An Achy Cold Day in Which I Messed Everything Up

Ugh, another one of these cold days in January. It’s nice, at least, to see the sun shining, even though today I see it mostly through my bedroom window.

The cold weather is bothering me this year, more than it has in the past. Perhaps it’s the dampness. But I want to go out for a good walk. I want so much to go outside. But I can only step out onto the porch and take a few deep breaths of the brisk air as the sun sets.

Not that I didn’t have a “busy day” here at home in my bed. This is the Internet Age. Never before in history has it been possible for someone to interact with so many people and have access to so many resources without leaving the house. But what is the value of all of it? I want to accomplish things, engage my talents, build a legacy… my heart still bursts with aspirations!

The years of living, the stiff limbs (I have dealt with these kind of things for longer than most people my age, but experience affords no advantage here), the rapid onset of stress, frustration, exhaustion because I mucked it all up today. Distractions, problems, blind alleys, no adequate solutions.

But do I know what I am really called to accomplish? I follow the “signs” and make my daily efforts. “Success” is rewarding and brings some relative satisfaction, for a time. It also leads to more signs, more questions, more awareness that anything I do is insignificant in relation to the Mystery I seek in everything - the Mystery who calls me. “Failure”? Is it really the end of the world? No. I just need to get up and keep going, fixing what I can, getting help if I need it, and letting go of the baggage that’s just weighing me down. Letting go… because there is Another who will carry it away; there is Another who implores me to entrust everything - success and failure, joy and pain, life and death - and let myself be carried to a destiny beyond all my imagining. Ultimately, I am “carried,” even as I do my best to “follow the signs,” to be devoted, to serve, to witness to the truth, accomplish the good, and build up the beautiful along the journey of this life. This life is a precious reality; even if everything is passing away, something new is already beginning.

I fail a lot. So I get up a lot. Sometimes I “get up” metaphorically, because… that’s the way it goes with me (read THIS BOOK if you want to know more about why), but since my work is done mostly with the part of my brain that’s still in good shape, and there are so many gadgets that can assist me, I have confidence that I still have much to share.

Ultimately the goal of all our efforts, the goal of life, is the fulfillment of a promise, a gift that fulfills our journey and even now begins to transfigure us, gives a new value to our efforts (beyond what we know), even “uses” our failures and weakness and distractions if we allow ourselves to be converted and formed by the One who loves us and redeems us: the One who has come to be with us, to find us when we’re lost, to bind up our wounds.

The Wondrous Miracle of the Conversion of Saint Paul

January 25 is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. The first of my monthly "Conversion Stories" series addressed this dramatic and archtypal New Testament conversion, and appeared in the December 2013 issue of Magnificat. Obviously, Paul's conversion is as marvelous today as it was to the astonished Christians of Damascus in the First Century. Here is the text of my article: 

Saint Paul’s conversion from persecutor to Apostle is the radical instance of what constitutes every Christian conversion. His experience is fundamentally an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ who communicates himself in and through his Church. It reveals at this very early moment in Christian history an essential feature of the mystery of the Church: Jesus identifies himself with those who follow him, and extends his visible and missionary presence in time and space through them.

Of course, we are familiar with the story. After presiding over the stoning of Saint Stephen, Saul obtains letters from the high priest so that he can arrest Christians in Damascus. He is “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). Saul has met the followers of “the Way,” but there has been no real encounter; he doesn’t see that the God he longs for and seeks to please with a desperate zeal is communicating himself as a free gift in the midst of these people. “I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13), he explains later.

Saint Paul is converted by the famous “light from heaven” on the road to Damascus, in which Jesus reveals himself in his own voice, and at the same time indicates that he is the object of Saul’s persecution: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). It is Jesus himself who opens Paul’s eyes and enables him to see that Christians are not an errant Jewish sect but the very presence of God’s redeeming love in the world.

The light from the glory of Jesus blinds Saul, and it is fitting that a disciple from Damascus, Ananias, is sent to him after three days to restore his sight and baptize him. After this, Saul is completely changed. Immediately we hear in very simple terms that he is “with the disciples at Damascus” and “in the synagogues immediately he proclaimed Jesus, saying, ‘He is the Son of God’” (Acts 9:19-20).

For Saul, conversion comes from the completely gratuitous gift of God, from an encounter that is pure mercy: “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:14). The grace of this encounter with Jesus corresponds to a recognition of who the followers of Jesus really are, and an insertion of himself into this reality, the Church, and into its mission of witness.

