Luigi Giussani: Friend of Popes, Friend of Humanity

February 22 is a feast day in the Roman calendar. It is the feast of the "chair" of St. Peter, the sede in Latin, which we usually render as "the see" in our awkward ecclesiastical English. It celebrates this singular office in the Church which is the bishopric of Rome with all the universal significance it contains.

It is a day to celebrate devotion to (i.e. love for) the office of the papacy, and confidence in how the Holy Spirit works through the flawed men who hold this office.

I would also argue vigorously (and I don't think I'd be alone in this) that the men who have held the office during my lifetime (whatever their flaws) have been exceptional. February 22 is a time to remember and be grateful for these exceptional men.

In the year 2005, however, February 22 gained a new significance for me personally, and quite possibly in the future for the whole Church (if she so judges it). This new event, however, has a profound and fitting relationship to the present significance of the day.

Msgr. Luigi Giussani died on February 22, 2005, several weeks before his friend Pope John Paul II. It is well known that he lived a profound and exemplary affection for the popes of his time. He was also a witness who touched the hearts and the understanding of these men, contributing to a distinctive point of focus in the New Evangelization.

Giussani lived and expressed every day the fact that the presence of Christ is the definitive meaning of the whole of human existence, that the human heart's desire for truth, goodness, and beauty finds in the face of Christ the superabundant answer of Infinite Love, in a manner beyond all expectations. Jesus is the gift of God's love that, even as it transforms us by raising us up to a participation in the life of the Trinity, can also be recognized to correspond to the deepest needs of our humanity.

Thus, for Giussani, what is decisive for Christianity is the encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ, who is present now in his Church.

Christ is present in a way that provokes and challenges the human heart in every time and circumstance, and thus in our times, in our world, in all the environments in which humans search for meaning and fulfillment. He is present through the whole mystery of the Church, from her teaching and her sacraments to the concrete gestures of caritas -- the love, understanding, compassion, and companionship -- that build up the relationships between human persons who have been touched by Jesus and who live his joy as a gratuitous proposal of friendship and solidarity with every person.

Luigi Giussani has been a witness for many people in Italy, Europe, and throughout the world. There is much that needs to be said about this, but February 22 calls to mind the way in which his witness has touched in an intimate way the men who have been called to sit in the chair of St. Peter.

Luigi Giussani with Pope Paul VI

Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis are among those who knew him. Paul VI knew him first, when he was Archbishop of Milan in the 1950s and Giussani was guiding the high school students participating in the episcopally sponsored Azione Cattolica. He encouraged him then, while admitting that he did not understand his methods. Later, in his final years as Pope, he met with Giussani again, and this time he spoke without qualification, saying to him, "This is the path. Go forward on it."

John Paul II recognized immediately the congeniality of the movement that took inspiration from Giussani, that had come to be known as "Communion and Liberation." In a meeting in 1982, he charged them specifically to "go into all the world to bring the truth, beauty, and peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer... Take onto yourselves this need of the Church: this is the task that I leave with you today."

As CL expanded into a worldwide ecclesial movement, the priest who had begun as a teacher in a high school classroom, who said that he had never intended to "found" anything, relied much on the guidance and wisdom of one of the most important members of John Paul II's curia: a man named Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The great heart of this much misunderstood and under appreciated man grew deeply from this relationship. Ratzinger said at one point that Luigi Giussani had "changed my life."

Cardinal Ratzinger presides at his friend's funeral

When Giussani died in 2005 after a long illness, Cardinal Ratzinger -- who seldom preached in public -- personally requested to represent the ailing John Paul II and celebrate the funeral Mass in Milan, where he would preach before thousands in attendance and all of Italy through natioinal television coverage. People (and churchmen too) heard for the first time the clear, simple, and tender eloquence of the Cardinal whom they had seen primarily as the Pope's "enforcer." The memorable "funeral oration" of February 24, 2005 was the voice of Cardinal Ratzinger speaking of the witness of faith given to him by his friend.

In less than two months, he was elected Pope Benedict XVI.

For his personal household staff, Benedict chose consecrated women from the CL association Memores Domini. Each week the household held the common reading and meditation, the "School of Community," that challenges those who attend to make a comparison between the proposal of Jesus Christ and their own experience of life. These meetings are held all over the world today, and everyone is welcome regardless of their beliefs or lack of beliefs; they are welcome to come as much as their freedom prompts them. Of course, the School of Community in the Papal household was private, but there was one very conspicuous and faithful participant: Pope Benedict himself.

