Reading over the syllabus for my Old Testament Prophets class, which starts in a week, I came across the following: 

"Take note of things that threaten to change your life, the way you see the world and your place in it, and the way you think about God. If you don’t notice anything like that, read the biblical text again."

This is going to be a sweet freaking class. I'm at once terrified out of my mind and terribly excited.

 I'm home in Florida for the last time until August. I need to clean a little, finish packing, load up my car and drive up to Tiger, Georgia tomorrow. I'll be there for a week with my Middle School Youth Group at summer camp, then I'll drive to Indianapolis and stay there a couple of nights. On the 15th I'll drive to Notre Dame and be there for Summer school. It'll be great.

A fictional conversation I created for Cavadini's Catechism class last Summer. The subject is the Incarnation. It was by far my most successful In Brief assignment.

 

( Music Appreciation and Theology: My Two Loves! )

 

 Take this cup away, for I don't want to taste its poison.

It's amazing how far I've come since last December here in Florida. Do I have a permanent home here? I don't think so. Do I have a temporary home and a way in which to engage myself in my work? Yes.

All Echo students are required to write an end-of-year report. I wrote mine yesterday, thinking I would have to temper the negativity I've felt througout the year. But, I suppose that's why we wrote the report: to reflect on the negatives and see if we can find positives in them, positives that will guide us in the next half of our work. I think I was able to determine a few things after 7 pages of semi-organized processing and reflection:

• I now have a vision for the middle school youth group and thoughts on how to implement it.
• I have a sense of why and how I became so depressed last fall.
• Youth ministry uses catechetical techniques that are transferable to all other religious education programs.
• We must try to base all catechesis not on our ideas but on Revelation.
• I have a pretty good intuition of things to come but become paralyzed before them.
• I'm fairly sick of being insecure and underconfident (therefore under-compotent), but human value is not determined by compotency (difficult to really believe).
• I don't want to take anymore classes online.

In other news, I've felt drawn to the discipline of spiritual direction lately. And quite intimidated by it. Working one-on-one with people seems to be one of my strengths, as I combine a quick and discerning mind with an open heart that longs to invite others in for a meal. I asked a mentor-figure in my life, the diocesan Director of Catechist Formation, for any books she had on vocation and discernment. One of the books she gave me was about learning to be a better spiritual director! I, rather reluctantly, started reading it on Saturday, after hiding it under my Bible and Thomas Merton books for a few weeks. It's full of wisdom and lessons that are quite applicable to my own style of forming others in the Faith. It advises open and engaged listening, conscious awareness of my own notions of the Other and discernment over where each person I meet is in his or her relationship with God before I start talking. It's also written by two Jesuits who clearly love Jesus and admire Ignatius. Finally, they mention as a good resource a priest who came and spoke to our class with some regularity in 7th grade, Fr. Francis Tiso. That part was just crazy and reminded me how small our Catholic world can be.

So, basically, I have the beginnings of an inkling of what it might mean for me to be a "channel" of His peace, as St. Francis puts it.

Somehow, I got permission, airfare and a scholarship to leave Florida and work for a whole week to go to a conference in Detroit. I'm leaving in a few hours. I'm very excited. I'll get to attend some workshops and see many of my friends from Echo who live in other cities. I'll have a full week of living with other men (4 in our hotel room).

What a welcome change it all is for limited time! Hopefully the workshops will also be beneficial to my growth as a catechist.

Also, I might see a certain Costa Rican friend on May 1st. A friend said yesterday of my situation with her that I'm "dealing with something way bigger than myself." It would appear so!

"Have I spoken something, have I uttered something, worthy of God? No, I feel that all I have done is to wish to speak; if I did say something, it is not what I wanted to say. How do I know this? Simply because God is unspeakable." - St. Augustine, On Christian Teaching

Does that mean that I should stop blogging my theological reflections? Probably.

And I probably would stop, except this is in in the introduction of a 127 book written by Augustine, so clearly he has an awful lot to say about an unspeakable subject. Augustine was absolutely a theological badass. He was also crazy and extremely long-winded!

 I love that as soon as it's okay to start saying Alleluia again, the choir starts singing hymns whose lyrics are only "Alleluia" ... over and over and over again.

