Some Thoughts This Week

 I was not planning on another post this week, but I wanted to just reflect a bit on a few things, as there is much to think about.  This blog has been becoming more of a personal journal than anything, as I seem to write more in it than I do in my personal journal.  However, I still utilize the journal as there are thoughts obviously that would not be in line to share here, as we all have that personal dimension to our being which requires some sanctity.  I have talked at length about journaling before, so I won't get into that here.  Rather, I am doing one of those posts that more or less goes with the flow of my thoughts, as sometimes there is something profound or insightful that comes from that too. 

The first thing that comes of the top of my head is this blog itself - 15 years!  It is hard to fathom that, and it continues to grow too.  The blog initially started when I lived in Largo, FL, and was something that Barbara said I should do.  It turned out to be a decent idea, and thankfully it did.  15 years later, I am still going with it.  I am not sure how much longer I will continue to write, but this year seems to be more than usual - the "blog book" I usually have published and bound every year will be huge this year, but that's OK.  In time, I am still thinking about gleaning through all this to create the skeletons of future books I want to publish, so we'll see what happens. 

One thing that many probably noticed missing this year is the post about the anniversary of my music collection.  I began that collection officially on October 1, 1982, and in the process I have lost that collection twice and had to rebuild from scratch.  I suppose that this would be a good time to tell everyone what has happened.

When we were forced to move last year, I ended up leaving the bulk of my music collection behind.  It was one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever had to do, because at that point I had pretty much every recording I was ever looking for.  Now, this does not mean I lost everything, as I did manage to salvage my larger boxed LP sets, and still have those thankfully.  But, I have had to buy new CDs - I have a much smaller collection than I used to have now - and I have had to rethink my music collection a bit.  One thing that turned out to be very fortunate for me was the greater availability of MP3 recordings that could be saved on flash drives, and starting this Spring I was able to begin collecting a bunch of those.  I have two large orders of those on the horizon, as I found a couple of good resources that pretty much have every item I used to have on CD as MP3 downloads, and I can get them at a huge fraction of the original cost.  At this point, a collection I used to have of over 3400 recordings now fits into a box in the palm of my hand, and it can now go anywhere I go too.  With CDs also kind of going by the wayside (they don't sell like they used to in all honesty) it looks like digital downloads may be the way of the future, and I am fine with that.  A thumb-size flash drive can hold up to 500 gbs of data, and when that is broken down into sound tracks, that means a library of potentially 300 or more CDs per drive.  So, about 8 of those drives can hold a huge collection of recordings.  I will still buy some vinyl and some CDs too, as not everything is digitally available yet, but for the foreseeable future I see the flash drive as being the new face of my music collection, and it is somewhat exciting to think about. 

There was a fantasy I had as a young kid that I wished I could shrink everything I owned into a small box, and then I can take it anywhere.  With so many pieces of music, books, and films now available to download (both free and at cost), it looks more like a possibility these days to do these things.  And, after the events of last year as well as my ever-increasing reality that I am no longer getting any younger, there is a sort of practicality in this.  I recall several years ago watching the various incarnations of Star Trek, and especially later with TNG and DS9, I recall how data was preserved - it was stored on these long drinking straw-like glass sticks that could contain the whole documented legacy of a small civilization, and I am looking at my flash drives now and seeing how much of a prophetic reality that became.  Star Trek seems to be the impetus for a lot of things, including even the cell phone now - 50 years ago, no one would have ever imagined that you could possess a phone with the whole world at your fingertips, yet here we are.  It is practically a necessity now to have a cell phone, and much like a Star Trek tricorder, you can do anything with it.  Technology is a blessing in many ways, but it also can be a liability too if it is misused, which is why I want to briefly address this thing with AI.

AI (artificial intelligence) is the new popular topic of conversation, and it is starting to show up everywhere.  Last year, I was joking with one of my students when I announced the final exam, and they said "Oh, I can use AI to do that."  I half-jokingly said, "why did you tell me that?  You know I am going to be checking for that now."  The student of course was kidding, and in all honesty he was smart enough to get a decent grade on his exam anyway, but it highlights what could be a potential liability of AI technologies.  AI can provide answers, compose projects, and even simulate a human being with just the click of a few keys.  But, is that good?  I feel a bit concerned about it, because God has already given us the most sophisticated information processing system in our brains, and ultimately AI owes its existence to a human brain.  It took a brilliant and gifted person to create AI technology, something a mere machine cannot do.  However, if we start to make people more dependent on AI technology, it will lead to a deficiency in things such as critical thinking, creativity, and other things God endowed us with which are inherent to the human body.  A machine can never recreate or replace that, and why people advocate for that is beyond me.  Take these transhumanists for example - I think of Kevin Warwicke, who frankly is about the creepiest human being I have ever encountered.  Warwicke wants to turn himself into a cyborg, and when he talks about it in his rather weird, sinister British brogue, I see red flags going up all over the place.  There are people who have studied Bible prophecy that view transhumanism (rightly) as a potential tool of a future antichrist, and it's a valid concern.  Whether they are right or not remains to be seen, but they are seeing something that doesn't add up.  Now, does this mean all AI technology is evil?  I cannot say I hold that view in all honesty, as I think that if used responsibly, AI could be a valuable tool.  Also, despite the fact that AI may have some value to transhumanism, I don't think AI and transhumanism are the same, and therefore I dispell any conspiracy theories I hear about it.  But, it still does pose some legitimate concerns, and if it starts to be used to redefine what humanity and personhood are, then I would say it is over the line.  That leads me to a couple of concluding thoughts.

Technology is wonderful, and in many ways we should feel blessed to live in an era when technology does have its benefits.  As a responsible tool in the right hands, technology has the potential of making some rather difficult areas of life more efficient, and it also opens up some doors of possibility we never had.  For that, I am thankful.  However, as imperfect as human nature is, the potential for abuse and addiction of technological innovation is there, and we have to set boundaries so as to keep our utilization of it focused. I myself am thankful for my cellphone and laptop, and do use them extensively, and I also am excited to be able to preserve a whole vintage music collection in a format that easily fits into the palm of my hand.  That being said though, let's never allow technological innovation to rob us of what makes us unique as human beings overall, but more so as individuals created in the image God made us.  The key is moderation, balance, and focus, the same ideas we should exercise with anything, and tech is no different. 

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to ramble more today, and I will return soon.  

Beacon of Truth

 Today we had a sort of mini-retreat day at school for our faculty, and there is nothing at all wrong with that concept - sometimes we have to mentally and spiritually recharge our batteries, and things like that help do that.  The theme of the retreat was centered around a couple of questions which were good:

1. What areas of my life and work fill me with the most gratitude?

2. What are obstacles that I experience that lead me away from gratitude? 

To be honest, a little of both showed up in this mini-retreat time in our small group.  Now, I work with a wonderful group of colleagues overall, and I have really come to like many of them personally.  However, many of them also have radically different ideological views from me as well, and the way I handle that is to try to find common ground with them.  One young man in particular who teaches History is generally a quiet person, and he generally is easygoing with everyone.  However, today one idea comes up that sort of threw me a curve ball - he was blaming the lack of gratitude in Western society on capitalism and an over-emphasis on individualism.  In reality, on some level he was not wrong - there are some issues with those things for sure.  However the place he was coming from was in reality a sort of product of that itself, and that is what I wanted to focus on. 

Capitalism, as a system, is not truly evil - it is an economic system primarily, and it promotes things like free enterprise and being able to be successful.  However, there is a toxic variant of capitalism called corporatism, or by its more popular moniker "crony capitalism."  I have talked about this before, and it entails greedy corporations swallowing up the small businesses that often form the pillars of communities, and the replacement is far inferior to the original.  The end result is an "oligarchy of monopolies," and they have the resources to rig political systems to make it harder for small businesses to function because they hate competition.  In reality, often the product which is churned out and marketed by the big corporations tends to be inferior, and even harmful in some cases - take the whole issue of GMOs in the food industry, as well as some of the stuff the pharmaceutical industry is pushing out.  That form of "capitalism" is at its roots totalitarian, and it doesn't represent true capitalism.  Oddly, for those the rail against capitalism (and I am not accusing my young colleague of this by any measure) are the same ones who think large corporations are good things - many of the most radical among them are even bankrolled by the same large corporations they are supposed to be against.  Do you see the inconsistency there?  That is why when the word "capitalism" is bandied about as a bogeyman by some who have certain political leanings, maybe it is a good idea to really probe what they mean by "capitalism."  If they mean commercialization and corporatism, I would probably agree with them, as there is way too much of that.  I get so sick, for instance, of trying to watch a YouTube video only to have it interrupted by a blast of 10 commercials/ads - one day in frustration with the Liberty Mutual commercials that air over and over, I said that they should stick that emu up their butts.  So yes, less of that junk would be better - I know advertising is integral to a company, but in all honesty when all that is advertising is multi-billion-dollar corporations, it gets old fast.  I feel a similar disdain for the MLM schemes that are often pushed even by church groups as "healthy alternatives" - they are corporate cults too, and they don't do anyone any service as they mix aggressive marketing with cultic philosophies that come more from Mary Baker Eddy or Ernest Holmes (the father of the New Thought movement) than they do the Bible. Any unrealistic "get rich quick" schemes are anathema to me personally, and I don't want to hear about them, so keep that junk to yourself if that is your thing.  MLMs and mega-corporations represent a skewered form of capitalism, built upon the theories of homosexual economist John Maynard Keynes, and we all see where his views have taken us - the whole Equifax credit score system is based on Keynesian principles that capital is relational to debt, and that theory is also disastrous.  So, now that we explained what capitalism is not, let's more properly explain it.

