Silence

Sometimes in silence
when I listen with the ears of my heart
and see with the eyes of my soul
the curtain of my ego concedes.

The stillness of my breath
unspeakable beauty
a thin place between heaven and earth
united with luminous everlasting.

An endless hymn
in the temple of my heart
the tabernacle of my soul
resonates with the consonance of eternity.

Romance and Roadkill: How I Went On a Date and Ended Up Taking Out a Deer

My first car was a 1986 Mercury Grand Marquis, an automobile modeled after the Sherman Tank. Nothing says "seventy year old man" better than the Grand Marquis, notable for its rear-wheel drive which caused terrible handling in inclement weather, 18 foot bumper-to-bumper dimensions, boxy steel frame and body which rendered it bulletproof as well as highly fuel inefficient, sleek cloth interior, and cutting edge "ride engineering" technology. It was such an unwieldy beast, that I chose to take the road test for my drivers license in my parents' Ford Aerostar minivan because it was actually smaller and easier to parallel park.

The pimp-ass 1986 Mercury Grand Marquis

As a sixteen year old boy, however, I didn't care about the practicality or the looks of the car. It was a pimp-ass machine as far as I was concerned and represented a certain level of independence from my family that meant I was becoming a real "adult" with real responsibility. Within a couple of months of getting my license I scored my first job - selling appliances for Best Buy - yes I was that cool - and I began to feel confident enough to begin my first foray into the world of dating.

I strategically waited to start dating until I could drive. The thought of having my parents drive me to a date was enough of a buzz kill to keep me from even thinking about it until I had received my drivers license. This, coupled with the fact that I was completely invisible to all of the girls in my class (which to this day I prefer to see as a happy coincidence and not my own crippling insecurity and undesirablitiy prior to age sixteen), made dating off limits until I could provide my own transportation. Once I was an "earner" - thank you Best Buy - with some expendable income and a totally bitching ride, I was finally ready to enter the high school dating scene.

It was within this context that I found myself on my very first date, in the Spring of my junior year of high school, with a girl on whom I had had a crush for a very long time. My exterior composure (or what I remember as composure) for most of the evening belied a bizarre cocktail of emotions immediately beneath the surface. I was most certainly attracted to her but I also felt amazed, grateful, terrified, giddy, bewildered, and sweaty for the duration of the date. I'm pretty sure I had a good time, but there was definitely some relief when I finally dropped her off at home. I'm also pretty sure everything that came out of my mouth the entire evening was basically the verbal equivalent of dogshit. Nonetheless, the date was a success, and I drove home in the euphoric fog of young love.

As I made my way home I wasn't paying much attention to the road. My mind wandered through the events of the evening, replaying some of the more memorable moments. I felt all of the feelings and was excited that I had actually taken my first step toward romance with another person. I'm pretty sure it was this general state of euphoria that distracted me from the large mammal that was standing in my lane as I barreled down the narrow strip of highway in the Spring darkness. Before I knew what was happening my lights flashed on the brown fur and terrified eyes of a rather large deer. I touched the breaks, but by the time I reacted my car made impact.

A side note about the Grand Marquis. As I mentioned earlier, this car was built like a tank. A year after this story occurred, I was driving the same car through the parking lot at school when a kid, driving 30 miles per hour the in the wrong direction on snow and ice, sandwiched his parents' sedan
between my car and a parked school bus. The sedan was totaled: broken axle, shattered passenger side windows, detached front fender, and one entire side caved in from impact with the bus. Damage to the Grand Marquis: broken front blinker light. So my car, yeah, one bad motherfucker.

As my car hit the deer I braced myself and steadied the vehicle. What I was not prepared for was how the deer immediately exploded all over my windshield and down the entire driver's side of the car. The only equivalent I can think of is driving out from underneath a shelter into a sudden downpour of really heavy rain. Except this wasn't rain. I felt the deer bounce off the hood, get dragged for a bit underneath the car, and then finally come free at the rear of the vehicle. I couldn't see a thing out of any of my windows, so I turned on the wipers smearing deer all over the windshield.

I had to pull over. My mind, which had been blissfully recalling romantic memories only moments earlier, was now contemplating the deer murder I had just committed. I was terrified and had absolutely no idea what to do. I crawled across the roomy bench seat of the Grand Marquis, opened the passenger door (the only side of the car not entirely caked in deer guts and entrails), and got out to survey the damage. Upon exiting the vehicle I was immediately overpowered by the smell of shit.