At first it's a little stomach-turning. It's like watching someone who just quit the Atkins diet eat 6 donuts, simply gratuitous. But, somehow it leaves me settled and happy; I want to join in with their repeated "Alleluias!" Such a gratuitous act of Creation, Incarnation, Passion and (wow!) Resurrection from our God merits only these redundant cries of joy and praise. On Easter, the core of our faith is celebrated, hence the ridiculous litanies and "Alleluias" I experienced at the Cathedral last night. As we emphasize the central aspect of Christian belief, the Resurrection of Christ, we expose the very center of all Christian worship, "Alleluia!"

"From Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, the daily liturgies contain wildly different emotional focal points. Good Friday is the saddest day of the year for a Catholic; Easter is the happiest." - from an article about working for a Cathedral during Holy Week.

It's true; as Catholics we embrace in our holiest week of the year a nearly bi-polar spirituality. When I grow frustrated at my emotional ups and downs as being detrimental to my own desired practice of Christianity, I need only remind myself that such ups and downs were not only shared by my Savior and the earliest practitioners of my faith, but embraced by them. The cycles of the world, the things we perceive as suffering and the things which we make evil, are subsumed by the Creator's eternal mercy and gift of Self. It's the humanity of these cycles that allow for us to have any salvation at all! They are part of our nature- senses and feelings, desires and attractions. And they are, at times, excrutiating until fulfilled in our ultimate purpose, that is, co-creation of the cosmos. 

So, for Holy Week, I will not be running from my wants and excitements. I will be exploring them to the best of my ability, with the added assurance that my Creator is personally concerned for their development.

IC XC Nika Alithos!

 This morning I woke up and the whole world looked... different. More beautiful and foreign and new. I gazed out over the intercoastal waterway and was struck by how much this place looks like Venice.  Maybe it's just that spring in Western Florida is lovely.

Even my silverware drawer is different. That doesn't make sense.

It's nice to feel hope again.

 I'm enjoying my meditation and reading time lately much more than normal. It seems like I'm getting some outside help with it all, in the form of borrowed  books, clearer ideas and a better attitude in general. What I like most is the idea of getting to know myself in part through what I want.

Those of you who've followed my livejournal over the last few years might have noticed that I am perennially trying to figure out how to deal with my desires, especially when I see them as counter to some kind of value or "good." Somehow, I got this idea the other night, asking God "who am I?", to look at my deepest desires, whatever those are. The things my heart and mind choose are, with prayer and trust, the things God would choose for me. 

I think it's a move from basic distrust of self to basic trust of Self, that is the Self that God planned for me. The scary part is that I don't really know what it is on a practical level, other than being more attentive to and less suspiscious of my emotions and thoughts. I'm trusting that as I learn about who I am, I will learn what I want to, and therefore should, do. And I'll do it.

Trust, faith, in a Creation that is radically personal and fundamentally loving- that's what Christianity is all about.

Otherwise, I might be like Kierkegaard (or perhaps I already am): "If there were no eternal consciousness in a person, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?" (Fear and Trembling)

Today being Sunday, I went out of my way to celebrate the Resurrection by having a hamburger. Actually, I wasn't going to buy meat today, but I went to the record store near St. Jude's to look for the new Decemberists album. The store was closed, and I was hungry so I went to the Checker's right next store. First I ordered a chicken melt and a root beer. When I got my order, it had two patty melts with bacon and cheese. What I ordered? No. Delicious nonetheless? Yes. I asked about it and they apologized for getting my order wrong. I accepted the extra burger as a gift.

After the first burger (I hadn't eaten beef since Mardi Gras), I was feeling really full. So I decided to keep it for later. I got in my car to look for the next record store, which was downtown. On my way to downtown, I decided to give the extra burger to the first panhandler I saw. There are usually many and I almost never have anything to give them. I parked a few blocks away from Daddy Kool's Records and walked down Central Ave, which is a very seedy part of town, figuring it would improve my chances of running into someone who would like a free patty melt.

On my way there, I met a guy who was yelling (literally) about the bus not running on schedule. He was clearly not completely stable mentally, but nice enough. He approached me about it for some reason. I told him he should call the transit authority and complain. He told me about losing his belt because someone gave him a funny look while he was putting it on on the bus yesterday ("usually only dicks and fuckers ride the bus"). And he complained about the existence of nursing homes and how the cashier at the last Subway he went to used to work at one. "She was a bitch," he insisted. I offered him the burger, but he didn't want it, since he'd just eaten at Subway. He followed me down to Daddy Kool's where we parted ways. I don't know what his name was. He makes me pretty nervous and I hope he gets the help he needs.