Benedict's staff has accompanied him in his retirement at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery (they are the "four consecrated women" who are sometimes mentioned as his attendants). Undoubtedly, they continue their small School of Community, and the Pope Emeritus continues to be helped by it to seek the presence of Christ in the unique circumstances of these moments in his life.

Bergoglio presents Giussani's book in Argentina

Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was reading the works of Giussani, and gave public introductions to the first Spanish editions on two occasions. He said that he had made a point of reading Fr. Giussani's writings because they helped him "to become a better man and a better priest." Cardinal Bergoglio also became good friends with the priest who helped guide the CL group in Buenos Aires, Fr. Giacomo Tantardini (who was very personally close to Fr. Giussani).

Pope Francis has an affection for many of the new ecclesial movements (as did Benedict and John Paul II). He speaks the language of the new evangelization: the need for personal witness, for bringing the faith into the places where real human life is lived, for building a "Culture of Encounter." If we think the word "encounter" is vague and mushy, Giussani can help us to see its authentic and profound ecclesial and human significance.

But there is nothing particularly "Giussanian" about any of Luigi Giussani's teaching, other than the charism of his particular focus, as well as the impassioned and sometimes difficult style of his words. Giussani only wanted to articulate the reality of Jesus in the Church as he had experienced it in its Catholic fullness. Giussani's challenge to popes and to everyone was to live the intensity of belonging to Christ in every circumstance, to allow Christ's grace to convince us and change us, and to find the joy of Christ in wherever we are and in whatever we do. And let us not be afraid to let others see this joy and be drawn by it.

The Servant of God Msgr. Luigi Giussani was the friend of popes and of humanity. He was, as John Paul II called him, a "teacher of humanity." He was a prophet and a pioneer in the New Evangelization.

Relationships Take Me Beyond Myself

If I try to consider my life in a truly objective way, something is very clear: I am not alone. Insofar as I am an actual human person, I am not an isolated atom who generates the meaning of my own identity. We are habituated to consider ourselves as autonomous, independent individuals who can be entirely self-fulfilled by whatever we choose to be and to do.

It's a very heady philosophy, but it just doesn't correspond to reality. It's certainly not my own experience. I am not the source of myself. I didn't even give myself my own name!

As soon as I look honestly at my real self, I find that I cannot separate that personal self from relationships, concrete relationships with real other persons; relationships that take me beyond myself.

I have never been an isolated, autonomous entity, not for a single moment. The most obvious facts of my life reveal that I have always been a person-in-relationship. I came into existence as the son of my parents, and the dawn of my awareness is full of the memory of being a son, a brother, a grandson, and a nephew. I soon began to discover that I was also a "friend," and as the years have gone by I have discovered the value of this relationship on all of its many different levels.

The original experience of belonging-to-a-family, far from being a prison or a suffocation of my freedom, has been the foundation from which I have grown in the capacity to love others and commit myself to further relationships. In this growth of love, I have not "lost" my original relationships. On the contrary, the depth of these relationships grows even as the circumstances change. It's not a smooth or perfect growth -- there are failures and misunderstandings and setbacks and forgiveness -- but it's real growth.

This is what happened when I became an adult; above all when I became a

husband. Here I have really learned that I am nothing by myself, that I must share myself, share my life, live in communion with a someone else.

I have learned this not by any theory, but by hard human experience, not only by the joys of giving and sharing many blessings, but also through dark and difficult times, through the recognition that the ugliness I found inside myself was a cause of real suffering to another human being, and that we had to give and receive and share our lives together even in these ugly, painful places.

At the heart of love and of all relationships is this mysterious thing called "sacrifice." You really know that you belong to someone when you just give without expecting anything back, you just give because there is this other person who is with you and who needs you in order to keep herself together and move forward.

You know you really belong to someone when you are humbled, when another suffers and makes sacrifices for you, and carries burdens with you because you are together with her in life. You know you really belong to someone when she makes space in her life for your faults, when she treats you with patience and compassion. It can be a grubby business, like digging a trail through the woods, but some new sense arises in the midst of this struggle. You are going somewhere together, and you need each other to get there. Even more so, there is a truth that begins to emerge: you both want to get there together. You sacrifice because you really love the other person, you want her to arrive at her destiny, and it is the same destiny as your own.

And, of course, there are others on the path too.

Bad for my back, even two years ago

At a certain point in my life, "I" suddenly acquired the identity of "Daddy." I tell all the amusing stories, because that is my nature and also because -- by the blessing of God -- we are (usually) a cheerful, funny, openhearted bunch, who have been blessed with much joy together (and also more than a little nuttiness and chaos). Thank God, we are a loving family, even if we do get on one another's nerves every single day.