The true form of capitalism is based on a meritocratic premise that anyone who invests the effort can be successful, and although we don't have the right to wealth or success, we do have the right to aspire to success.  Private property and hard work are both Biblical principles that are the true legacy of Western civilization, and if someone wants to own their own house and have a way of generating income for themselves, then by all means they should go for that.  There is nothing wrong with striving for success, provided the success doesn't become an idol to the person.  And, success is different for each individual - what may be successful for one person may not be for someone else.  An Amish farmer, for instance, will have a success that looks relatively minor to a savvy investor, but both can still be successful.  Neither may become a billionaire, and I don't think that is the objective of either anyway.  But, if they reach their own benchmarks, then that is success.  The problem with Western society today is that many try to define success - we look at football players, actors, and politicians as icons of success, but are they really?  In his book Return to Order (York, PA: York Press, 2013) author John Horvat introduces a term to us called frenetic intemperance.  On page 355 of the book, Horvat defines this as "a restless, explosive, and relentless drive inside modern man that manifests itself in economy by 1) seeking to throw off legitimate restraints, and 2) gratifying disordered passions."  It puts me in mind of what Josef Pieper talks about in Leisure, the Basis of Culture when he talks about another term, acedia - a sadness in view of the divine good in man.  Essentially, the pursuit of that thing which becomes an idol produces a sort of spiritual sloth in man, and we lose the impetus of what true leisure is.  It is from acedia that frenetic intemperance emerges, and again goes back to what Fr. Alexander Schmemann defined secularism as "the absence of man as a worshipping being."  As I noted before though, it is not the idea of man not worshipping, but rather what man worships - is he worshipping God, or an inferior substitute such as corporate success?  Therefore, it is not actual capitalism - the pursuit of one's success - which is the actual issue, but rather a bastardization of capitalism in its more onerous form, corporatism.  Corporatism is a sin in that it is a sort of idolatry, but it also is an addiction - an addiction to power, and the need to control financial resources to obtain that power.  Mega-corporations are thus almost like a religious tradition now in themselves, a "tradition of man," and thus it is this which is antithetical to Church teaching, and not the mere pursuit of personal success through hard work.  And, that leads to another point. 

In time, overreaching corporatism leads to totalitarianism, in that mega-corporations can wield influence in the political realm.  Every totalitarian dictatorship of the last 100 years was put into power with powerful corporate backing in many cases - it is true of the Bolsheviks, the Italian Fascists, the Nazis, and even secularist Ba'athist regimes in the Middle East.  And it is true of many "progressives" in the US as well - think of how many millionaire celebrities and corporate bigwigs are promoting socialism - that seems weird, right?  I mean, why would a huge Hollywood celebrity campaign for a socialist like Bernie Sanders??  Yet, you see that all the time.  But, when you look at the fine print, the millionaire influencers and socialist radicals want the same thing - a society made over in their own image, thus a micromanaging totalitarianism that tells people what they can eat, where they can work, etc.  And, the war chest they have to fund that agenda is seemingly bottomless.  On the other hand, ask the average blue-collar worker what they want, and you hear this - less taxes, freedom to live their lives as they want, and in many cases they are also largely people of faith and moral standards too.  A whole other discussion alone could be initiated just on this, but you see where it is going - those who reject God and follow their own disordered passions will end up in the same place.  

Another thing of note was our group facilitator, who also happens to be the campus minister at our school.  He has a perspective that is colored by his experiences in El Salvador, and to be honest I do feel for the man on that, but at the same time he has resorted to defending Marxists there as well as dangerous gangs like MS-13 and he blames the US for violence against citizens there.  He is always using the word "justice" like a mantra, but today I took my parish priest's mandate to be a beacon of truth to heart and quickly made the following point:

1.  Faith without justice is legalism

2. Justice without faith is tyranny.

Again, it was the misguided pursuit of justice that led to perhaps some of the most murderous regimes of the last century - Lenin chanted the word in the Kremlin when he overthrew the Czar, Hitler was utilizing it during his 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, and Castro used it to overthrow Batista in Cuba in 1959.  And, also Mao - he did the same thing in 1948, and all of these individuals together are responsible for millions of innocent deaths, all committed in the name of "justice."  This is why "liberation theology" is a heresy, as it does two things. First, it tries to make faith a political statement.  Secondly, it ultimately diminishes faith in favor of something antithetical to the Gospel, and often what it supports is more oppressive than what it was against.  Justice that leads to tyranny is not true justice at all, as a just God is the author of true justice, and once he is removed from the equation, problems happen.   This is why, when examining this for myself, I noted some things that true justice stands for:

1. The dignity of every person as created in God's image.

2. A fair and ordered implementation that does not steal justice away from others to give it to "favored" groups (yes, this is what some radically militant "liberation theologies" do too).   Therefore, an ideology like socialism is legislated theft in that it steals from others in the name of "equality and inclusion." 

3. True justice will always be founded upon authentic faith - if it contradicts it or tries to reinterpret faith in any way, then it is a false man-centered justice. 

4.  True justice upholds law - so, in the case of illegal immigration, it is not true justice to harbor people who enter a nation illegally.  True justice provides a way for those truly seeking a better life to get it through legal means, and there are provisions for that. 

5. True justice has a moral basis - the whole LGBT platform is basically immoral, and true justice does not seek to legalize immorality.   Rather, we have a level of compassion for those struggling with that (and with anything else) by recognizing them as fellow human beings, but we never affirm their behavior or views, especially if they are in conflict with Church teaching or Scripture. 

Looking at it from that perspective, our campus minister is a sincere (and he is actually a nice guy with a sincere heart, and I personally like him) but seriously misguided soul when it comes to justice.  My own solidly Catholic convictions scream disagreement with some things I hear, and I am reminded of something that came to me today, and it is another reason why I take being a "beacon of truth" seriously.

In Mark 16:18, there is a somewhat controversial passage that some Biblical scholars have been debating over for decades.  The reason is that there are some people - in particular some Pentecostal congregations in my native Appalachia - that take these passages literally to the point they risk death by doing some extreme things.  Some of the things mentioned in this verse include a couple of things which are the focus of some of these groups - handling serpents and drinking "deadly things."  The little churches in the mountains in question take up rattlesnakes and drink things like battery acid and strychnine to demonstrate that they are "confirming the Word," and they really take that seriously!  However, let's also remember what the Church teaches us about hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation), and it is called the Four-Fold Hermeneutic of Scripture, which I teach my kids with the acronym LAMA:

Literal - deals with the plain text

Allegorical - deals with a belief about the text

Moral - deals with what a text challenges us to do

Anagogical - tells us where believing will take us.

While some Biblical passages can be one or more of these at once, this particular passage in Mark's Gospel is I believe something allegorical - the "drinking deadly things" is what I want to focus on here. 

Often, due to our work or other circumstances, we are compelled to work in environments where we have people with opposing views, some radically different than ours.  We are not there by choice, and some of the ideas these people have can be toxic.  So, when I read this verse in Mark's Gospel, I read it in that context - these opposing ideologies are the "deadly thing," and when you work in certain places, you are exposed to them on a daily basis.  It means you have to keep your faith alive, and rely on God's protection, and if we do so, he will help us to not be poisoned by toxic ideologies.  However, this requires something else - we have to have a constant renewal of our minds and spirits, and that is why we must participate in the sacramental life of the Church as well as engaging in a personal prayer regimen, and we also need the prayers of others as well.  The key piece of this is supernatural grace, which has the task of healing, elevating, and perfecting us on a daily basis.  Letting that grace inoculate us against toxic ideology is key, and it is a medicine to our weary souls.  The more of this grace we allow in us, the more resilient we will be.  To be a beacon of truth, we also need that extra strength, because we face a fallen world out there that can be hostile to us.  Any rate, that is the theological lesson in this.

In summary, Catholics require a more discerning spirit when it comes to the practical application of our faith, and I think we could benefit from a more orthodox understanding of it free of non-Christian religious influences and radical politics.  My role as a beacon of truth is to shine a light on this, as well as being a light to others.  May God give me the strength to help me to do that.

Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you next time. 

Return Reflections

 As I mentioned last time, earlier this week I was at a school-sponsored retreat for teachers at Jesuit schools, and it was in Madison, CT, at a retreat center called Mercy by the Sea.  Upon catching an Amtrak on Monday morning and arriving at around 1:30 in the afternoon, the retreat itself lasted until 12:30 PM on Wednesday, and then myself and a fellow colleague I work with here caught the Amtrak back in New Haven, CT.  I won't indulge details about the actual retreat itself, but rather want to focus on the entire experience, including the travel. 

