Is Hate a Contradiction?

 The reason I write this is that our parish priest in his homily yesterday addressed something of interest.  The Scripture passage - the daily Mass reading from the Gospels, in this case Luke 14:26 - is a verse that talks about if you love Christ, you must "hate" your mother, father, children, spouse, self, etc.  Now, oddly, when you read the rest of Scripture (which Fr. JoseMaria, our priest, astutely pointed out) you are told to honor your mother and father, hate no one, etc.  Is this a contradiction?  That became the focus of Fr. JoseMaria's homily, and to be honest while I was listening to that a light clicked on in the deep recesses of my mind as if to scream "This makes sense!"  Now that those preliminary comments are the introduction, let's dive in. 

The word "hate" is often associated with things we morbidly hate, and in the case of people, it is tantamount to a death wish on our enemies when we say we hate them.   This is not the hate our Lord is talking about in this verse, and as our parish priest pointed out, this type of hatred has nothing to do with malicious or murderous intent, as you are not hating the person.  Rather, it means that the focus of our ultimate love and devotion must be to something greater, and if anything stands in the way of that, then it deserves to be abhorred, which is not the same as hatred.  You can love someone but also abhor what they do or stand for, in other words.  Therefore, you are not hating them as human beings, but rather you seek to distance yourself from a potential hindrance they may be causing you if it interferes with your faith.  When it is explained that way, it makes more sense, although the wording of Scripture here may be a bit confusing unless you understand the context of the passage within the whole.  Now, I will elaborate further.

Loving someone does not mean you have to like them, as some people are just downright disagreeable.  And, that can include some of our own family.  For instance, you have heard me talk about the attitudes of some of my family - to me, they are abhorrent, especially the tendencies of some late relatives to gossip and tear down others just because they get a sick pleasure from it.  I don't hate them in the sense of how hatred is understood, but I hate what they did, and due to some very wise counsel it was best I limit my contacts with those particular relatives.  I still have some cousins with attitudes like this, especially on my mother's branch of the family tree - they also treated her like this too, and she didn't have much to do with them either.  They are not people I would choose to be close with in other words, because their own attitude toward me would be toxic.  So, I stay away from them, simple as that.  And, this is kind of what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels when he said we should abhor those who seek to bring us down if they hinder our spiritual life and the flow of grace to us.  It is for our own good.  But, as I have also said before, forgiveness is still a factor too, and if some of them were to have a change of heart and mind and would seek to be better, then we extend that grace to them and give them forgiveness we seek.  Forgiveness, as I have said before, is like a gift - it is of no benefit unless the recipient accepts it.  However, like any gift, keep the offer open until they are ready to receive it, and that is called having an attitude of forgiveness. It is the same way with what Jesus is talking about in this context regarding "hating" - it does not mean that we hate their guts, but rather that we abstain from being around them if they present something toxic.  Let me give some other examples.

Let's say a boy comes of age, and he has a passion for a career.  However, his father is giving him opposition and is trying to hinder the boy from doing what makes him happy.  There is nothing wrong or immoral about what the boy wants to do, and he has a passion for it.  But the father is trying to micromanage him.  Finally, the boy has enough, and after a heated exchange with his father he decides he is going to do what he wants anyway.  Is the boy wrong?  Is he disrespecting his father?  The answer to both is no - the boy still loves his father, and just has a different outlook without totally rejecting his father but rather just his father's attitude about his own goals.  The boy in a sense is "abhorring" his father, but not coldly hating his guts, you see.  There comes those times when we have to establish boundaries with even those we love - we tell them we love them, we appreciate their input, but we also are capable of our own decisions too.  When it comes to matters of faith, it is even more intense.  Let's say a child who is raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist house - his dad may even be a pastor of a church - decides to begin to investigate the Catholic Church just out of curiosity.  In time, the kid likes what he sees, and after a long talk with a local priest, he decides it is time to "come home" to the Church.  Then, his father finds out - oh my goodness!  Keep in mind, if this kid's father is a fundamentalist Baptist pastor, a key "tradition of men" that this pastor is going to cling to is anti-Catholicism.  His dad may have preached sermons that the Pope is the antichrist, and a secret coalition of Jesuits, Freemasons, and other nefarious groups is plotting to take over the world and exterminate every fundamentalist on the earth.  To that father, it is as if his son just openly took the "mark of the Beast" and thus is eternally lost now.  The son, however, feels differently - perhaps for years he questioned his father's teachings, being as Mark Lowry so humourously said it, the typical Independent Baptist attitude is "I'm not always right, but I'm never in doubt!"  The son legitimately understands that he was probably getting only one side of the story from his preacher dad, and given God has gifted all of us with working brains, he began to start examining things for himself.  However, the preacher father invests more authority in himself than any historic Pope ever did, and for his son to "apostatize" like that is a betrayal.  Because the dad has such an unbending bias against anything even sounding "Catholic," the wiser course for the son to take is to say "You know what Dad, I love you, and I appreciate your convictions, but you are wrong, and if you cannot support my decision then I need to distance myself from you."  This is again what Jesus is saying - anything (or anyone) that hinders one's personal spiritual growth needs to be avoided.  The father would deny this with his son, although in practice he will be doing the same thing if he disowns his son (that has happened more often than not in strict fundamentalist Protestant households).  The son risks never seeing his dad again, and it is a big sacrifice to make to grow in his faith.  But, in the end he will see he made the wise choice, and these stories can also have more pleasant endings - the father may one day wise up and realize that maybe those "heathen Catholics" are not so bad after all, and perhaps just maybe they are actually fellow Christians too!  That being said, not every fundamental Baptist hates Catholics either - both Jerry Falwell and Jack van Impe were independent fundamental Baptists who had wonderful relationships with Catholics (Dr. van Impe was even a huge fan of the late Pope St. John Paul II).  And, even the controversial fundamentalist Baptist pioneer J. Frank Norris ended up forming a sort of alliance against Communism with Pope St. Pius X (I need to double-check if that is the right Pope too).  So, even fundamentalists are capable of reasonable thought too, provided their egos and their own biases don't cloud it.  So, change is possible, which now leads to the missing piece of the puzzle. 

When Jesus commanded us to "hate" some relatives, he did not say to do so in a literal, exterminating way.  Rather, he said that if they were a hindrance, we need to turn away from them - we still love them, and we pray for them, and if one day they come around we freely offer forgiveness and reconciliation with them.  This was really what the crux of Fr. JoseMaria's message was in yesterday's homily, and again, Scripture has given its eternal yet fresh wisdom on a topic that can easily appear confusing and contradictory on the surface.  So, rather than despising someone like that to the point you wish their death, you abhor their attitudes and distance yourself from them for your own mental and spiritual well-being.  I am even thinking of presenting this in some way to my 11th graders at some point during the year, as that is an important lesson for them too.  It means that although elders are to be respected, they are not perfect either and it is OK to differ with them where they are wrong.

I was not planning on writing again this soon, but I was sort of inspired by this and wanted to share it.  Thanks for allowing me to do so, and will see you next time. 

Feeling Old

 Does it ever seem like your mind doesn't want to catch up to your body?  At 55, I have been feeling it recently.  Just a couple of nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a pain in my leg that was just uncomfortable.  My first fear-addled thought was "Oh Lord, I have a blockage!"  A day later it wasn't quite as noticeable because it went as quickly as it came.  However, waking up out of a sound sleep with a charley horse in your calf is not the most pleasant experience.  There are facts we have to face, and I am realizing that more every day. 

A nice little proverb circulates out there now that tells us a fact of life - one in one dies.  Unless the Second Coming happens, dying is an inevitability we all will face.  At times though, we labor under the delusion of our own immortality, not realizing that our mind and body are having a difference of opinion with each other.  That whole 12-inch pizza you could polish off when you were 25?  Now, you are ready to explode after two slices because you get so full.  Also, that long walk that encompasses 12 blocks you could do without breaking a sweat at 22?  Now, climbing three stairs to your front door is a challenge.  I recall an episode of The Golden Girls several years back where Dorothy was regaling Rose with her day at the teacher's lounge where she was a substitute teacher.  She said that she was having a good time talking to a group of much younger teachers - she noted they were young and pretty, and then said "at that age you don't have to be pretty and you're pretty."  However, as Dorothy was driving home, she looked in her car mirror and said she saw this old woman staring back at her, and the comic effect was that Rose, ever the functional moron, said "who was it?"  It of course was Dorothy's reflection, and it was as if reality came rushing back at her like a 200-mile-an-hour freight train.  As most of us get older, we have those days like Dorothy did - we are feeling so good and then we catch a reflection in the mirror - oops!  A realization like that can do one of two things.  First, it can make you depressed for three weeks.  Second, it could force you to accept reality and maybe think about what you can do with your life at this point, as you still have life and don't want to waste it.  If any realization were to hit me, I would much rather it be the second.  And, that puts me in mind of what I was teaching my 11th graders this week.

The course I teach at the Jesuit high school in Baltimore I work at is called Sacraments and Morality, and a part of the Sacraments aspect of the class is understanding what the sacraments do for us.  For one, they dispense grace.  Secondly, they challenge us to live out our faith more fully, both to serve others as well as to fulfill what God instilled in us.  That is the whole point of passages in Scripture like Romans 12:4-5, as well as the whole chapter in Ephesians that deals with the spiritual gifts.  Whether we know it or not, we all have a purpose on this earth.  We may not live up to doing it, nor may we even feel like we have any value, but God creates us as individuals for a reason.  So, what does age have to do with this?  Let's talk about that a bit, shall we?