Of course, The Decemberists' album comes out on Tuesday the 24th, not the 17th. So I left Daddy Kool's empty-handed. Walking the 10 blocks back to my car, I expected to see a panhandler at some point, but I never did. However, a man approached me and offered to give me a live squirrel, which he was holding by the back of the neck. I think he was joking (I think). I declined and offered him the burger. He didn't want it. I asked him why he was holding a squirrel. He told me it was a baby and was going to get hit by a car; he was moving it out of the way. "I know what I'm doing, man. You keep track of what you're doing," he said, kind of disgusted. I guess I had been pretty condescending in my new sunglasses and red polo shirt, offering him my extras just 'cause he was unshaven and wore tattered clothes. 

I never found a panhandler and I still have the hamburger. It's very delicious I'm sure. Perhaps there will be someone begging on 31st St on my way back to the Cathedral.

They probably won't want my cold, leftover patty melt, though. I don't know what they want or need, but that  certainly won't help anything.

From a letter to a new friend, regarding my most recent theological musings.

"At the moment, I've been fairly concerned about the Resurrection from the dead at the Parousia. Well, by concerned I don't mean worried, but I've been mulling it over a lot. St. Paul seems to think that our bodies are like little seeds, ready to become more like flowers or wheat plants (1 Cor 15). I am a fan of this notion, as it values the material world, especially the human body, in a way that could free a lot of people, especially Christians who have trouble understanding it. It seems like almost all of my middle schoolers (I teach 6, 7, 8 grade religion) think that when we die we stop needing our bodies and go to heaven as souls. The authors of the New Testament would have thought that was ridiculous. Part of the reason Jesus was so unpopular with the people who killed him was because he valued the human body so much. They all loved the material world, even if they thought it was broken, and they worked to heal it, in preparation for the day when Jesus would come to finish the job with us."

 I woke up at 4:45 this morning for some reason. I think it had to do with the sprinklers coming on. Also, it might have been too cold in my room since I left the bathroom window open.

Anyway, I tried to get comfortable and get back to sleep, but had too many thoughts in my head. I tried counting sheep and even this weird sleep-aid exercise that Andrew's dad taught me in high school.  At about 5:30 I got out of bed and cleaned my room, since I thought having a more orderly space might help my thoughts be more orderly too. I changed my sheets, sorted my laundry, read some Origen and watched an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Hulu. 

I went back to bed at 7 and fell asleep for a couple of hours. 

In other news, I've been in touch with the Jesuit office for vocations, just to see. A little less then a day after I sent them an e-mail, the diocesan director of vocations approached me about going to a retreat for young men considering the priesthood. Creepy, but I don't think the Jesuits would have told Fr. Len so quickly. (Nor would they have wanted the diocese competing for me!)

Maybe that's why I couldn't sleep. That's a big decision.

Theology on Tap tonight. I'll be drinking $3 margaritas and meeting new people. Exciting.

This morning I woke up at 6:30 for a couple of reasons.

I spent all last night dreaming about giant Florida spiders. The two biggest were just exoskeletons. 

Anyway, I think part of the reason I woke up was because I wanted to stop having nightmares. Another part was that I wanted to pee. And the third was that it was too cold in my room because I'd somehow managed to push all but one of my blankets down into the crack between the wall and my bed. I've developed a habit of that.

So, I was up at 6:30 in the morning. (Which, for most working people, is normal. For me, though, it's not.) And I started to get those 6:30 in the morning kind of thought processes - the ones that are half dream/half awake and feel logical at the time but, in retrospect, are either nonsensical or just bizarre.

Well, those kind of thought processes lead me to the kind of creative thinking that most people are have naturally, but that I lack. I make connections where none seemed ot exist before, everything is utterly important yet fleeting, and it's just generally a fun time for thinking.

 Perhaps I shouldn't start the day with two of cups of coffee.

Today has been a lesson in getting over myself.