This was my first visit to at least 3 states we traveled through - New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.  It was also my first visit to several cities, including both Philadelphia and New York.   I wanted to say too that upon leaving Penn Station in downtown Baltimore in Monday morning at around 7 AM, the sun was just making its appearance.  As we went over a rail bridge at Havre de Grace, MD, I was able to capture a beautiful view of the sunrise on the upper Chesapeake Bay, and it looked like this:

It was a beautiful and peaceful sunrise, and the reflection over the water was breathtaking.  Often, our lives get so busy that we fail to take the time to just notice stuff like this, and thankfully a train seat helped to focus me on the sights I was seeing.   We have talked over and over at times, based on my reading of Bonaventure's and Aquinas's views on this as noted in Fr. Norris Clarke's The One and the Many, that Nature is the creation of God, and thus, as he said in Genesis, it is good.  And likewise, Nature is the unspoken other "book" of God (the first being Revelation) and thus it affirms his existence.  When seeing things like this, it is a reminder of that.  Now, even at the retreat there were some skewered notions of Nature that many more liberal/progressive-minded Catholics have, and it is more Eastern religion than it is authentic Catholic teaching.  I saw this in particular in the bookstore at the retreat center, where there were many books on "eco-spirituality," and they were not remotely orthodox.  "Eco-spirituality" is in reality New Age and not anything remotely Catholic.  While we can appreciate nature and also we should be wise stewards in taking care of it, at the same time we cannot lose focus of what is true and good, and "eco-spirituality" is a doctrine of demons that should never be promoted as Catholic.  So, what is this weird ideology?  Let's get into that briefly.

"Eco-spirituality" is a belief that the earth itself is sacred, and thus we draw God's "spirit" from the earth itself.  At the mildest, it is panentheistic at best, but outright animistic and pantheistic at worst.  It makes a fatal error in confusing God with his creation, and in doing so it can risk the nullification of core Christian theology.  I heard another manifestation of this when we had morning prayer on the beach at the retreat center, and the facilitator was talking about "thanking Mother Earth" which immediately sent up a red flag.  At a Catholic retreat, there is no place for the adoration of "Mother Earth," as that is outright paganism and pantheism at its worst.  We can thank God for the beauty of nature, but we have to remember that the earth itself is not a god, and should not be addressed as one - the earth is created matter, created by the one true God of the universe, and thus is not deferred to for worship.  I believe that many Catholics do stuff like this in ignorance, in that they try to either politicize their faith or they just haven't been properly catechized.  It sounds beautiful, and the sentiment is nice, but it is still clearly wrong and endangers our very souls when we focus on the creation instead of the Creator.  Therefore, yes, pick up the garbage that pollutes the earth, and try to be a wise steward of our world, but remember also that the world is a creation of an almighty God, and thus has no divinity in itself.  And, it is a fallen world too, which although retaining some beauty is also corrupted by the arrival of sin and death after the events of Genesis 3.  Any rate, that was my sermon/reflection on this. 

As mentioned also, this was my first visit to New York City, and I captured the photo above on the train as we were leaving Penn Station in downtown Manhattan.  It was evening, and as the sun was setting it caught the great towers and buildings of downtown Manhattan (this picture only shows a part of it, as there is much more).  We have all seen pictures of New York, and while we know there are tall skyscrapers there, you don't really appreciate the immensity of this city until you see it yourself, and it is huge!  Visiting there means I have been to the three largest cities in the US - I have been to Chicago twice and Los Angeles twice.  When I visited Chicago, I also saw an immense urban sprawl on Lake Michigan, but after seeing New York this week, Chicago pales in comparison.  On the ride up, for instance, despite some haziness I got a view of the whole city as we were going through the Bronx, and that picture more than this one demonstrates how vast the city really is.  Then, of course, while in Manhattan at Union Station as I was awaiting my New Haven transfer, I got to sample actual New York pizza - it was as good as people say.  And it made for a filling lunch on what was a lot of travel.  Seeing a new part of the country was nice, and no doubt I will be back at some point. 

The retreat center itself was located in a very rural part of Connecticut near the town of Madison.  Called Mercy by the Sea, it is a Catholic retreat center on a very picturesque parcel of beachfront property.   Here are a couple of pictures of it to show you:

The middle picture was our actual lodging, and it was quite peaceful.  Each of us who stayed there had our own private quarters including a private bathroom, and it was lovely - the room I stayed in was bigger than the master bedroom at my house in all honesty.  The grounds were nice to walk and take in, but there were some concerns about the facility overall - it had a lot of New Agey stuff there too, including the laberynth "prayer" mazes and some bizarre items like sage bundles (a co-op from American Indian religion adapted by New Agers that entails lighting a bundle of sage and then "cleansing the aura" with the smoke) and lots of crystals.  The only remotely Catholic books in the gift shop included an array of books authored by Tielhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Richard McBrien, all of whom have questionable practices in regard to what they identify as "Catholic," so that was concerning.  However, I am reminded of the passage in Mark 16, that if a believer drinks any "deadly thing" it will not harm them.  While some of my serpent-handling friends take that literally in that they quasi-sacramentally ingest strychnine and other toxic substances, the actual meaning of that verse is allegorical - it means that if we are in an environment where weird ideologies and non-Christian influences are around, our faith will protect us if we keep ourselves receptive to the supernatural grace God gives us.  So, thankfully, I emerged from that place unscathed.  It often does amaze me though that this toxic spirituality of New Ageism and its variants shows up in the most beautiful places - but then again, based on the ecological focus of some pantheistic beliefs, it kind of makes sense when you think about it.  This is why we must begin reclaiming some of this back from the pagans, and start teaching the right way to respect and care for the natural world around us.  Only in doing so can we have a vibrant Catholicism that is Christ-centered rather than creation-centered. 

There is honestly not a lot I remember about the retreat sessions themselves - I know one of the activities was to create a personal mission statement, and mine was sort of like this - communicating an unchanging faith to a changing world, and creating an educational experience that is academically excellent and passionately Catholic.  I got that from Steubenville, as that is their motto that I incorporated into my own mission statement.  I also tended to move away from the whole Jesuit focus and adopted a more Dominican one, which includes these four pillars of spirituality:

1. Prayer

2. Study

3. Community

4. Vocation

To add a Templar dimension to that, it means also that we are warriors for truth in a world of error, and as such we remember our own "armor of God" taught to us in Ephesians, but we also look to the Captain of the Heavenly Host, St. Michael the Archangel, to defend us in battle and defeat the forces of wickness - that is the essence of Pope St. Leo XIII's prayer to St. Michael.  The other part of the retreat focused on the "I/We" dynamic, and there was sound wisdom in that - if the "I" is where it needs to be, then it creates a productive impact on the "We."  The "I" in this case is the first person reference to self, while the "we" that is directly impacted by our vocation is our students.  So, that was good, and it falls into the four pillars analogy in that two pillars - prayer and study - focus on ourselves, while the other two - community and vocation - focus on those we are called to serve (our students).  I am practicing this now because nine chances out of ten our campus minister here at the school, Mr. Parr, may call on me to share that so I will be ready.  

The takeaway from the retreat was this - you apply what you can use, and throw away the rest.  It is like eating a Waffle House ribeye at times, in that you may have to spit out a lot of gristle in order to get to some good meat, but it's in there somewhere.  And, that is what I intend to do - the challenge is making it fit to apply it, but it can be done, I am certain of that. 

That concludes just a few brief notes on my experience, so thank you for allowing me to share.  See you next visit! 

Looking Back

 On October 5, 2024, things were dire - that was the last day at our former house in Hagerstown, a nice place I really missed.  I recall the frantic search for a moving truck, the packing, and the constant chatter of an old Jewish lady named Beth who was "helping" us - she was actually somewhat of a blessing, but had she talked less we would have had more time to pack.  Later that night, Barbara, myself, and a menagerie of animals (including two cats, a rabbit, and three birds) were settling into a rather dingy motel room in Charles Town, WV.  The following day, we were unloading things into a storage unit in nearby Martinsburg.  In the coming weeks, I would be staying in three different motels before finally getting an offer from my current employer and securing a house in downtown Baltimore.  It was a time when I felt uncertain, scared, and utterly exhausted.  It was not a time I wanted to remember all that well in all honesty, as the circumstances were not ideal.  But, in time, I got settled in and life began to rebuild for me. 

So, it is a year later now, and I am about to complete my first year's lease where I am currently living.   I also have started (as of six weeks ago) my second year at the job I secured then, and have a nice salary.  It is a new normal - a new chapter - and while life is not ideal, I see progress.  At the point I am writing this now, I have the possibility of securing a mortgage for a nice mobile home in a good little community conveniently outside of the city, and things are looking promising for that.  Also, tomorrow, I will be taking my first overnight stay outside the house in ages, as the school I work for is sending a couple of us on a retreat to Connecticut for a couple of days.  I am kind of looking forward to that, as I have never been in that part of the country before, so I have a bit of excitement about it.  A lot has happened in the past year too, in that now I have the original two cats, but also obtained a third, and I had to rehome the rabbit and the birds as it was not practical to keep them here in all honesty.  At the end of this month also, we are retrieving what is left in the storage unit in Martinsburg, and we can finally have the rest of our things back here with us.  Life is much different than it used to be, as I am essentially starting over, but the rebuilding has been smooth and I anticipate good things for the future.  I am only praying I never have to go through anything like last year - my goodness!  I am getting a little too old for that now and want to settle and stay somewhere.  There is much more to say about that, but we'll get to that some other time. 