You see, the Grand Marquis had not merely hit the deer. With the accuracy of a surgeon's scalpel, the front edge of the car made a two foot long incision in the abdomen of the animal, allowing the entire contents of its stomach and intestines to erupt in an unspeakable discharge of foulness that now covered the entire front and driver's side of the vehicle. I looked back at the lifeless deer, laying peacefully on the highway and shuddered. After surveying the damage, I sheepishly returned to the car, crawled back across the bench seat, cleared the windshield to the best of my ability, and slowly - so very slowly - continued on my way. After arriving home and hosing off the exterior of the vehicle, I was amazed to discover only a small dent in the front quarter panel, but otherwise no other damage.

Like I said. Badass.

In the end, I drove the Grand Marquis for another year until the transmission finally gave out. It was a good first car and I think about it occasionally, especially when the weather gets warm and my thoughts nostalgically turn to the past. It's funny to think about how important that car was to me and what it represented at the time. I was in such a hurry to grow up. The date, the job, the car - these were all teenage rites of passage for a suburban kid like me and they were all formative experiences that helped shape me as a young adult.

As I see it now, that Spring evening from my junior year of high school was a seam in the fabric of my life. I was a confident young man on his first ever date but I was also a terrified child who had just killed an animal. I was simultaneously invincible and vulnerable that evening. I think we all encounter these seams from time to time and as I grow older I find the veneer of my invincibility wearing away. I am now beginning to see my own mortality and weakness, understand the importance of people in my life, and to discover (to borrow from Brene Brown) the power of vulnerability and how it can connect and bring me closer to loved ones. In the end, it is our strengths that attract us to one another but our vulnerability is what actually binds us together.

*I'm happy to report that my date to roadkill ratio has since dramatically improved.

Easter Retreat

For many years I was a Catholic tourist. I became Catholic simply because it was "close enough" to my Episcopal upbringing and it would make it "easier" for me and my ex-wife to attend church together. I could simply be a part of her faith without compromising much of anything, so it was a good deal. I remember attending Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, checking off the ways that Catholicism was similar to my Protestant background, and was able to intellectualize the tenets of the faith in ways that I could rationalize or understand so as to make my transition from "observer" to "practicing Catholic" as smooth as possible. Once I became Catholic I went to church regularly (mostly), sang in the choir, and joined a small group for young couples in our parish. My faith was solid enough, and that was that. It wasn't until my separation and divorce that I experienced a true awakening, an aching desire to be close to God, or as the Psalmist poetically states, "My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life; when can I enter and see the face of God?" (Ps 42:3).

Holy week of 2013, ushered in by a crippling blizzard in central Illinois on Palm Sunday, was a life changing event for me. During that week I began to understand the true mercy of God, to finally allow myself to be receptive to the power of the Christian message, and to truly begin to grapple with my own faith on a personal level. Why am I Catholic? What do I believe? Is there something for me on a more than purely intellectual level? Was Jesus just some good guy that was killed horribly two thousand years ago or is he truly the Son of God? During that week and subsequent year I challenged all of my previous assumptions about Catholicism and my own faith, and began a journey which continues to this day. I am certainly not, nor will I ever be in this lifetime, at the end of the journey. My Christian calling is a path and not a destination.  

This year, rather than having an amazing experience like 2013, or a beautiful retreat at a monastery like I did last year, I simply stayed home. It's been a quiet and somewhat lonely week in Springfield. I sang in the choir at the Cathedral right across the street from my apartment, but was otherwise alone most of the time. I was feeling sorry for myself until I realized that this isolation and opportunity to completely devote myself to singing at Triduum was a new type of retreat for me: completely self-guided, completely alone, and all within the context of my own little "monastery" in Springfield. Once I realized this, my outlook shifted and I suddenly was filled with gratitude and wonder - and slightly embarrassed for being so thick headed and self-pitying.

