little red plane
On Memorial Day, in honor of those who have fallen in the line of service, an award-winning animated short film from director Joey Jones: Little Red Plane.
on the passage through life
Today (at 11:45 am, to be precise), I turn 42. (It’s the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything!)
If I were going to take my cues from the culture, I should be surrounding myself with black balloons and all sorts of birthday cards evoking nostalgia and/or grief. For all of the talk about being “forward-looking,” we sure spend a lot of time longing for the past.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in recent years thinking about our passage through time… especially as both my father and the man I consider one of my primary spiritual fathers passed from this life to the next. Experiencing these deaths, and especially being present at the side of my father as he took his last breath, had an unexpected effect on me. Of course I expected the grief and sense of loss. But what surprised me was the way it stirred up a desire for the life to come, enkindled, I’m sure, by the fact that both men had pilgrim hearts: They took great joy in this life but never forgot that they were still on the way.
About a year before he died, my dad sent me an essay he’d written in college about Robert Frost’s After Apple Picking, which includes this passage:
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Dad enclosed a short note with the essay, very matter-of-fact, saying he found it among some old files he had been sorting through. He didn’t need to say anything more; the consummate teacher, he allowed his own peaceful – and I might hazard to say joyful – entry into the next life to interpret the poem for me. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy this life, but he had tasted something more and wasn’t going to stick with the hors’d ouerves when an entire banquet was being laid out before him. As C.S. Lewis once put it,
If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Or in the words of Saint John of the Cross:
I will never lose myself
for that which the senses
can take in here,
nor for all the mind can hold,
no matter how lofty,
nor for grace or beauty,
but only for I-don’t-know-what
which is so gladly found.
Or as T.S. Eliot wrote in The Four Quartets,
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass….Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
So I think my perspective on age is a bit different, a bit changed this year. If someone approaches me today and asks, “So how does it feel to be a year older?” I think I will respond, “The real question is: how does it feel to be a year closer to the life to come?”
This was the question asked of those participating in this year’s Catholic Media Promotion Day (#silenceandword).
If an event can be considered a means of communication — and thus media — I would say that the Catholic New Media conference in Kansas City last October was probably the thing that had the greatest impact on me over the past year. In my experience, events like this truly build up communion in the new media community, and give the greatest sense of purpose and authenticity in the shared gift and task of evangelization, which is marked by a deepening sense of being entrusted to God and to one another.
In the more traditional sense of media, a piece of music I have listened to each day of this year has become a deeper part of my life. While at a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve, the host couple stopped everything at midnight for their annual tradition of listening to Biebl’s Ave Maria, as performed by Chanticleer. I decided that this song, which uses the prayers of the Angelus, would make a fitting theme for the coming year. And so I’ve played it every day since.
Catholic Media Promotion Day 2012 — which will be observed on Wednesday, May 23 and Thursday, May 24 — will take up the theme of the Pope’s message for World Communications Day: Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization.
Last year, on Catholic Media Promotion Day, we asked you to promote your favorite 3 blogs, 3 podcasts, 3 other media, 3 random Catholic things online, as well as your own projects. (You can find my favorites here.) Additionally, we asked you to go to iTunes on that single day and leave at least 3 positive reviews for various Catholic podcasts and 3 positive written reviews for Catholic mobile applications. The response was phenomenal.
Something different this year
This year, we’re asking you to do something different.
On Wednesday, May 23, we’re asking you to take a one-day break from posting on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, etc… and use that day to reflect on the Pope’s words about the role of silence in communication and evangelization.
Then, on Thursday, May 24, please share the fruit of that day of prayer and silence with everyone, by posting your answer to the question: “What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” Share it on the New Evangelizers website at:
http://newevangelizers.com/forums/topic/catholic-media-promotion-day-2012/
Why silence on Wednesday?
So why did we choose Wednesday as the day to be silent? According to a recent study, Wednesday is the day that most people post on Facebook. Remaining silent in the world of social communications on this day is a way to become more aware of the temptation to value doing over being and speaking over listening. No one on the web may notice our silence, but surely God will notice, and hopefully we will notice Him more deeply, and thus come away with a greater readiness to share a word that gives life. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us: “Silent contemplation immerses us in the source of that Love who directs us towards our neighbors so that we may feel their suffering and offer them the light of Christ, his message of life and his saving gift of the fullness of love.”
