Rain

               `I love rain. People say that love is a strong word and is unsuited to objects like rain, but I REALLY LOVE rain. As a kid I remember gathering outside with the neighbors and doing rain dances on the verge of an approaching storm. I still go outside when it rains –perhaps this is a sign that I don’t have sense enough to come out of the rain-. There is something soul satisfying about the rumbling thunder which words are not apt to describe. I figured since I was off of work due to rain, and it had been kind enough to remain roaring throughout the night, the day would be well spent writing out my appreciation to the floodgates of the heavens.

               I live in a place where rain is rare. We measure rain in 100ths of an inch. –I’m not kidding-. The annual precipitation average is around 20 inches. As rare as the rain is, being rare does not automatically make a thing valuable.

A drought  map from this year. Yeah, I live in that dark red  circle out west

Unfortunately, rain is a requirement for life. Farming is a prominent business around here, and the weather must cooperate in order for success. Rain means that the economy will pick up. It means that friends will be able to pay their mortgage. That sense of relief and joy is infectious, and even if you do not benefit directly, that joy wiggles its way into your soul. A smile is, after all, contagious.

               One can outline a whole host of spiritual analogies using water. Water is cleansing, water is a necessity, and Christ even described himself as ‘living water’. Instead of talking about any one of these, I would just like to note how much we take things for granted.

               We take water for granted… even out here. One thing that struck me odd while I was at school in Missouri was how depressed people got when it rained. The mood was exactly opposite of what I was used to. A few desert dwellers also would go for walks in the rain, but hardly anyone realized just what a gift it was. Not only were people not appreciative of this gift, but they despised it. We do this not only with rain, but many other blessings in life. Just think: the very things that irritate you may be the greatest blessings you have!

               I haven’t decided yet if that is a wonderfully joyous thought or an incredibly depressing one. Either way, it is a cool thought. 

A Bad Article on What is Best

               I think it was one of Donald Miller’s friends who said “I am drowning in a sea of good”. At first I thought this was a very stupid thing to say. People strive to surround themselves with good things. It stands to reason that if you are in a sea of good, you can’t really get much better.

               I failed to realize that good is less than better which is in turn less than the best. I think that Orthodox Christianity believes that people were made for the best and not just the good. I really really really like that idea, and, frankly, I think the rest of the world should adopt it. In the book of Genesis, after God creates each thing, he sees that it is good. I am incredibly excited to live in a world full of good.

               As a thought experiment, attempt to equate ‘doing what is best’ with ‘doing what is moral’. Within our own society there are widely different beliefs for what is moral. I think this rift is due to the acknowledgment of what is good without thinking about what is best.

               For example, It is good for an orphan to have a family. It is good for two people to devote themselves to each other for life. A stable loving home is a good thing. Everybody acknowledges these goods. So why is it that when it comes to gay marriage, Catholics remains stubbornly unaccepting? I think you can understand this seeming jump in logic by understanding that Catholics don’t believe that homosexual relations are the best.

               Another excellent example is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is pro-sex. Sex is good. My God invented it –yeah he is THAT cool-. Yet, Catholicism insists that sex is only good between a man and a woman, within the bounds of a certain institution, with an openness to conceive….. blah... blah… blah… All of these ‘requirements’ are due to the belief that sex gets better with each requirement, and it is this belief that needs to be debated.

               Sex, money, McDonalds… These are all good things, and it is easy to see how each of these can lead to a depraved life. In the book of Genesis, after God creates each thing, he sees that it is good, and I for one, am incredibly excited to live in a world full of good.

               For clarity’s sake, I am not trying to give reasons why certain actions are immoral. Nor am I saying that Christianity’s idealism leads to the best outcome in real-life. My real point, -which I didn’t make very well- is that arguments about morality are not all that dangerous to the faith. People try to choose what is good, but fail to choose what is best. It seems at some point, the church started wishing bad upon these people with ‘lesser moral standards’. People all around us –myself included- are drowning in a sea of good and are desperately in need of the best. It is not the Churches job to beat them with the scepter of morality, but to live the best, and in so doing, show them that there is something better. 

Crisis of Faith

               I am irritated when people are not direct. When a person beats around the bush, when they give all the details without describing the actual reality, I get quite disappointed.  I feel that this happens in religion far too often.  I may be very wrong, but I get the impression that a great deal of preaching is simply missing the point.

               The minute I point an accusing finger, I have to reflect that critique back on myself. In my blog especially, I tend to share random odds and ends without nailing down the crux of my spirituality. I follow this bad tendency because being honest is hard, and I’m not very good at difficult things. Because if there is one thing that characterizes my spirituality it would be my time in the seminary, and if there is one thing that characterizes my time at the seminary it would be depression.

               Going into the seminary, my psychological evaluation revealed that I was prone to a chronic low-grade depression called dysthymia. This was in no way a surprise to me. I tend to stray away from a sun-shiny optimism and focus on the hard facts of reality. –I think you are pessimistic if you call that pessimism-.  The Church had become a refuge for me and I felt drawn into the very heart of it.

               Ironically, I did not find God in the seminary. I found philosophy. I found a lot of talk about ‘all the things’, but apart from talk, I experienced none of ‘those things’.  I found myself irritated by my faith because it stopped being something real and present and began to be a concept floating out in the vast abyss of academia.

               My first year at school was characterized by solid attendance and strict adherence to the rules. I tried to be the best seminarian I could be. During my second year, I came down with a bad case of mononucleosis and ended up dropping a semester’s worth of classes. During my third year, I plain stopped caring. I realized that the sky did not fall down if I stayed in bed instead of going to prayer. I had never much cared for the Liturgy of the Hours anyway.

               I think the depression really kicked in when I realized that the main source of comfort in my life had become a burden to me. I found myself ‘keeping up’ with my faith only because I had to. I still frequented the sacraments, but not as frequently. I still attended, but not as regularly. I still laughed, but not nearly as hard.  I had faith that some realization would break through the clouds, and in a little while things would be better. But nothing happened.

               I made the decision that if nothing changed, I would not go on after I had finished my undergraduate degree. I had about 25 credit hours to complete, and I would have a summer break in-between them. I have learned to do things despite how I feel about them. Getting through school was no different. I did not make the decision to leave because I had learned that the seminary was not the priesthood. You can hate one and love the other. Maybe my ministry would have been magnificent.

               Somewhere along the hierarchy, the decision was made that I should not return for the 2012 spring semester. I was informed of this decision the day I was driving back to school. At first I was shocked. Before I had left, there had not been a mention of such a decision. After the initial surprise, I was a little irked at the short notice, but any anger was washed out by a torrent of relief.  It was a relief not to have to drive another 7 hours, to not have to fix schedules, order books, clean rooms, pray, study and so on and so forth.

               It was a good decision for me not to go back. The seminary did not hurt my faith in God or the Church, but it wounded me emotionally. By doing so, it wounded me spiritually. In Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz –which I would recommend to anyone- he opens his chapter on ‘belief’ with a paragraph that has stuck with me for a long time:

        “MY MOST RECENT FAITH STRUGGLE IS NOT ONE of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore… I don’t believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway? If I walk away from Him, and please pray that I never do, I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything.”

               And that about sums it up.



               For now…