this beautiful work. I absolutely love the way it unfurls, like a quilt woven of gifted and musical passion. It's a slow build, with wonderfully talented bands, vocalists, and soloists appearing and adding their own layer of rhythm or melody as the song literally moves through a grassy stretch of earth and trees. As harmonious and whole as it is musically, culminating in a vast and soothing choral that woos the listener at the end, the piece is a sad one. To use John Paul II's meditation on historical man, who is wounded by sin and left hungry for meaning, it is the quintessential ache of being utterly unfulfilled by another human being. 

There's a melancholy in the heart when we realize this truth: that no human person, no earthly experience can totally fulfill the heart. We try to fill it, we stumble, we sometimes fall. But we are flawed, fractured by our original sin, and we must face it. 

I have the same choices

As you do

As you do

When you fall

Fall like I knew you would

Lead me down down down

Lead me down

As the song sinks into these "choices" that lead down down down, the music still lifts us up. It seems to say that no relationship, no romance can be completely devoid of the hope that springs eternal. 

He's on your doorstep

He's laden with flowers

This garden is freezing teasing

You're leaving me for hours

A song like this for me, pulled and put together as it is from so many bands and gifted young musicians is hope enough. There seems to be a sweet return to music that's soul-crafted, experiential, more real than our techno-pop that tends to dominate. I hope you enjoy the music!

Love is Not Hate

"When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you. Say to them: This is the nation that does not listen to the voice of the LORD, its God, or take correction..."

- Jeremiah 7

There is an utter simplicity to every waking moment of ours that can truly prepare the way towards happiness or misery, trust and hope, or fog and confusion. It lies in the posture of openness... of receptivity. We say yes or we say no. It's encoded within the moral law. Inescapable. Powerfully purposeful. It is that solid foundation Thoreau wrote about many years ago when he spoke of shoving down ones boots through all of the many layers of opinion and agenda, politics and double-speak until we hit rock bottom. We then choose truth or we don't.

These are harsh words, as strong and biting as a winter wind, because they expose us in all of our utterly naked dependence on God. The truth is I we did not, nor could we ever, create ourselves or the vast framework of reality in which we live and breathe and have our being. So in the end, this simplicity of the truth must either be listened to or ignored. "Do this. Don't do that" always sounds off in the depths of our being. The words of the Lord above flowing through Jeremiah are of course just as applicable to us now as they were for his ancient audience. Either a thing is true or it isn't. We accept it or we reject it. 

Case in point; less than a week ago, the incredibly gifted Sr. Jane Dominic of Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee gave a talk at a high school in Charlotte, North Carolina on masculinity and femininity and the wonderful and illuminating differences between them. She spoke a truth ancient and ever new. She then extrapolated near the end on the disorder of homosexuality in the sphere of this masculine/feminine sexual expression of love. As can be seen in any of her online video teachings, (available through the Newman Connection YouTube channel) Sr. Jane delivers the Faith with love, mercy, and compassion. But it was met last Friday with anger, hate, and a student (and parent) led online complaint with over 2000 signatures (as this article attests, some names are fabricated, some authentic). 

This was a Catholic High School with a Catholic nun presenting, and arranged by a Catholic Chaplain (a good friend of mine and an amazing and faithful priest by the way) with a mostly Catholic audience of students and teachers. And yet, reportedly, there was a firestorm of reactions.

A sample of comments from the www.change.org online complaint: 

"There was absolutely nothing positive that came out of the nun's mouth that day. I'm upset that the school had to be subjected to such ignorance."

"We are disgusted by the message this talk portrayed and in NO way support it or anyone who presents such twisted and offensive information." 

"This was a poorly veiled attempt to present hate propaganda disguised as something to do with our faith based education." 

"I believe the students of CCHS are far more intelligent than the group behind this "presentation" and saw it for what it was... garbage."

Wow. Now watch Sr. Jane Dominic for a few moments in ANY of the videos she has posted here. And here below is a three minute sample...

What a bunch of garbage right? This content truly has no place in a Catholic school! It's hate propaganda! OK, my brain hurts. Ladies and gentlemen, sanity has indeed left the building.

"When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you."

- Jeremiah 7

We are strangers in a strange land. Perhaps the best thing to do is just keep listening to the anger, digging in deeper to see what lies beneath it, then spending time before the Great Mystery of the God Who made us, made each of us unrepeatable and unique, receiving that Truth, that reality, and letting it get into our hearts and form us. We have to become so one with this Word of love and truth that no matter the hate we will face it with Love. For Love is the only answer. 