But these kids have also heard their father's cries of pain and have seen his incapacity and his withdrawal. They have also seen that he loves them, that he struggles to be present to them, and to guide them according to the wisdom and love of God. They know that he prays for a strength that he does not possess by his own power. They also know that he and their Mommy love each other.

These are relationships that are already taking new forms, and will change throughout life. I live each day and try to respond, knowing that the future will bring sacrifices and suffering and also a greater foretaste of true joy.

God, of course, makes everything possible. It is all the story of a fundamental relationship, the one that makes me exist: my relationship with God. I am, at every moment, called-into-being by the personal love of God. God's love is the reason why I exist at all, in the beginning and also at this very moment. The same God draws my freedom into relationship with him, to love him as my ultimate destiny.

I dwell with God in the silent and secret places of my own heart. But in the depths of that heart I find the others that I have been called by God to love. He has brought us together to love one another and serve one another, to lead us all together to himself and to let his mercy shine through us.

Cooking With Josefina and Friends

The "Josefina and Friends" Cooking Show

Recently, I walked into my living room and was surprised to discover that I had stepped onto the set of a live cooking show (just like the ones on TV). The expert cooks were dolls named... oh heck I don't remember; maybe she can tell me later and I'll fill in their names here: Jenny and Laura. The dolls were "assisted" by Josefina. (Got the names, haha!)

Lots of plastic vegetables and imaginary spices cooked and sizzled in pots and pans while the dolls gave very slow and considered explanations of each step. The audience was very impressed.

Jojo loves to watch cooking shows on television  This is a relatively new development for her, although she's been running her pretend restaurant for some years now. It's good because we all like to watch cooking shows. The best ones are very entertaining, and of course they about food, which is one of our favorite things, haha!

I am a person of Mediterranean heritage. That means that I not only enjoy eating food, but I also enjoy... food, period. Food is beautiful. Food is culture. It is the expression of peoples and their histories. Food is art! Good food looks beautiful. It sounds beautiful. A good chef (or even a good recipe) can get you to try new things in your own kitchen.

The cook and her book.

Watching a chef like Jacques Pepin beat egg whites while he describes the souffle... well, it's great fun as long as there is some hope that, someday, you might actually get to make it (or at least eat it) yourself.

Josefina certainly has this hope, and she has already begun to realize it in our (real) kitchen, thanks to her Kids Cooking cookbook. She made dinner for us last week, using the spaghetti sauce recipe. She has done a few lunches too, like tuna salad cones.

Lots of fun stuff that kids can do. Great, pre-digital illustrations.

I have great hopes for her future -- amateur at least, if not professional -- as a culinary artist. Yum yum!

Death Becomes Love

No mistake about it, here we have an entry from February 17... 1991. Young Janaro was pondering death in his entry for that day. This may be a bit hard to read, but let's give it a try:

Hmmm. This is a little hard to read. I probably need to rescan the original "paper" document.

"The fact that I am going to die has been overcome by a deeper fact: that I have already died." Still, I remain in the world because of mission, because I have been "sent" to others, to witness this truth to them.

I also note a few things here about a course I was taking on the Orthodox church, taught by an Orthodox priest. I had already begun to experience the division as a deeply personal pain.

The quotation at the end is from Von Balthasar's Engagement with God, p. 69.

Praying When We Don't Feel Like Praying

More snow. More RED marked "high" levels on the "aches and pains index." O Bother!

Still, I can't blame that for the odd malaise of today. Nor can I blame it on Monday. There are some days when time seems to just plod along, relentlessly going nowhere.

Everything seems to have lost its vividness and texture. It's all reduced to stuff: stuff to do, stuff to move, stuff to say to people, stuff to eat, stuff to read, stuff going on in the world.

I guess I am not surprised that people are materialists. What seems to be their experience -- the appearance of things -- is dull, monotonous, and seemingly beneath the level of their interest. Stuff.

But I have faith. I believe that God became man and dwells in the midst of all this stuff. But today I am not going to do a very good job of explaining why that is important. Today I feel a little stupified by stuff, and I find it very difficult to recognize Christ's presence in the midst of it all (or perhaps what I mean to say is that I lack the energy, and find it very difficult to summon the enthusiasm to write about such things with any insight).

Nevertheless I believe, and I summon myself to pray. Prayer. This is everything. Even when I don't feel like praying.

We have a choice: prayer or the void. Prayer or nothingness. Prayer turns to God and says, "You are here." Emotionally and intellectually the experience of prayer can seem dry and insignificant just like everything else we do. There is a serious temptation here, one that could lead me to think that prayer is just more stuff that I do during the day.