And being pissed. Yes, plenty of being pissed. I've been confronted with lots of situations where I have to look at things and behaviors that I think are wrong and restrain myself from yelling about it. I tend to take things personally, too. The list includes a parent who chewed me out because her daughter doesn't bring notes from class home, hearing about the run-around Amherst College is giving the Newman Club again regarding graduation Mass, a Catholic-made card game that glorifies the likes of Francisco Franco and Hernan Cortes, ordination of women (or the lack thereof), and more.

Anyway, I don't really know why I'm so sensitive today. I imagine that extra cup of coffee I had this morning because I made too much by accident might have something to do with it. Whatever it is, I'm letting it wash over me, because being angry is a little fun for a while.

The Tampa International Airport is rated #1 in the country for good reason. There are never lines, it's easy to navigate, and there's free wifi. I suppose if I get bumped and have to spend extra time in an airport, it might as well be this one, right?

Pretty excited to see Andrew and Patrick and hopefully Shane tonight in Berkeley. Then I will see my mom tomorrow when she comes to pick up my brother from the airport. But, I'll head back up north with Patrick... maybe Sunday?

Anyway, my morning was a little stressful, because my car cost a lot of money to get from the shop and I'm confronting the need to sell it/buy another. But, one thing at a time and the next thing is friends, family and the birth of Our Lord.

But, seriously, they'd better not bump me. The storms are in the Northeast not down here or in CA.

 Seriously, my car is sucking the life force out of me. And my wallet. It's hard to even begin to describe all the problems it's given me since I got to Florida, but let's just say that as I was driving home with windows that won't roll up and steam billowing from the panel vents and outside, I decided to get rid of that shit. I will looking for a new car starting immediately. Perhaps I will even get one in California and drive it out here.

Also, I looked up the bus schedule and it's insane how long it would take me to get to work by bus- at least 2 hours. It takes 20-30 minutes if I drive myself. I would much rather take public transportation than rely on driving myself everywhere, but that's just a little too much time... that would be 4 hours a day commuting.

Gah.

So last Thursday Audrey and I broke up. I am pretty bummed about this development, since I totally dig her. However, I don't think we had much of a choice; we were having quite a lot of trouble being emotionally connected to one another while apart. I guess there are a number of reasons for that, the primary one being my detiorating emotional health. I'm trying my best not to be hurt and bitter and I'd say I'm making a valiant effort at it.

Other than that, I'm starting to take ownership of a few programs at work. I'm glad they started me off with something relatively small that I could make my own right away- teaching 6, 7 and 8 grade theology once a week. That's a lot of fun and I think I get along well with the students. However, as I should expect, the full time teacher drops my lessons for just about anything: half day? Lesson cancelled. Pop quiz? Lesson cancelled. Fire drill? Lesson cancelled. I like working with her a lot, as she's very good with the students and a very experienced teacher. I just wish that I could have more regular time with the students so that I could really get to know them and what they need from me.

Also, I'm beginning to plan Adult Confirmation classes for next semester. This program will be my baby for a number of reasons. I'll be working with adults who are seeking the Sacrament for no other reason than to have it. They will all be somewhat formed in their faith already, which means I will get to talk about deeper, more intellectual elements. Confirmation is perhaps my favorite Sacrament next to the Eucharist (if I'm allowed to have a favorite). Finally, Fr. Gregg, the Cathedral's Rector, has basically given me license to develop whatever kind of curriculum I want. This means that I envision things like trips to the Catholic Charities tent city and perhaps even to the Catholic Worker community in Gainesvile. Now that's theology.

Also, Janet, my mentor and the Youth Minister, has turned over to me the group of high schoolers who assist with middle school youth group. They're a great group of faith-filled teens who really want to grow and help. I can see a lot of ways to help them, beginning with building a strong community of support with each other and building a stronger devotion to Scripture. Plus, they're fun and one of them can get us into Disneyworld for free. XD

I'm biking every day and trying to eat lots of fiber. I've harvested almost all my radishes and now have a lot of delicious, spicy pickled radishes. The spinach is doing well and will be ready to pick sometime in early January. I need to figure out what the hell is wrong with the beets.

It is sunny and 78 degrees here until I leave on Friday afternoon to see Andrew and Shane and hopefully Patrick in Berkeley and then make my way up to Eureka for Christmas. 

Now that I'm single again, expect more from me.

 Breakups suck.