Saint Paul’s miraculous conversion is one of the great events of the New Testament. Nevertheless, in it we can see the basic features that make up every conversion story. It was not just a change of convictions. Paul encountered a person, Jesus, who identified himself with persons that Paul knew or would come to know. He recognized Jesus in these persons, the disciples, and in his own transformed life (“it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” [Galatians 2:20] ) as he also witnessed Jesus through the grace of faith and love.

Conversion is always a work of grace. It is always an encounter with Jesus in the communion of the Church. St. Paul’s story is reenacted, again and again, in less outwardly dramatic ways, in every place, in every time, to so many different kinds of people.

“What I Longed For, I Now See…”

January 21 is the feast of our much beloved Saint Agnes of Rome, about whom I have written numerous times in this blog through the years (see, for example, HERE). This year, I present this simple graphic to commemorate the great third century virgin and martyr.

The Ice-And-Snow-Pocalypse of ‘22… Sort Of..?

We had the first serious “Winter Storm” of the year in the mid-Atlantic region of the USA. You know, the kind of storm that The Weather Channel gets excited about. Not only to we get the experience of extreme weather conditions, we also get to watch ourselves going through all the drama on reality TV. It makes it twice as exciting, right?😝 

Really, it’s odd how having our weather on national television makes us feel like we have “accomplished something important” just by living in an area that’s “on TV.” No matter how many gadgets we have, the Big Screen retains its mystique as the main “portal of extension” between our homes and “the world,” with an aura of authority vested in it by the Guardians of Program Content: networks, cable channels, and now streaming services that make decisions about what we can watch based on the power they possess. Their judgment, credibility, or expertise may not deserve this level of respect, and yet they are among the “lords” in the Aristocracy of Power in which we live. The gap has closed, a little, in communications media now that we “commoners” can also produce and disseminate media content. 

I spoofed this little video last Friday while in a silly mood, posting an “official report” to my YouTube channel. I don’t ever expect to have a YouTube video that gets more than a handful of views, which is not a disappointment since I put ZERO effort into making them. I actually use YouTube (at least for making videos) in the way its geeky founders originally intended it to be used, way way back in 2006: as a convenient internet site for uploading videos that I can then easily share in other places, like this blog. Oh yeah, by the way, let me share that no-longer-new “special report” here:

Anyway, I turned out to be right.😉 But rather than being the “on-the-seen” reporter (too cold!), I stuck to photography after that. Sunday and Monday gave us 5 inches of snow before the sleet and freezing rain left about a tenth of an inch coat of ice on top of everything. Traveling conditions off the main roads were hazardous for a couple of days, and we had to be careful walking around.

But when the sun finally came out, we saw some beautiful and unusual scenes:

“Maria’s Song” 🎶☺️

This video is about a month old, but I wanted to share my singing of “MARIA’S SONG” (I had songs for each of the kids, but this is my first song for a grandchild.🎶) 

Notice her “enthusiastic” reaction…😝🤣🙂☺️❤️

Maria has grown a lot lately. She can hold herself up in a sitting position, and is getting more engaged with the world around her every day. And she’s still cute when she sleeps too.

Winter: Warm, Wet, Bright, Fiery, Frozen

Winter weather in this new year has been "interesting," so far. 

At least, it has been interesting to look at. My arthritis and overall physical condition didn't exactly thrill over the roller coaster ride of temperature and barometric pressure changes during the past couple of weeks.😝 We've had a little bit of sun (as indicated by the "bright and fiery" images here) and sometimes the warmth to go with it, such as temperatures over 60F at the beginning of the month. Mostly, however, it has been cloudy. On some days the clouds are distinctive and striking; other times we just have an unbroken, dull gray sky. The latter conditions generally don't inspire me to portray them in pictorial arts.

I can get out a bit when it's not too cold and/or wet. A little wet is okay. These are the months when I cherish especially those non-deciduous hardy leafy wintergreen plants that are more conspicuously "awake" when most of nature sleeps. Rhododendron are impressive all year round, but in the Winter they are still bright and perky (see below) and when it's warm I like to hang around them and pretend I'm on vacation on a tropical island (hence the portrait).

We have also had a couple of days of significant snow accumulation (by Virginia standards, where it melts fairly quickly). Snow is certainly lovely... to look at... once in a while.😉

Christina Grimmie: A Face that Shows the Way

For the past five years and seven months, this face has been among the most important human faces in my life. It is a face that challenges me, consoles me, and changes my perspective on reality again and again.