In reading more of Anthony Esolen's book on nostalgia, I was thinking about living here.  As I have noted before, I have always had a sort of connection with Baltimore, but living in the dead center of this city for the past year gave me a shocking realization that I feel like I landed in a foreign country.   The inner city of Baltimore is not anything like the rest of the state of Maryland, and it is even radically different from the suburban communities that lie outside the city.  I was watching an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares from several years ago that featured a local restaurant here called Cafe Hon.  That little establishment embodied old Baltimore perfectly - I connected with that, as that is the Baltimore I remembered as a kid.  Oddly, that little restaurant (which has unfortunately closed) is located very close to where I am at now - it is located on the other side of JHU, a mere blocks from our parish church. Watching that episode of Ramsay's show brought back some fond memories - the people, the food, and the ambiance I recalled when I was a kid attending kindergarten at Steuart Hill Elementary over on Gilmor Street.  I haven't saw much of that version of Baltimore since moving back here, as now the demographic seems to encompass three groups - the majority Black population of the city (which, if I recall the stats, Baltimore is the second city after Atlanta to have a majority Black population), the growing Hispanic community, and pockets of young Millennial White liberals who have values radically different from mine.  I don't relate much to any of those three groups, although I know many people in at least the first two as they make up the majority of the students I teach now.  I think back to the Baltimore of 50-60 years ago, when areas like Irvington and Pigtown had large populations of Appalachian folks from West Virginia and western Maryland,  and areas like Little Italy, Fells Point, and Greektown were largely ethnic enclaves of Italians, Poles, and Greeks respectively. Northwest Baltimore - above the JHU campus and just prior to entering the community of Reisterstown - was also at one time the center of a vibrant Jewish community too.  Black people were of course in Baltimore then too, but for the most part they were also a cultural component of the city in a positive way.  Many of the older residents of the city have now moved elsewhere, many to the suburbs in communities like Dundalk, Essex, Towson, Middle River, and White Marsh, and the once-vibrant communities  where many of them once lived are now largely abandoned and falling apart - the rows of abandoned rowhouses are somewhat depressing to look at in all honesty, and they should really be torn down because they attract both vermin like rats as well as crackheads in the community. Many of my own cousins live in a fairly close radius to me, and even they (with many of the 3rd and 4th generations being born and raised here) have moved on and live in the outer suburbs of the city. It is definitely a changed world from 50 years ago when I was last here as a 5-year-old kindergartner.  Change is inevitable though, and it will happen whether we want it to or not, but it can be a lot to process when you have been away from a place for a while and then come back to it. Then, I read what Anthony Esolen writes in his book on page 67, and this is profound - the question is what to do now, and why, and there is such a thing called home - now it is up to us to take a step in its direction.  Reading that, I have thoughts, many thoughts, and let me just expound on that a bit.

The house I live in now and share with three other people is not my home - it is a way-station for finding my home.  This place here is a 102-year-old structure that requires a lot of renovation that I don't think the property owner has a full scope of.  The basement is so low that I get claustrophobic going down there, there is an apparent short in the household circuitry, and the accident in July has left a plywood-covered hole in the front where the basement is that the owner is taking his sweet time to repair.  The house is old, drafty, in need of new flooring, and the back steps are an accident waiting to happen.  But, it is where I have to be at this point.  The home that is mine is contained within my own spirit, and its essence is in the manner I have chosen to manage and live in the small living space I have, and it isn't always easy to manage it either.  And, being my home is with me, it can leave this place with me in a quick packing up and transporting to a new living space somewhere.  Once I pack up and leave this living space, it will no longer contain my home because home goes with me.  And, God willing, in the next few months that will be happening too as currently I am in the process of possibly purchasing something of my own.  If that succeeds, I will be able to establish a better place to contain my home for a long time, and it also means roots again.  That possibility both excites and frightens me a little, as it also means I have to take on a few more responsibilities too - owning a house is different from merely renting/leasing, as now the house is yours and it has maintenance and upkeep.  However, that too is going to be manageable as well, as I am in a place now where I can take on that challenge.  And, in time I will have the possibility of a new family being with me too, and that will be the beginning of a good life for me as I approach my 60s in a few years.  As Esolen notes though, it means I need to take steps in the direction of home, and although it is contained in a physical place, the home I think he is talking about as well is the essence of oneself that manifests in their routine of living.  I want that, and it's my goal now to make sure I can make that happen.  This now leads into something else I have been reading and reflecting upon recently, as there is a theological dimension to this as well.

I mentioned about a remarkable young apologist who I have been watching on YouTube by the name of Melissa Dougherty.  Earlier this year, Melissa published a book called Happy Lies, and I received that earlier this week.  Unlike some apologetics literature that tends to actually be more polemical than apologetic in nature, Melissa impresses me in that she has a balanced look at things, and I can appreciate that.  One of the things she addresses is how a certain mentality has invaded Christian circles in recent years that has nothing Biblical or traditional about it, and what she is talking about is New Thought.  One thing Melissa does is she notes that New Thought is not the same as New Age, although they are easily confused due to a lot of overlap between them.  New Thought, which has its roots in the mid-19th century, was also called the "mind science movement" in that certain things about it were taught which incorporated Christian language but were in reality a sort of self-deification - you have the same creative power as God, in other words, which means you are a "little god" and can use the power of words (called the Law of Attraction) to create your own reality.  It later came into play as the basis for a lot of self-help literature as well as some bizarre adaptations to Christianity, and while Melissa rightly attributes this movement to rising out of transcendentalism in the mid-1800s, I want to take it a step further.  The real root of New Thought, in my studies of it, can be traced back to Enlightenment rationalism - after all, was it not Descartes who said "I think therefore I am?"  New Thought, to me, is both a reaction against and an adaption of Enlightenment philosophy, and I would go further to say that at its roots New Thought is the ultimate Cartesian expression.  I don't think Melissa has made that connection in her writing or videos with Descartes, but I think she might want to explore that and I plan on writing her and sharing the idea with her.  So, Cartesian philosophy either directly or indirectly impacted New Thought, and because of that the latter is a product of the Enlightenment then. 

I said all that to preface my point regarding Esolen's point about taking a step toward home - this is not a matter of Law of Attraction or "blabbing and grabbing," but rather it is accepting what is in one's own heart, and then taking the steps to make it happen.  Positive thought - and I am thankful that Melissa also makes this point - is not the issue with New Thought.  There is a certain benefit in having a positive attitude, but it should be a motivator instead of baseless affirmation, and that is where the difference is.  One can easily make up their mind to succeed, and if they take the risks and invest the work into it, it can happen.  It won't be an easy way to go in many cases, because along the way mistakes happen and we get proverbial scraped knees and black eyes, but we don't let that deter us from the objective.  We work toward that, and in doing so here is where our faith comes in.  We pray for God to help keep us on track, and if it is God's will for us to achieve that objective, and if we are willing to invest ourselves into it, God will help us get there.  But, we cannot create reality out of thin air based on "positive confessions" we utter because we are too greedy, too impatient, or too lazy to invest in the effort entailed to get from Point A to Point B.  And, to expound on Melissa's points, that is where things such as New Thought fail miserably - they set unreal expectations, and try to find an easy way out, when in most cases getting between the points is not going to be easy.  Like a trail that needs to be blazed, it requires clearing brambles and brush, contending with snakes, and other things, and your back will get sore, you will get tired at times, but if you push on the reward will be in sight.  That is why the one petition in the Ignatian Prayer of Generosity is this "Teach me to labor and not seek rest."  We can rest when we finish the race, but not before - we have an objective to meet, and we need to be serious enough to give and not count the cost in that case.  Also, we cannot be afraid to ask help when we need that extra boost to push onward - ultimate help comes from God, but his way of providing it may be setting people in our paths who can take up the axe and help us chop down a few trees in the path.  We cannot simply "speak into existence" the end result, but we need to resolve ourselves to forge ahead on the path God places us to get to that result.  Again, it won't be easy, but in the end it will be worth it.  St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, understood that when he made that prayer.  Other great saints and pillars of faith have also understood that too.  And Scripture affirms this too - James tells us that faith without works is dead.  Is that faith in relation to our salvation?  Not necessarily, but rather it is for living a life that seeks to glorify God, even in the mundane daily tasks that can at times get tedious for us.  It ultimately cultivates our fruit, and the more we invest into it, the sweeter and more fulfilling the fruit will be.  This is true on a practical as well as a spiritual scale. 