Sr. Jane Dominic, Fr. Matthew Kauth (the school chaplain), Pope Francis and every single faithful and properly formed Catholic on the planet loves every single unrepeatable and unique human person on the planet. In our sexually confusing times, amidst the incredible fallout of the pornographic revolution, where organizations like Planned Parenthood are miseducating our kids (see this piece of actual garbage) the words of Sr. Jane and the light flowing from Blessed John Paul II's Theology of the Body and the compassion and clarity of Pope Francis's words are exactly what we do need in schools. God help us, God bless Charlotte Catholic High School. God bless the young, the confused, the abused, the seekers and the searchers. God bless us everyone!

So Close to Us

"For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?"

- Deuteronomy 4

A short reflection for now in this 40 Days of Blogging-palooza... On the Eucharist. 

I actually missed posting yesterday but had at least popped the above verse from yesterday's reading from Deuteronomy in here. It's got power. And as radical as the Jewish receptivity was to this unique, personal, intimate, monotheistic, and deeply monogamous revelation of God to them was, they had no idea just how close He wanted to come. 

The Jews were a joke to their generation, to the pagans surrounding them with their multiple, man made gods who had to be appeased or they'd punish. The Jews believed there was One God and He was more a Lover than a Master, more interested in virgin (or pure and whole) hearts than virgin sacrifices (though admittedly it took a few centuries for that to sink in!)

The Christians though, and the Word they received was far more scandalous. God wants to literally come into our hearts, not just "move" them from afar by His Majesty and Power. He is such a Lover (Love Itself, as St. John would reveal) that He was willing to strip Himself down for us, leave the heavens, become a man and further still become man's food. He'd devised a way to really enter hearts, through our lips. As our food. 

I'll stop there. It's enough to confound angels and send St. Joseph of Cupertino levitating above the church pews (please google him). Let's pray on this. Better still let's become the prey of this Divine Lover who even today wants to consummate His immense love for us at the altar of the Mass. 

"For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?"

- Deuteronomy 4

From Eve's NO to Mary's YES

When I taught high school I tried to teach with visuals as much as possible; movie clips, sacred art, memes, intentional doodling in our notebooks, and then through what I call "theography." It's simply a way to capture the typology of the Old Testament in a graphical, tech savvy way. I use a stylus on the iPad and my favorite app was (and is) Paper by Fifty Three. 

The drawing above tried to capture the dichotomy of the two mothers of the human race, as well as that of the two fathers (or husbands perhaps fits better). 

Typology is an incredibly rich gift for interpreting and understanding Sacred Scripture, and it's as old as the Bible itself. It's essentially God's theography or "divine writing" found in water, rocks, trees, people, places, events. God uses everything in the world and every word of Scripture to speak to us. That's how He rolls, and the wrappings of HisTruth have multiple layers! I'd be continually surprised by my freshmen each year as they discovered new "gems" in our Biblical Studies classes. 

Today is the awesome feast of the Annunciation. The dawn of salvation is breaking over the humble heart of the Virgin of Nazareth, and the angels await her answer with bated breath. When her yes comes it continues to echo throughout her entire life right up until the end. And at that foot of the cross, the yes  again unlocks power. Tremendous power is unleashed by Mary's yes that unravels the sin of the first and of subsequent women throughout history whose yes was repressed, or locked up out of fear of all the yes would entail. 

Christ too unleashes power. His yes fills in the hollow silence that Adam gave when put to the test. 

May we sons and daughters of Eve and of Mary, of Adam and of Christ truly tap into that yes. May it unleash power too for us. The power of His redemption!

Singing the Song

"Why was there a sexual revolution? Because Christians stopped singing the Song of Songs."
- Christopher West

Sr. Cristina Scuccia is an Ursuline nun from Sicily. She is also a powerhouse vocalist and contestant on Italy's version of The Voice, a clever musical talent show where judges judge solely by what their ears are picking up. In this case, they picked a consecrated woman in full habit. 

So passion meets purity. And this seeming contradiction is the exact kind of cultural contraband the media loves to feed off of. A nun belting out an Alicia Keyes tune on stage? Scandalous. Does the Vatican know about this? 

What's sad is the age we live in which thinks that passion and purity are polar opposites. Watching Sr. Cristina sing her heart out (and boy she does) is really the purest of passions and the possible sign of an authentic and integrated self. 

