HOW TO BE A FAILURE

ACHILLES

In one of the greatest scenes of Western literature, the enraged warrior, Achilles, unbeaten and unbeatable, stands outside his tent on the beach of Troy, while three ambassadors beg him to rejoin the battle.  Achilles, unmoved by their appeals and their tears, answers, “I hate that man like the very Gates of Death who says one thing but hides another in his heart.  So I will say it straight.  Will Agamemnon win me over?  Not for all the world…Not now that he has torn my honor from my hands.”

It is a shockingly powerful passage—shocking and heart-wrenching—but also somewhat confusing.  After all, we moderns have to ask ourselves, how could anyone steal another man’s honor?  Well, scholars have written volumes on the topic, but the long and short of it is this: The Greeks of the Bronze Age measured their honor in stuff and in reputation: time´ and kleos were the words they used—sometimes you hear it translated “honor and glory”.

Time´ was measured in stuff.  The more stuff you had, the more honor.  And if someone took your stuff, they literally took your honor.  If someone stole a Greek hero’s cow, they stole one cow’s worth of honor.  Similarly kleos (or glory) was determined by popular opinion.  So if someone insulted a Greek warrior in public, he literally damaged that man’s glory.

So when Agamemnon, the general of the Greeks, steals Achilles’ slave-girl, he literally steals one slave worth of honor, and Achilles never gets over it.  Because honor is a zero-sum game in the Greek world.  The more of it you get, the less I have.

Now the reason I tell you this story is because I think Achilles has begun to make a comeback.  I think, as a culture, we’ve begun once more to measure our honor in material, external things.  And our kids have begun to feel the stress of it.

Of course, my purpose here is not to whine about how lousy the world has become for our kids, but rather to propose solutions—to offer antidotes.  And I offer them in the form of four stories—five people; five saints, four stories.  And as I move from one story to the next, I want you to keep Homer’s invincible hero, Achilles in the back of your mind.

SAINT #1: JOHN THE BAPTIST

        He ate bugs [I could stop there, actually, and I think I would have made a pretty good point, but I’ll continue], wore uncomfortable unattractive home-made clothes, died young, and was, by his own admission, unworthy to unfasten the sandals of the man who came after him.  When his own followers decided to abandon him to follow Jesus, he actually encouraged them to do so, saying: “Well, I must decrease so he can increase.”  What a sad thing to say.  Can you imagine any politician, movie star, superhero, CEO, or even any of our favorite televangelists saying something like that today:  “I must fail so someone else can succeed.”  Like most of the prophets, John was murdered by the very people he was trying to help.  Furthermore, he was preparing them for a man they would eventually reject, humiliate, and execute.

And yet…Jesus himself said of this failure that he was “the greatest man born of woman.”  He’s one of the few saints in the Roman calendar who has two feast days devoted exclusively to him (One is his birth, the other is, ironically, his beheading).

SAINT #2 AND #3

Here are two men who owned nothing and about whom we know very little.  Saint Jude was confused with Judas so often that he eventually became the patron of lost causes. What’s more, the gospel writers themselves couldn’t seem to keep his name straight: John calls him “Judas – but not the Iscariot!” Luke calls him “Jude the brother of James,” and Matthew calls him “Thaddeus.”  Nothing is said about him in any of the gospels except that he asked one question, and not a very good one.  He says, “Lord, what’s this?” (Jn 14:22).  And that’s it.  There’s a New Testament letter that bears his name, but most scholars agree that someone else probably wrote it for him.

We know even less about Simon.  Mostly, he goes by “not Simon Peter”.  Luke calls him “Simon the Zealot,” Matthew and Mark call him “Simon the Canaanite.”

And that’s pretty much it for Simon and Jude.  They even have to share a feast day.

And yet…they were chosen by Jesus himself to lead his church.

SAINT #4: SAINT EDWARD, THE CONFESSOR

Now for a change of pace.  Edward was a king.  By the standards of the time, he was obscenely rich and singularly influential.