I think that is a reason why so much of modern American Evangelicalism has in essence become sterile and disconnected for me personally.  And it is also why I don't really pay attention to self-help garbage or marketing schemes - they are ultimately unrealistic in that they promise much but fail to deliver.  They cannot deliver, in all honesty.  And that is the failure of the whole "Word of Faith" shtick in modern Pentecostal and Charismatic circles too.  I recall how much this was tied to marketing schemes - many WOF proponents, as Melissa has pointed out in her videos, also promote these get-rich-quick schemes called multi-level marketing, or MLMs.   Years ago, in the abusive Pentecostal church I was part of, the pastor's wife tried to push one of these things at us, and it was called Melaleuca.  I don't even know if that crap is even still around, but it was the most ridiculous thing ever.   I never bought into it, and didn't want to - I had neither the time nor the resources to invest in such things, and looking at the literature actually depressed me in all honesty.  But, the pastor's wife - a fat woman in her mid-50s then who was promoting "nutritional spirituality" (looking at her 350-pound frame, you can see how well that worked!) - insisted that it was the Holy Spirit's mandate to sell that garbage, and anyone who questioned it must have "demons."  Now, this particular Pentecostal church was not technically part of the WOF, but was part of another bizarre offshoot of Pentecostalism at the time called the Discipleship/Shepherding movement.  That movement sought to give pastors more authority than they actually have, and if you questioned them, then you were guilty of questioning God himself - a Fundamentalist variant of the same thing was evident in the Bill Gothard Seminars too.  It was an attempt to micromanage the lives of church members, and in extreme cases of Discipleship/Shepherding groups, a person couldn't even use the bathroom without the pastor's blessing.  Some of this does overlap with WOF too, but it is a potent enough movement of its own without the WOF influence.  So, MLM schemes were a convenient tool to control church members, in particular those who were deemed to be in jobs "unworthy" of them (that is a line of BS these pastors use as well, and it can have disastrous economic consequences on a family that falls for it).  It puts me somewhat in mind also of an episode of Designing Women years ago when Charlene's character got involved in an MLM called Mama June's Products.  The scheme was so pervasive that it even got beyond the original vision of the founder and everyone had to dress alike, sell quotas every month, and they had a lingo all their own like a cult.  Julia Sugarbaker started calling them  "the Junies" and fortunately the founder of the scheme had more common sense and she released Charlene from it without any hard feelings.  How many groups of "Junies" though are creating cults-within-cults in hyper-charismatic churches??  That number, if properly researched, may be staggering.  There are other dimensions of this that I will refer to Melissa Dougherty's videos, as she tackles that stuff more in detail, but sufficive to say this stuff can do more harm than good.  Now that I chased all those rabbit trails, let's get back to the original discussion about where "home" really is for me.

Your home is a reflection of your personality, so wherever you go your home travels with you.  While there are physical locations we can call, in our Appalachian vernacular, "homeplaces," the heart of the home is in the heart of the one for whom it holds meaning.  And, it is not necessarily about just stuff either - stuff is good, and it helps express things, but it is also replaceable.  But, "sense of place" goes with all of us, and we carry it with us into even the most oppositional of environments.  That is something I have learned in the past year, and thankfully too I have been able to express that as well in writing.  The connection here though with all the discussion leading up to it is that knowing home in your heart is not some New Thought-based metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, but is one's life experiences and memories that they themselves uniquely treasure.  There is nothing wrong with that, and many great pieces of literature, compositions of music, and works of art have been produced by that inspiration.  

Thank you for allowing me to share.  I may or may not write again later in the week, as I will be out of town on retreat for a school function this week, but always feel free to visit and you are always welcome.  

Sense of Place

 I am starting to read through Anthony Esolen's other book, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World (Washington, DC:  Regnery Gateway, 2018).  Again, while much of Esolen's work isn't exactly what I thought it would be, there are still insights he has that dovetail my own experience, and I wanted to talk about one of those today.  This is an important one, because there are dimensions to this that often cannot be articulated as well as they should be.  The concept I am talking about is a distinctive Appalachian trait called "sense of place," and it is to a degree one reason why it is of interest as it also affects me personally.  Esolen devotes a whole chapter in his book to this, with the chapter title being "Man in Place."  There are many aspects to this, so I will dive right into it. 

If you were to visit my hometown of Hendricks, WV, and were new in the area looking for something specific, it would be customary to stop and ask directions.  Many of the old-timers I grew up around there (the majority now gone) would have a unique way of giving directions too - it is landmark-based direction, as street signs and words like "north," "south," "left," and "right" would matter little to people there.  If you grew up in the area, you just know where something is.  The concept of "sense of place" has a huge investment in this thinking, as the landmarks are sort of an expression of the pride of the locals in where they come from.  I have to a degree inherited that same mindset, as even now I give directions based on landmarks, even when it is a place I am not from but have lived there a while.  For instance, if I am in Baltimore, and wanted to give directions to a restaurant, I would use directional words but also punctuate them with landmark references, such as "turn right at the coffeehouse on the corner of East and Eastern."  It is wired into who I am as a person.  It is at this point now we move onto another aspect of the "sense of place," that being the feeling a place invokes. 

Near my hometown in Tucker County, WV, we have several remnants of old mining, railroad, and lumber communities called "ghost towns."  They have names like Bayard, Kempton, Gormania, Douglas, etc.  Even though many of these places are now long-abandoned, and all you may see is woods or an occasional ruin of a chimney, that place is still known by that name regardless. As a kid, I loved going through those old places, as it evoked a sort of mystery for me.  Even today, I have fond memories of those old places, which don't look like much to most other people.  It is because I feel a connection to those places though, as I have deep roots there.  Dr. Esolen explains this on page 30 of his book when he says "Let me not suggest then, that man loves his place because it would be a nice postcard. He loves it because it is in him, and he is in it; it bears the impress of his fingers, and it touches the nerves of his soul.  The place that has once been seen and worked and loved by man is no longer a mere intersection of longitude and latitude."  I say to that - exactly!  I think more than anything Dr. Esolen captures the essence of  "sense of place" in that description, and as he goes on, he notes on the next page that one cannot belong in any place in quite the same way.  Granted, many of us have lived many places - I personally have lived in 5 states, and while each contributed to a chapter that is my life story, it is not the same as the place you have roots.  Now, that is not to say that other places don't evoke similar memories though, especially when related to childhood.  For me, just as an example, I have a "sense of place" over an entire region that stretches from roughly Morgantown, WV, to Baltimore, and my childhood played out over that entire region.  I have recently moved back to Baltimore, but I lived here before - I went to kindergarten less than a couple of miles from where I am sitting, and my folks lived in that neighborhood of the city for generations, so I have a history here.  While that history does not stretch to the east side of the city, which is where I live and work now, Baltimore still plays a role in my early history.  And, that old neighborhood over on the west side of town where I spent about two years of my life still evokes memories of things.  And, it creates a longing in my soul as well - the Baltimore of today is by no means the same as the Baltimore of 50 years ago, as so much has changed over time (and not for the better, I may add).  That being said though, there are some things that still evoke the old memories here - one place is a pizzeria over on Eastern Avenue called Matthew's.  Their pizzas are very unique, in that they evoke that taste of pizza I recall from when I was 5 years old.  Just a stimulus like that - a pizza - can serve as a reminder of our past.  I had another such episode the other day when we visited Solomon's Island, about an hour south of here.  We ate at a good seafood place, and I had ordered fried oysters.  As I was eating those though, I tasted something that was familiar to me, and it was a pleasant experience.  Our senses at times do that to us too, and it is quite the thing when it happens. Now that I have shared a little of that, let me now address a negative that Esolen addresses as well. 

On page 41 of the same chapter, Dr. Esolen notes that those who hold a more leftist/progressive mentality are of the belief that if something grows old, worn, or discarded, it should be forgotten.  This explains why they are so iconoclastic in society recently and are trying to recreate the society in their own image.  As Esolen notes later in the chapter on page 43, the secularist focuses on the future without having a foundation in the past, as the future cannot lay a foundation because it hasn't happened yet.  This is where utopian fantasy then becomes dystopian reality, and this can be disastrous as we have seen in recent history.  While we may not be able to recreate the exact aspects of the past - the past is the past too, and much happens over time obviously - we can preserve the best of our past, and it will shape the future for us in many ways.  But, we also must not forget the worst aspects of the past either - simply erasing those could cause problems of a different sort, as it is a denial of reality and will also create an atmosphere of dishonesty.  Preserving the good and learning from the bad is what helps create healthy memory, and bad things often happen for a reason.  The reason could be our own failures at something.  It could also be a circumstance we were thrown into that we didn't cause or expect.  And, despite a bad experience, a good thing could come from it.  Take the example of a manure-filled plot of ground.  It smells horrible, it is grossly unpleasant, and it is not something you want to be around a lot.  But, from that nasty experience can grow beautiful roses or succulent fruit, and it is the bad that makes the good possible in that regard.  It is a bit simplistic maybe, but there is also a spiritual truth there too - often, we have to die to self in order to grow, just like a seed planted in the earth.  It can be unpleasant, painful, and it is not something we want to recall, but we grow as a result.  Adversity can be a huge motivator for success, as it does build up the character and it also anticipates that we must overcome challenges to get to where we need to be.  It is called life, and it is a reminder that we live in a fallen world, but that we can also use that fallen world as fodder to grow too.  This is even true with places which shape our past as well - some places may be painful for us to revisit, but they remind us that if we had not had that bad experience, we may not be where we are today.  After all, a crucifixion of our Lord later led to his Resurrection, but the fruit that bore did something for all of us who understand what happened - it gave us salvation and eternal life.  Calvary is a place, and in sacramental life, we are endowed with a supernatural grace that allows us to revisit that sorrowful place in the partaking of the sacrament (in this case the Eucharist) and it in that regard is a time travel of sorts.  It is a mystery of faith we cannot explain in words, and nor should we unless we end up getting into a bog of potential heresy, but we know what it does for us.  The spot where Christ died for us is where we too are resurrected and given a new life, and a bad place becomes something beautiful because of the love that it represents for us.  We too can turn our bad places in life into a beautiful testimony of restoration, because supernatural grace makes that possible for us.  And, thank God for that.  