People think that when they reach a certain age, that is it - life is over, dreams die, and all we do now is just sit down and accept it.  However, is that the right approach?  Another stronger reality exists too, one I learned from reading Lawrence Welk's own story years ago in his book You're Never Too Young.  Welk, a devout Catholic who had accomplished a lot in his 90+ years on this earth, lived by a motto - work is integral to fulfillment, so do what you have passion about.  He wrote this in his late 70s, and it does speak to something.  No one is too old to fulfill their dreams, to find true love, and to have a fulfilling life.  On the contrary, it is important to keep oneself active, in mind and in body, because it improves quality of life.  And, sometimes, the opportunities to do certain things when we were younger were not there, and now that we have the time and resources, those same opportunities are now gift-wrapped at our feet - all we need to do is accept them and pursue them.  So, if a widower has another chance at love and happiness, let him do it (and widows too).  If a 60-year-old wants to earn a Ph.D. or even a Bachelor's degree, go for it.  As has been said many times, the most formidable obstacle in life is ourselves. If we can break the barrier we set up, then what lies ahead of us is one thing - possibility.  Again, one of my favorite phrases I heard from a preacher years ago is this - "your present position does not dictate your future potential." And, that includes age. That leads to another interesting thought.

I have heard folks say they cannot wait to retire, as all they were going to do was sleep until noon, and then sit in a chair vegetating all day.  It is easy to feel like that when you have a hectic schedule - I myself just wrapped up a very busy second week of the school year, and all I wanted to do was think about sleep when I got home.  Yet, it is almost 10 PM, and I am doing something I love to do - I am writing thoughts.  For most people, retirement is viewed one way until someone actually does retire, and then they almost go crazy with boredom so they have to do something.  Keeping the mind active in particular is a key factor, because an active mind will continue to stretch and challenge us.  So, keep in mind that before you start dreaming of a retirement where you lay like a drunk manatee on a beach in Florida somewhere, wait until that day actually comes.  After you spend what is probably going to be your last day at an office where you have worked for years, and you get emotional goodbyes from wonderful co-workers who also have become dear friends, you open the presents, eat the cake, and are in a pretty festive mood, then the next morning comes.  You may not feel it right away, but give it about a month and you will - you start feeling bored and restless.  You need to do something, but you are now retired - so what do you do?  This is where the value of hobbies, passions, and working to benefit others in a volunteer capacity come into the picture.  Those things give a new focus to life, and they may even open a new chapter.  So, don't let your brain hibernate when your pension starts - do something that you find fulfilling and stay active.  

This was a short reflection this week, but it was one that I am feeling immensely myself right now.  When you start reading obituaries and see a lot of people you have known over the years in them, it's time to think about your life and what it means to you.  As you do, hopefully you will find new purpose and make a difference.  Thanks again for allowing me to share. 

Summer Ends

 "The summer wind, comes blowing in, from across the sea..."  This old Frank Sinatra classic song from the mid-1960s is one of my favorites.  It is smooth, accented with organ legatos, and of course Sinatra's classic vocal.  While one usually thinks of this as a song at the beginning of summer, it seems as if the "summer wind" is blowing back out to the south from whence it came.  Today is September 1, and also Labor Day.  Although solstice summer ends in about 19 days, the summer season ends this weekend.  The timeframe between Memorial Day and Labor Day constitutes the classic summer season, as it is the peak time for schools being out, and family vacations.  Usually also, it is the day before the school year starts in many school districts, although in reality our school year where I teach started last week.  It begins a busy four-month countdown to the final days of the current year, and it means a very busy few months are ahead as summer slowly says its goodbye and we begin the slow trek to what will be in a short time the cold months of winter.  In between are holidays - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and a few other days of significance (including my own celebration of my birth, which will happen in November).  The last third of the year is generally perhaps the busiest, although each part of the year has its own significance too.  This is where we are.

I think back to when I was in school as a kid myself.  The approach of a new school year brought with it a cadre of mixed feelings.  I recall being excited with going back to school, with my 4th-grade year particularly coming to mind.  I recall that well.  It was the summer of 1979, and I had just finished up a chaotic third grade year at my dad's in Georgia and we had recently moved back in with my grandmother and step-grandfather in Augusta, WV.  Back then, they lived in an ancient farmhouse that had no indoor plumbing save a cold-water sink in the kitchen, and if you had to go to the bathroom, it was in the custom-built two-seater outhouse my step-grandfather had built just beyond the front door of the house, complete with carpet and a window to look out at the nearby slope of Short Mountain. My grandparents were the picture of Appalachian poor, and their house was an exemplification of that.  However, I did not let that deter me from the excitement of starting 4th grade that year.  I was back at Augusta Elementary School then, and had a couple of old friends I knew from a couple of years previous when we were in 2nd grade.  So, I had the big plan laid out - I spent a lot of the summer collecting an absurd arsenal of every school supply imaginable, and I would spend hours trying to organize it, including washing down my brand-new Trapper Keeper three-ring book with warm soap and water.  By the time the new school year rolled around, on my first day I looked like I was attending a nuclear summit as I even had a briefcase to carry everything in.  Of course, when the rigors of the school year would set in, a lot of that initial enthusiasm would fizzle out and the usual "Oh geez, school AGAIN??" attitude would manifest itself every morning, especially further along when winter really set in and I had to walk over a quarter of a mile to get to my bus stop. I would later find out that teachers had similar feelings, especially once I became a teacher myself. 

The idea of a school year has a pattern to it.  In the beginning is apprehension and excitement, which lasts until right after Christmas break when you start to feel burnout and apathy.  Then, around mid-April, when the traditional Spring Break happened, you are seeing the end in sight, and there are activities, testing, and other things to break up the usual routine.  Then comes the last day of school - you are both excited but also worn-out, and all you are thinking of is sleeping in until 10 AM the first day of summer break.  Summer then has its own course - you want to rest, then you get bored, but then you both dread and anticipate going back.  As mentioned, this pattern is true of both students and teachers - so if you are in school, let me assure you that the teachers in a lot of cases may share your feelings on a different level.  So, let's talk about summers a bit, shall we?

I went through 12 years of formative schooling (unless kindergarten is factored in, and then it is 13).  That means I had about 13 summers I experienced, each as different as the next, and there are many things I experienced in those summer months over the years.  During my high school years, my summers were generally good - I spent time at home creating new recipes for my burgeoning cooking interests, wildcrafting in the woods above our house then, and listening to a lot of good music.  And, church and the fact I was in the high school band then gave me a bit of a social life.  However, there were two summers I would rather forget, and let me tell you a bit about them.  The first was the summer of 1979.  I had spent the Spring in Georgia with Dad then, and when I came back I got my first taste of what bone-crushing poverty felt like.  At the time, Mom and I stayed at my grandfather's rowhouse on Schwartz Street in Martinsburg, WV, and Mom had no income, no hope for anything, and there were nights when the only entertainment we had was the PTL Network on TV and all I had to eat were fried corn cakes and my late step-grandmother's canned applesauce in the basement.  My grandfather at the time was spending a lot of his time up in Parsons, our hometown that was two hours away, courting the lady who would become my new step-grandmother, and she and Mom were not the best of friends.  So, we stayed there by ourselves, and things got very desperate after a while.  Eventually, Mom decided we had enough of living like that, so she made a call to my grandmother in Augusta, and a few hours later they came in my uncle Junior's souped-up car and loaded up what we could, and we went back with them.  But, that started what was probably the most intense 8 years of my life, as I would taste poverty for many of those years until Mom finally landed some good work as a live-in caretaker for a couple of elderly folks and our lives stabilized.  Before that happened, 1979's summer was bookended by 1985, six years later, when we were in similar dire straights and our survival was based at that point on biscuits made from scratch and vegetables jacked out of the neighbors' gardens.  That six-year period - roughly from July 1979 to August 1985 - was a time of having to grow up fast for me, and in time my school actually became less of a burden and more of a diversion from the rather bleak life I had at home.  Again though, I survived all that, and in doing so I also would later rise past it as my life became more stable as a young adult. 

I share that little snippet of my personal history to say that summers can be good or bad, depending on perspective.  Likewise, a new school year can be good or bad depending on the same factors.  I have had the good and bad of both, and the good thing is that they are just seasons of life - they come, they go, and then new challenges arise later.  Without sounding like a lame line from The Lion King, it is a sort of circle of life that revolves around the yearly changes in seasons and what those entail, and we grow from the experience.  God sometimes allows some negative for our own growth, and I have learned that much like I learned everything else in retrospection.  But we do learn, we grow, and we move on, and that is just living life as God gifts us with it. 

For those of my readers who are students or teachers, may we all have a great school year ahead, and let's try to keep the bigger picture in focus, especially on those days when apathy and dread of the daily grind get to us.  Thanks again, and look forward to next time. 