However…

He was one of the worst politicians in the history of Britain.  King Edward, son of Ethelred the Unready (an inauspicious beginning if ever there was one), was a weak, impotent, timid, and famously ugly man.  In worldly terms, a complete disappointment.  During the course of his reign, Edward lost all his money without accumulating any political power.  In fact, he allowed himself to be used as puppet by—of all people—his in-laws.  Then when they were done with him, a pack of foreign con men took over.  Furthermore despite his marriage to an intelligent and beautiful woman, he never managed to produced an heir, which is the one thing even an incompetent monarch can usually pull off.  Some claim that this was his choice because he secretly wanted to be a monk.  Others claim that his wife just could not force herself to sleep with him.  Indeed, King Edward the Confessor left to history a reputation for weakness, indecision, and financial incompetence.  And yet…he remains England’s most popular saint.  He built one of the world’s greatest abbeys at Westminster, and over a million people come every year to visit his tomb.

SAINT # 5: ROSE PHILIPINE DUSCHENE

       I’ll just show you a paragraph from her biography by Marian T. Horvat:  “The first order she entered closed; she did not feel realized in the second institution until she came to America to convert the Indians. Then, instead of carrying out this long-desired mission, she was ordered to teach girls and found convents. The work was more difficult because she never learned to speak English. She founded one convent that failed, then another that foundered. The girls there were ungrateful and worldly, and the Sisters chaffed under her governance and wanted to relax the Rule.  When she finally was permitted to go to work in an Indian mission, she was already seventy two years old, too old to work or learn the native language. But after only one year, she was denied even that great consolation - she was ordered to leave the Indian mission and return to Florissant….”  where she died, having converted exactly one Indian, who apostacised three months later.

And yet…she was utterly faithful to her call as a missionary, and a century after her death, the Pottawatomie Indians still remembered her as “That Woman Who Prayed.”

Saints like these would have baffled Achilles.  Simon and Jude died without time´ or kleos.  Edward squandered his political influence.  John the Baptist had his head cut off.  Rose Philipine Duschene died penniless and disappointed.  No honor or glory here—not by Ancient Greek standards.  In fact, these folks come up pretty short by our modern standards as well.  You kind of have to wonder at the Church’s logic when it holds them up as role models.

And yet, that is the logic of the Cross—a logic which redefines success and turns human wisdom on its head.  In the light of the cross, failure becomes promise, weakness becomes strength, the meek and humble inherit the earth.

This is why Nietzche ridiculed Christianity as a religion of the weak.  We come from a long line of failures.  Sometimes, we actually seem to take pride in that.  Mother Teresa was asked once if she could possibly hope to succeed in India when the poverty was so overwhelming.  Her answer was simply: “God does not expect us to be successful.  He expects us to be faithful.”

THE SAINT LOUIS PRIORY SCHOOL RUGBY TEAM

This quotation has come to mean a lot to me in my work—especially in my work in our high school because, in addition to my teaching and praying, I also coach a rugby team which has not had a winning season in over ten years.  Indeed, we only broke even once (we were four and four), and that year, my players tore down the goal posts because it marked the end of a twenty-year losing streak. (NOTE: Since Andy Wenger Took over as head coach we've gone to state every year!)

Now, some might argue that a losing streak of that magnitude may have had something to do with my coaching, but I prefer to look at it in biblical terms.  You see, god has a special affection for losers.  Look at all the losers, for example, in the long, baffling history of our salvation, starting with the Israelites themselves (whose finest king seemed to have a thing for other men’s wives) and continuing right through the age of the apostles (whose first unanimous decision was to run away when their leader got arrested), to our own age, and people like Saint Philipine Duchesne . So when it comes to losing, I sometimes convince myself that it is a sign of God’s special affection for my team; for every failure reminds us that Our beauty, our value, our integrity, lie not in our accomplishments, but simply in our existence as sons of God.

That said, I want to make one thing clear:  failure is bad.  Like all forms of suffering, it is a consequence of Original Sin, and it is natural—even wise—to avoid failure whenever possible.

But just as there is a tendency to romanticize suffering as though it were a thing to be sought out—or worse yet, enjoyed; so there can be a tendency to romanticize failure, as though it were just an alternative form of success.  Like suffering, however, failure can be transfigured, enriched, elevated in the light of the cross, which was, in its unique way, the fusion of humanity’s greatest failure with its greatest victory.

So…just as it was Christ’s vocation to die on the cross, so our sons and daughters may be called by God to fail from time to time.  In fact, I think it’s fair to say that they will all inevitably be called to fail on some level.  But the Good News (with a capital G and a capital N) is that, if we can teach them to unite that failure with Christ’s own suffering, it transforms into a tremendous good—not just an opportunity to grow, but a participation in the redemptive sufferings of Christ.