I return to Christina Grimmie every month, not only because I find her to be one of the most truly compelling “media icons” of the past decade (that sounds like an enormous claim, but I think history will show it to be true), nor only because she is one of my favorite human subjects for digital graphic art, in my ongoing efforts to understand and make creative use of its continually expanding tools.

I return to the memory of Christina because I need to see her face.

The whole of her gaze on life is more than the sum of its parts. I certainly never noticed this before she left this world, and it took some time for it to dawn upon me even afterwards. Now I know the sincerity, the honesty, the wise innocence, the humor, the unguarded vulnerability, and the courage that shaped her most mundane gestures, and the powerful clarity with which she looked at everyone and every thing in her brief beautiful life.

When she spoke those occasional serious words of faith, of testimony to God’s love, of affirmation of the inestimable value of each one of us as persons, she spoke with a kind of “authority” unusual for someone her age. When she looks at us and says that “we are loved,” it’s convincing. Her face, her manner, her vitality, her whole life are a convincing testimony for us - a communication of the gift of unconditional love and mercy from a person who has experienced that love and mercy herself.

Her communication became uniquely expansive, unconditional, and open to every person through her perseverance in love right up to its ultimate, utterly vulnerable expression at the completion of her life.

Her offering of herself in love won’t fade away with the passage of time. It endures.

I need to see Christina Grimmie’s face because she reminds me of the meaning and the aspiration and the hope of my own life (which I still struggle to learn after 59 years of living - so much “more time,” but too often wasted time). She helps me to remember the source of my own confidence, to remember to live each day, to remember why I live, and the One I live for.

She also helps me begin to see the way toward the final moment that inevitably draws closer as I grow older. She helps me to remember the promise of joy that is worth all the risks of love: the risks of living and dying. She reminds me not to be afraid.

Theophany: The Glory of God Revealed

The culmination of the Christmas Season is the Great Feast of the Theophany, known in the West as the "Baptism of the Lord." 

The Byzantine tradition especially emphazizes that the events commemorated on this day involving Jesus's ritual immersion in the Jordan river at the hands of John the Baptist are a public "manifestation of God" ("Theophany") in a hitherto unprecedented way. Today the Holy Trinity - the One God who is an ineffable communion of persons, the God who is Absolute Love - begins to be revealed and glorified in Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, the Beloved Son of the Father anointed in the Spirit. The great mission of God’s self-giving love is proclaimed.

Here are the antiphons from Morning Prayer in the Roman Rite:

(1) The soldier baptizes his king, the servant his Lord, John his Savior; the waters of the Jordan tremble, a dove hovers as a sign of witness, and the voice of the Father is heard: This is my Son.

(2) Springs of water were made holy as Christ revealed his glory to the world. Draw water from the fountain of the Savior, for Christ our God has hallowed all creation.

(3) You burned away man’s guilt by fire and the Holy Spirit. We give praise to you, our God and Redeemer.

My Research and Scholarship for 2022 and Beyond

Recently I indicated that I still was plugging away on my research, and I want to update where I am and broadly outline the aims and the scope of my studies in 2022 and beyond.

I do in fact have some “scholarly goals” for the time that remains to me, but as usual they are far too extensive to be realistic even if I lived literally all of what remains of the Chinese sage's symbolic 36,000 Days. But we’ll see how far we can get. What remains undone (insofar as it’s worth doing) can be taken up by others.

I would like to organize and develop my scattered writings on human power, technological infrastructure, media, and the challenges that persons and communities continue to face in the world’s massive, chaotic, and largely unexamined transition to a new global “epoch of power” of unprecedented proportions. My goal is neither naive celebration nor pre-judged condemnation of the continually emerging new technologies, but first to understand their impact on the life of the person and the (inevitably unnoticed) physical (including neurobiological), social, and relational environments they generate and sustain as they enter into common usage. 

I was born in 1963, and I am a first generation child of television. Our generation was raised without a thought regarding the impact of the T.V., this audiovisual communicator and processor of information and sensory experience that created a new and strange global “common space” in our homes, rearranging the furniture in our living rooms, altering our schedules, shaping the expectations of our sensory and emotional responses (in many ways? but how, and how much?). 

