Grinch

               I have recently been concerned about what I should post in my blog. Being a seminarian, one may expect that I would have something about Christmas. For good reason, I feel obliged to blog about Christmas.

               Yet, the more and more I think about it, the more I realize that I have very little to say about Christmas. It is a big deal of course. When you honestly sit down and think about God taking on human form, it can give you chills. But, when I think of Christmas, I tend to imagine the smell of fresh gingerbread, lights, and presents, and in some sense, that is Christmas.

               The celebration of Christ’s birth, for me at least, has been divorced from the idea of ‘Christmas’. I think that the distinction between these two ideas is prevalent in our culture as well. Think of a Christmas movie. Most movies have the main character getting mixed up about what’s important in life. In the end, they come to a realization of what the spirit of Christmas is all about: Christmas is about loving other people. It is about family, and friends, and good cheer.

               Christmas is not about family, friends, or good cheer. Christmas is about Christ. That is it. Everything else is ‘Christmasy’ only in so far as it stems from and points back to Christ.

               It takes a conscious effort in order to remember that all of this is because of our loving Father sending his Son to us. I don’t really have much to say about Christmas because this fact is so hard for me to stamp into my heart. At the end of Dr. Seuss’s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch realizes that Christmas “doesn’t come from a store… maybe Christmas means a little bit more”.  Notice that no mention of Christ is made. The Grinch doesn’t get baptized. Perhaps this is because the Who’s could not find any water that wasn’t frozen into their snowflake.

               The reader is left with the idea that Christmas means something else

                without the explanation of what exactly that might be.

               And through all the Who’s and hububaloo, I realize that reader is me.

Committed to the Process

                              When people find out that I’m a seminarian, they are naturally curious. “Why did I choose this kind of life?” “Do I not want to have a family?’ The most common question I am asked is “what if you wake up 10 years from now and not want to do this anymore?”

               This question amuses me. The vocation of the priesthood is little different from any other vocation in this respect. People wake up all the time in marriages that they don’t want to be in. People go to jobs that they would rather not do. In marriages, one can get a divorce. In a job, one can quit, but the priesthood is not something that you can just abandon.

               Catholics don’t believe that one can simply abandon a marriage or any other God-given vocation. A marriage is a solemn vow, to man and God. In wedding vows, one doesn’t promise that “I will be happy with you until death do us part”. On the contrary, one promises to be with another person no matter what happens. Even if that person is sterile, even if that person gets cancer and dies a painful, expensive, and slow death, even if that person is total trash, one promises to be with them.  A marriage is special because even though a person may wake up and not want to do it, they do because of their promise.  If love were easy, it wouldn’t mean much.

               The priesthood is the same.

               The seminary is the same.

               I think you could say a meaningful life is the same: you must be committed to the process.

               When I entered the seminary, I gave my word to the archbishop that I would remain in the seminary for at least a year. I am now going on year 3. I know that tomorrow, I am going to wake up tomorrow and there will be things I don’t want to do. But I will do them anyway because of a commitment I have to formation, and while I may not enjoy it at the time, I think that someday I will reflect and know that it was all worth it.

Tidbits on Judgment

               This Thursday, I completed my final examinations. It is both relieving and not relieving to be finished with the semester. Our finals were not comprehensive, and were no more difficult than regular tests. The only real difficulty comes from the fact that they are all scheduled within a few days of each other. -Of course, this isn’t too much of a problem if you don’t really study for tests, but that is neither here nor there.-

               Regardless of their relative ease, finals are incredibly stressful. The real vexation does not come from studying, but comes from being judged. Everyone fears judgment. We all have jobs to do. We all have bosses, parents, or teachers who evaluate us. We like to think that these people only evaluate our work and not evaluate us as people, but that is hard to believe.  It seems that we either have an unhealthy pride in our work or a fear of inadequacy. Middle ground is difficult to find.

               Seminarians are judged quite a bit. The seniors just finished their final evaluations. From this evaluation and other observations, the administration decides whether or not a student should be recommended to continue seminarian formation. It often feels like a chaplain with a clipboard looks over your shoulder at all times to make sure that you are doing everything right. Judgment is nerve-racking.

               God is a judge.  People fear God’s judgment, and why would we serve such a God?  It is difficult to realize that God only judges for the sake of the good of the person. A mother does not allow her children to do whatever they please. She restricts their actions because of her love for them. When children do something wrong, they are judged and punished. This does not mean that the mother loves her children any less.
               God is great. Christ provides us a way to live free of fear and focus on God’s love for us. 