Secondly, I’d like to distinguish between failing and being a failure.  A parallel can be drawn, I think, between sinning and being a sinner.  When we say, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner,” we do not mean by that to define ourselves by our sins.  We are sinners, but our identity is in Christ.  Martin Luther used the analogy of a dunghill covered by snow to illustrate his theology of humanity’s utter depravity.  We’re all basically manure, he said, but Jesus hides this fact from God beneath the snow of his grace.  That is wrong.  It’s wrong because it does not acknowledging the fundamental goodness of God’s creation.  Our identity, in other words, is in our goodness—NOT in our sinfulness.  We may fail in our endeavors, but we are not failures at heart.  Not while we remain united to Jesus and his Church.  Which is why we can rejoice even when the hour looks darkest.

My best friend in grad school was a self-professed “bitter ex-Catholic,” and he used to say, “The problem with you Catholics is that when you’re happy, you’re happy; but when you’re miserable, then you’re really happy.”

Well, that’s true.  There’s something really beautiful about the way Christianity can transform suffering into joy.  Which is why we look to saints like Edward and Philipine for inspiration;  and why it is such a disappointment to hear people recite platitudes like, “You can do anything, so long as you put your mind to it.”  That’s just not true.  No one is omnipotent but God.

And Just once—just once, I’d like to hear a valedictorian say to his class, ‘You are all going to fail.  You will all, inevitably, have your hearts broken, experience loneliness, miss a major opportunity, lose a game, lose a job, lose some money, be abandoned and ridiculed, be humiliated and scorned.  You are destined for failure.  And that is very, very sad.  But it’s also ok because your God had his heart broken and was ridiculed by his friends.  Your God was humiliated and scorned and abandoned.  And that means that your dignity is not bound up with your success.  You are a child of God.  You have been divinized.  And in the end, when you lie on your deathbed as we all inevitably do, without trophies or diplomas or accolades or even your bodily health to comfort you, ALL that will matter is your existence as a child of God, and it will be enough.  That will be more than enough.  That will be everything.

LENT

           For forty days, the Church relives in the most literal sense the most sacred event in the history of the Cosmos, namely, the Resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.  In forty days, the Lord Himself will resurrect in our parish church.  Indeed, it is an event so sacred that, properly speaking, none of us should be there.  Or rather, none of us deserves to be there.  That is why, in the psalmest sings: “Your ways, O LORD, make known to me; teach me your paths, Guide me in your truth and teach me.”

            We have just started Lent.  That means that we get to spend the next forty days thinking about death, and that is why, on Wednesday, you came to Church and had your foreheads smeared with ash.  And while the minister applied this morbid reminder to your skulls, he said something along the lines of “Remember  you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

            So this week, we began our forty days of fasting, repentance, and self-denial. "This is the time of fulfillment,” says Saint John, “The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel."

            But why all the mourning and weeping, all the gloom and doom, all the self-denial and self-abasement.  Above all, why all the talk of death? 

St. Benedict said that a monk should reflect every day on the hour of his death.  And this isn’t bad advice for non-monks either.   St. Francis de Sales wrote in his Introduction to the Devout Life,  “Only one thing in life is certain.  You will die.  And sooner than you think.”

At St. Louis Abbey, we had this old monk named Br. Ed.  He was a genius. At the age of 76, he taught himself to play the harmonica and drew a cartoon version of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great.  He knew absolutely everything there was to know about bluegrass music, early American cinema, and Earnest Hemmingway.  In fact, his single most treasured possession was an autographed biography of Hemmingway that he had found at a used book store about twenty years ago.  He really loved this book.  And he kept it in a special place in his room.

In addition to all this, Br. Ed was also a total nut case.  He absolutely could not endure chaos, and if even one of his utensils was slightly out of line when he came to prayer, he could spew the most vile litany of expletives, the likes of which even the most seasoned sailor or criminal would be hard pressed to equal.  Br. Ed absolutely hated chaos, so he tended to avoid people whenever he could.  And he tended avoid me too.  In fact, I think it is not too great of an exaggeration to say that I was one of his all-time least favorite people ever.  And I can’t say I was one of his greatest fans either.  Now, shortly before I left for England three years ago, I celebrated my departure by cooking a big meal for the monks, the crowning achievement of which was a chocolate walnut torte.  I did this partly with Br. Ed in mind because I knew he liked his desserts.  As a matter of fact, I made three chocolate tortes, so that there would be plenty for everyone---and as a little gift to myself, I cut a piece off of one of them and placed it in the refrigerator wrapped in aluminum foil, with the intention of coming back for it the next morning, after all the cooking and baking and feasting was done.