NO! Prayer is, first of all, something that God does in me. He whispers in my heart. If the desire to lift my mind and heart to God stirs within me -- however faint and weak and wretched that desire may seem -- it means that God is attracting my heart, he is drawing me to himself.

God calls us to pray everyday. He has given us the words. "Our Father...." To accept God's words and address them to God in obedience to God is already the beginning of the conviction that the "stuff" of the day is more than it appears to be.

"Hallowed be thy Name / thy Kingdom come / thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

There. I prayed it.

I lacked the warmth of ardor. I didn't pay attention to the words. I begin the words and my mind was immediately sucked back into the stuff that surrounds me and that appears so real, the stuff that is perishing all around me, the void....

Still, an event took place within my heart. Saying the words and just wanting to pray are the beginning of the affirmation of eternity. God will bring the rest: the attention, the conversation, the conviction, the transformation of the way I look at reality. He will do so in his time, according to his plan. But I must be faithful. I must pray. Pray, pray, pray. Even if that means just taking up the words in dryness and believing and hoping in God.

We do not need to fall into nothingness. Jesus. His very name is a prayer. "God saves." God, save me.

Winter is a Hard Time

Weather affects people in many ways.

A winter like this has given me a hard time, and I know it hasn't been easy for others either. We are creatures of soul and body, afflicted by sin and afflicted in so many ways by our complex environment and our mysterious physical constitution.

Ice and snow coat our external pathways even as they challenge our physical and mental health. But with all our pains and turns of mind, something endures that rejoices to see the light breaking forth against the shadows.

We never cease to hope for the warmth of the sun, and all these captive crystals opening up and rushing together as streams of water for our thirst.

BASEBALL: Take That, Mister Big Bad Winter!

In OTHER news, Spring Training has officially opened. Washington Nationals pitchers and catchers have reported to their camp in Viera, Florida, and are working out.

Once again baseballs have begun to thump in gloves, and for thousands of hearts Spring has started!

Snow schmoe! Exhibition games in two weeks.

Manners, Love, and Living Together

When Pope Francis spoke to a meeting of engaged couples, he repeated to them the same advice he had previously given to families: "there are three important words for family life: permesso, grazie, e scusi." I give them in Italian because they lose something in translation, but they correspond to the English "excuse me" (or "please" or "may I...?" -- all of these go with permesso), "thank you" (grazie), and "I'm sorry" (scusi).

In keeping with our "Italiano style" home, Eileen printed out these three words and put them up on the wall in the dining room.

The Pope really nailed it, I think.

Although we have had a few laughs thinking of a some other words that might be added in a home with kids living in it, words like basta! ("enough" or "stop it").

Italians respond to grazie with the beautiful idiomatic term prego which comes from the word for "prayer" (pregare). Prego (literally "I pray") is also used for phrases such as "may I help you?" and to indicate things like "please, have a seat."

It can also be an invitation to "enjoy" as one might say after serving food (and this is how it connects to the well known American brand of spaghetti sauce).

In any case, simple expressions of courtesy are basic if people are going to share life in a human way. I rather like what we say in English as a response to being thanked for something. We say, "you're welcome." There is something fundamentally affirming and open about this phrase. It says, "I'm happy to do this because you are 'welcome' in my life" at whatever level the relationship exists, even if it's just a moment in the checkout line.

We say "thank you" and "your welcome" as we gratefully give and receive one another's generosity.

The Big Snow

Annnddd... here is the big blizzard of February 12-13, 2014 as it was seen in progress on the morning of the 13th at Casa Janaro:

At this point it was still snowing in that quiet, slow, relentless manner of a real snowstorm. It just keeps falling minute by minute, hour by hour, all night and all day until things look like this:

This looks like quite a job of digging out lays ahead. Ouch!

Is There Such a Thing As "Attention Excess"?

When I read, I read. What fire?

I have a pathological attention span. When I read, I read. Food? Meh. Sleep? When my head hits the book, maybe. House on fire? Hmm, I thought it was getting warm in here. Coffee? Okay, I'll get some coffee. Bathroom? KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! "Daddy, hurry up!" Daddy's reading in there again. That's basically the routine.

Of course, the same thing can happen when I start writing (which is kinda cool in a way, except that it exhausts me, because writing is exhausting even when -- especially when -- I'm on a roll).

The Internet is different. It's an adventure in exploration in which I may find myself in a mental place that I had no intention of visiting. One time John Paul forgot to put a block of cheddar cheese back in the refrigerator. He and his mother proceeded to have an "animated discussion" about whether or not it was spoiled. I decided to settle the whole thing by googling it.