There is something powerful about witnessing this kind of purified passion, one striped of all pretense and pomp. It shoots straight up and hits the clouds, leaving a tiny place through which graces can fall down. During Sr. Cristina's performance on The Voice, one hit Italian rapper J-Ax right in the eyes. As Sister brought her notes to a climactic close, it was clear he was visibly and perhaps spiritually moved. 

Perhaps her witness to the integration of passion and purity will begin a healing for him? Maybe the impressions he's always had of nuns, priests, Catholics, and Church in general have been of prohibition and prudery? Well, may this be the beginning of the end of that way of thinking. She chose him as her voice coach. And something tells me that this little sister knows something about how grace works. 

"Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but “by attraction”.

- Pope Francis, Joy of the Gospel, 15

A Messiah Walks into a Bar...

Well, that's what the well was, essentially, in the ancient world. A bar. A meeting place. "A watering hole", literally. A place where "everybody knows your name..." A place where everything and probably everyone was talked about. And in today's gospel, Jesus goes there. 

The well was also similar to the bar scene of today because, so often, relationships were born there. Think about it. Moses met Zipporah at a well. Isaac met Rebecca at a well. Jacob met Rachel at a well. And Jesus meets a Samaritan woman... (don't lose the marriage theme here) at a well. 

Problem: She was already married five times. She was presently living with, it would appear, soon to be husband number six. And suddenly there appears number Seven. Lucky her!

The number seven in biblical language and numerology stands for completion, or perfection. The Seventh Day is the Sabbath. The perfect day for rest and contemplation.... and for union with God.

This woman was thirsty; and aren't we all? We thirst for so much more than the bar scene, the water cooler gossip, the Friday night lights, sexual encounters without consequences, pay checks without a deeper purpose in life. "Everybody's working for the weekend" sang Loverboy, but what are we living for? What deep down are we truly thirsting for? 

"In truth, we all thirst for the infinite: for an infinite freedom, for happiness without limits," wrote our Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI. Where do we look? Can we really find it in the stagnant little pools of our own creation, or is it rather in the billows and breakers of the sea of love gushing from Him, the Source of Love at the heart of the world?

The real beauty of this gospel for me is not the thirsty soul but the thirsty Savior. Yes, Jesus is thirsty too. He longs for our hearts, our restless, ridiculous, clueless hearts. He waits for us. He waits behind bars (and sometimes in them), behind the latticework of the structures that we hide behind, in every place and space of every nook and cranny, He waits. Tenderly. 

He knows us so well. He simply wants us to know ourselves too. And how deeply we are loved. 

The Conversion of Bilbo Baggins

On a long drive this morning to NJ, after the girls fell into what I'd call a strategically placed nap, with only the Boy awake, I popped in my coveted Lord of the Rings audiobook and our feet took again to that Ancient Road that leads to the West. I was struck this time (I'm always struck when I read this masterpiece, by the way) at the sense of conversion and redemption it holds in its pages. Listen to the vulnerability of Mr. Baggins as he explains to Gandalf the hold the Ring of Power has over him and the confusion it engenders. 

Bilbo drew his hand over his eyes. 'I am sorry,' he said. 'But I felt so queer. And yet it would be a relief in a way not to be bothered with it any more. It has been so growing on my mind lately. Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me. And I am always wanting to put it on and disappear, don't you know; or wondering if it is safe, and pulling it out to make sure. I tried locking it up, but I found I couldn't rest without it in my pocket. I don't know why. And I don't seem able to make up my mind.' 

      'Then trust mine,' said Gandalf. 'It is quite made up. Go away and leave it behind. Stop possessing it. Give it to Frodo, and I will look after him.' 

       Bilbo stood for a moment tense and undecided. Presently he sighed. 'All right,' he said with an effort. 'I will.'

- Fellowship of the Ring, pg. 34, J.R.R. Tolkien

Lent is about letting go of the little rings of power that keep us circumscribed unto ourselves, always circling, never breaking out in linear paths to our great potential. Lent is about our being stripped, emptied of the clutter of the self-conscious life (which is different from the self-aware life) Lent is a chance to clear out the closet of self-importance, pride, egoism, and the endless desire to possess and covet things, which itself is a twisted desire for self-possession. 

But we cannot, as Mr. Baggins could not, do this work alone. We need that supernatural power of grace to assist us, inspire us, and allow us to let go of our addictions. For Bilbo it was the Wizard Gandalf. For Christians, it is The Lord.