Smashing Shingles

               I remember a game I used to play as a child. On the west side of our house there was a large stack of thin wooden shingles. I would pick up these shingles and break them in my hands. If this did not work, I would muster up some strength and break them over my knee. If they were so big that this would not work, I would prop them up against something solid and jump on them with all my might. It was a kind of test of strength for me. It had no purpose. It was mindless, but somehow fun.

               Much of the time, I feel like this is what the cosmos does to us. The great forces of the universe seem to pick us up, and smash our hearts. Some of us are stronger than others, but all of us will break. Sometimes the gods don’t think it is enough, and they break us again… and again.

               Recent events make me wonder if such hearbreak ever stops. We are always on the lookout for our fair maiden, or our knight in shining armor, but maybe we are just fooling ourselves. I have broken hearts before. I have had mine broken. We are a world full of users and cheaters. I wonder if I could ever make a good priest. I wonder if I could ever make a good husband and father. Most of the time, I seriously doubt it. I see too much of that shingle-smashing child in me.

               Hurt people hurt people. I try to find that grace where it stops. I try to be that change that I hope to see in the world. I know that I will never be that knight in shining armor. I relinquish the idea that it is my responsibility to glue hearts back together –my own included-. The world is a shattered pile of woodscraps.

               But Jesus is a carpenter, and he specializes in making beautiful things out of scraps.

The Trinity and BECs

               The trinity is a wonderful and terrible thing to attempt to understand. Simply put, it is an illogical  doctrine that –pretty much- all Christians believe. It is a troubling thing to think about: How can something be both one and three?

               People come up with all kinds of ways to describe the trinity. The trinity is like water in its three phases, or like the ocean, 3 in 1 shampoo, or even like a chicken egg. Personally, I don’t like reducing my concept of God down to an egg, even if doing so would clarify whether the chicken or the egg came first.

                When it comes to my God, I don’t like to make many comparisons, but if I had to, I would say that God is like a Bose-Einstein Condensate. Firstly, I think this applicable because I hardly know what that even means. 

^I'm not sure what this means, but I think it is applicable^

               Here is my understanding. If any of you know more about the physics, or the trinity, feel free to correct me. Basically, when you supercool a gas- and by supercool, I mean really really really cold-, some very strange things happen. Quantum mechanics become visible on a large scale. By a large scale, we are talking like 1000 atoms, but still. Most of us have heard that light is both a particle and a wave. What happens in a Bose-Einstein Condensate is similar. The mass takes on wavelike properties. No particles exist on their own, but only exist together, and with completely different properties. In effect, the many become one, and the one is the many.

               Matter is seen acting in new ways, but it is apparantly natural for it to do so. We once thought that reality could be cut up into particles, but now things are more complex. Matter can be thought of as energy, and wave. If modern physics can ever reach the point of fully explain how and why this is, Christians will take that explanation and stamp it onto the conception of God. We can’t even talk about physical realities with certainty. What makes one think that we can think about God with calculating even greater certainty?

               Personally, I like living in kind of wonderful, fantastic, and nigh incomprehensible world. It kinda makes things fun.

Why You Should Hold Open Doors

               I must reveal to the reader that I am a very utilitarian minded individual. I cannot claim to be very selfless, but I do attempt to mind others. I am the kind of person who times how long it takes a crowd to exit a room and realizes that the process goes faster if someone holds the door open. I often hold open doors for just such reasons. After all, if there are 100 people in the room, and my holding the door allows everyone to get where they were going an average of 5 seconds faster, I have saved 8.3 minutes of time. 8.3 minutes of time may not seem like much, but if that room was full of medical researchers, I may have advanced the cure of cancer by 8 minutes and by doing so, saved countless lives!

               As it stands now, I do not hold open doors for medical researchers, but instead hold them open for seminarians and monks. Realize that these are seminarians and monks who pray for your eternal soul. I don’t make any claims about the state of your soul, but I figure you need all the help you can get. By my logic, if I hold open the door, I figure that is 8.3 minutes less prayer I have to do! I try not to think about the fact that I can be replaced by a $2 door wedge. 

               I think this service needs to be reciprocated. So, the next time you can, hold a door open for the people behind you, and as you do, say a little prayer for me.