So that’s what I did.  On Monday morning the next day, after we’d finished matins and lauds and breakfast, I made myself a big cup of coffee, and I found a good book, and I found a big comfy chair next to a window, and I went to the refrigerator to get my slice of chocolate torte.  But when I unwrapped it, I discovered that someone had gotten there first—indeed, had taken a bite out of my chocolate torte, wrapped it back up, and returned it to the refrigerator.  I can’t describe for you the depths of rage that I felt at that moment, contemplating my half-eaten, slobbered on slice of chocolate walnut torte.  And there was no doubt in my mind who had done it.  This work of colossal insensitivity had “Br. Ed” written all over it.
            So I went back to the kitchen, cut another slice of chocolate torte, wrapped it in foil just like the first one, and placed it in exactly the same place in the same refrigerator—BUT, not before soaking it in Lea and Pepper’s Super Hot Cajun Pepper Sauce.   The next morning, after we had finished matins and lauds and had our breakfast, I made my cup of coffee, found my spot by the window, and went back into the kitchen, there discovering, to my immense satisfaction, a whole spray of chocolate torte regurgitated on the floor next to the refrigerator.  Arguably, it was one of the most triumphant moments of my life.  A few weeks later, I left for Oxford.  Br. Ed didn’t even wish me goodbye. 

And when I came back from my studies three years later, Br. Ed was on his deathbed.  As far as I know, the chocolate torte incident had nothing to do with that, but I was suddenly struck with the realization that I could have been a little nicer to him.  And now, Br. Edward is dead.  He died that Christmas.  And he left me his biography of Hemmingway.

So this is why we are asked to reflect on death during this season.  Because thinking about death has a way of putting things in perspective.  There are people here today that you may never see again.  So this is a good time to tie up loose ends.  Make some apologies or say thanks to someone who has shown you kindness.  Above all, this is the time to make amends with God.  To set straight our spiritual lives so that we can look upon the day of our death with hope and joy.  So that we may not cringe when we hear the words which some angel will inevitably say to each one of us:  “"This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.”

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS

Good news:  Ignatius Press just offered me a contract for "Humility Rules".  This should be a proper book within a year or two.

Bad news:  I have to take down all the material that will be in the book.

So...I'm starting over again.  If you are looking forward to steps 5 through 12, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the book to come out.  In the meantime, this blog will have to take a new direction.  Exactly what it will look like, I have no idea.  But I'm open to suggestions…

Why wait? It's Advent!

     Here is a brief poetic meditation written by an early-twentieth century Greek novelist named Nikos Kazantzakis.  In this meditation, the author imagines a young man standing on a mountain overlooking Nazareth.  It’s the middle of the night.  It’s some time within the opening years of the first century A.D.  He describes what the young man sees:

    Little by little your eyes became accustomed to the darkness and you were able to distinguish a stern straight-trunked cypress darker than night itself, a clump of date palms grouped like a fountain and, rustling in the wind, sparsely leafed olive trees which shone silver in the blackness. And there on a green spot of land you saw wretched cottages thrown down now in groups, now singly, constructed of night, mud and brick, and smeared all over with whitewash. You realized from the smell and filth that human forms, some covered with white sheets, others uncovered, were sleeping on the rooftops.
    The silence had fled. The blissful uninhabited night filled with anguish. Human hands and feet twisted and turned, unable to find repose. Human hearts sighed. Despairing, obstinate cries from hundreds of mouths fought in this mute God-trodden chaos to unite, toiled to find expression for what they longed to say. But they could not, and the cries scattered and were lost in disjointed ravings.
     Suddenly there was a shrill, heart-rending scream from the highest rooftop, in the center of the village. A human breast was tearing itself in two: “God of Israel, God of Israel, Adonai, how long?” It was not a man; it was the whole village dreaming and shouting together, the whole soil of Israel with the bones of its dead and the roots of its trees, the soil of Israel in labor, unable to give birth, and screaming.”