In any case, television has been a powerful force for good and evil, even if we remain perplexed (as I have been for my whole life) on what place it has in our lives and the ways it has impacted us, perhaps enriching, perhaps impoverishing our humanity in different ways. The same is true of other electronic media, which are emerging rapidly in the present time. When we understand how we are affected by these technologies, we will also be able to seek wisdom to subordinate them properly to the dignity of the person and the building of communion between persons. 

We must cultivate together the proper self-possession and self-discipline required to live in a media environment. Call it, if you will, “media ecology.” This is an important component of a wider (and urgently necessary) “technological ecology” that goes beyond all projects that try to manage technology and its human consequences simply by using other forms of technology. Nothing can replace the agency of the human person and the responsibility of human freedom - weak and embattled though it may be. This may all seem impossible in a world misshapen in so many other ways, but we must take heart, turn to the God who makes us exist, acknowledge God as the Mystery who moves our hearts, and then do the best we can. (Christians should know that Jesus is with us in this work, which is a work of mercy - both in relation to communication of the Gospel and the temporal good of this world in which we live here and now, which He loves and wherein our love - united with Him - sows the seeds of transfiguration.)

I would also like to progress far enough in my East Asian Studies Project that I can at least become familiar with the people who are “bridges” between East and West, and also between the ancient traditions and the current realities of Asian life and cultures during these unpredictable, changing, explosive times. I hope to be able to pass on some research (bibliographic if nothing else) that will help others to go further. This work is vital for a genuine globally inculturated “new evangelization.” It is also vital for the future of the world. Mutual ignorance is no longer an option.

I have always loved the Chinese people, and admired the many heights their classical humanism attained over the course of the centuries. I also have a very personal reason for wanting-to-understand-more, but I’ll tell that story another day. The odyssey of Chinese and Asian immigrants to the West, and their great hardships and quiet dignity, remain largely unknown by Westerners. When I was a boy I was much closer to a living experience of this story than I ever knew … and books and memoirs by others about their immigrant childhoods that I have recently read have reawakened in my mind and heart questions regarding things I never understood about my best friend in school: a brilliant, humble, jovial, articulate, amazingly talented Chinese-American guy. He was someone I really trusted, and something of a role model for me from Elementary School up to High School.

Yet I didn't know much about his life at home. He and his family were Evangelical Christians, and were serious about their faith. He had a couple of younger brothers, but I can't remember their names. I met his parents several times, but they spoke almost no English. I never knew when or why his parents came to the USA. I knew nothing about their work, or where they lived, or what financial position they held. He didn't talk about these things (in his perfect English); and when you're a kid there are lots of other things to talk about. We talked about serious things too: science, music, history, religion. We were both oddballs because we liked school and we excelled.

I never understood how - when we were 16 years old - what seemed at first like an ordinary illness for him became the awful tragedy that remains one of the great scars of my adolescence. I may never learn the answers, but I know now what I didn't know then, that so many of his people faced such immense challenges when they came to the USA. Many had fled horrific events in China, and accepted the lowest places and the most humiliating conditions so that their American-born children could succeed and have a better life. Their tenuous predicament at home was carefully hidden at school. I don't know if my friend was in any situation like this, but there were definitely Asian kids like him among our generation who were at the top of their class at school, but after school they would go to work in illegal sweat shops, and then do their homework at night in deplorable living conditions.

We never knew about this. Did my best friend die because he didn't have access to adequate medical care? In any case, I still can't make any sense of what happened, and I'll probably never know. But I want to know more in general about his people and their tragic, heroic suffering.

Asia: so much suffering. But, of course, we live in a world of suffering. I must remember to bear with hope, and to offer with love, the very small suffering that God allows to afflict me so that I might grow a little in love. I’m terribly impatient. Lord, grant that I persevere.

One reason that I persist in my study of China is out of loyalty to my friend from long ago. That, however, is not the only reason. Let me return now to my resume of future academic projects.

Regarding religious and theological topics, there are various possibilities. I have already written a lot of reflections on feast days and the spiritually rich variety of Collect prayers throughout the liturgical year in the Roman rite. I have an outline for a project to edit Patristic texts in a way that allows people to pray and meditate on the the testimony of the Fathers. I’m considering publishing in book form some (perhaps all) of the “conversion stories” I have written in my column, if nothing else to make them more accessible in a single source. Or, I may pick one story, or a few related stories, and expand on them in a book. There is much more to be said about so many of these people, and I already have drafts that I had to cut significantly in order to make the final article concise and within the limits of two pages. I could go on and on about “possibilities” in this realm, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. Let’s first see what actually gets done.