"God exists: that is the real message of Easter," says Pope Benedict XVI. Sometimes in my own self-absorbed daily life I forget this. I am grateful for the Easter liturgy each year, because it brings me back to my center - if I allow it. Pope Francis calls this a "return to Galilee." The Holy Father says, "to return to Galilee means above all to return to that blazing light with which God's grace touched me at the start of the journey." As Christians we get to get experience this every Easter as a "returning to our first love in order to receive the fire which Jesus kindled in the world and to bring that fire to all people." We get to experience the fellowship and covenant of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, the tragedy of the Passion on Good Friday, and the triumph of the Resurrection at the Easter Vigil. Easter is the center of our world as Christians, or as our Bishop said in his homily this morning, "we are an Easter people."

However, the reality of Easter is that it comes with a cost. We cannot have the triumph of the Resurrection without the suffering of the cross. Jay Cormier captures this sentiment beautifully by stating simply, "Easter begins in the dark of night. If you have ever kept vigil at the bedside of a dying loved one or if you have ever been unable to sleep because of what was to come, Easter has dawned in your life." My own reception of the Christian message and willingness to fully embrace my Catholicism came only after my life had collapsed on itself - when I was finally ready to let go and allow God's mercy and forgiveness to wash over me. In my emptiness and brokenness I truly thirsted for God. I gradually came to realize that when I finally hit rock bottom, Jesus was indeed there to share in my suffering and transform it through the power of his Resurrection. He offers me a hand, picks me up, and walks alongside of me in the darkest night. In other words, God's answer to human suffering and misery is "a new story that contains the first glimmer of encouragement, the only hint of an explanation, that heaven has ever deigned to offer earth," as Thomas Cahill asserts in his book, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, "I will suffer with you."

In meditating on the duality of the Easter story this year, I am greatly encouraged by the message of hope in the Gospel, which contains both suffering and redemption. In Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Richard Rohr speaks about this duality. "The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside of the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising." Jesus had to suffer and die so that he could conquer suffering and death from within. We acknowledge this in the Apostles Creed when we say, "He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven..." In a similar way, God transforms each us from the inside rather than imposing His will upon us, if we are receptive to Him. St. Paul reminds us of the transforming power of Christ when he writes to the Corinthians, "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10).

Suffering is a doorway through which we enter joy. Through the love of God we are able to transform our weakness to strength. The duality of our lives, the darkness and light, is what makes us complete human beings, therefore we should embrace our falling down. Rather than struggle against our faults, as Christians we own up to them and embrace them. Thomas Merton captures this beautifully in a reflection from Easter Sunday, March 28, 1948 which can be found in The Intimate Merton: His Life From His Journals. It captures the spirit of the day as well as the duality of the Easter mystery so well. "On these big feasts you come out on top of a plateau in the spiritual life to get a new view of everything. Especially Easter. Easter is like what it will be entering eternity when you suddenly, peacefully, clearly recognize all your mistakes as well as all that you did well: everything falls into place."

Not Magnificent

I recently returned from an epic Spring break road trip that took me from a monastery on the icy fringes of a Minnesota winter, to the warm, seductive embrace of the Big Easy on the Mississippi Delta. I logged over three thousand miles in the car round trip from Springfield, spent time in contemplation with the monks at St. John's Abbey, and rambled around the crowded streets of the French Quarter taking part in the great sea of humanity celebrating life in New Orleans. This trip afforded a good deal of time to examine my life and to place myself in the context of two diametrically opposed communities.

That I would undertake such a trip that was both literally and figuratively at opposite ends of the spectrum was fitting at this point in my life. These days I feel like I have not suffered a minor setback to my inevitable forward progress, so much as a complete derailment and realignment of my entire world. I made some major life changes this year that involve my education and career, and have begun to finally understand who I am. I am finally asking questions about why I engage in certain behaviors, why I make the choices I make, and what I actually want to get out of my life. This process has brought me to some pretty dark places but it has inevitably yielded self-knowledge. I've sat with the worst side of myself, the most horrible things I've done, examined my motivations, and taken ownership for my past. It's been humbling experience at times but ultimately very necessary and long overdue.

This isn't to say life has been all "gloom and doom" for me. My trips out of town were incredibly fun. I absolutely love to travel, meet new people, explore new places, and try new things. Getting out of my comfort zone is the best thing I can do, especially since it helps lift me out of my depression. I met some really great people in my travels, laughed harder than I have in a long time, and felt a connection with people - sometimes complete strangers - that I seldom feel in my everyday life. This connection was possible because of my willingness to be open and take chances - to strike up a conversation or ask a question or even get excited about seeing alligators - which I seldom do on a daily basis due to my extremely shy, introverted nature.