     The young man, you find out eventually, is Christ himself—a teenager still, not yet ready to begin his ministry, but acutely, painfully sensitive to the longing and suffering of his people.  The God of Israel is there among them—but they don’t know it yet.
     I’ve always liked this image, and for a long time, I used to keep it on my nightstand next to my bed.  I like it because it gives me a sense of the longing I should feel during this time of Advent—indeed, the longing I should feel my whole life.  And so too there’s something so poignant about that image of these people—these suffering people—groaning and crying and waiting—and not realizing that they’re redeemer is already there.
        This is the way God chooses to come to us.  The birth of the Messiah is THE KEY EVENT IN ALL HUMAN HISTORY, and yet God wanted it to take place “so quietly that the world went about its business as if nothing had happened.”  A few shepherds noticed.  Those few magi noticed.  Herod noticed.  And then, apparently, the whole thing was forgotten.  For a time.
     In the end, therefore, waiting is not necessarily a BAD thing.  "I would like to beg you, dear Sir," writes Rilke in a famous passage from his "Letters to a Young Poet"  "...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.  John Keats wrote of “Negative Capability,” that is “when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”  ADVENT is the season when we learn to LOVE THE QUESTION.  Where we learn to love the waiting.
     So you see, there’s this simultaneous sense of urgency—that we need to answer God’s call and that we need him to answer our call—and soon.  “Answer me, Lord, when I call to you,” the psalmist says.  “Answer me, when I call to you”…there’s something so brazen about it that it’s charming.  There’s an urgency in the psalms.  But there is also this sense that we must learn to be patient, and wait—wait in joyful hope—find God’s answer in the waiting.
     In the monastery, we have an Advent tradition that goes back all the way to the fifth century—and probably earlier.  For seven days preceding Christmas, we sing a set of antiphons—short chants that precede the Magnificat at Vespers.  And we call these, “The Great O Antiphons.”  Seven meditations on the seven titles of our savior.  Each night we sing one more:  “O Wisdom….O Adonai…O Root of Jesse…O Key of David…O Rising Sun…O King…O Emmanuel.”  “O come!” we sing each night.  “Come and teach us, come and free us, come and deliver us…”  Each night, the chant shifts in emphasis, builds in urgency, until on the last night, December 23, we sing “O Emmanuel, you are our king and judge, the One whom the peoples await and their Savior. O come and save us, Lord, our God.”  And the O is drawn out…like a cry.  It has an almost Eastern ring to it.
          And here's the coolest part: the first letter of each title read backwards spells  out “ero cras”—“Tomorrow, I come.

Surprise! It's the apocalypse!

         At the St. Louis Priory school, the students use an adjective that is not used anywhere else in the world. That adjective is fatherpaulish—one word, pronounced “fatha-polish” with no “r” in “father” and “paul” pronounce “pole”.  It refers to any phrase, instruction, or admonition uttered in such a manner that the listener is simultaneously daunted, endeared and amused.  Words such as “puerile” “pusillanimous” “cantankerous” and “bum” (when used as anatomical designation) are regarded as distinctly fatherpaulish; as are expressions like “silly boy”, “are you quite finished?” and “Are you in my way?”

         I mention this because there is a phrase in the Gospel of Mark that I can only hear, pronounce, or even silently read with a fatherpaulish inflection.  In fact, whenever I read it, suddenly Jesus loses his beard and long hair, leans back, lowers his chin, clears his throat, and in a distinctly Oxford accent, he rumbles: “Learn a lesson from the fig tree.”   Then I imagine Jesus’ disciples, endeared and amused saying to one another, “That is going straight in the senior quotes.”

         Turns out, even though it may sound like a silly way to start a sermon, Christ is referring to something deadly serious: the end of the world—a time when the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken…” A dark and a frightening time in many ways not unlike our own.  In Paris right now, I imagine that it feels very much as though the sun is darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars have fallen from the sky.  But here’s the catch: at such a time there is also, mysteriously, great joy because the followers of Jesus know that some day soon they will see Him in all his “great power and glory” calling them out of this present darkness into the light of the Truth.