O Lord, grant that I might remember that my aim is not more achievements, or diversions, or passing time in amiable comfort, or even being useful or “helpful” according to the way I perceive such things. I will gladly accept such things, and work in whatever way I can, for as long as I can… but (I pray that I will do so) with serenity and trust in God, free from useless anxiety or brooding over my own faults and limits. My aim, each day, is to live for the glory of Christ in whatever circumstances He places me. It is a daily work to remember that this is why I live and breathe, that this alone encompasses all other endeavors, successes, failures, joys, and sorrows in this world. Jesus, have mercy on me.

The “Wondrous” Beginning of Our Redemption

Here is the Collect Prayer for January 5, which is the “Twelfth Day of Christmas,” the eve of the celebration of the Epiphany in the universal Roman calendar (in the USA and some other places, it is transferred to the nearest Sunday).

Thus, we continue to say, “Merry Christmas Season!”🎄⭐️ 

God has come to save us and to dwell with us because He loves us immensely. Because He is with us, we can find joy even in the midst of our present sorrows and afflictions.

“He Loved Us and Sent His Son…”

“God is love. 

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

~ 1 John 4:8-12 

The 30th Anniversary of My 29th Birthday 🎉

The second day of the year has been my own personal “new-years-day” for… well… a long time; in fact, ever since I was born. It was 1963, which seems like antiquity to many people today. Indeed, so much has changed in the world at large (and in the small world of my immediate and extended family). So much has changed for me.

It’s in one way shocking for me that thirty years have passed since I noted briefly in my journal - on January 2, 1992 - that I was 29 years old. I was about to begin my last semester of graduate school as a lay student with the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, the Dominican college on the campus of the Catholic University of America. At the time, I was regarded as quite the “budding intellectual prospect” with lots of creative ideas and a brilliant mind. The future stretched before me. It seemed so vast, so full of possibilities, such a promising realm wherein I was sure to make my mark and accomplish great things. I was 29 and I was "moving up" in my world. I still had big dreams.

Now those thirty years stretch behind me. In the material and circumstantial sense, things turned out totally different than any thing I expected (insofar as it is even possible to “expect” how one’s own life will unfold through various stages). It has not been thirty years of published academic books, articles, lecture tours, accolades, and making friends with people in high places. I have published a couple of books, a few articles, and eight years worth of monthly columns on “conversion stories” for a widely-circulated Catholic magazine. At least I have some sense that the small amount of what I have published has been worthwhile. Perhaps it is just as well that I have been hindered from unleashing too many words on the world.

Not that any of this was my main aspiration during the course of these past thirty years. In any case, other circumstances took priority: like getting married, having five children, raising them; working to solidify the foundations of a still-relatively-new Catholic liberal arts university in the Shenandoah Valley, teaching lots of classes and students, wearing different administrative hats, working too hard while neglecting my health in this beautiful, tick-infested countryside until Lyme Disease and other issues brought about a midlife physical and mental collapse that necessitated early “retirement.” There’s a book all about that (see Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy, Servant, 2010) and the ongoing story fills eleven years of this blog.

Thirty years. Children who were not yet born are now grown up. We are grandparents. A new rhythm is taking hold, as the house becomes emptier and quieter (except when everyone comes over, which is fine too). I hope I’m ready for whatever this new period of life brings. It may be a very brief period. Death is not unknown to cut these so-called “golden years” short. I hope this doesn’t happen, mostly because I feel that I’m still called to be with Eileen and the kids for a bit longer. Josefina is still only 15 years old. But death may come, and I can only trust in God.

If I live out another era of days, they will not be easy ones. Perhaps I may finish a few projects (more on that soon). I will ponder many things. I will pray for the younger generations. I would love to see all my kids grown and established on their vocational paths, and get to know my grandchildren. I know that grandparents can be a special presence in the lives of their grandchildren, and receive much joy from them (I saw both of these realities at work with my own parents and our kids, and I’m so grateful that they had that whole season of life - for them and for the kids too). 