New Chapters and What Hinders

 I had an odd dream last night I want to discuss to preface today's thought.  In the dream, I had to spend three days in what was essentially a detention center.   I was assigned to a bunk in a large room, and other bunks in it were partitioned off with plexiglass.  When I went to settle down in my bunk to sleep, I was told by someone to keep my cellphone (which for some reason I was allowed to have) in a secure place, as people could steal it while I slept.  The phone was, interesting enough, on my wrist.  So, if I recall correctly the dream, I removed the phone and slipped it into a pocket. While not necessarily a bad dream, it is not the most amicable situation to be detained somewhere, and that dream represented some things for me.  When I looked up the symbolism of that, I noticed several things coming to view:

1. Feeling trapped or restricted by a particular situation.

2. Some unresolved guilt.

3. A perceived loss of freedom through circumstance.

4. Anxieties about being judged.

5. Self-imposed limitations.

6. Inner factors that may be hindering or restricting progress in life.

It is no small secret that I especially can relate to the first one over the past few months.  After having a move that was beyond our control, I had to relocate to a whole new city, and begin to rebuild a life I once had and was used to.  It has had challenges, and in all honesty the place I live now is not my ideal. However, on the positive, I am working in a job that is an actual vocation now, and I am making the best income I have in ages, so that is a nice benefit.  And, the income I am provided has helped with some rebuilding (although I still have work to do yet).  In casual conversation with Barbara yesterday, she reminded me that I am where I am by design, and I am destined to be there a while.  But, naturally, I have questions as it is a bit to take in.  And, that is why I am talking about this today. 

Hindrances are a pain in the backside but they are also a fact of life.  And, I feel some now, several as a matter of fact.  When one starts over in life, you have things to face, things to overcome, and things to achieve, and all of that is where I am at right now personally.  The prison dream last night symbolizes the limitations I am facing, but also the fact that they are temporary and won't be forever.  Even now, I am at a point where I can think about something I only dreamed about in years previous - owning my own home.  I have a decent income, a decent credit rating, and also I have a couple of areas of prime interest to me that I can consider buying properties.  However, that too is a process, and I won't get a home overnight.  But I can begin the process of moving toward the goal.  And, that is where overcoming some limitations - especially that of my own impatience at times - comes in handy.  

I have talked a lot in the past months about the new chapter I am coming into in life, and at this point if it were a literal book I would still be in the middle of the opening paragraph of it.  I am in what is called a sort of transitional/recovery phase, as the previous years were a bit challenging and I am in this place due to things that happened then.  Some of what happened was due to my own lack of planning and mistakes, while other aspects of it were things beyond my control.  But, I am at this place now.  And, as I have learned, what happens in life is not an accident, although there are times we miss a turn and have to go on a detour to get back on track again.  I have heard it said that when you think life is falling apart, in reality it is God making everything fall into place.  That is perhaps the mentality I should have as I navigate through a lot right now. 

Entering into a new chapter can be a scary thing, and what has happened in my life just over the past 11 months has been a paradigm shift in life for me - the life I had before, a life I had settled into over a period of about 32 years - has changed.  In the process I lost a lot, and I have had to adjust to a different standard of life for the interim that I was not expecting.  But, I survived it, and as the dust begins to settle I will begin to see things fall into place.  My late spiritual mentor and friend, Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, was once fond of saying in both his writings and his messages that "Man's disappointments are God's appointments."  He may have been onto something.  The last time I went through a radical shift like this was 33 years ago, and it took a little over a year to get back on track again but I eventually did.  The difference this time is that I have a lot more thankfully to work with, and it is making the process a lot more smoother than I had anticipated.  Being older when facing things tends to make one think more rationally, and I would have to say I am handling this better at 55 now than I would have at 20.  So, I want to review myself now a bit to just share what has fundamentally changed in the past year.

From roughly 1998 up to 2020, I worked in the corporate world, and to be honest while the jobs I had did create a level of predictability and security, they were just that, jobs. Prior to 1998, most of my work was limited to landscaping at first, then moving up to restaurant prep cook work, and then to working as a security officer - jobs like that got me through my undergraduate tenure in college in all honesty.  I supplemented those types of jobs then with being an itinerant minister for the Pentecostal denomination I was part of, and although I never got rich from doing that, it was fulfilling.  Then, after almost 8 months of no work in early 1998, I finally got an office job, and I did office work as an administrative professional for the better of 32 years until COVID-19 happened and I was laid off from the last position like that I worked, which entailed data entry at a large bank in Frederick, MD.  In the ensuing years, up until the end of 2024, I was doing two things - pursuing my doctorate, and also finally able to use the paralegal certificate I had earned earlier in 2006 by performing as a freelance virtual paralegal for a budding company.  Once I earned the doctorate though, I felt a career change was afoot, and only three months after earning that I ended up in my first full-time teaching position, which is where I am at now.  For once, I feel like I am in a vocation instead of a job, and while it has its share of stress (especially last year - my goodness!) it also has a lot of wonderful rewards too.  My new vocation as a full-time teacher is an integral part of this new chapter I am settling into, and I have a feeling it will be a major part of my story from this point. 

I have come a long way from when I earned my first official paycheck working alongside my dad in the maintenance department of the Holiday Inn on Jekyll Island, GA, back when I was only 19 years old and fresh out of high school.  That is almost 40 years ago now, as since then I went through a variety of positions rising up the occupational ladder.  I earned my first chef's certificate in 1992, thanks in part to a free program in the state of Alabama called JTPA, and later I would acquire a class-D security license three years later while working for a large Florida megachurch.  11 years after that, I completed a paralegal studies course by correspondence and earned a certificate in that as well, although it would be many years (13 to be exact) before I could use it.  And, in the midst of the 36 years between earning my high school diploma until now, I completed a complete college education with three degrees - a BA, an MA, and a Ph.D.  Every aspect of my life was ordered in those steps one way or another, and completing all those opened the door to the next chapter in life, where I am at now.  I have some feelings to share about that, so let me do so.

The journey of life is for a reason, and just like a literal book it has chapters we live out.  You know you are at the end of a chapter when it seems like all of a sudden there is a disconnect between your previous life and what you are entering into now.  Some things cannot be done the same way anymore, and there are adjustments to make.  Those are the opening sentences of a new chapter in one's life, and they are not always easy.  The old phrase "new levels, new devils" applies in that with every milestone one faces a new set of different challenges, some of which perhaps they had never encountered before. And, that can be scary.  However, the feeling of overcoming a challenge is also something that defies description too, and it is a good feeling that is similar to when a firefighter successfully puts out a five-alarm fire - you may feel exhausted, but now you can rest easier knowing that hurdle has been overcome.  I know all these feelings well, because I have went through them very recently in all honesty, and it can be a lot to digest.  However, as I have also noted before, often in retrospect you see how it all fits together - it may be a bit murky now, but in the long run it makes sense.  Let that encourage those going through these sort of chapter-like transitions today.

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

Feelings of Discovery

 I wasn't planning on writing again in August, but I wanted to actually share just a few things, as the "feelings of discovery," as I call them, have been making themselves present recently.  I am not totally sure of what it all means yet, but for the most part I am actually feeling good about things.

In our grade-level faculty meeting today, our team lead - a sweet lady named Miss Myers who teaches 11th-grade English - posed a question to us as a group activity.  The question was something like, "if you were to describe the beginning of the year as weather, what would yours be?"  For some, it was a sunny day, although the history teacher had a more grim forecast of hurricanes and destruction which caused us all to have a good chuckle.  My answer however was interesting - I said mine was like this dry, dusty condition which is now starting to get the first sprinkles of a good spring rain.  The question our faculty team lead posed was an interesting one, and it made me pause to think a little about how things have been over the years. 

I have talked I think before of dreams I have had on several occasions about tornadoes and floods.  The most hair-raising dream I had about a tornado was several years back, when in the dream my great-grandmother and my mother were alive, and we were in a car traveling.  As with many dreamscapes, the scene was a sort of amalgamation of the country roads of my youth and a little bit of the I-4 corridor between Lakeland and Tampa in Florida, and on the horizon I recall this huge tornado - it was black, and it was perhaps bigger than any actual twister in history has ever been - it looked like it had a diameter of several miles, and it was looming right in front of us.  Mom, Granny, and I were in a car traveling in this dream, and we managed to avoid the storm somehow but at the same time we knew we needed to get home fast.  In the dream, what was representative of Granny's house sat at the intersection of two roads, and there was not a tree in sight and in many respects it didn't look anything like Granny's actual old house in Hendricks, WV, but rather had a similar setup to my grandmother Elsie's house that used to be in Augusta, but it looked a lot nicer.  We got into the house just in time, and I remember that big twister of monumental and colossal diameter going right by the living room window, where a rocking chair sat parallel to the window looking out, and it did not even touch the house yet I saw how scary it was up-close - it was pitch-black, ominous, and just not something I would ever want to face in real life.  As scary and formidable as it looked though, it never touched or harmed us.  A second and similar dream I had at another time I cannot recall offhand entailed my living in this beautiful house - it had a nice porch with French doors, and at the end of the yard was open water - a bay I believe.  In the dream, there was a huge tidal wave coming, and to the right of the house was a spillway with a concrete pavement.  The floods came, and the wave towered over the house about 500 feet - it was huge and scary.  And, from up the spillway came another rushing torrent of water too, and both of them hit the yard. The steps to my front porch became waterfront property, but again the flood never touched the house itself except now the front door had to be accessed by boat.  Considering all I have been through and what has happened over the past several years, this is where I have a "feeling of discovery," and our faculty relational exercise sort of sparked how this fit together.  Let me explain.