         But Christ warns us, “no one knows the day or the hour” that this will happen—“neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  And here again, in spite of myself, I find Father Paul Kidner creeping back into my sermon because this past summer, Father Paul showed me a photograph that perfectly sums up all the joy, fear,  apprehension and hope of Christ’s apocalyptic message.  It is a photograph of Father Paul dressed in full fishing gear, beaming, noble, exultant, holding a magnificent salmon that he has just pulled from an Alaskan river.  Behind him, in the bushes, about thirty yards away, peering at that salmon with ineffable longing, unbeknownst to Father Paul is a grizzly bear.

         The longer I look at it, the more layers of apocalyptic meaning I uncover.  Think, for example, of the salmon.  For its entire life, it has been anticipating its homecoming, only to find that death and home…are one and the same thing.  For the bear too there are apocalyptic implications, for his is an experience of unfulfilled longing and the anticipation of a destiny that is just beyond his reach.  For Father Paul, of course, it represents the culmination of countless hours of relentless perseverance and prayer, fused mysteriously and at the very last moment with a dawning awareness of his own mortality.

         The apocalypse is all these things: homecoming, judgment, mystery, fear, joy...  And even if we see it coming, Christ assures us that it will come as a surprise.  Saint Ephram wrote, “Jesus hid the time from us so that we would be on the watch and so that each of us might think that the coming will happen in his own lifetime.”  For Father Paul, it nearly did this summer.  For any one of us, it could occur today.  “You shall die,” wrote Saint Francis de Sales, “and sooner than you think.”  We will all in our lifetimes, see the end of the world.  You may long for it like Father Paul’s grizzly, rejoice in it like Father Paul himself, or find yourself like that salmon, helpless in the hands of a righteous god.  But even if you know the time and place of your homecoming, even if you work long and hard for it, fighting the tides and currents of this present world; even if you anticipate that homecoming with every fiber of your being; even then, "be vigilant because no one knows when the exact moment will be" when the creator will pluck you from the river of life and lift you, smiling for your last portrait.

         Year passes after year silently,” wrote Saint John Newman.  “Christ's coming is ever nearer than it was. …Resolve to be no longer beguiled by "shadows of religion," by words, or by disputings, or by notions, or by high professions, or by excuses, or by the world's promises or threats. Pray Him to give you what Scripture calls "an honest and good heart," and, without waiting, begin at once to obey Him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none… He is behind this material framework; earth and sky are but a veil going between Him and us; the day will come when He will rend that veil, and show Himself to us. And then, according as we have waited for Him, will He recompense us. If we have forgotten Him, He will not know us; but "blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He comes, shall find watching … He shall gird Himself, and make them sit down to eat, and will come forth and serve them. And if He shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants," [Luke xii. 37, 38.] May this be the portion of every one of us! It is hard to attain it; but it is woeful to fail. Life is short; death is certain; and the world to come is everlasting.

Your mom.

I have stilled my soul like a weaned child to its mother (Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 7).

Halloween, by Jean C. Wetta

    Last summer, when I went home to visit my family, we watched a really awful movie with Macaulay Culkin called “The Good Son.”  Surprisingly, it turned out to be a movie about a really bad son.  In fact, this particular son was a homicidal maniac; and at the end of the movie, his mother ends up holding him by his hand off the edge of a cliff.  In her other hand is a really nice kid.  She can’t hold on to them both, so she has to choose between them.
    After the movie, I turned to my mother and asked her, “If it were Dad and I hanging off that cliff and you had to choose, who would you hold on to?”  What really surprised me, was that she didn’t have to think about the answer.  She immediately said,"You.  So I took a different tack.  I said, well what if it was Dad or Kristen*?  But again the answer came instantly.  “I would choose my children over anything and anyone in the world.”
    Kids may find this hard to believe, but I’ve never met a mom who would answer otherwise.  I’ve never met a mom who even hesitated with her answer.  That is a terrible—a, terrifying—kind of love.
    There’s a painting in my home that my mother painted when I was a child.  It was Halloween, and my sister and I went out to go trick-or-treating, and some of the bullies on our block stole our candy.  My mother, an artist, painted this the day after.  It is a depiction of my sister and me in our Halloween costumes walking through a forest.  Behind us are the bullies, and just behind them, barely visible, their own bodies are among from the trees, suspended by their necks.
    That is a terrifying kind of love.  And while it may surprise some teenagers to hear that a mother could have such deep and violent emotions, I’ll bet it doesn’t surprise their moms at all.  Moms understand this formidable bond between mothers and sons.  This is why the most powerful prayer in the world is that of a mother for her child.  All we sons can do is be grateful and try to respect it.  Try to respect them.