Lately, the family always tease me that (given my recent “East Asian Studies”) I inevitably find a way to bring up China in every conversion. So, here I go: the Chinese (historically) saw the togetherness of “three generations” as a great blessing. There was no small insight in this observation. Chinese sages also referred to the span of a human life as “36,000 Days” … and I ran the numbers and found that to be something like 98 years. Few of them ever lived that long, so (in my ignorance) I’m going to assume that’s a symbolic number. I’m not looking to get that far. I pray that I can live well and at peace, one day at a time, for the measure of days that God wills in His infinite wisdom and goodness. Hmmm... well, I wish I were more stable in such an attitude. The fact is, I worry about dying. Of course! But I pray that I might live with trust in the Lord. I still have to keep asking Him for that trust, with hope that I will grow in trust according to His plan.

If I live the fullness of my elder years, and if my health permits, I want to go back to Rome someday with Eileen. If it’s just us, we can take our time and rest when we need it. We can see vistas again, pray at Saint Peter’s tomb, walk around, sit in the parks, eat cheese and panini and drink wine and read poetry. Maybe meet the Pope again (who knows who will be Pope by then, but perhaps they’ll have a special audience for “old people”😉). Maybe see old friends. We would have to pace ourselves pretty slowly (I would, at least). We haven’t been to Rome in 25 years but every inch of it is still “our city.” Three of the kids have been there since, but we threw those coins in the Trevi fountain for us. May God grant it.

In any case, I pray that I might live each day - day by day - for the glory of God’s infinite love, revealed and given through Jesus Christ whose birth we continue to celebrate.

And yes, I want to note that we finally “celebrated” the family Christmas… on the same day as my birthday.

This Christmas Season, we’ve also experienced vividly how “you never stop being a parent” even for your adult children. Agnese began feeling sick with a variety of symptoms in mid-December. She tested negative for Covid, and decided to come “home” (i.e. our home) to convalesce. But she didn’t improve, and further tests revealed possible internal organ problems. She was in the hospital for over a week, and the staff worked to stabilize symptoms and make extensive further tests. She finally came home New Years Eve, and is feeling better every day. Nevertheless she still needs to take certain medications, and doctors are still monitoring her condition and trying to understand what brought on her illness and whether it involves any systemic chronic issues. We would appreciate prayers for her health.

But she’s back home and everyone is happy about that and hopes she won’t need more hospital odysseys. Meanwhile, January 2nd was a Sunday this year, “Epiphany Sunday” in the USA. Everyone came over and we wrapped presents and opened them and had a lovely dinner together. I didn’t get a family picture. I don’t think those are going to happen at Christmastime anymore: there are too many of us and we are too big to fit in (I know that larger families get it done, but they must be more organized than we are).

I got a few “sneaky pics” - they don’t read this blog so they’ll never know, haha.😉 I can share a few below. What I enjoyed most was just being together with everyone. It was the best birthday gift I could have hoped for. “Three generations together” is a blessing indeed.

A New Year, A “Marvelous Exchange”

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2022.🤓🍷

And Merry Christmas Day Eight, the Octave of Christmas Week, dedicated to Mary the Mother of Jesus, the Theotokos, Mother of God, Mother of the Word who became flesh in her womb, whose birth we continue to celebrate. 

[Image: Coptic Ethiopian icon of the Nativity]

The “Long Year” of 2020-2021

What is there to say at the end of 2021? It has been a long year. This was not one of those years that just "zipped by." At least, it doesn’t seem that way to me.

In one sense it feels like the surreal year of 2020 hasn't ended yet. The first year of this decade started out "normally" (as far as we first-worlders knew). There was some new virus in China, or something like that... it was hard to gauge the news regarding it: A few doctors expressed concerns but, after being visited by the police, they seemed to change their minds. In any case, most Westerners didn't see what was coming.

The PANDEMIC. This capricious new disease - ironically named Covid-19 (since it first appeared at the end of 2019) - began spreading all over the world. Often, people who caught this highly contagious virus developed only a mild illness, with few discernible symptoms. Others got sick with a pneumonia-like illness, and/or other kinds of acute respiratory distress that required hospitalization. A small percentage of people - especially among the elderly and others with preexisting medical conditions - died from the disease or from health complications which it contributed to and aggravated. Covid-19 was easy to catch and to pass on to others, difficult to predict in severity, and overwhelming for hospitals that were overfilled with seriously ill people and lacking resources to treat them. The West, and other advanced or advancing technological societies, were caught off guard. A strategy of putting virtually everyone into a state of quarantine (“lockdown”) was adopted in a unprecedented way. By the end of March, my country - the United States of America - was, basically, closed. But everyone knows about this (and the complexity and controversy surrounding it) so there is no need to rehash it in detail.