When you dream of storms or floods - particularly whirlwinds like monster tornadoes - it is a sign that something is about to rock your world.  I have had more than one dream about scary tornadoes, as well as a couple about mega-tsunami floods, and at the time I had many of these dreams I was in a good place.  However, a sense of foreboding always gripped me with a dream like that, and later I would understand why.  As I mentioned, in the past few years my world has been rocked in so many ways - a year ago this week, as a matter of fact, I was in danger of being thrown out of our house because my money had dried up and I had no way to pay rent.  On October 5 in a little over a month from now, Barbara and I will commemorate that happening.  After enduring a divorce, the death of both my parents and then my last grandparents, and then after being forced out of our house I went through about 2 weeks of relying upon God's mercies to provide for me (and he did).  In addition, I got my doctorate but it was not the way I imagined that either - no ceremony, no significant memory, or nothing.  Then, I started a new job, moved to Baltimore with two new roommates who to that point were strangers, and it felt like my whole world was turned inside out.  I lost a lot, and even now I am still trying to piece some things together, but I am still here.  The storms of life came, they really gave me a whisker-whipping, and I thought I was going under so many times, but here I am.  And, now a new chapter is opening itself, and it's a good chapter - I am settled into my new role as a teacher, and I feel my "groove" so to speak now, and it may be possible for me to purchase a house soon.  The "feeling of discovery" here is a new land, and I am like the first settler in this new land, and as the new chapter starts to really open up I will discover much.  I did get some wounds yes, and I feel the exhaustion of the past year catching up to me as I am now having some health challenges I never anticipated, but I believe I am a better person coming through it.  So, let's talk about that feeling of discovery.

I am a pilgrim of faith, as my Christian walk relies on God's grace like a car relies on gasoline to operate. Part of a pilgrim's journey is coming into a new land, settling it, and taming it to turn it into something great.  I feel like a pioneer who is starting to upgrade the lean-to I was living in to an actual log cabin now, and building a house - even in an allegorical sense like this - takes a lot.  Knowing the "lay of the land" is vital, and I am still scouting some areas of the new territory out in all honesty.  After all, even looking at this big city of Baltimore here, it took a couple of centuries to grow from what was essentially an Indian boat dock to one of the largest cities in America.  The Baltimore of 1600 would look totally different than the Baltimore of 2025, namely because the Baltimore of 1600 did not exist.  My new frontier in life didn't exist a few years ago either, but here I am taming and claiming it.  There is still much more to discover,  but I am on a path of discovery, so we will see where that goes. 

Thank you for allowing me to share, so as you prepare to celebrate the long weekend with your families, may it be blessed, and will see you next time. 

Back to School

 My weeks have gotten much busier beginning this week, as the school year officially starts at the Catholic high school where I teach in Baltimore.  I know that many kids dread school starting, as many of us also did when we were kids, but in a way teachers have that same feeling.  It isn't that we hate our jobs - teaching is not a mere job, but a vocation, and many hours go into it outside the classroom too - but just that getting back into the routine, anticipating what the new kids this year will be like, and so many other normal feelings go into play with this.  That is frankly true when one starts any job, be it a prep cook in a restaurant or a corporate executive in an high-rise office.  There is natural apprehension, but the good thing is that it does quickly dissipate too.  Let me explain.

Today, I taught the first classes of the year with a totally new group of 11th graders, and while I was expecting some challenges out of them similar to some I had last year, in all honesty it went surprisingly well!  Turns out they are generally a decent group of kids, and I am teaching four classes this year in my subject area, with my fifth class being a study hall. The study hall consists of a group of my former students from last year, but they were not bad either - most of them were some of my better students from last year, and even the more "spirited" ones were nothing I couldn't handle.  I do have the challenge this year though of being what is called the "hopper" - what that means is that I don't have my own classroom, but rather teach my five classes in different classrooms while maintaining a desk in an office for a base.  That will prove a little different, but to be honest I am looking forward to a little more variety this year.  If the rest of the year goes as nice as the first day, I am thinking this will be a good year.  Of course, I also went into it with a good attitude too, and that helps as well.  We have some new and better systems in place this year, and it has somewhat streamlined our work a little better - the new principal that started this year really has a vision for the school, and he is implementing some new stuff that will make less stress for the teachers as well as helping the students be more committed to learning.  These are good things, and I am fully supportive.  I am looking for the following year into some other opportunities however if God opens a door for that, including possibly teaching overseas, but if God wills for me to commit a third year here, I can do that as well.  God's plan is ultimately the perfect plan, and either way it always works out.   I will deal with the specifics of that some other time however. 

Realizing the effort that goes into starting a new school year from a teacher's perspective has made me appreciate my former teachers more.  There is a lot invested into lesson planning, making sure that the students can understand the material, and then there are the creation of exams, coming up with syllabi and annual plans for the school administration, and then the meetings - it is a lot for sure.  And, with our particular school, we don't have a substitute teaching program in place, so if a teacher is out, one of us that is open will be scheduled to cover that particular class.  For the most part, coverage is not a bad thing - you don't do actual teaching (unless you know the subject area) and the regular teacher often leaves their instructions and all the students have to do is the assigned work they have.  While initially it seems like a pain in the neck, in reality it is not that bad, and it can be an opportunity for the covering teacher to catch up on some of their grading and other stuff they need to do.  And, that leads me to another discussion.

Last year, I came in during the middle of a semester, so I was sort of proverbially "thrown to the wolves."  With no textbook to work with, I had to pull off some meatball surgery that would make the fictional Hawkeye Pierce from the old TV classic M.A.S.H.proud.  The chaotic introduction of my first year teaching led to some problems to say the least - I was dealing with discipline issues and other things that frankly caused me sleep problems and other things.  A lot of it was an imperfect system and also having to go it alone for the most part.  Thankfully though, we ended up getting a very capable department chair, and she did wonders streamlining us - that lady doesn't realize what an answer to prayer she truly is!  Being she came into the picture later than I did, she had challenges ahead of her too, but she, to use the vernacular, "kicked butt and took names," and we are now a more cohesive department as a result. However, the one benefit of having to design my own curriculum is that I was able to essentially author my own study guide, and an idea occurred to me that I want to share here now. 

The Theology course I teach 11th-graders is called "Sacraments and Theology," and it focuses on two seemingly disconnected areas but that are fundamental to an understanding of Catholic theology.  Our courses at the school I teach follow a structure similar to many other conventional Catholic education curriculum programs - one year is Jesus and the Scriptures, the next is Jesus Christ and His Church, third is mine, Sacraments and Theology, and the fourth year is a course on Catholic social teaching. When we were in our department meeting on Thursday, a realization hit me - those four courses are designed around the four major documents of Vatican II.  Those four documents, known as Constitutions, are centered on these four aspects.  For the first course, Christ in the Scriptures, the focal document would be Dei Verbum.  For Christ and His Church, it would be Lumen Gentium.  For my course, Sacraments and Theology, it would be Sacrosanctum Concilium.  Finally, for the fourth-year Catholic social teaching course, the document Gaudium et Spes.  When you start thinking of Catholic theological education that way, then you see how it fits together.  This is actually a lesson I want to give my kids tomorrow as a matter of fact as a sort of introduction to the course.  Even as I write this now my wheels are turning as to how to present it, and it's actually kind of an epiphany moment for me.  The Dogmatic Constitutions of Vatican II, in essence, did not change Church teaching on anything - it just created a digestible framework that even the layperson could appreciate.  So, despite if someone is a TLM traditionalist or a more modern-thinking progressive Catholic, this is still the framework that is supposed to govern them theologically.  Now, I am ready to teach that tomorrow!

Those were just a few insights I had that I wanted to share from today, and hopefully for my fellow educators reading this - anyone from the volunteer parish catechist to the university professor - it will prove valuable in some way.  Perhaps some can even refine the idea a bit, and that may catch something I could be missing also.  Any rate, with a busier schedule now, I will not be writing as prolifically as I did during the summer, but perhaps a weekly insight will still be possible.  Thanks again for allowing me to ramble, and I will see you next time!  

Forgetfulness: Blessing or Curse?

 A trait of human nature is the tendency to forget things.  Let's face it - we have all forgotten something at some point, right?  As we get older and things slow down, forgetfulness becomes more frequent.  It is intensified with unfortunate conditions like Alzheimer's disease and dementia in elderly people, but even a perfectly mentally cognizant older person can have days of forgetfulness too.  What is this forgetfulness, and why do we have it at times? 

This is a multifaceted topic, as for one forgetfulness is a reminder of our own finite existence - we are not immortal in a physical sense, and being forgetful is part of the process of aging.  It is also a consequence of the Fall in Genesis 3 as well, and as such it is connected to concupiscent nature in humanity.  However, this does not make forgetfulness a bad thing, because in some ways it may actually be a safety mechanism God gave us to protect us.  Let me get into that a bit.

Just because something is forgotten does not mean it is necessarily lost forever.  Our memories are always part of us, and we can picture our minds and souls as being like a huge archive.  Some things may be buried, they may be faded a little, but they are there somewhere.  Often, a stimulus can cross our path which for some reason refreshes that old memory, and it is like an epiphany moment for us when we think, "Oh yeah, I remember that now!"  And, let's face it too, some things are better left forgotten, as they could also evoke some painful memories and feelings, so in that aspect it is a mercy we have to forget.  Also, God makes forgetfulness a virtue in some cases as well - even he "forgets" our past sins if we come to him in repentance and receive his grace to do that.  That is a key fact of the Sacrament of Baptism in the Church - it washes away our original sins, and it as is if we never had them.  Likewise, the Sacrament of Confession we should receive as often as we can does the same thing with subsequent sins committed after our baptism.  Grace, therefore, uses our own innate capacity to forget things as a tool.  So, when we are met with the old axiom "Confession is good for the soul," it truly is.  Even if a person is not Catholic, being able to confide in a trusted person about things on one's mind can bring a closure that person desperately needs, and it just helps getting it out there.  While that may seem contradictory to the virtue of forgetfulness, in a lot of ways they go hand-in-hand.  Getting closure and forgetting past disappointments and hurts is restorative, and although the memory is still there somewhere, it is not important anymore once we receive that closure, and therefore it lays forgotten where it should be.  That is virtue of forgetfulness.

