Year-End Perspectives

 This will be my last official post for 2024, and it ends a very crazy and different year with lots of ups and downs.  In one year, I managed to earn a Ph.D., was kicked out of my place, lost a lot of my stuff, made a momentous move to downtown Baltimore, and ended up working as a full-time teacher in a Catholic school.  There have been many adjustments, and at this point as the year comes to a close I am looking to begin rebuilding again.  So, let's review the year, and recap some significant aspects of it.

The year started out good enough - after a wonderful 2023 Christmas, we entered the New Year on a positive note.  Things went smoothly until about April then, when we started having some challenges meeting our rent on our old mobile home in Hagerstown.  After several months of struggle, the owners of the park we lived in gave us the proverbial "walking papers" to move, and that was sudden but not totally unexpected.  While the owners of our former place are evil, the office manager there was actually very gracious to us and allowed us to salvage a lot of our stuff, which was a blessing in itself.  And, to sort of make things better, the move was not even recorded as an eviction.  Subsequently, that led to about 1/2 of the month of October living in motels, and finally Barbara and I moved to new places - she moved to Rockville, where she now rents a room in a house she shares with five guys, and I moved to downtown Baltimore where I ended up in a similar situation but with only two roommates.  The move to Baltimore was providential though, as I was able to land what is essentially a dream opportunity.  Let me explain that now.

Not long after my degree was officially conferred in September, I received a phone call from the principal of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore, Dr. Joe Mitala.  He had come across my resume and was very impressed with me, so he wanted to consider me for a position.  However, that first attempt resulted in a rejection, and after I tensely told him off I got another call for a position that had recently opened up for an 11th-grade Theology teacher.  This time, it was a go, and after two stymied attempts to get to the interview - one was due to our move date, and the other was because the train was too early to catch in Harpers Ferry - on the third try I got in, and had a working interview with the school for the position.  They liked me, and a week later I had a phone interview with Mr. Reap, who is the President/Administrator of the school, and that following Sunday I was offered a $55K annual contract.  And, that is what facilitated my move to Baltimore, which happened very soon afterward.  

The move to Baltimore was fraught with challenges of its own.  For one, I had to come in with Barbara the day I was to move in and I was in the parking lot of her office building in Rockville with three cats and a rabbit piled in the car with me.  That night - it was on a Thursday - I arrived at the new place, and now I wanted to recap how I ended up there. 

I had been frantically searching for houses up to that point, as I was living almost day-to-day in the Motel 6 in Charles Town, WV.  God miraculously provided the funds I needed to survive, and in time I heard from the landlord of the place I was looking at,  and his name is Andy Dovel.  Andy turned out to be a very workable guy, and he was more than willing to let me move in.  So, thanks to the church giving me my deposits and first month's rent, I was able to secure my new place.  Located in a very rough section of town called Harwood off of Greenmount Avenue, the new home was a rowhouse that Andy was refurbishing, and I would be subletting a room in it as two other guys also shared the house.  So, I was able to move in, and at that point a whole new life to adjust to started.  Two weeks later, I would start my teaching job at Cristo Rey, and as I write this now, I have just completed my first month here.  The months of October and November seemed like an eternity, but in reality they went by quite fast.  As of today (12/4), I am one month teaching at the school, and two months since getting thrown out of Hagerstown.  Tomorrow will mark four months since I defended my dissertation, and three months since my degree was officially conferred.  This is the biggest transition I think I have had in 32 years, and there is still much to do yet.  I want to talk some about that now.

My primary objective at this point is to get a more stable house, and Barbara wants to go in with me to do that - she is not happy where she is either, and being I make a decent salary now, I can afford a better place but also understand that I need time to recover from the previous months.  So, I plan on using the next six months to get myself back together, rebuild a little, and then I can simultaneously look for a better place to live, preferably over in this area where the school is now.  It won't be easy, as properties here are astronomically high, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.  Besides, God has been with me this far, so I know he will see me the distance.  My faith is what strengthens me, and thank God for his grace that I accept by faith. 

At any rate, that is how my year has been - a time of tumultuous paradigm shifting, rebuilding, and getting things in order.  Hopefully as 2025 dawns in less than one month, it will be an even better year. 

A  blessed holiday season to all reading this, and I will see you in 2025. 

Coming Together

This has been a week of progress.  After a very nice Thanksgiving weekend, I am happy to say my new digs are coming together.  That is why I am titling this talk the same.  Let me elaborate on that by offering a sort of parable.