   That said, there will come a day when, in spite of all that love, your mother will annoy you.  That’s okay.  It’s genetic.  If your folks didn’t annoy you, you’d end up living at home the rest of your life and then everyone would be miserable. Just try to remember about half-way through that multisyllabic “Mo-o-o-om,” that she really can’t help herself.  And after all, she is God’s icon of love to you.

---

*Kristen is my sister.

How I became a monk...

"The mind cries out, explains, demonstrates, protests; but inside me a voice rises and shouts, “Be quiet mind; let us hear the heart!”
                     --Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

    For those who really are interested to know why anyone would do this, I thought it best just to show you.  The following are short excerpts from my diary, starting in high school and ending in the monastery.

GALVESTON, TEXAS, 1989

March 20
    What will I do with my life?  I want to BE something!  I have all this energy and don’t know what to do with it.  I hope I find my place sooner or later...I’ve prayed for it, I’ve searched for it, but I can't find what I’m looking for.  I have this feeling and I don’t know what to do with it.  Sometimes I try to channel it into my studies, but as soon as I sit down with a book, I loose it.

ROME, ITALY, 1992
April 28
    Today I met some Benedictine monks.  I was impressed.  I remember this girl stared at them as they walked down the street.  The motorcycle policemen looked silly beside them.
    I sometimes feel that I would like to do something like that.  I would love to belong to the Church in that way.  I would love to wear those robes!  They say Vespers at 7:15.  Perhaps I’ll go.

May 19
    I just got a job in a monastery!  I can’t believe it.
    It’s such a quiet place.  I must remember to be quiet.  That will be difficult for me—a good thing, though...I think.  I wonder if I’ll like it.  This is such a foreign experience for me.  I’m not used to it, but I’m sure I’ll be able to cope.

May 20
    The monks keep asking me what brought me here.  I just don’t know.  Perhaps it was God...
    These guys are cool, but I could never be a monk.  And yet, living and praying and talking with them makes me so happy...if I were this happy all the time, who knows how my life might turn out?

May 21
    The monks wear a long black tunic with a hood and a piece of black cloth hanging down the front and back.  I still can’t figure out how they go to the bathroom...

May 23
    Dude, I could dig being a monk.  It’s just that I like girls way too much.  I mean it.

June 14
    You know, I’ve changed a lot over the last few years, but something has happened to me here in this monastery that has changed me.  Right now I’m not too sure what it is, but I feel as if a seed has been planted somewhere in my soul.  It grows every day like something living.  It’s not just confidence that I have gained; it is something greater.  I think I am beginning to feel what some people call “inner peace.”  The funny thing is that it hasn’t exactly made me happy.
Whatever the case, I think I am beginning to learn who I really am.  It disturbs me though because as I learn about myself, I am more aware of what I don’t know...the more peace I find within myself, the more I am aware of the parts of me that are not peaceful.  I am learning not just about myself, but about God and what he meant by creating me.  I have more confidence and peace than ever before in my life—but at the same time, I am more confused and unsettled than ever.

SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI, 1995
April 11
    Is the monastic life really for me?  I have a girlfriend!    Things get so complicated.  I was at peace no more than three weeks ago.  Now what?  Why, if I am to be a monk, would God send me a woman I could care about?
    A Benedictine!  To spend my life in search of God!  To wear the black habit!  To vow my life into bonds that free my soul!  To live each day in prayer, close to the heart of our Savior, close to His holy presence!
    Am I to be a monk?  Please, God, be more specific.  This is a crucial moment here.  Make your move, God.

April 16
    I am still in love with my girlfriend...but more confident that the monastery is my calling.  As much as I care for her, I still see this as the answer to my question of what to do with the rest of my life.

April 27
    I have such an awesome decision before me.  I have come extremely close to entering this monastery...but I just can’t make that final leap.  If I knew it was what God wanted, I would certainly trust Him to work things out.  But I’m just not sure...