Over the next hour and a half I learned some fascinating things about cheeses (soft cheese spoils faster), how refrigeration works, different kinds of bacteria, the digestive system, yogurt, fruit, molds, diverse climates, and the Arabian desert.

Was the cheddar cheese spoiled? I don't remember.

The Slave Who Found True Freedom

St. Josephine Bakhita, February 8

I must shout out for this amazing woman whom we honor today. She was called "Bakhita" by the Arab slave traders. It means "lucky one." There was nothing that looked lucky about the horrible abuse and mutilation that she suffered as a slave in Sudan, but then she was brought to Italy, found Christ, and was baptized Giuseppina Fortunata ("lucky one" in Latin).

She became a religious sister and for 50 years worked at the convent and among the people simply but with profound charity. She not only forgave her oppressors, but said she would kiss their hands if she saw them, because they brought her to Jesus (ultimately, in God's plan).

St Josephine Bakhita, you have a lot to pray for. We need you. Pray for an end to violence, human trafficking, and child abuse. Pray for South Sudan, your homeland. Pray for us, that we might love our enemies out of the conviction that God loves us and orders everything to the good.

And just to let y'all know, you'll find her "Great Conversion Story" in Magnificat, September 2014, in the GCS series written by yours truly. (Don't miss these remarkable and inspiring stories that will be appearing every month in this wonderful magazine.) 

A Personal Relationship With Truth

I think Pope Benedict XVI expressed very well this point about teaching and education that I have been exploring in recent posts. Here are some words he preached two years ago. I would say further that his entire service as successor of St. Peter was a continual witness to what he said here:

The true educator does not bind people to himself, he is not possessive. He wants the child, or the disciple, to learn to know the truth and establish a personal relationship with it. The educator does his duty to the end, he does not withdraw his attentive and faithful presence; but his objective is that the learner hears the voice of the truth speak to his heart and follows it on a personal journey. 

~Benedict XVI, Homily for January 8, 2012

On Parenting and Encounter

It's particularly hard to be a parent in the secularist culture of the Western world today. But Eileen and I have been blessed to be surrounded by a group of friends who support one another in the task of giving their kids a complete education.

We see all the dangers and frustrations and dead ends in our society; some of us have been down these paths in the past. But we also see many possibilities for goodness and beauty and solidarity in our society -- many perennial human possibilities but also many new possibilities opened up by all that is genuine in this emerging new epoch.

The forces of corruption are pervasive, as is the tremendous damage that is being done to persons, relationships, communities, and the civil order. It's only human for us to want to be "protective" of our children.

So we protect them, certainly, by setting certain prudent "boundaries," but also by living so as to build an environment, together with our friends and their children, that allows them to grow and develop through the normal stages of childhood and youth. We thus engage life not with a reactionary ideology, but from inside the positive dynamic of human nature and redeeming grace: the life Jesus generates among us because he is present with us.

We live with Jesus, within the context of the family, supportive institutions, and the sacramental life of the Church. From this context we introduce our kids, in a pedagogical way, to the great potential, the challenges, and the struggles of adult life in this society.

Do I mean something more here than simply that "we want to raise good kids"?

Well, certainly we want to raise good kids.

With the right pedagogy, we hope to help our children cultivate a generous personality, an authentic understanding and empathy, and a sense of responsibility based on the truth -- a solid moral character.

These are all realistic and admirable goals.

But there is a problem that might arise. I might be inclined to take as a "given" the very purpose of everything else in life, to assume it in such a way that I forget about it or it loses focus. I want an intellectual and moral formation for my kids. But as the Pope said, "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ." (And this is not Pope Francis speaking. This is Benedict XVI, and he says this over and over.)

I want to help my children to be open to the love of Jesus. I want them to encounter Jesus, to be drawn by his love, and to follow him in the paths of their vocations.

It's especially easy among us Christians to focus on raising good, morally strong kids who have the right ideas. It's easy for us to talk about Jesus and the Church and faith, but forget that he is present with us, that he is drawing the hearts of each and every one of our children and shaping their destiny according to the mystery of his wisdom and love.

Our children belong to God. It's easy to forget that as parents our vocation is to have stewardship over them, and the environment in which they awaken to life and hear his voice.

Of course we want our kids to be moral, but why? It is because we want them to respond in love to the God who gives himself to us in Jesus. This is what life is all about. Our primary task as parents is to prepare our children to encounter Jesus and follow him.

And I have failed so often (in 17+ years of parenting) to be the instrument of God's love to my children, but I pray and I beg Jesus to shine through even my weakness, to touch the hearts of my children and draw them to him, to enable them to know that he loves them personally and calls them to share in his eternal life with the Father in the Spirit.

