The View Up Here

Regardless of our vocation – married, priesthood, religious, or single – the daily grind and the pressing worries that ever more hound us day and night can wear us down. Even when we love our families, our work, our ministry, our community, we can still become like a well that’s gone dry.  And something must be said about our post-modern obsession with multi-tasking. Is that really how humans were meant to live? I don’t think it would be over the top to say that it is inhuman, even with all the tools we now have which allegedly assist with this frenetic, attention-splitting lifestyle. In fact, it seems with all the conveniences and communication technology available to us, we are multi-tasking and doom scrolling ourselves into states of severe anxiety, depression, and poor health in which we lose sight of faith, hope, and charity.  We lose sight of who we are. We lose sight of Christ. A remedy for this lifestyle, found in ancient Christian tradition and modeled by Jesus, is t...

Ever have one of those days that you're so grateful you have leftover chicken in the fridge that isn't too old to eat, and you have some raw shredded cabbage in there too so you can dip the chicken and the cabbage in blue cheese dressing and that's supper? Yeah.  This has not been a banner year pour moi. But I keep climbing because Jesus is with me and I know he's got this. But dang it, sometimes my grip is slipping and it's all I can do to hang on by one brittle fingernail. I keep hearing something faint, muffled. Jesus is speaking but I'm whining and carrying on so much I can't really hear him. Two syllables. "Hang on," I suppose, since that's what I'm trying desperately to do and I'm banking on his help. Because, really, I am a 98-pound weakling with no climbing skills. But the more I try to hang on, the sweatier my hands get and the fingernail is ripping through. It's only in that last breath when I'm sliding into the abyss ...

2020 was the year that stretched and formed me more than any other in recent memory, and I'm not talking about the Covid. Last August, I started teaching full time at a small Catholic, Classical school in Rochester. While I love my work and my students, the 50-55 hours a week are grinding me into a pulp. No brain matter for anything else, really. It has forced me, though, to be attentive to how I spend the time I have outside of work. Prayer is my priority - resting in His Love and praying the Liturgy of the Hours. I'm back to reading akshual books, which is a great gift of itself. Current read:  A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. But 2020 left me an orphan. After a year's struggle with gastric cancer, my brother Patrick passed into eternity on Nov. 27. Yes, the man who'd spent years in retail died on Black Friday. I can't help but think that was no coincidence.  Thankfully, we his family were with him during his last week. It was far more grueling than what I wen...

Recently, I'd say in the last two months, I've been the recipient of several outside references to Bruce Lee. I haven't gone seeking them, they've just shown up. Not the least of which happens to be part of my new license plate number: JKD (Jeet Kune Do, the martial art Lee created, which roughly translated means "way of the intercepting fist."). What has this to do with my life? His famous quote returns to me over and over again, like waves at the shore:   Be like water. What does this mean, and how am I to understand it in a Christian context?   Today's readings in the Lectionary point to it: saying yes to God's will in every moment, even when we don't understand it. Even when we cannot see the plan that includes every mote and moment of all creation in and outside of time, that includes every choice every person has ever or will ever make. I've just finished re-reading (since high school) C.S. Lewis's 2nd book of the Space Trilogy...