Now we are ringing in 2022, and Covid-19 is still around. The Pandemic is still in the news every day, as the virus continues to mutate and generate uncertainty. We now have several versions of a vaccine, and millions and millions of doses have been administered. A third (and now a fourth) booster shot is being recommended for maximum protection against the new Covid variants that keep marching onto the scene denominated with Greek letters (“Delta,” “Omicron,” …).

This has been a very serious and tragic factor of The Long Year. We know people who have gotten seriously ill, and some who have died, even in recent months from Covid and/or a variety of conditions which Covid contributed to making worse. It has become a sorrowful and potentially hazardous factor, and we still don’t know how it will all play out, or what might come next.

Since the initial emergency lockdown, events began to happen again (and events got cancelled). Businesses opened and closed. Advice regarding wearing masks fluctuated (sometimes from one week to the next). Churches restored the ordinary responsibility for Sunday Mass attendance (in the summer of 2021) but most continued to livestream daily Mass now that they had the basic tech gear in place to do it. Lots of other new methods of remote communications connection got a boost because of the Pandemic, and we continue to find them useful even when they are not necessitated by restrictions on movement and gatherings.

But on the eve of 2022, Covid-19 is still around.

We still don’t really know what might happen next. We can only do our best to be responsible in the circumstances and then … either live in constant anxiety and take refuge in whatever distractions we can find … or trust that our lives are shaped by a Wisdom greater than ourselves, a mysterious plan in which we participate but do not control, a promise of goodness and love that will ultimately give meaning to everything, that will console us and change us if we allow our hearts to be open to it.

During the Long Year, lots of events and changes have taken place in the lives of the Janaros. Our son John Paul got married, and our daughter Lucia got engaged (stay tuned for more about that - Summer 2022). Our eldest daughter Agnese graduated university, began working, but now has some kind of illness (not Covid-related) that made her quite sick and ended up hospitalizing her through Christmas. It has also given her parents a few more gray hairs, although it appears that she has a condition they will be able to resolve (or at least manage). She just got home this afternoon, armed with medications and appointments with specialists, and it was so good to see her! (Because of the ongoing Covid situation, the hospital had restrictions on visitation: one person at a time from a pool of two people, who were Eileen and our daughter Teresa - and Teresa started university in August, by the way).

Then my mother passed away on July 5 after a brief illness (not Covid). And four days later our first
grandchild, Maria Therese Janaro, was born. She is nearly six months old now, and she has already asserted her distinctive identity (and charm) in our familial world and beyond. It’s mysterious: my father and my mother have gone beyond this world and at the same time Maria has entered this world.

I have experienced a range of emotions much larger and more complex than I ever knew were possible. Remarkably, the pathological aspect of my “moods” has remained pretty stable, but all the changes we have seen during this Long Year have taken a toll on me physically, I think. The same pains, the same exhaustion have gained some ground in recent months. (That “other Pandemic” - Lyme Disease - may still be causing trouble.) I still take walks, photograph the countryside, and then experiment with digital art projects (something I can do in bed). I’m determined to keep going, or at least do what I can. For the moment, I am ready and hopeful to enter a new year. It is fitting to begin the year on the Octave (the eighth day) of Christmas, the culmination of the week during which we remember with singular gratitude the birth of Jesus.

We will celebrate again tomorrow the coming of the One who gives us hope in every circumstance, who gives us the courage to act and the patience to endure everything according to the challenges of this life. We know that we will all die, but He has died with us and had risen, and He stays with us. He is making all things new. So let us persevere in hope, whatever comes. Circumstances and feelings go up and down, and we can live all of these moments because He is with us and He is preparing us for a joy that will never end.

Merry Christmas Octave and Happy New Year!

"Christmas Season" Birthdays: Mom Would’ve Been 83 Today

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Facebook Memories are especially vivid during the holidays. There are a lot of images and texts from the past dozen years to prompt memories from Christmases Past. I was struck by something from this Facebook post from TEN years ago, namely, how long my mother suffered in circumstances that were difficult for most people to comprehend, but that were very real nevertheless. She would go on to live nearly another decade "home bound and in poor health," and I know it was very hard for her. The Lord permits us to endure trials of different kinds and durations, but He also accompanies us as the Incarnate Word, and on the Cross He makes all our suffering His own and transforms everything from within, so that we might be raised up with Him to a new life in the victory of His love.