Our children have been created for this and given to us for this. How do we truly succeed in our task as parents?

I can only humble myself before the Lord and ask for his grace for my own life, for my wife and our marriage, and for our family. The infinite mercy of the heart of Jesus is my hope. May all our children encounter him in his mercy, and place their trust in him.

Welcome To My Workshop

Who knows what this thing is?

I have done a lot of writing in the past three years, and quite a bit of it has been here on this blog. Here I find the impetus to keep up with posts, to write something, even if it is just a few brief words.

Rarely is much of what comes out in these posts "polished," nor does it pretend to be. Rather, this is a place that stimulates my thinking. It is a place where I can hammer out ideas into words -- in fact, as I've said often, I tend to think things through by writing them out.

Blogging is an experimental literary form. If writing were painting, a blog would be a kind of sketchbook full of things ranging from scribblings to quick but colorful drawings. But it's different too, because everything is set forth for people to see (or read, in this case) if they wish. For your sake, I try to put a little paint and varnish on what is presented here. The result is something that, no matter how primitive it may be overall, is always in some respects a finished utterance.

I like to think that I'm welcoming people into my "writing workshop," where I can be a craftsman of words and offer something beneficial to others by bringing them into the work even while it is in progress.

And there has been lots of progress in these years, considering that without this place I would have done little writing beyond my direct publishing assignments. It has required energy, but has also generated it.

Thanks to the blog, I now have a "workshop" full of roughly drafted texts (close to 600 by jiminy -- and that's after subtracting posts that are just pope quotations or cute Josefina pictures). A lot of written material here focuses around a group of related themes. There is the genesis and the initial development of more than one future book in here, if I can find the further energy (and--let's face it--the courage) to organize and develop, to cut and clarify, to revise and synthesize.

In the Midst of the Storm

Today's gospel reading contains a familiar scene from the life of Jesus and his disciples. With a little metaphorical imagination, we can easily see that this is also a good description of our relationship with Jesus.

A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind,
and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”
They were filled with great awe and said to one another,
“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

Mark 4:35-41

It's not hard to see the point of this splendid account. This is my life. This is my way of reacting to crisis situations (and virtually every "situation" in life is, more or less, a crisis, or at least a challenge of some kind).

It's one thing to talk about Jesus (or write about him). I rather like it when the seas are calm, Jesus is with me, but I've basically got the boat under control. Jesus is "asleep," which -- I must admit -- seems convenient when I am captain of my ship. He's not going to suddenly pop up with his inscrutable demands about leaving everything and following him, or about how hard it's gonna be for me to get into the kingdom because I have lots of stuff and I kinda like having stuff.

Calm seas. Jesus "asleep." I'm at the helm on the open sea. I'll have to talk with him later, but right now it's break time. It's a little vacation from Christianity.

What am I thinking? What I really want is a break from being a human being. I'd be glad to sail in circles, going nowhere, as long as the passengers admired me and said things like, "What a fine captain you are!"

I'm the one who is asleep. I'm dreaming.

Then comes the storm.

And I go running to Jesus and I say, "Why are you letting this happen to me? Can't you do something?"

Jesus brings peace, and he also gently reveals the real problem. I would rather sail in circles in the sun because, really, I'm terrified of what's beyond the horizon. I'm afraid of the storms.

But he is gentle with my broken soul. He knows that the storms are sometimes so long and dark and fearsome, and that I often don't know where he is -- indeed, I am afraid that he has left the ship, I am afraid that he doesn't care....

Do I not yet have trust in him?

Come, Lord Jesus. Calm the storms of my fears. The winds and the seas of my soul belong to you, and I trust in you even when they rage and howl. I will not be discouraged.

Give me the grace to trust in you always.

January Cold and White

What can we say about the first month of 2014? Cold, cold, cold. Icy, clear, colorful, bright shining windy days. The powdery white snow of January remains on the ground. It will melt soon enough, and we will cease to think of these days that we endured with grim humor -- these days that have surprised us with their beauty.

May we never lose the wonder that springs up from these scenes, that lets us see that we are still children, and that everything is really fresh and new.

Adventures in New Media

My spot in the Twitterverse. Brave new worlds.

Well, we have celebrated the fact that the blog is now three years old.

This is also (more or less) the third anniversary of my overall big splash into the world of New Media.

Actually, "tiny ripple" is more like it. But it was big for me. I had spent my whole life in teaching and print media. I did a lot of hard work that people don't have to do anymore (that whole subject deserves a post of its own).

Media have changed very much in my time.