Obviously, forgetfulness has its negative side too, like everything else.  For instance, if you forget to turn off the coffee maker when you leave for work of a morning, it can lead to a disaster like a house fire.  Or, if you forget to take vital medication, it can lead to a health emergency.   To counter that, this is why it is important to write everything down - keep journals, write in calendars, and although it can be a bit cluttered, even resort to Post-It notes if it helps. A journal is particularly good, in that often even writing down the bad stuff that occurs in our lives helps us to have closure too, and as I have talked about many times, often in retrospect we find the overall reason God allowed those things to happen to us. So, even negative memories are not necessarily bad, and if you document those too it can be a way of finalizing your freedom from them.  Being the fastidious bureaucrat that I am, I have meticulously kept records of everything over the years.  For the past 30 years I have kept a journal, for instance, and I also have kept tax records going back to my first paid job as well as bank registers, calendars I have had since high school, and other documentation.  While I don't keep every piece of paper that crosses my path - I do a cleanout every year of my files and discard receipts and other stuff I don't need that is over 2 years old, for instance - I do keep the important stuff, those records that can be used to know me after my passing at some point in the next decades.  So, I have put in place a safety net that if I forget something, I can easily reference it through a series of ordered records I have kept up for years.  There are a couple of takeaways now I want to note, and then we will wrap up the discussion for today.

As a normal person going through your routine of everyday life, it is not necessary to recall every minute detail of your life for every moment. If we did that, our brains would probably explode.  That is where documentation comes into play.  For those details we don't use every day and cannot recall at a moment's notice, we have a documented record of it to remind us when it becomes necessary.  With the increased availability of online resources now, it has become even more accessible as a couple of clicks on a computer screen can bring up any piece of information we have collected (provided it has been digitized) and that makes life more manageable.  However, in many cases, forgetfulness is also a good thing - putting things in our memory archive within us means that they can no longer affect our quality of life, especially the negative things.  The memories are still there for sure, but they are just tucked away and we live our lives without needing to recall them.  That again is a mercy that supernatural grace gives us with our own cognitive abilities and limitations.  

That being said, not everything we forget is necessarily a bad thing - sometimes it is for the best.  So, as we continue our pilgrimage of life on this earth, let us learn to document what is important, not worry about what is not, and even with bad memories we often have good retrospection.  Thanks again for allowing me to share with you. 

Getting Back to Work

 I am sitting in the combination gymnasium/auditorium/cafeteria area of the high school I teach at, and we are on an extended lunch today during our faculty orientation week.  It is a bit to get back into the routine again after a two-month break, and actual class starts next week.  However, I am optimistic about the coming year.

I spent the first part of my extended lunch procuring my textbooks as well as making a visit across the street to the little Polish market - very interesting little store, and they have some of the best chocolates and cookies there, as well as a delicious barbecue seasoning that I have come to use on almost everything. It is a small indulgence to visit that market on lunch hours during a busy class day.  We are spending the week this week in some talks, a bit of relational activities, and some general onboarding for the coming year, and for the most part it is low-stress and actually quite pleasant.  It is also a way for those of us who are faculty to bond and come together informally, and that is nice too.  I wanted to talk a little about one of the relational activities though that was of tremendous interest, and it was sort of enlightening as well. 

The activity was led by the 9th-grade science teacher, and it had to do with contemporary kids' slang terms that to be honest I was not really all that familiar with.  For instance, how did I know that the word "tea" meant gossip, with "hot tea" being good gossip and "cold tea" being bad (what does "iced tea" mean, I wonder - that is worth exploring).  There are some terms I have some familiarity with, such as "ghosting," which is essentially a complete block or cancellation of someone, usually within the context of social media.  However, many of these terms are like speaking a new language - I can understand my Filipino friends speaking Tagalog or Visayan better than that actually.  I thought it worth mentioning because every generation has its slang terms they use - for Gen-X the words "chill" and "crusty" were some of our most-utilized phraseology.  However, to previous generations the current lingo may be a bit of an adjustment to understand.  

With the maintenance guy moving some things around and doing things here, there is not much else I can say for today as it is a bit distracting with everything going on.  However, I will try to return soon with something more insightful.  See you next visit. 

The Story of Valentina's Uncle

 

When I was around 11 years old, I lived in a battered old blue-and-white trailer in the town of Kirby, WV, with my mother.  We were extremely poor, and during the summers in particular I had to find ways to occupy my time as there was not a lot of connectivity then with the wider world.  One of the things we got as a sort of blessing were a huge number of old magazines - Time, Newsweek, and Reader's Digest.  I was an avid reader then, and there were some especially good stories that caught my attention in Reader's Digest back in the day.  One of those features the magazine had was a lengthy book review of some new release that caught the reviewer's attention.  Many of these books were somewhat obscure to most - one particularly good one was Jacobo Timerman's book Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. Timerman, a Argentine-born Jewish author, was a victim of the various factions of the Peron regime (it was one of the movements that had both a "right-wing" and a "left-wing," and neither were that great as far as ideology was concerned) and he was imprisoned at different times by both of those factions.  His book is a sort of journal of his prison experience, and it leaves nothing to the imagination - the man really suffered.  I now have a copy of that book behind me on my bookshelf, and I am actually encouraging my 11th graders I teach to read it as an extra credit project.  Another book of interest that was featured in a 1980 issue of Reader's Digest was published in 1981 by Gerda S. Mathan, a noted educator and photographer at the time.  Mathan took an interest in some accounts a colleague of hers by the name of Valentina Zavarin, a Russian emigre who had earned her Ph.D.,  at the university they both taught at.   Mathan initially proposed doing a photo essay of Valentina's five little children, but Valentina had another idea - she asked if Mathan would mind doing some photos of her aging uncle, a Russian immigrant named Vadim Shepkin, who at this time was 92 and lived in California if I recall correctly.  As Mathan got to know the elderly gentleman, her initial portrait project grew into a photo essay that she would later publish in book form, and thus that is how Valentina's Uncle became a published work.

Vadim Shepkin was a man who had lived a pretty amazing life overall.  He was born when Russia still had a Czar, but later he became part of the October Revolution and for a time was an enthusiastic Leninist until he was later disillusioned by the sheer cruelty of Stalin and then immigrated to the US in 1950. In his later years too, he also became intensely religious as a devout Orthodox Christian, and his pride and joy was the herd of cats and his numerous fruit trees he planted in his yard.  The sad part of the story came when Vadim was no longer able to care for himself, so he had to leave his beloved house and became a resident in the local nursing home.  Not long after, he passed away, but thankfully his legacy lives on thanks to this book and also his great-nieces and nephews, who are all probably in their late 40s and early 50s now, as some of them were younger than me. It is this last part I wanted to spend some time talking about, as it sort of goes along the theme of my thoughts as of late.

Vadim's demise was sad, and Mathan did such an amazing job on the book that you feel that melancholy when he is no longer to live independently.  She documents how the empty house deteriorates, and even how a small child living next door said "who will pick the fruit now?"  It is really a powerful documentary of the life of a unique man who otherwise would have been forgotten as just another old immigrant in California.  Vadim Shepkin is the type of person I wish I would have known, as I feel there was a lot of wisdom contained in that old man's mind.  Reading stuff like this always has a certain level of resonance with me, as we can all see ourselves in him if we look close enough.  Especially as many of us get older ourselves.  I know for a fact that after age 50 I started thinking about things I never gave much thought to before - after losing both my parents within 5 years, experiencing a divorce, and even losing a home recently, it made me think more about legacy - what legacy will I leave?  Vadim Shepkin was blessed to have a niece who had the foresight to enlist a friend of hers to document some precious moments of his life, and also who was there for him when he needed people to care for him.  As it seems that he had no children of his own, the mantle of preserving his legacy fell upon his niece, and now it falls upon her children, who as I mentioned would be close to my age now.  Hopefully they passed this on to their kids and grandkids, so that Vadim Shepkin will have immortality in the best way that can be done - tell his story.  

There is a lot more that could be said about this book, but it is definitely worth a read.  Copies of it are quite rare to find now, although I have had success on both Amazon and Ebay.  I have with me now the second copy of it I ever owned, and even as I write this now I am thinking of ways it could be used to create other discussions.  It pays sometimes to look in unexpected places for the rarest treasures, and I thank God for bringing that issue of Reader's Digest to me when I was an 11-year-old kid stuck in a poverty-stricken home in a small West Virginia town.  Although over the years I had forgotten the story, it was maybe about 10 years ago a thought of it had crossed my mind, and it took a while to remember the title but I did find it.  It now keeps a good place in my library, and maybe something in it can be used to inspire others.

Thank you for allowing me to share yet again, and will see you soon. 