In summary, here’s what we ask you to do:
1) PREPARE (May 19-22)
Spread the word about World Communications Day and Catholic Media Promotion Day using all the social media:
a) Link to the information page on the New Evangelizers website: http://promotecatholicism.newevangelizers.com/promote-catholicism-day/
b) Like / +1 the page
c) Include the hash tag #silenceandword in your posts
d) Consider using this avatar in place of your profile photo on Facebook, Twitter, etc.:
http://tinyurl.com/silenceandwordavatar
2) FALL SILENT (May 23)
Refrain from using social media to post content on Wednesday, May 23, and use it as a chance to read and prayerfully reflect on the Pope’s message for World Communications Day 2012:
http://tinyurl.com/silenceandword
3) EVANGELIZE (May 24)
Share the fruit of your day of prayer and silence with everyone, by posting your answer to the question: “What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” Share it on the New Evangelizers website at:
http://newevangelizers.com/forums/topic/catholic-media-promotion-day-2012/
silence and word: path of evangelization
The Pope has penned a characteristically profound and beautiful reflection for tomorrow’s celebration of World Communications Day (Sunday, May 20, 2012):
Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization
A teaser:
Silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist. In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express ourselves. By remaining silent we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself; and we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested. In this way, space is created for mutual listening, and deeper human relationships become possible. It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other. Joy, anxiety, and suffering can all be communicated in silence – indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression. Silence, then, gives rise to even more active communication, requiring sensitivity and a capacity to listen that often makes manifest the true measure and nature of the relationships involved. When messages and information are plentiful, silence becomes essential if we are to distinguish what is important from what is insignificant or secondary.
celebrating Mom
In celebration of Mother’s Day, here’s an idea for a future Mother’s Day gift: a letter of memories and gratitude from all the kids.
Several years ago, shortly after my Dad died, one of my sisters initiated a Christmas letter from my siblings to my mom, and it turned out to be a great way of honoring her. I think, with our Dad’s loss fresh in our minds, we realized that we didn’t want to wait until she was gone to send up some words of appreciation.
Here’s the idea as my sister presented it. She collected our letters, which were based on the following format:
- Identify the top 2 things you like most about mom and why they’re meaningful to you. Add up to 3 more areas that you admire or like about her, (optional)
- When you think of mom, you think of __________(from 2 words to 2 sentences)
- Two important things that mom has taught you. (Can be more) This can be by her example as well, etc.
- Most important gift mom has given you.
- Favorite day, moment or memories with her (this is not limited but can expand as far as you’d like- beyond just one moment, day, experience too)
- Funniest or silliest memory of her (laughable moment/s).
- Your hopes, prayers or dreams for her now-what you would hope she will have/experience, related to her fulfillment.
- (Optional) One thing she doesn’t know about you that you’d like to her to know (it can be anything, silly or serious-the point is sharing something here with her that she doesn’t know yet know about you or your life, that you’d like her to know).
- Thanking her for … (Personal thanks for whatever comes to mind) (Some of these things may overlap but that’s fine).
A sampling of the responses from my nine brothers and sisters is posted here.
mom with Jackson and Cooper
My own contribution:
The two things I most appreciate about Mom: her generosity and her receptivity. She defines what it means to be recklessly large-hearted, and fearless of the pain that might come from making herself so vulnerable. And by receptive I mean welcoming, not in any formal, dutiful way… but genuinely ready to open herself to whoever would present themselves to her. And then there’s her sense of humor, generally self-deprecating but always alive to the incongruities of life and all that is inherently silly… without caving in to the temptation of being ironic or sarcastic in any form.
Like last Christmas Eve, when she and I spent a good hour traversing back and forth across Clark Fork looking for the Holy Grail of plumbing: a toilet plunger for the overflowing facility at Sacred Heart.
When I think of Mom, I think of lilies of the valley and sailboats, two things she’s fond of. Mom is like those delicate, fragrant flowers that change the whole aroma of the place without drawing attention to themselves, and like a sail open to wherever the Spirit might blow, and constantly tacking to see where the Wind might want to lead next. I think that’s how she taught me the value of discernment: testing everything, and keeping what is good.
Favorite memories include the lunches we shared together at the Burger King at Vine Hill and Highway 7, when I was in junior high school. I was just attending the junior high on a part-time basis, spending the rest of my time homeschooling. Generally, a bus would pick me up midday to take me to East Junior High. But from time to time, Mom would offer to drive me, so that we could have lunch together. It was just as the era of Home Covenant School ended, and during these undivided times shared with Mom, I felt I was getting to know her all over again.
My hope and prayer is that in this particular chapter in her life, she can look back with satisfaction on all of the artistry she has co-created — not the least the family she raised and nurtured with Dad — and look forward to all the new expressions of creative love that she has within her, waiting to be revealed in the days to come. She’s an artist of the human heart, with a canvas that has stretched as far as the eye can see… and a lot farther, I’m sure. There are realms of that canvas for her to revisit, and others to explore for the first time.
So I hope she’ll hop on her pontoon sailboat, so to speak, find the Wind like the expert sailor that she is, and set the course anew each day… touring that entire canvas, that whole work of art that is her life. It’s going to be a joy to watch.
feminism and the Church
Yesterday, the Holy See proposed a reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). The document announcing the reform can be found on the USCCB website.
From the archives: here’s a post I wrote in 2008 that provides a bit of background on some of the related issues.