During World War II, some very historic cities were the targets of devastation of warfare.  Both Berlin and London took some heavy tolls.  The same could be said as well of Beirut in recent years - a beautiful city reduced to a rubble-strewn war zone.  Life is like that sometimes for us as individuals too - life generally goes at a good pace for a number of years, and then all of a sudden circumstances change and we find ourselves under attack.  That happened to Barbara and me recently, and it was a toll on us - we lost perhaps 50% of everything we owned, and most of the rest is in a storage facility almost 80 miles away.  And, we were compelled to resort to living in motels for a couple of weeks until both of us were placed in a position to where we had to live in rented rooms in houses shared with roommates.  It was a big transition.  And that was the aftermath of the attack upon us we weathered.  However, like many cities which have experienced the ravages of war and attack, we as individuals are faced with the aftermath, and that is a process in itself.  Let me go into that.

In the midst of a major catastrophic event, there is always the aftermath, and that entails a few things.  For one, it is important to get some bearings and try to accommodate a whole new set of circumstances.  Second, upon doing that, there is a recovery time - it is a time to get back on track financially and socially in many cases.  Then comes the rebuilding.  Rebuilding can start immediately, but it can also be a timely process depending on the extent of repair needed.  London and Berlin, for instance, were able to both rebuild fairly quickly after World War II, but Beirut is still in that process even today - new conflicts have made the latter more challenging.  Our lives can be like these cities too - some can rebound quickly, while others can take years to recover.  A lot of it depends on factors such as the resources available, the stamina the individual has, and the social support one has.  You cannot totally recover on your own, and the help of others is often a necessity even though it is a test of how we manage personal pride - we naturally hate asking for anything, so it is an exercise in humility to do so.  However, that swallowing of pride may be crucial to survival, and at times we need to rely on the love and support of others to help us rebuild.  We should never consider such help a hand-out, but rather a hand-up - my attitude is built upon a "pay it forward" principle that challenges me to help others who may be experiencing the same situation later, and that is the crux as well of the Dominican way that I am contemplating becoming part of as a lay disciple.  I will share more about that at another time, but it is a development of my own spiritual growth through these challenges. 

Ultimately, rebuilding comes from the heart - the raw material to rebuild one's life is not something that can be purchased or tangibly acquired.  Rather, it is what makes up what is inside us.  Although we may be divested of material items, the heart and soul of what those things represented on a sentimental level are inside us.  God did that for a reason, and it is one reason why Scripture in so many places talks about spiritual riches - no one can destroy those.  And, if you have a rich enough inner conviction, outward physical rebuilding will come.  This warrants a whole discussion of its own, as it comprises our "story" and consists of a lot of motivating attributes which compel us to pursue that which we truly desire.  Ultimately, what is inside us is of more value than any material possessions we may accumulate, and we can still be the person we are created to be even when divested of those things.  That is the ultimate heart and soul of the Christian faith too - our faith is not built upon external and tangible stuff, but upon a supernatural God who did become material for us to gain eternal life.  That is what Advent commemorates, and Easter celebrates.  That supernatural God took on a human body to ultimately demonstrate His love for us, and another truth taught by His life, death, and resurrection is that His love transcends the body, and it is for all of us.  And, as I remind my 11th graders in their Theology classes I teach, ultimate love, truth, beauty, and goodness are embodied in one person, Jesus Christ, and He is fully God and fully man.  In that way, He appeals to both aspects of our nature - the need to have tangible reminders of our destiny (in the literal life of Christ as well as in the mystery of faith that embodies the Sacraments) as well as an appeal to our inner self - a connection to something greater, a purpose, and even sentimentality.  I have no great theologians or specific passages of Scripture to reference at this point, but they both talk extensively about this, especially in Dominican spirituality.  So, rebuilding after a time of intense attack is an exercise in spiritual growth as part of the rebuilding process.  It is, in a real sense, a set of "growing pains" for us, and if we respond rightly, we will grow spiritually.  And, as the Psalms promise, if we seek first the things of the Kingdom of God, then the rest naturally comes.  And, that is not the vain platitudes of heretical televangelists with a "blab it and grab it" false "Gospel," but rather it is an outgrowth of common sense and true effort and drive to rebuild a life which has been impacted by the storms and battles of this world.  God is not against material blessings, but we must prioritize the personal transformation of our souls first. 

That was some interesting insights I wanted to share as I come to the end of this rather roller-coaster year of 2024.  In the next week or two I will do a year-end perspective to recap things as well as sharing some outlook for the coming year. Thank you for letting me share today, and will see you next time.