Loving When A Plan Comes Together

 For folks of my generation, the 1980s was an interesting time for television.  At the time, many houses either got reception from a local cable provider (the "struttin' in high cotton" upper-class option then) or they were forced to wrestle a 30-foot monstrosity on the side of the house called an aerial antenna.  With the latter, if you were lucky you could pick up three local stations, which ironically were the three major TV networks of the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS).  So, prime-time TV was a big thing then.  For most of us, it consisted of some classic shows - The Dukes of Hazzard, MacGyver, and sitcoms such as The Golden Girls.  One particular show that was considered the most popular show of the decade was The A-Team, which centered around a quartet of four soldiers-of-fortune who were hired guns inadvertently protecting the "little guy" who was terrorized by a formidable antagonist.  The "team" was made up of handsome front-man "Face," eccentric former combat pilot Murdock, hulking muscle B.A. Baracus (played by Mr. T), and their leader, a cunning, resourceful former military colonel named "Hannibal" Smith, played by the late actor George Peppard.  Always with a smug self-assured and cocky grin with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, Hannibal always directed these operations with the efficiency of a well-armed guerilla leader, and at the end of every episode, when his team had successfully defeated a potential societal threat, Hannibal would nonchalantly grin and say "I love it when a plan comes together."  That phrase came to mind today as I considered my own situation, as looking back on a lot of things a lot is now unfolding to make perfect sense.  

We as human beings are noted to make plans, strategies, and objectives in our personal lives - it is part of the creative ability God gave us to distinguish us from the rest of creation, and the reason why in the earliest chapters of Genesis he bestowed Adam and his descendants (us) with dominion over the earth. However, in Genesis 3 a catastrophic thing happened - Eve ate of a fruit she was coerced by a supposed serpent into doing, then she gave it to Adam, and it was a flagrant act of disobedience against a God who had already given them all the hollow promises that Satan, in the form of that serpent, used to manipulate mankind into rebellion against God.  This led to the Fall, and human beings in subsequent generations paid for that with the attribute of concupiscence, and it made us limited.  Therefore, another consequence of the Fall is our glaring imperfections, both as a race and as individuals.  This means that sometimes, despite how detailed and failsafe our own plans are, they fall short.  That is God's reminder that he is there to guide us, and we would do well to rely on that.  Looking at Hannibal Smith's closing affirmation at the end of every A Team episode, I am reminded of something else I learned very recently that relates to it - often, when we rely on God's guidance, there may be some rough terrain to navigate, and when it seems like things are falling apart, they are actually falling into place.  A lot of times, it will only be through retrospection we see it, as our fallen state has made us rather dense when it comes to seeing the obvious sometimes, and if we had seen the obvious, it would have saved us a lot of trouble.  Thing is, the obvious is usually there, but our own blinders of concupiscence blind us to it.  This is where we need God more than anything.  That little devotional lesson prefaces what I wanted to talk about today.

My own plan, to use Hannibal Smith's rationale, has been coming together before my own nose without me even seeing it yet.  There were signs - there always are - about the direction we need to take, but often we dismiss them as the after-affect of spicy pepperoni on the cheap Little Caesar's pizza we had for supper out of the desire of not wanting to cook.  In a very specific case in my own life, I have seen signs for things for years, and only recently have they started actually making sense.  Let me tell the story.

The city of Baltimore has had a connection with our family that stretches back at least four generations. It started with the Appalachian migrations of the late 1940s and still is relevant today, although less so now.  Many poor West Virginia families came here to seek opportunity, since Baltimore was the closest urban center (well, there is Pittsburgh too, but for some reason it never had the attraction for our folks like Baltimore did) and offered many opportunities.  As a result, a subculture blossomed in this city that we created, and even when some of the older generation, financially secure enough to retire, returned home to the small towns in our state, they brought this Baltimore experience with them.  My family was no different in all honesty, and Baltimore played a big part in our collective family history as well as in mine personally.  Our family became so ensconced here as a matter of fact that many of my cousins were born and raised here, so we have a sort of sanguine beachhead in the area.  While many of the third- and fourth- generation cousins I have are now comfortably settled in suburbs outside the city in communities like Elkridge and Cockeysville, they all started here, and that start was due to their West Virginia grandparents coming here and settling in areas like Irvington and Pigtown in the western reaches of the municipal limits. Like many of my cousins, I too had some roots here too - I wasn't born here or anything, and in all honesty my stay here as a child was brief, but it was still a part of my story.  50 years ago at around this time, Mom and I traveled up from Georgia after she and Dad had a very intense separation, and in Dad's old white van Mom had taken, we traveled until we found a place to stay with my aunt Ruth and two of her younger kids, my cousins Greg and Gayle.  Ruth, who we all affectionately called "Aunt Pip," was at the time not in the best of health - she had multiple sclerosis and was largely bedridden and communicated in almost unintelligible words.  Often, if she was trying to get someone's attention - either Mom's, my cousin Greg's, or the visiting nurse, a kindly older Black lady we called Ms. Patrick - she would become frustrated as her brain didn't allow her to form the words she needed, and she would cry - looking back on that, I really felt bad for her, and I remember as a precocious 5-year-old asking Mom, "Why is Aunt Pip so sad Mom?"  During our sojourn in the city, we lived in three different rowhouses - all of them looking somewhat similar to the one I am sitting in now writing this - and I had begun my formal education as a kindergarten student at Steuart Hill Academy over on Gilmor Street, about a mile and a half west of where I am at now.  Even after moving away a time later, we still visited family here for many years. Baltimore was a part of the story now for me, but had been for at least a good 20 years prior to me being there. Like many things in our subconscious mind, Baltimore added itself to my memory bank, and over the years many dreams about being here have been part of my sleep experience.  A lot of times I just dismissed them as nice but insignificant things that probably consisted of my mind cobbling a lot of different and unconnected things together to create something, but then came the deja vu moments - I have had several of those.  And, beginning as early as 1997, Barbara and I were actually looking here to move and re-establish our lives, a choice we finally sort of acted on in 2016 as we began planning to make it happen - it did on New Year's Eve of 2016, our last day after 27 years in Florida, and within one week I was living in Maryland again, the first time in about 42 years.  At that point, it was just Hagerstown, but I was back where I believed I belonged anyway.  Dismissing those old Baltimore dreams as being somewhat satisfied by our move to Hagerstown, I didn't think more about them until I realized I was still having the dreams.  Then came 2024, when a culmination of things thrust us into moving here - losing our house, getting a new job in the city, and earning my long-sought Ph.D.  Almost a year later, here I sit, in the midst of eastern Baltimore, in the heart of the city, and that leads to more pertinent observations.

This part of Baltimore I am sitting in now - it is a neighborhood called Harwood, approximately 30 blocks from downtown and also 5 minutes from the main Johns Hopkins University Campus just to the west of here - was not my ideal location.  I had to take it because of time constraints.  First, I was living at a Motel 6 in October of last year and needed a house fast as my options were dwindling.  Second, I landed what was essentially my dream job, as a teacher at a very prominent Jesuit high school over in Fells Point (1.5 miles away) and needed to be closer to get the job.  The neighborhood we are in is not by any means the best - a couple of blocks south is an area known for drug trafficking, and the urban blight in this part of the city is like a foreign country almost.  The rowhouse we live in is also not my dream home - it is over 100 years old, and it really needs a lot of work, especially after a car slammed into the front of it a month ago.  Also, my job has its challenges too - I have had a well-earned three months of paid vacation, but frankly the previous school year was intense and I am a bit apprehensive at what I am going to have to deal with when the new school year begins a week from Monday.  However, on the positive, I have a good position overall, and it provides me with perhaps the highest salary I have ever earned, and financially I am in a good place.  And, as of late, no actual dreams about Baltimore itself as I am actually here now.  The pieces are falling into place - or the plan is coming together, if you will - for a new chapter here, and I am about to move into the next phase of the plan but have learned to let God guide my steps as I am at a point where one misstep could lead to catastrophe as things are still a bit fragile. However, there are ideas, and I want to briefly share them.

The Baltimore dreams I had were never about this inner-city area where I am sitting now - most of them entailed a suburban home somewhere but the settings of the area were inescapable; it was definitely Baltimore.  For the first time in my own life, I can start to contemplate home ownership, and am beginning to look into that.  Much like my cousins had astutely done, I am looking to get out of the city and move to a nicer area that is more conducive to my personal lifestyle, and it looks like I can start to make that happen.  At this point, I am in touch with both a realtor and a mortgage lender, and they are helping me to get the wheels turning to make things happen.  Getting into a nice place of my own like that would be the fulfillment of those dreams, and that is why as I look at the house listings the realtor gives me, I am looking for that house.  This also calls on God's taciturn direction as well, as I really want to do this right too.  I know this will not be an overnight process, but I think I can make it happen, so we will see what happens.

In conclusion, I believe that getting my own home here in a place that has haunted my dreams for years will be an example of the plan coming together, and things falling into place for me.  I know some reading this are facing similar situations.  You may be scared out of your wits and not have a clue as to what to do, and that is where you rely on God even more for the answer.  Your plans are not falling apart, but God is looking at them, tweaking them here and there a bit to line up with what he wills, and in no time your doors will open too.  So, be encouraged by that today, and I will keep you updated on how my plan is coming together, with all the pieces falling into place as they should.  Thank you until next time. 

Aging - The Glaring Reality

 I am about a little less than three months out until my 56th birthday.  There are many thoughts I have as I think about this, including starting to contemplate my own mortality.  As you get older, you begin to notice things, and it is a bit surreal when you do.  And, lately, my body has been screaming at me that it is aging, and I think I feel it more now than ever. 