As I wrap up these reflections on Esolen's writing as well as my own ideas about "sense of place,"  it presents a challenge.  Sometimes we have to go back, to revisit, and to reflect upon certain memories, and given we are a creature that responds to physical symbolism, a place or an event can be what motivates us to do just that.  This is true both on the individual level, but also for humanity in general - we accept Christ's ultimate gift of himself for us by revisiting the event where he gave himself for our sins, and we then humbly and joyfully receive that grace in order for us to grow in our faith.  Hopefully that will be an encouragement to someone, so thanks for joining me, and will see you next visit. 

Sorting Through the Chaff

 Over the past week, I have been listening to an amazing young lady named Melissa Dougherty.  She is an apologist, and one area she is researching extensively is the whole idea of what is called New Thought influences in Christianity.  She authored a book, Happy Lies, that I will be receiving this week as it is on order.  Looking at this material made me think, and there are a couple of observations about Melissa that I wanted to note. 

The one thing that strikes me about her video content is that she is very charitable - she is not going into this stuff with guns a-blazing, and she shows a remarkable sensitivity to people who are ensnared in some of the things she talks about.  This is a good thing as far as apologetics goes, because we should never view people who are into cultic or heretical beliefs as necessarily "the enemy," but rather we should see them as human beings who are victims of something they are not even aware of, and therefore it takes a level of compassion to reach out to them.  Melissa does that well, and I was very impressed with her. 

Another thing I noted about Melissa's work is that she really does her homework.  She doesn't do casual readings of things and then comment on them - rather, she explores all the nooks and crannies of the topic and presents an exhaustive overview of it.  That shows integrity as well, as Melissa does her due diligence in trying to give a comprehensive panorama of the topic, and I can appreciate that.  She is working on a Master's degree at this point, but with that type of research, she will honestly take to a dissertation like a duck to water.  

The one thing that is fascinating about Melissa's work is that she makes an important distinction between New Age and New Thought.  This is actually something that is important, because one is essentially a Christian heresy, while the other is sort of a heresy of Eastern religious traditions - even Hindus don't have a lot to do with New Agers, in all honesty.  While, as Melissa points out, there is some overlap between them, they are still distinct.  And, New Thought is a lot more insidious.  You can look at her videos on YouTube for more on that, because I don't want to steal her proverbial thunder, but I had an experience dealing with a New Thought group and I wanted to talk about it. 

Back when we lived in Florida, Barbara worked at her company with a young lady named Suzie.  Suzie was a sweet girl, but she was a bit, well, out there.  In 2010, she got married to her longtime fiance, and we were invited to the wedding.  The wedding was held at what is called a Unity church in Dunedin, FL, and Unity represents what is probably the largest and most visible New Thought group on the planet.  Upon arriving at this place, the first thing we noticed were a group of Buddhist monks milling about next door - I already knew something about Unity, and I knew it was a heretical group, but to be honest I was about to get a first-hand look at how bizarre it was.  The inside of the "sanctuary" was almost completely bare, except for a few rows of uncomfortable seats around about.  And, I got this weird spiritual vibe from the place - it was a bit creepy.  Then there was the minister, a woman named "Pastor Leddie."  Oh my goodness - she was a rare one!  She was acting something like a hippie flower child, and even looked like one, and when she officiated our friend's ceremony the words she spoke were like "universal harmony," "the brotherhood of the Christ spirit," and all sorts of wacky stuff.  Being a fairly traditional Catholic who was raised in a fairly conservative Pentecostal tradition, this Unity stuff was just out there for me.  But as a gentleman, I was respectful although on the way home Barbara and I were like "what in hell just happened??"  This "Pastor Leddie" in particular got a new nickname from me - Reverend Rainbow, because she sounded like a cross between Leo from That 70s Show and a big purple dinosaur named Barney.  It was an unforgettable experience for sure, and also perhaps one of the craziest weddings I have ever been to.  I was so thankful for Mass that Sunday, and hearing sound teaching again - I needed a palate cleansing for my soul in all honesty.

From my experience, let me just share a few things of my own.  If you ever have the experience of visiting a group like that, there are two things to remember.  First, pray up before you go, because you are entering the proverbial "belly of the beast," and if you are not prepared for it, the deception can be subtle but deadly.  Secondly, don't go into a place like that thinking you have the call of an evangelist to "straighten them out."  You are in their territory, and although it may not be that pleasant for you, try to act civil.  If you can do that, then you have the true message of Mark 16 - you are compelled to drink the deadly thing, but it shall not harm you.  Supernatural grace is what does that, so remember that also.  

Unity, in particular, can be quite insidious with its message, as even people in orthodox Christian groups can get sucked in by its publications such as The Daily Word.  I recall this old Italian lady I knew at a parish we attended, and she thought that The Daily Word was gospel truth.  And, despite the fact some of us told her to stay away from that, she got defensive about it.  Finally, you just have to surrender people like that to God, because if they are not ready to hear the truth, they will not be receptive to it.  It always amazes me at how many Catholics are duped by not only stuff like this, but also preachers like Joel Osteen.  I had an acquaintance I know who claimed to be a "traditional Catholic" but he idolized Joel Osteen - when I attempted to tell him that Joel Osteen was heretical, he blocked me on social media.  Again, if they refuse to hear, give them to God.  As Melissa has pointed out in many of her videos, there are some of these esoteric New Thought things that have crept into Christian churches, and often you don't know it's there until an astute person who can discern them points them out.  That is why the work that Melissa and others do is so vital, and I would love to see some good Catholic apologists rise up who would tackle those issues, as New Thought garbage is totally opposed to Catholic teaching and no faithful Catholic should have anything to do with it. 

Given I have a class to teach shortly, that is my word of the day.  Thanks again for joining me, and will see you next time. 

Boyhood and Youth - Some Reflections

 I am currently reading through Anthony Esolen's book Defending Boyhood (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2019).  The whole idea of Esolen's work is to talk about facets of boyhood which have been lost regarding the proper development of manhood, although I initially thought it would be a sort of prompt for reflection regarding boyhood and masculinity.  In a way however, I guess it is, but it also establishes some principles.   I wanted to dissect some of this initially and then add my own reflections to the observations I make.  

I note first on page 14 of Esolen's book, where he talks about how a boy looks toward a certain type of man to grant liberty of intellectual and spiritual "combat," (I am not quite sure why the author uses this word, but we'll go with it) and about discourse regarding higher things.  There is a rubric, Esolen notes, as well as the wonder of the search into mysteries.  Looking on page 15, I understand what he is saying about "combat" now - it has to do with questioning and dissection of rules about things, or in another way of putting it, refining the rubric.  This "combat" though is not an end unto itself, as that would actually be the truth, a truth free of subjective feelings, social comfort, and convenience for convenience's sake.  Those factors often lead to an acceptance of a half-truth, and two half-truths, as Esolen notes, can produce a whole lie.  It therefore means as we see on page 16 that combatting the rule is the way of seeking the truth that inspired the rule.  It does not mean the rule is thrown out, but rather clarification happens.  Seeing it that way, there are many things to unpack here.

Truth is unchanging, objective, and is ultimately rooted in divine law - that is factual whether dealing with a Church teaching or just basic safety (not touching a hot stove, for instance).  Questioning or challenging a rule in the right spirit is not denying the truth behind the rule, but rather seeking where the motivation for it comes from.  In watching several of these "HOA Karen" videos on YouTube in recent weeks, we see how a supposedly good concept - a community organization which is supposed to promote safety and order in a community - can be twisted and corrupted into a system where the lives of rightful homeowners are micromanaged and manipulated to control rather than preserved, and an astute homeowner will see the absurdity in this and challenge it.  The idea of "combat" that Esolen notes in regard to rules has to do with two important components.  First is actually knowing the rule.  As Sun Tzu's book on warfare notes, you have to get inside an opponent's head in order to understand how to prevail against them.  One aspect of this intellectual "combat" is knowing a rule first before you decide to mount an offensive against it.  Second, strategy is key.  Once you know the rule, then you have to strategize how to combat the rule without compromising its original spirit.  In other words, if we mount a half-cocked offense against something, it will not go well for us.  And, this is where another concept comes into play.

The term "malicious compliance" is often employed with HOA disputes, and it is a way for a homeowner to show how absurd an interpretation of a certain rule is.  It's actually a good tactic, in that one is using the very weapon directed against them as an offensive advantage.  When it comes to boyhood and masculine mentorship, this can be a key bit of wisdom we can use.  Jesus Himself employed it in the parables in a way that is a radical reinterpretation of what the parable is often interpreted as saying.  When Jesus says "love your enemies" for instance, he is not meaning that you go up and give the person who just wronged you a humongous bear hug and tell them you love them - that will get you smacked down pretty fast in all honesty.  What it means is a little tough love in some cases, meaning that you set boundaries, and you communicate to your enemy in a way that respects their personhood that they crossed a line.  You are not tolerating the wrong they committed, but rather handling it strategically.  And, it is done in the proper spirit and not as a vindictive action.  Looking at it from that perspective, it makes more sense than the false altruism that many well-meaning but misguided Christians tend to impose upon themselves when dealing with an adversarial situation.  Boys need to be taught that at a young age, and of course they will make mistakes and fall short - we are fallen humanity after all, and screwups are a part of the learning and growth process.  The idea of "combat" then means fighting smarter, not harder.  