December 29 has been a special day during Christmas Week for my family for a long time. My mother was born on this day in the year 1938. We celebrated her birthday, along with my own (on January 2) and then - since 1998 - Agnese's pre-Christmas birthday on December 21. Sometimes we would have a "triple birthday party" at Papa's and Grandma's condo in the later years.

Nothing is the same this year. We haven't even celebrated Agnese's birthday yet. She may be back from the hospital before the new year, and she is improving (though they are still searching for the cause of her current illness). I never expected to spend Christmas Week worrying about my daughter and having so many as-yet-unanswered medical questions. It reminds me, strangely, of another Christmas 15 years ago when our youngest daughter Josefina was already two months in the NICU with complications from her premature intestines and problems recovering from the surgery that had connected them initially. (Another surgery was required the following March, and JoJo didn't come home from the hospital until mid-May, nearly seven months after her birth.) Of course that was an entirely different situation. But whether your kid is two months old or 23 years old, she is still your kid when she's not well.

I was expecting to miss Mom this year (and Dad too, again). And now I'm "talking to her" in prayer and saying, "Can you help them figure out what's going on with your granddaughter?" I'm quite sure she is helping.

"The Sign of Hope"

Pope Francis at Christmas (as posted to Instagram):

The “Peace of Christ” Who Dwells With Us

It has been a great blessing to be able to attend Masses in churches so far during this Christmas season. Something many have taken for granted most of their lives - the festive decorations and the parish Nativity displays - were very much missed last year, when COVID restrictions and/or precautions kept people at home. There’s nothing quite like a church at Christmas. Natural and sacred images come together to create an environment that helps us gather together in remembrance of the event we celebrate, and worship the God who has come to dwell with us.

May we continue to rejoice in the birth of Jesus in the days ahead.

“Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:12-17).

Merry Christmas 2021

Our family activities for the Christmas celebration this year are going to have different “segments,” due to present circumstances. We hope that everyone can be together soon.

May Jesus be born anew in all our hearts. In all things He is our hope and strength.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Dear Daughter, Get Well Soon!

So it is a most unusual Christmastime in this most unusual year for our family.

This beautiful young woman turned 23 years old on Tuesday. It was her birthday, and we hope and pray that God grant her abundant grace and blessings for the year ahead. But it could not be said that it was - in any ordinary, conventional sense - a "happy" birthday.

Agnese, my oldest daughter, whom I love so much, has been ill for more than a week.

It is definitely NOT Covid. She tested negative, and in any case the symptoms are entirely different. (I won't give many details, even though for all practical purposes this blog has become little more than a private journal: it no longer has many readers, and I haven't posted about this on my much-more-widely-viewed social media platforms, and I won't until we know more about what's going on.) But she has been in the hospital since Tuesday, requiring medication to stabilize blood pressure and normalize kidney function. Meanwhile, a multitude of tests are being run to determine the cause of these abnormalities and other symptoms of her persistent illness.

Most likely, all of this sounds much worse than it actually is. There are many (unusual but resolveable) circumstances that might be causing these problems. Doctors, as yet, do not have answers. We can't really speculate, and I'm counting on the discretion and courtesy of the very few people who still see these blog posts.

The main reason I'm writing about this is that I just need to "get it out" on (virtual) "paper" so that I can put it into some kind of context for myself. In the same way, I wanted to make the graphic, above, because it's something I do for my kids (usually) on their birthdays.

I am a weak and sinful man, prone to worry. I want things to be "back to normal" (indeed, normal - at this time in my life, with all the changes, with the passing of the generations, the 'loss and gain' that humbles us but also makes our hearts grow - "normal" is dramatic enough for my nerves).

But beyond all this, I love my daughter. I love my family. I know that God is all-wise and all-good and that He loves us. Whatever comes is woven into His mysterious plan which is shaped by His immense love for us, the love we celebrate in these days as we rejoice in the gift of His Son - the birth of Jesus.

I hope and pray that Agnese comes home soon.

Winter Winter, Cold and Bright...

I recall that in May or June I posted a video greeting on how awesome it was to still have light in the sky at 9:00 PM. It's only fitting that I take a positive look at the Winter Solstice, when we're glad to have light in the sky at, like, 4:30 PM! Thus a greeting from a more bundled up and chilly me than six months ago.

Of course the sun has many lovely hues when it does come out. And the lights of the approaching Christmas and New Year (and Epiphany too) will add their brightness.