I am part of Generation X - we were considered the generation that gave a middle finger to both our Boomer parents and to the Millennials that came after us.  As such, I think many of us labor under the delusion that we are still who we were when we were 25.  To correct that delusion, all I have to do is look in a mirror, and there are days I wonder to myself "who in hell is that old man looking at me?"  Then, I realize it's my own reflection.  My hair, which was naturally a chestnut brown color, has become more white than brown in recent years.  My teeth are at war with practically every bite of food I take now, and in all honesty I need to see a dentist desperately but it is not always that easy to do so.  And, for the past 5 years part of my daily regimen is taking an ACE inhibitor called Lisinopril every day, and if I somehow have a delayed refill of my prescription, after two days I feel the effects as I wake up with a headache that feels like someone split my head in two.  Lately too, it is becoming harder to climb stairs - I can still do it, but I am climbing them now like my grandmother used to instead of easily ascending them like I used to. Let's face reality - physically, I am getting old!  Mentally, my mind has not quite caught up with my body yet, and when that spirals into a border skirmish, I feel that too.  It must be remembered though that aging is part of the life process, and none of us is exempt from its effects.  No matter how many hairplugs, how many botox injections, and despite gallons of wrinkle cream, age will catch up with us.  However, there are also external reminders as well, and this week one sort of sparked this discussion.

Does anyone my age or older remember the sitcom What's Happening?  It was popular about 50 years ago when I was still a young kid in the mid-1970s, and one of the best parts of it was the cool theme song composed by Henry Mancini.  However, it was also a fun show to watch too.  The youngest cast member, actress Danielle Spencer who played Dee, was perhaps one of the best characters in the show, although she had a lot of competition from ReRun, the overweight sidekick of the main protagonist, Dee's brother Raj.  Any rate, a couple of days ago Danielle Spencer passed away due to complications of cancer at the age of 60, and that sent a bit of a shock through my system.  After her breakout role as Dee on What's Happening, Miss Spencer went to college and got a degree in veterinary medicine, and she was apparently a very successful vet for many years.  With so many celebrity deaths this year, one can get the feeling that their generation is dying off.  Being a slightly older Gen-Xer than I am, Danielle Spencer probably didn't anticipate this happening, and it is really tragic because she was talented as a child actor but also apparently had achieved a great deal of success in her adult life too.  Hearing of her passing - along with the stomach pains I have had the past week for some unknown reason - is what got me contemplating about all this.  We should all pray for Danielle's family too as they mourn her loss, and my God comfort them. 

Since turning 50 in November 2020, these past few years have saw a lot for me personally.  Some of it was good, a lot of it wasn't, but I survived.  I lost a lot, and had to more or less do a reset on my life, but I am more or less finding my new place now.  Although at this point things have started to stabilize for me, I know that I need to watch my own health better.  However, my Gen-X delusions of eternal youth coupled with a natural inclination to procrastination tend to make me delay things I probably should take more seriously.  When I woke up this morning for instance, my left arm was practically on fire as if someone stuck a gas line inside me and it also was somewhat numb.  I don't think it is too serious, but I probably should pay closer attention.   As the comedian Mark Lowry said once, the statistics of human mortality is that one in one dies, and the only exception to that is if the Parousia happens.   I don't know if I will ever make it to my 100th birthday, but I am not quite ready to pass into eternity yet either. I feel as if I have still more to do, and at this present season it is teaching about 80 high school juniors during an academic year that starts approximately one week from this coming Monday.  Like our youth, summer vacation too is fleeting, and in all honesty I cannot fathom how fast the past couple of months have flown by!  

My current focus of contemplation compelled me to watch Grumpy Old Men again last night.  There were two of these movies, and for those of us who came of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these movies are classics.  Featuring the late actors Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, this movie and its sequel now strike a nerve, as I feel like those guys.  In the first movie, Burgess Meredith plays the father character of Jack Lemmon's character John Gustafson, and the character he portrays is a cantankerous, naughty, and colorful old man who in his profanity-based ramblings to his son does spout some occasional good wisdom.  The one thing he says is that after age 90 you start counting minutes instead of days, and that it is important to treasure the experiences of life you have.  As one of my favorite authors, the late Robert Newton Peck, once wrote:

"The basis for my success is that I write about what people do, not what they ought to do." (Robert Newton Peck, Weeds in Bloom: Autobiography of an Ordinary Man. New York: Random House, 2005: 207).

In other words, the "shoulda/coulda/wouldas" don't leave a legacy of anything, and envying someone else's hard-earned success does us no favors.  However, despite how our physical bodies fail us, we can create legacies that are eternal, and thanks to modern technology, those can be easily preserved.  As Nat Hentoff, the renowned jazz critic and pro-life activist, once noted in his memoirs, this piece of wisdom he wrote sticks with me now:

"Musicians used to tell me that playing jazz keeps them young. So does listening." (Nat Hentoff, Speaking Freely - A Memoir. New York: Alfred F. Knopf, 1997: 279). 

Being I collect vintage big band and jazz recordings myself - and am starting over with the collection now due to unforeseen circumstances last year - I understand that last part perfectly.  There are times when I listen to certain of my favorite recordings, and a feeling comes over me.  I feel 25 again, and a glimpse of the person I really am comes through.  I think of the famous Frank Sinatra record, "You Make Me Feel So Young" (which in all honesty Ray Conniff had a better recording of in the late 1950s), and although that is about romantic love (I feel that too, but more on that at another time) it also hints at something else.  There is a huge difference between aging and feeling old.  The former is the natural process of life, and the latter is the attitude with which we respond to it.  Many people say "you are only as old as you feel," and to an extent that is true.  No one is going to be feeling completely peachy every day obviously, and that is not the point.  Rather, it is an attitude, a state of mind, that defines our own course in life.  So, what does that mean then?  Let me talk about that a bit.

The best way to deal with aging is to age gracefully.  We all know one day God is going to say, "time to check out," so that reality is inescapable and also inevitable.  However, we don't have to despair that maybe we gained a few pounds, got some grey hairs and a few wrinkles, and maybe our body aches in places we never anticipated or took for granted.  Rather, we set our course by living the life we should be living.  If opportunity presents itself, seize it.  You are never too old to fall in love, get that Ph.D. you always wanted, or even to do those bucket-list projects that have been collecting dust in your mental closet since you were 20.  If 1980s and 1990s movies and sitcoms like The Golden Girls or Grumpy Old Men taught us anything, it is that life doesn't end once you reach 50 - for some, it may just be starting!  I mean, think of your 20s, 30s, and 40s - what did you do with those?  Sure, you may have financial stability, and you probably slaved away at a job for decades you were not happy with to get it, and for many the responsibilities of starting and raising families may have put old dreams and goals on a back burner.  However, age should never been seen as a limitation - we Gen-Xers, many of us now in our 50s, should be able to resonate with that.  Think of our generation - we were perhaps the most independently-minded and creative generation of the past century, and it was because many of us were forced to grow up fast as young kids.  Our Boomer parents in many cases were Yuppies who were formerly anti-Establishment hippies, and we grew up in the relative prosperity of the Reagan years after Carter almost killed the US as a country during his Presidency.  And, we were also one of the most misunderstood, overlooked, and ideologically diverse generations too - even I, as a relative eccentric who had more in common personally with the World War II generation rebelled against my late parents.  My mother, for instance, was a "Nashville Sound" country music fan who thought a potted meat sandwich was the pinnacle of culinary bliss, and my dad was an aging metalhead who also embraced some antiquated views on race, and both of them were Vietnam vets. I was neither of these, as when I was a young kid I dressed more formally (my dream outfit wasa royal-blue sports jacket, a pair of white slacks, and wingtip shoes), I was an extremely picky eater, and I hated both rock and country music, choosing instead the archaic old records of Guy Lombardo and Tommy Dorsey over even the popular music of my generation.  I generally eschewed the fashions of our generation as well, which made middle school hell but then got me some grudging admiration for my individuality in high school.  And, as a Gen-X boy then, I learned an increasing arsenal of self-sufficiency skills that would serve me well later too.  I mostly had to do all that myself, as at times I never got clear direction from anyone, and for those who attempted to impose it, often it was in a way that was micromanaging and tried to force me into their mold.  Many of my generation were also "latchkey kids," and that crossed economic class - middle- and upper-class families then had their own versions of "latchkey kids," as did those of us who were lower-income. We became a proud generation, as asking for help became anathema to many of us because we were always in situations where we had to figure out things for ourselves.  That was both positive and negative, as it made us reluctant to ask questions on the job and in college and we suffered for that big-time.  I think if I could go back to fix that, one thing I would do is perhaps be more nuanced with some of my personal stubbornness and self-sufficiency.  Again though, that is the old "shoulda/coulda/woulda" mindset and we cannot mourn our mistakes - rather, we pick ourselves up and learn from them, which thankfully many of us did.  Any rate, I went down a rabbit hole there, so let's get back to the topic at hand.