So, how did that impact me as a boy growing up?  I was one of those kids that defied a lot of things and I had my own set of quirks.  While I was considered to be a good student in school and overall I never was much of a disciplinary challenge to my single mother, I was a kid who marched to his own drummer in a proverbial sense.  And, it created a little friction with my dad too.  This is where the "combat" of rules that Dr. Esolen talks about comes into play.  Boys should be mentored by their fathers in all honesty, but not every father is up to the challenge.  Part of mentoring a son is encouraging them to refine the person they already are, and not forcing them into some preconceived mold the father has.  My dad unfortunately failed miserably at that, and he and I never had the best relationship because what so many others saw as strengths, my dad acted like he was ashamed of them.  Also, not having him in my life as much as I should have didn't help either, as it created further dissonance between us.  I believe my dad loved me though, and I did love him, but our personalities clashed and we couldn't stand a lot about each other either.  However, "being about your father's business" does not necessarily apply to biological parents - we can have other mentors who are father figures to us, and thankfully I had a few of those.  It doesn't mean that when we butt heads with our biological fathers that we ignore everything, as they too can have valuable insight for us, and I actually learned much from my own father too.  For instance, I hated eating cooked vegetables when I was growing up, as often the texture of them was weird.  The problem wasn't the veggies themselves, but the way many people cooked them - they literally boiled the hell out of them until they became a yellow/green mush, and they were just nasty to eat. My dad showed me something though that revolutionized that - he knew how to steam things like broccoli and cauliflower properly so that they were actually appetizing to eat, and I owe him a lot of thanks for that.  My dad also taught me about fishing, and I learned some good life skills from him such as how to wash my own laundry, and that made me more self-sufficient.  I also found out that I inadvertently picked up a few traits from my dad that have served me well over the years - for instance, having multiple copies of certain documents, etc.  When I began sorting through a lot of my dad's stuff after he passed, I saw patterns I myself have in what he kept, and I realized I carried more of my father's attributes than I thought.  It was an epiphany to me, and it made me appreciate my own father more.  He and I disagreed on a lot, but in the end, he also made his own valuable contributions to my development from boyhood to manhood. 

I am also looking later into this same chapter, and came across page 29.  This talks about how boys form relationships as they develop into men, and there are two things Esolen notes that are of interest.

One, what a boy seeks from other boys and men is generally public in nature.  This entails things that either directly resonate with their masculinity, or in a more professional and fraternal sense.  That is why we as Catholic men seek out organizations like the Knights of Columbus (of which I am a 4th-degree Knight myself) and also we tend to be more into organizing politically and socially.  This happens in boyhood as well, as I recall my own boyhood adventures - as the intellectual among a group of other boys in my neighborhood for example, I was the one always trying to create my own re-creations of the explorers I read about in my history books, and I would elaborately construct forts and other structures as part of my "domain."  One of those I recall when I was about 10 years old was actually creating an island in the middle of Grassy Lick Run in the town of Kirby where I lived, and it was an interesting experiment now that I look back on that.  If you saw Grassy Lick Run then, it wasn't much - at its deepest it was maybe 3 1/2 feet, and that was underneath the bridge that crossed it going up Rock Oak Road.  So, in about 8 inches of water that I waded out into just beside the bridge, I hauled large river rocks, piled them, and then scooped dirt from the bank to pile on top of them - I ironically go this idea from reading about the Aztec chimanpas, and I wanted to build my own.  After scooping all that dirt onto the rocks, I then "forested" my island with some weeds that had some nice flowers on them, and that little makeshift island (it was about 5 feet in circumference at most) was a kingdom for me, or rather a "colony" of the little kingdom of forts and other things I had all around the community.  I recruited some local kids as allies to help me do all this, and looking back on it the experiment was pretty good.  Also, at a year or two older, I actually had a whole political movement planned out as well that I wanted to start, and I remember writing out a whole manifesto about it - I kind of wished I had kept that, because it would have been interesting to look back on now.  I saw myself then as a visionary, a "leader of men," and I would recruit younger boys to my cause and make them my minions, or in some cases a de facto junta over my various forts and the island I constructed in the middle of Grassy Lick Creek.  That activity for me fulfilled a social function that was crucial to my development as a young boy.  And, of course, I needed other boys to make it happen, so I recruited and was often successful.  

Secondly, what a man seeks from the opposite sex is often private and not public, as Esolen points out.  The affinity of a boy for a girl is a lot more specified, and even from an early age when no sexual desire is evident a boy wants to impress the girl he has an interest in.  I recall a very quirky way I did that back when I was 11.  I had always wanted a chemistry set, and that Christmas Mom got me one.  At around the same time, I began to develop an interest in the landlady's granddaughter, a beautiful young lady named Jennifer who was about a year or two younger than me.  She came from a rich family though, and she had no interest in any of us local boys, and she was often kind of dismissive of us in all honesty.  I remember trying to impress Jennifer by utilizing my chemistry set to make her perfumes and soaps - a lot of this involved using a bunch of Mom's perfumes she never wore anyway, and the remains of bars of soap in our bathroom.  I would use some things in my chemistry set to synthesize a variety of potions into an aromatic concoction, and then I would gift-wrap them and give them to Jennifer whenever she was down to visit her grandmother's store.  She was perhaps my most serious early crush, and I had it bad for her.  She, of course, didn't reciprocate my feelings, and I have the distinct feeling that many of my well-intentioned gifts I bestowed upon her ended up discreetly discarded in a garbage can somewhere (and in retrospect, who could blame her?  While noble in attempt, the poor girl may have broken out in hives or something with the ambiguous concoctions and soaps I created!).  The point is, when a guy seeks the attention of a lady, he often reveals things about himself to her that no one else would either understand or appreciate.  That is something we even carry into adulthood, as with the right woman a man can feel more like himself and by sharing those more intimate parts of himself, he is committing himself to that woman - that is also the basis of marriage too, and why "the two become one flesh."  These two aspects of a young man in particular - the public part of himself he shares with his buddies, and the more intimate private part of himself he shares with his girl - are not contradictory:  he is the same person, and both parts of that person are what make him who he is.  It is like the fictional jazz musician Moses Godfrey noted in Nat Hentoff's book Jazz Country - you cannot ask a person to "be themselves" because they are a different self to a different set of circumstances.  One can be a son to one's mother, but cannot be that same son to one's wife - he is a husband.  He can be an employee in the workplace, but also be a student at his school - they are not one and the same as each requires a different set of personal rubrics.  This is true as well when a guy is socializing with his buddies - he is not going to be tell them the sweet romantic stuff he shares with his girl, although they may see how he looks at her, and many of them will have their girls they like too so it will be an unspoken understanding among them with that.  Because guys tend to be more vulnerable with girls they have an interest in, they may actually do things that may seem silly if they did the same things in other circles of relationships they have.  Oddly, this still holds true as adults as much as it does as boys, although by that point men are more mature and they can talk about some different issues and even share some ideas based on the solidarity of being husbands to their respective wives.  Even so, even in adulthood when men have wives like that, the circle is smaller at that point.  Let me give an example of a couple of individuals.

There is a guy who has a Filipina fiancee, and he has a friend who has been married to a Filipina for several years, so naturally that creates a point of mutual recognition between the two friends.  The conversations they have will go something like this:  "You know, the other day my fiancee was so sweet because she is always making sure I eat my breakfast, etc.  Is this what a typical Filipina wife will do?"  The friend in this case responds that his wife - he may have been married to her over 18 years at this point - does the same thing, and he also thinks it is a sweet gesture.  Unless one has a friend who has a similar experience though, this is not something that one can talk about with just anyone.  It is based on a shared experience, and the point of true friendship in that case is being able to bounce insights off each other and perhaps even gain new insights from each other too.  That is a good thing, and it is 100% true masculinity for two guys to have a conversation like that.  This starts even in boyhood as well, where perhaps two friends from similar backgrounds can relate regarding a certain circumstance both face.  This was true for me as a kid growing up in a low-income single-parent household in a small town in West Virginia - many of us neighborhood kids did face similar challenges, and often we could talk about that because we knew where we came from too.  Shared experience is what creates the communicable traits of community, something we talked about before, and now let's put that together.

All of us have "stories," and we also are members of one or more types of groups, either by choice or circumstance.  The collective "story" of that group is one in which all the members of it share, but there are also things called individuality and distinctiveness, and those dictate how the individual shapes their part of the "story."  What is unique to that individual, in Personalist terms, is called incommunicable traits. What they share with others in the same group is called communicable traits, or universals.  At the core of that is what makes up the story - this is a series of central narrative convictions that evolve around the response to four fundamental questions:  who am I? where am I? what's wrong? and what's the remedy?  Yes, for those who have read my stuff for the past 10 years now, you know where I am going with this - this again is the CNC model that Pentecostal theologian Kenneth Archer proposes, coupled with the thesis that Catholic philosophy professor John Crosby gives, both in their respective books.  This kind of fits into Esolen's thoughts too, as he talks about the male proclivity to rank things, and me even proposing this model is my attempt to do just that.  Like Esolen notes on page 33 of his book, I as a man do not see these two concepts (Crosby's and Archer's) as the same, but rather they can be viewed in one of two ways.  They can be contrasted against each other (the philosophical vs. the theological in this case) or they can be compared and as I have done synchronized into something more complementary.  I have always had a knack for doing that, and thankfully according to Esolen, it means I am a normal male of the human species.  Esolen argues - more or less - that instead of suppressing this proclivity in boys, we should be nurturing it and encouraging it to grow, and teaching things such as critical thinking, problem solving, and fundamental skills that will aid in evolving both of those in the mind of an impressionable boy.  It teaches boys to think on their feet then, and instead of worrying about the problem, it sets the boy's mind into a sort of "survival mode" to where he comes up with his own solutions.  Let me tell you how that relates to me. 