I learned how to sign my name at the age of four (that would be 1967, uh huh). Sometime over the course of the past few years, I have forgotten how to sign my name. Now that everything is digital, it seems like the only time I have to sign my name is on a birthday card (and, depending on who it's for, sometimes I have to remind myself that my first name isn't "Daddy").

My editing career started with working on the high school newspaper. By the way, dear millennial friends, have you ever wondered why "cut" and "paste" are called cut and paste? Scissors and glue, man. I've cut. I've pasted. And I'm proud of it. I've seen a "Press" actually press ink onto paper. It was beautiful. I'm not saying I want to go back to doing it that way. But considering how rinky-dink it all was, we did amazing things.

Anyway, we thought that "word processing" was the revolution. And it did bring fundamental changes to writing and publishing. But interactive media have really changed the scene. As it has turned out, I've been following the changes more attentively than might have been the case under other circumstances.

Getting sick changed my way of working. Was it the Lyme disease that triggered another long ride on the neurobiological roller coaster inside my brain? I don't know, but it was some ride.

Through all the ups and downs I read history voraciously (and a good amount of literature too) . I pretty much took a break from the theology/philosophy routine, but otherwise I read and read and read. And I managed to write a (non-academic) book of my own and get it published. I also piddled around on the Internet, but not much.

Three years ago, I had just begun to emerge from another bad episode of my "rheumatism"* thanks in part to some new medications.

[*Footnote: Lately I've taken to using the old fashioned term rheumatism to just cover the whole wammy of my illness and all its various symptoms (including "the brain fever," i.e. all the various kinds of "mental rheumatism" that flare up). "Rheumatism" is a (deliberately) vague term that sometimes (but not always) indicates "inflammation." Certainly, my chronic condition involves things that are literally or at least metaphorically inflammatory (even the mental symptoms "flare up," or maybe I should say "flare down" but in any case they get swollen and they hurt). More importantly, however, rheumatism signifies an overall physically-based affliction that goes up and down, that comes and goes, more or less. But you never get rid of it entirely. Still, you do what you have to do to control it, and if every so often you have to disappear for a bit, people understand: "it's his rheumatism." I'm just trying to simplify discourse. I'm not hiding anything: the more technical clinical and diagnostic presentation of my medical conditions and their shorthand initials are in my book and often enough on this blog. But trying to identify what exactly is going on in every flare-up is like trying to nail jello to a wall. My doctors know enough to help me for now, and there is some serious business, but we're managing it. Meanwhile, I'll make my references general and folksy. People don't want to hear about it all the time, and I don't want to write about it all the time. Is that okay?]

It was a very hard period of my life. At times it was awful, really. God was working deeply during those years, but I don't yet understand much of what he was doing (probably I don't even need to know... not now, anyway).

Early 2011: the days of the wild
hermit and his crazy long beard!

But in 2011, I started to feel better with some consistency. Meanwhile, people had been reading my book and it was really helping them. Not only friends and acquaintances but also people I had never met were contacting me to express their gratitude.

I began to get the sense that God was calling me to do something to promote the book more. My vanity was not the defining motivation for this (which is not to say that I don't have plenty of vanity, haha... but there was something else that was more important). I felt that this light belonged on a lamp stand, and that I had to take some responsibility for that.

But how? I was feeling better, but I was hardly in any shape for a book tour. So I looked at the Internet, at blogging and "social media," in the hope that I might find some ways of networking and promoting the book. And it certainly has proven useful in that regard.

But I also discovered something that, after many years of publishing and writing, was a completely new experience: a way of interacting with my readers and getting to know them, and a medium that brings together writing and conversation in a way that is filled with new possibilities, even if it is also filled with danger.

In fact, I had found the possibility to interact with all sorts of people, all over the world, using the written word and other forms of creative expression. I found also the possibility to continue, or resume, conversations already begun.

Thus began my Adventures in New Media, which have taken me in directions I never could have imagined. I've made mistakes and I've wasted time, but I'm learning and I'm praying that God's grace will sustain me and lead me in his ways.

Three Years of Blogging: I Am Grateful For The Journey

Happy Birthday to the Never-Give-Up-Blog,
Happy Birthday to the Never-Give-Up-Blog,
Happy Biiiiiiirthday to the Never-Give-Up-Blooooooooooog,
Happy Birth... well, you get the idea.

This blog is three years old today.

That's right, three years of writing fairly regularly and sometimes thoughtfully. For someone with my constraints, it means a lot to my own sense of... I dunno... "self-worth?"... (or delusions of grandeur or whatever) that I've kept this little enterprise going consistently for three years.