Aging is an existential physical reality, but being old is a mindset.  There are many people who are of advanced age yet they are vibrant as far as their lives go - take the veteran big bandleader Ray Anthony for instance, who is 103 and still going strong.  Or my good friend John Booko, an Assyrian-American pastor who is almost 103 himself.  Both of these people are living long, productive lives still, and while there is no determination of how much longer they will be with us, they demonstrate that old axiom "you are only as old as you feel."  John, my friend, is one of the reasons I take a certain supplement today, spirulina (blue-green algae, particularly a strain found in Klamath Lake in Oregon).  I mean, seriously, if he is doing so well taking that for over 30 years, perhaps it's something to pay attention to. And, I do have two grandparents that lived well into their 90s too - had my late grandfather lived to September of this year, he would have reached his 100th birthday.  He died at 98 though, so he must have done something right too.  While healthy living is a good thing, there are more people dying at 40 of heart attacks that eat vegan diets and power walk 20 miles a day than there are people who are 80 that essentially love to eat fried chicken and good bacon for breakfast every day (and some have an occasional glass of Scotch or a premium cigar on occasion too).  The person who is 40, and is obsessed with health fads and climbing the corporate ladder, is doing themselves no favor.  Sure, they may look like a million bucks, but underneath that is a mindset that can never rest - if they blow one small thing in their lives, they lose the plot.  They may have exterior success, but their minds are not happy.  And, many will die young like that - some won't see their 60th birthdays.  Another pearl of wisdom from Mark Lowry I recall was this - either cholesterol or stress will get you, so why not have fun going out?  Good point I say, because despite how some obsessive people try to pickle themselves for posterity, at some point they will breathe their last.  That is something to think about too.  That is why I enjoy my Slim Jims, an occasional country-fried steak or some Bojangles chicken, and a nice cold Pepsi.  As long as you don't shovel it in, enjoy it!  If you enjoy what you do - be it your career, a hobby, or a favorite food - then you will naturally be happier.  Of course, the one factor in this is Jesus Christ too - people who follow Christ and have a vibrant faith also have a huge advantage.  That is something to think on as well. 

So, I talked over the past couple of weeks about aging, my childhood dreams, and a bunch of other personal stuff.   I am not sure where this is all going to head, but I am happy to share it with you.  Hopefully it will inspire you more as well, and in doing so, the important thing to remember as you take away from this is simple - getting old is a state of mind, so age gracefully.  Thanks for allowing me to share again with you. 

Exploring Childhood Memories (Again)

 The summer months often pique imaginations for kids, and there is something I wanted to share today that was of interest during my childhood.  Beginning at around the time I was 10 years old, I lived in a bit of a poverty-stricken environment.  At first, it was with my grandparents, who lived on a farm just outside the town of Augusta, WV, and they lived in an old house that had no indoor plumbing save a cold-water pump.  Also, the general isolation of my surroundings meant that as a kid I had to find ways to keep myself occupied.  A lot of it consisted of normal activities I did - I fished in the pond above the house, and also made a makeshift fort out of a small grove of trees at the edge of the yard.  The thing that fueled most of this was imagination, and mine was in overdrive in many cases.  Later, when Mom and I moved to the nearby town of Kirby, we lived in a mobile home there and also had very little at the time.  I remember the days when dinner consisted of oven-cooked French fries, fried cabbage, or fried squash, and for a long time the only meat we had was the occasional package of bacon or sliced ham we got at the store just on the other side of the yard. Imagination was my richest resource I had, as I had little else then, and I used that to my advantage. 

Most kids have vivid imaginations, as that is what actually compels them to learn and explore life.  In my case however, it was in overdrive.  Much of the imagination I had then was fueled by reading, and I read a lot!  Magazines, children's stories, and the occasional foray to the library in Romney provided me with reading material.  I particularly loved reading old issues of Readers Digest that people gave us, as well as a huge collection of old Cricket magazines a classmate in my elementary school had given me. From those, I got some ideas and did my own little projects - one was a foray into papier mache, in which I got quite good at making ducks from a clothes hanger frame draped with flour-pasted strips of old Grit newspapers I had temporarily gotten into as a sort of small business enterprise that sort of went by the wayside when I realized how much work it would take to sell them and also the fact most people didn't have an interest in them anyway. Once the newspaper was in place, I then did the same things with strips of toilet paper to make the duck look, well, like a duck.  Also, that Christmas Mom got me a chemistry set, and I used that a lot too, including an odd attempt to make perfume for a girl I had a crush on then. Although she graciously accepted my little "gift," I am thinking it probably ended up in a trash can somewhere because in all honesty who could blame her.  I also attempted to make my own cheese, and that actually had a certain level of success.  I created a tiny wheel of cheese, smaller than a Baby Bell, and after salting it and curing it more it looked like a small parmesan wheel.  I never actually ate it, but it was just cool to do.  My chemistry set and the fact I had a large bedroom to experiment in made my life somewhat more interesting, along with occasional forays to the local creek behind the house where I caught a ton of things such as baby crawfish, water pennies, tiny freshwater limpets, and the occasional big prize of a small mottled sculpin.  Those proved more challenging to catch as they were very fast, and they often were in fast-moving and deeper pools strewn with rocks in the creek. Such was life in the summers. 

Onto my more ambitious ideas, one of the things I feared most then was losing Mom - Mom drank a lot then and also smoked up to a pack of cigarettes a day, and while at that time she was in her late 30s it still was a real fear I had.  And, God forbid, I didn't want to end up with my dad and step-mother in Georgia then, although looking back that may not have been as bad as I imagined.  My survival instincts kicked in at that time and I was always plotting and thinking of an exit strategy in case something happened to Mom.  That strategy involved a sort of "base camp" in a forest somewhere (an idea I had picked up from reading one of my grandfather's old hunting books, and the duck blind plans in that piqued my interest then).  The plan I had was actually very minimalist but also to me it was somewhat sophisticated - I would build a partially-underground shelter that looked eerily like the duck blinds I was studying in the book, and then I began looking at catalogs and the various magazines given to us, and I had a plan in place!  I cannot at this point really recall every detail about those ideas, but they would make for an interesting book if they could be written down!  I was also thinking somewhat pragmatically - collecting things like sugar packets and other "convenience foods" that I would stockpile to live on.  As I look back on that now, I was a bit of a weird kid!  But, my plans got more ambitious as I moved on. 

I got this idea to start a sort of political movement based on all the history books I was reading then, and I eventually fantasized about carving out a kingdom in Brazil or someplace.  It was a pretty grandiose plan in all honesty, and by the time I was 12 I actually was trying to create a manifesto as well as a complete plan for how this was going to come together.  And, having the vivid imagination as a kid, I really thought I could pull that off!  However, within about a year or so that sort of fell by the wayside as I began to knock on the doorstep of adolescence, and I started developing more tangible interests that would later coalesce into something else.  

I was 12 when I started getting interested in music - I told that story already.  At that point my goal was to create the biggest collection of the music I liked, and it was actually a somewhat attainable goal.  Most of the recordings I acquired came via the local junk shop in nearby Rio, where I could buy records for a quarter.  By the time I reached my 14th birthday, I had a stack of a couple of hundred easily.  But, it also caused a few issues - remember those old Readers Digests we had?  I had discovered mail-order, and although I had no income to speak of then, it was easy to send a business-reply envelope and order things, and so I did.  Within a couple of years, I ended up with about 6 boxed sets of "collector's edition" recordings from Readers Digest, with no way to possibly pay for them.  Being relatively cheap at the time, the total amount for all six sets of records was about $200, something as an adult I could easily manage.  But, for a young kid with a $10 monthly allowance that came out of my dad's child support he sent us, I was in way over my head.  My dad and stepmom eventually paid for a couple of them for me as sort of an early Christmas present, but I also got a tongue-lashing from my dad about it. That leads to another part of this discussion.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I was still in my early teens, there was no internet and most communication or mail shopping was done via the old business-reply cards.  One could order just about anything then, and many places were a lot more trusting at that time than they would be later.  So, it was extremely easy to order a bunch of stuff, and the convenience made it somewhat addictive.  That was the day when vinyl records and cassettes were still the primary media, and there were also record clubs then where for a penny you could get 12 cassettes or records from clubs such as Columbia House or BMG Music Services.  What the fine print didn't say though was two things.  First, you had shipping to pay on those, and that could be as much as $10.  Second, by signing up for that, you had an obligation to buy at least two items a year, or you'd be penalized. I did manage to get several items in my collection then, but many of those were cassettes, and my rule is this - if you want music worth preserving, do NOT buy it on cassette!  I had more cassettes go kaput on me over the years than anything, and by the mid-1990s when I began to buy CDs as a young college student, I found CDs to be a more feasible format because for the most part they didn't mess up, and they also were easier to manage than huge stacks of vinyl records.  So, while it was fun to order things then, it was also easy to get in over your head, and I would learn that the hard way. 

Looking back on that, I think I was probably part of at least 3 music clubs, two book clubs, and I also got a lot of free stuff as I had access to a free religious magazine that the town store kept called The Plain Truth.  That magazine at the time was published by the Worldwide Church of God, which was founded in the 1930s by Herbert W. Armstrong.  Back then, it was essentially a heretical cult, although some years later they re-evaluated their doctrine and are thankfully now a more orthodox Evangelical Protestant church.  Everything that The Plain Truth offered was free, and I perhaps ended up with somewhere in the vicinity of 50 small booklets as well as two large books, one of which, The United States and Britain in Prophecy, promoted the bizarre and quasi-racist doctrine of Anglo-Israelism. At that time though, I actually thought I had hit the motherload, and I thought I was something with a library of free heresy.  Thankfully, in 1986 I became a Christian, and the weird, free cultic literature ended up in the garbage as I began to be properly discipled by a Godly Baptist minister.  Again, a large part of this stuff happened in my summers then, so it kept me busy.

While there are many more childhood reflections I could share, these were a few of my most memorable ones, and I do have one other one I want to share next time that entails cooking - I have always loved to cook, and that was an interest I developed at a very young age.  Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next time.