Like many people, I have faced my fair share of adversity and challenges.  You have read about some of them over the past year.  If a boy in particular is taught at an early age to anticipate variables, and then challenged with a way to address them, it will be an asset to them later.  This starts in the way they are educated.  Part of my teaching style I communicate with my high school juniors entails making them think.  I challenge them, girls and boys alike.  For instance, if I am asking them about something, I want to make them think, to get into problem-solving mode.  One thing, for instance, I do with my students when they ask what the letter of something starts with, I will say "the fifteenth letter of the alphabet" (which is P), and then I watch them when faced with a challenge trying to figure that out - it is a little bit amusing to watch them recite the alphabet while counting on their fingers, but eventually they get it.  Another thing I do as well is utilize word association - for instance, if I am teaching the components of the liturgy to my students, I will ask them about the General Confession as part of the Liturgy of the Word, and if they have trouble I will ask them "What is the highest rank an Army officer can have?" and then say, "OK, you got that, so combine that with what the one sacrament is where we tell our sins to a priest."  Once they make the association, they are like "Oh yeah, I know this!" and they end up actually doing good on a quiz if this comes up.   While girls in my classes tend to grasp this quicker, the boys love the challenge and will jump on it, and often they still recall it weeks later even if otherwise they are loud and distracted in class.  This is a master stroke at learning to solve a problem presented to you, and once the students understand what you are doing, they are able to think on their feet more.  These are ways I learned too in many cases, and it does work wonders with intellectual development.  The down side to it though is that I actually have to do with 11th graders what I learned in 6th grade.  Such is the culture we live in though.  Problem-solving is a skill that any person of either gender can benefit from, but teaching boys from an early age to assess a situation quickly and think on their feet is a valuable skill that could save their lives.  And, it is something lacking in much of today's youth, especially boys, because often boys have a lot stacked against them that they shouldn't have to struggle with, mostly because of the leftist domination of education and other societal factors that could be taken into consideration as well.  

I will probably visit this more later, as I also have a second book of Esolen's on the way I want to reflect on as well, but thank you for allowing me to share here today.  And, hope you will join me again next visit. 

Longing For Home

 If you have followed me over the past year, you understand that my life has been a bit upended.  We had to make a sudden move from the more comfortable atmosphere of Hagerstown to the chaos of Baltimore, and it has honestly been an adjustment to get used to.  I have lived in cities before, and generally felt the same way - I felt like this when we lived in St. Petersburg, FL, years ago too.  Baltimore is a MUCH bigger city than St. Pete was though, and although some demographics are similar, it is also been like living in a foreign country for me too.   When I feel like this, it also leads to some burnout at work, and I get to the point that certain things about my daily routine are dreadful to me.   Do you remember the cult classic movie Office Space that came out about 27 years ago?  The protagonist in that movie, a mid-career young Gen-X professional named Peter Gibbons, felt a similar way.  Whether it was the congested traffic he faced on the way to work, or hearing the condescending tone of his micromanaging boss, Lumbergh, say "Hey Peter, whaattss happening?" before being assaulted with a barrage of corporate head games, Peter felt a little discontented.  I think we all feel like that at some point, but living in a city intensifies it drastically.  It is not as if city living is completely bad - I mean, after all, I actually was able to experience my first Georgian restaurant in Baltimore.  But, you deal with a lot of things that get on your last nerve - congested city streets, porch pirates stealing your deliveries, the occasional crackhead who has no business operating a vehicle driving one into the foundation of your house, etc.  Then, when teaching at a high school - even though it is a Catholic high school - where the overwhelming majority of the student body are from low-income minority families and there are special sets of circumstances dealing with kids like that, it can drain one both physically and mentally.  As of late, I have actually been missing small-town life, and to be honest, despite some struggles I loved living in Hagerstown.  I felt comfortable there, and to be honest had things worked out differently I would have stayed there in all honesty. But, it is what it is, and as Barbara has pointed out to me, God put me here for a reason - there is a reason why I get paid a decent salary and have a stable teaching contract, and also why nothing else has come across my path yet.  But, I also know this is only for a season, as in time I will be released to move on.  I am currently looking into teaching jobs overseas - in the Philippines in particular for a deeply personal reason - and if the right door opens up I am gone. But, until that door opens, I have to make the best of things, and pray God shows me how to do so.  I have been through worse, in all honesty, but it does cause me some discomfort.  Tonight was a good example of that I want to talk about now. 

About an hour ago, two Black ladies who live close by were ringing our doorbell off the hook, and then they proceeded to complain about a gas leak.  Fortunately, I know what to look for with that, and I did the check around the house.  If you have a gas leak threat, there are three things that will indicate it:

1.  A disgusting skunk smell due to a chemical agent called mercaptan they put in the gas lines - smelling that noxious odor is indicative of a leak. 

2. A hissing or other noise from the gas meter and connected lines.  If that happens, that is a serious sign of a leak.

3. Having a CO1 alarm in the house will detect gas fumes, and our landlord was prudent enough to install one just outside the upstairs bathroom here. 

I did the check around all those things, and no indicators were found that we had a leak.  And, for good measure, I also emailed the landlord like a responsible tenant to let him know someone had said something about it just to give him a heads-up.  In all likelihood, there is probably nothing to worry about, and if necessary I will call the gas company myself to confirm it if it should come to that. 

This type of drama is another reason city living is not that appealing to me.  I can handle suburbs, and in all honesty I am at a place to where I can possibly get a mortgage in the next year.  If I can do that, I am out of here in all honesty.   I will talk more about a potential move later, but for now you get the idea. 

Aside from the main discussion, I wanted to also give a small memorial to a dear friend of mine who passed away last week.  Father Charles (Qasha) Klutz (1934-2025) is someone I have known about 37 years now.  Fr. Klutz gave me my introduction to the Assyrian people, as he was an ordained priest in the Assyrian Church although not Assyrian himself.  A well-read and very articulate man, we forged a friendship that has lasted for many, many years.  Up until his retirement in 2008, when he moved back to his native Washington, Fr. Klutz served in parish ministry as well as also being a Chancellor to the Bishop of his Church's Eastern Diocese.  While we had some interesting debates at times, they were always in good spirits and we learned much from each other.  

Rev. Fr. Charles (Qasha) Klutz (1934-2025)

I never had the privilege of meeting Fr. Klutz in person, but when I first reached out to him in mid-1987 to learn more about the Assyrian Church and its people, he was a wealth of information.  We had many phone conversations and we wrote many letters back and forth for several years.  Although we sort of lost touch as I got married, came of age, and life began to assert its demands, I have always considered Fr. Klutz a friend, and I am saddened by his loss on a personal level but also know he did the Lord's work with dedication, so I will one day meet him again in the hereafter.  Rest Eternal, dear Father, and may Light Perpetual shine upon you, amen. 

Fr. Klutz's passing is yet another reminder of how many people I used to know that I have lost, and it also fits into the theme of my reflections today - longing for home.  Fr. Klutz reminds me of an earlier passion and strong calling I believed I had then, to the Assyrians as a people.  Seeking to be a "missionary" to them, they eventually converted me instead, and it was because of knowing them that I ended up eventually becoming Catholic myself.  And, it is one reason why for several years as a Catholic I chose to attend an Aramaic-speaking Maronite parish in Florida over a Roman-rite church.  A lot of that influence is still evident in my own personal spirituality, as I still read St. Isaac of Nineveh and other Assyrian Church Fathers.  A part of me misses that passion I had for the Assyrian people, and I want that back - it is a little more challenging in some aspects now as I lost a substantial library of books on Assyrians and their culture that I once had, and I could kick my own rear for that happening.  The positive though is that there is a treasure trove of Assyrian information online, as this is the 21st century, and many of those books I had before can now actually be downloaded as digital copies.  Once the dust settles on the opening salvo of this new chapter my life is in now, I may begin pursuing some of that again, as it is an important part of my own story now too.  I am actually even thinking of writing more about the Assyrians later, especially my own experiences, and perhaps that can be an inspiration for the future maybe.  We will see. 

It looks like 2025 will be one of my most prolific writing years, as I have a lot of content this year.  However, that is OK, because writing at times is what keeps me focused and sane.  As it seems that my old work of journaling is starting to fade out after almost 30 years, my blogs present a way to channel my own penchant for writing into a more focused lens and I can actually share this with others.  I still journal of course, as journaling is part of who I am and there are some things I would rather keep personal for myself.  But, blogging has also had its rewards too. 

I am expecting Anthony Esolen's book on boyhood in the next day or so, and I will be doing some reflections based on my reading of that.  So, for tonight, I will bid my adieus and will be back again soon.  Thanks for joining me here on the virtual "front porch," and look forward to visiting with you again soon.