It began as a whim, an idea that I tossed out to my then small group of Facebook "friends" (which pretty much consisted of people I had known a long time, and also my former students):

So I got five "likes" and sixteen "comments" which was quite a response for me in those days. Many of the responses were simply "Yes!" (often with exclamation point). That meant something, because these were people I trusted. Still, I wanted to know whether they were actually saying something more than just, "Sure. Go for it, man!" So I asked more precisely:

A small chorus of "Yes, we want to read YOUR blog" was raised in the combox. These were people I knew, people who were dear to me in various ways, people who were able to perceive that I might be able to do something well. Notice how I have discreetly concealed their identities. Many of them know who they are, even if they rarely actually read the blog, hahaha (but don't worry about that... although, you could always start up now).

You gave me encouragement, dear good friends, and one of the things I want to do on this anniversary is say, "Thank you." (Of course the problem is that you're not reading this now, haha! If I get the chance I'll PM you the link to this post and thank you personally.)

Anyway, you convinced me, and on January 29, 2011 the first of more than 600 posts was proclaimed to the Facebook world:

It has been worth the effort, and remains so. I have discovered that the blog is a kind of literary genre in its own right. I have some frequent readers, more than enough to encourage me to keep writing. (Of course, as an incurable teacher, I only need a handful of people to give me the sense that I have "a classroom," even though sometimes the material here is unusual for a classroom, being so introspective, and sometimes painful.)

There is something about the charism of teaching that can't help being stirred up. It's an impetus that always wants to foster opportunities and places for learning and growing. It's so strong and so implacable that even when I'm suffering, even when I'm losing my mind, I want somehow to turn it into an opportunity for people to learn something. So I try to present my experience. I wrote a book about being sick. I wrote, and I continue to write about mental illness.

I try not to be didactic. Rather I try to walk on this journey together with everyone and observe the slopes and bends and surprising things on the path. I am the person who notices things and wonders at their beauty, their strangeness and even their scariness. Still I look and I try to see the significance of what I find along the way, and I can't help wanting to draw others over to look for themselves. "Come and look at this!" I want to say.

Even (indeed especially) if I find it inside myself.

For I am more convinced than ever that even down to the deepest depths we are all traveling together and we are all going to the same place. We must, therefore, help one another.

The Day St. Thomas Aquinas Went Shopping

My favorite story about Thomas Aquinas is the one where a young novice in the community was sent by the Superior to grab "one of the other friars" and go buy some fish.

This novice was very new. He saw only a community of more or less anonymous Dominican friars in black and white habits -- men who had committed themselves freely to vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The first friar the novice came upon was the stout, older fellow with a big brow who was pacing or perhaps sitting with his books and papers, pondering something and probably not looking very busy.  The novice said to him, “The Prior wants you to go buy fish.”

Friar Thomas Aquinas was in fact engaged in doing his daily work: a work that was destined to play a singular role in the exposition and clarification of Catholic doctrine and theology; a work that also bequeathed to humanity philosophical breakthroughs that would lay foundations and open up new vistas in metaphysics and epistemological realism; a work that brought about the historical integration of Aristotle into the Christian west, and that established the charter for the reconciliation of faith and reason, thus opening the way in the future for so many great advances in the humanities and natural sciences; a work that also gave us the foundational exposition of a political philosophy that would shape what is best and most enduring in the emerging "modern" Western Civilization, and so many other things that bear upon what we need to learn now, in the dawn of the new epoch of the third millennium.

"The Prior wants you to go buy some fish" said the novice. 

And then Thomas, without a word, closed his book, set aside his magnificent intellectual labors, and went off to the fish market.

What Our Souls Seek

The "Peace Cross" from Elementary Atrium

Lord Jesus, enfold us in your most compassionate heart and give us confidence in your merciful love.

I know this can seem so distant and abstract when we face real problems in life. But he is still there. I often don't "feel" that presence, so I beg and beg that God will shape me in whatever way I need to be so that he can draw me more and more. I need him to place in my heart the love he wants me to have for him and for others.

Draw us, Lord, that we may know that your love is what we have been made for, and what our souls seek.
So often we don't feel his presence, or have any idea what he might be up to. But in the end, we'll see how all the pieces fit together, and how every sorrow and all our fragility and all the humbling moments are gathered into a story of Love beyond our understanding.

We live now in hope. We are begging the Lord to give us the strength to believe that everything we live through has a meaning, that loving someone has a meaning even in the sorrow of losing them, that all the ups and down have a meaning, our weakness and our sins have meaning, that to live life and receive joy and endure pain is worth it!

We must go, with all our complicated lives, go to the Father like children and just give everything to Him. Jesus, take care of everything!