As I traveled this Spring break and thought about the last two years, I realized that my life is undergoing massive changes because I never really finished growing up in the first place. When I divorced, I discovered that I had been using my relationship as a band-aid to fix my broken self and to provide me with the sense of belonging that I so desperately craved. For eleven years I pinned all my hopes on another person to fill the void in my life. By the end, the void only had grown larger, and ended up consuming the relationship like a black hole. My brokenness and unwillingness to continue my own self-growth past twenty-two years of age, for fear of pain and suffering, left me feeling utterly abandoned and isolated at thirty-three.

At the time it seemed like the appropriate course of action but I now understand this pain is unavoidable. No matter how long I tried to live the "successful" life - marriage, career, house - telling myself that everything is getting better each year and avoiding issues from my past, my neuroses, and baggage - eventually it caught up with me. In his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Richard Rohr deals with this very issue. Rohr says that the only path  to growth includes failures, setbacks, and disappointments and that they must not be avoided. "Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the light and dark sides of things." 

In my own life I thought darkness was bad and to be avoided. I kept running from myself, running from the very people that could help me - my family and friends - telling everyone the narrative that I wanted them to hear. From afar nobody had to see the true me - and this included my ex-wife. I could craft a story and portray my life the way I wanted, thus making myself the hero and impressing everyone with (what I thought would be) my inevitable success, fame, and fortune. I even started this blog as a tool of my own propaganda.

In other words:

This is what I told everyone my life was like...

...when in reality this is what it actually was.

I kept telling myself that I was destined for bigger and better things - that there was more to life than what I was experiencing. "Don't get too comfortable now, because the next step will be better!" Life became an endless cycle of running to the next event because it was better than my current situation. This is how I ended up divorced, pursuing a degree I didn't want, and living in a town five hundred miles from my closest family and friends.

There is a great lyric from a Bon Iver song called Holocene which I listened to a lot on my three thousand mile road trip. The song itself is about moments of realization in life, how we as human beings are tied to the larger context of humanity, and how actually insignificant we truly are. The line goes, "and at once I knew I was not magnificent." I thought about this a lot as I drove across this vast country in the middle of a planet that is so tiny in the scope of the universe. I thought about this while surrounded by thousands of people on vacation, partying, and enjoying life. I thought about this as I sat in choir, praying with the monks at St. John's. 

I've spent so much time imagining my own magnificence with my gaze turned inward, that I have completely neglected the here and now most of my adult life. At any point, I could have chosen to be grateful for the people around me and the life I'm living. Instead I kept imagining happiness or fulfillment to be over the next hill or around the next curve in the road. Sometimes I get really mad that it took the collapse of my marriage and my career for me to realize this, but I guess this is the way I needed to learn and grow. As Thomas Merton points out, "a man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly." 

So here I am, embracing my failure in life, grateful for the lessons I've learned. I would not trade the loneliness, depression, or pain for anything because it has strengthened me and made me a humbler, more empathetic, and compassionate person. The pain is mine and it is a very important part of my story. I do, however, deeply regret the pain that I've caused others through my arrogance and selfishness. I also regret that I've spent so much time running away from those who are nearest and dearest to me so that I could prove my own self-worth. Greg Brown describes this perception so beautifully in his song The Poet Game, that I'm going to quote from it here:

I've lost track of my mistakes

like birds that fly around

and darken half my skies.

To all of those I've hurt - 

I pray you will forgive me.

I to you will freely do the same.

There are so many things I didn't see

with my eyes turned inside,

playing the poet game.

I've been playing somewhat of a "poet game" my entire life. I've spent a long time wandering restlessly, searching for myself, hoping to find out who I am in the next job, the next set of friends, the next town, or the next relationship. I've focused all of my energy on "what" I am, and not "who" I am. I am more than mere adjectives that describe me. I am me, in all of my not-magnificence, with all of my paradoxes and contradictions. Darkness and light. Suffering and redemption. Sadness and happiness. It's all there. Life is such an amazing mystery, my friends. I hope I will learn to embrace who I am - and I hope for the same for each of you.