The Difficulty of Philosophy

               Studying philosophy is hard. Philosophy is not difficult because I do not understand what people are saying, or that it is a challenge to stay conscious while reading it, or that much of it is anti-religion. Philosophy is difficult because it challenges you personally Everyone has a philosophy. Whether this philosophy is explicitly known is irrelevant. People have beliefs. People justify those beliefs with rational thought.

               Every philosopher worth studying says something that cannot be ignored. Philosophers are revolutionary because they challenge ordinary belief. In studying these philosophers, one’s own beliefs are challenged. Studying philosophy is difficult because it challenges your worldview. Some people here can simply ignore the objections that philosophers raise. Personally, I cannot simply ignore the logical contradictions in my beliefs. I do not hold myself to a high standard when justifying these beliefs, but these things do bother me.

               Every philosophy teacher worth their salt will destroy your philosophy and make you rebuild it. Not having a system of beliefs is a terrible thing to have to cope with. There is a notorious professor here that has been accused of destroying multiple people’s faith by teaching philosophy. Yeah, it’s that big of a deal.

               Recently, I was driving home, and had a 3 hour conversation about the definition of holiness with one of my seminarian brothers. Every definition we came up with failed to work in some way or other. This may not seem like much of a problem, but when your objective in life is to become holy, there is a need to define the word. I was surprised at how easily my friend was willing to settle on a definition that didn’t fully work. In a way, I was envious because this problem distressed me quite a bit.

               It makes me glad that I won’t be studying philosophy much longer, but I wonder if these problems ever really go away.

Snooze Button Blues

               I like to sleep. I like to sleep almost as much as I like to eat. There is an inverse relationship between the enjoyment derived from sleep and the amount of effort it takes to get out of bed.

               Every night I think that I will get up at the first ring of my alarm clock, and every morning I find this to be false. Immediately afterwards, I promise myself that tonight I will go to bed earlier, only to later learn that this also is false.

               I have never been one to hit the snooze on the alarm over and over. I would rather set the alarm to go off 15 minutes later and so get 15 minutes of uninterrupted sleep. I may know that my 15 minutes of uninterrupted sleep was more restful than the interrupted patches of 5 minute limbo dreaming, but hitting the snooze makes me feel like I’m getting away with something.

               Maybe there are psychological effects of hitting the snooze button. Maybe it makes me feel like I can put off my responsibilities a little bit longer. It makes me feel more self-confident to the level that I believe that I can actually deal with the day. Subconsciously I have proven that I am successful at shirking my duties. Now all that is left is to prove that I can also fulfill them, and that is why I get out of bed in the morning.

               I end up getting up –except in the cases I don’t (which happens more often than I would like to admit),- and immediately regret the decision.

               I am always tired during class. Then midnight rolls around and I am wide awake. It makes me wonder what would happen if they had class at midnight. The real problem of course is that I don’t go to bed early enough. This is because it takes me all day to realize that I should stop procrastinating and actually do something. Unfortunately, by the time I realize this, it is time to retire for the evening.

Snowflakes

               “You are not unique and beautiful snowflakes”. This statement from the movie Fight Club is to a great extant true. Everyone is unique. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is special. But when everyone is special, is anyone special?

               One of the monks here was pulled aside by a tourist and asked “In all reality brother, what difference do you make?” The monk did not give an answer. Instead he replied with the same question: “What difference do YOU make?” Although this at first struck me as a very rude dialogue, I think it is also quite profound.

               Growing up, I expected to change the world. I neither expected nor desired power, fame, or influence per se, but I did expect to make a great difference. I then began to realize that one can work as a homemaker, an accountant, or an ordained religious for 30 years and have very little to show for it. True, you may have raised law abiding citizens, earned your firm some money, or ministered to those in need, but at any time along the way, you could have been replaced by some other snowflake. You could die tomorrow and business would continue as usual.

               The importance of our lives does not come from what we do, but how we do it. Mother Teresa of Calcutta reminds us that “we can do no great things; only small things with great love”. Our uniqueness and beauty comes from the ordinary, mundane, everyday actions that are done out of love. The occupations of homemaker, accountant, or monk, are merely the backdrop of our lives.  The real beauty in our lives is derived from the loving relationships we that no one will remember in 100 years.

                So today, take a little extra time and effort and spend a few moments for the sake of someone else.