June 15
    I’m sitting in my room wondering what I just did with my life.  I walked into the monastery this morning, found the abbot, and asked him if I could join his community.  I’m tired of messing around.  Very well.  I’m leaving for the monastery. I’m taking a risk.  I’m going for it—all out!  Look, I want to do the right thing.  Christ will not abandon me if I seek him honestly.  I will not be a Macbeth.  I’ll do it—for better or for worse.
    On second thought, I like my life the way it is.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  I am really happy—or at least I have been.  But all of a sudden, I feel so sad.
    No, I have chosen to begin.  I have chosen to stop making circles of my life and begin the search.  There comes a point when you have to move from fun to joy.  That’s what I’m doing now.  I’ll miss my girlfriend.  I will miss dance clubs and parties and flirty, wide-eyed girls, but there is a chance that something infinitely bigger and more beautiful is waiting for me.  Now I have to empty my heart.  Now I have to put my trust—all my trust in Jesus Christ.  If I seek him, he will not abandon me.  Am I strong enough for this?  No.  Is He?  Yes.  He will not give me a burden I cannot carry.  I can’t say I know where my future lies, but I know it’s time to grow up.
    The celibacy part is going to be tough.  Really tough.  And obedience ain’t gonna be no piece of cake either.

June 19
    My first night in the monastery.  Will this be my home for the rest of my life?
    Oh my God.  I’m scared again.  I’m depressed.  Can I be bound into this monotonous cycle of living?  PRAY-EAT-WORK-PRAY-EAT-WORK-PRAY-EAT-WORK...  I’m scared.  I’m depressed.  I’m tired, too.  And I want a girlfriend.

June 28
    I hope I have the strength to do this.  Lord, give me the strength.

June 29
    Last night I had a dream.  I don’t remember the details of it, but I know that in it, I met, or spoke with or discussed Saint Augustine and decided to name myself after him.  When I woke up, I pulled out his autobiography and read the following passage:  “So my two wills, one old, the other new, one carnal, the other spiritual, were in conflict with one another, and their discord robbed my soul of all concentration...I was split between them.”  This is exactly what I’ve been going through.  But Saint Augustine gave up everything in the end.  Will I?

August 28
    My first day in the habit.  People call me “Brother.”  The title feels strange.  Like I don’t deserve it.  The habit feels strange.  Like I don’t fit it.  I don’t know whether or not I’ll stay here more than a year, but I’ll try.  I am not so happy as I am at peace.  Does that make sense?

SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI, 1996
January  7
    Tomorrow I begin my novitiate.  Does it scare me?  It does.  But no matter what path I choose it will have pain.  Deep, agonizing pain.  If I have a girlfriend, it might be jealousy, if I have a wife, it might be boredom or fear for my children.  If I am celibate, it may be loneliness.  Whichever path I choose, pain is an inevitable consequence.  Because I am human.  I can’t spend my life running away from suffering.  But even God felt pain.  Jesus felt pain and loneliness and rejection.  Just like me.  “He who wishes to follow me must drink from the same cup as I.”
    I asked for it, didn’t I?  “Yep,” says Jesus, “Yep, you did.”  The cup of bitterness.  The cup of loneliness.  The cup of emptiness.

January 11
    I’ve made it through the first three days of novitiate.  So far so good.  Only 363 more days to go (It’s Leap Year!).  For once in my life, I have no say in what happens to me.  I am no longer in control.  For one year, I will shut up, keep my head down, and listen...
May 29
    I dreamt about surfing last night.  Surfing and having a girlfriend.  I can’t figure out which I miss more.  Still, I suspect I’ll stick around when my novitiate is up.  I am beginning to really love the silence.

June 12
    What has happened over the last month?  Nothing.  Everything.  I have never been so busy and so bored all at once.  Nor have I ever felt so jumbled up and at peace.  I’m sure that I am hard to live with.

July 4
    Sometimes I pray that I am not called to be a monk.  At moments like this I ask, “Why me?  Did I not have enough pain in my life that I had to go and add celibacy to my list of struggles?"  I’ll tell you what: nothing short of God Himself will keep me in this monastery.
    Fortunately, I think God Himself is keeping me in this monastery.  You can consider my presence here proof of His existence.

July 13
    Perhaps I will become a monk after all...

August 6
    Perhaps I should be more open to following the Holy Spirit instead of trying to squeeze my feet into the sandals of a saint.  Take it easy, Augustine.  Do what you're told and follow the will of God as you feel it in your heart.  You’re no saint, so just work with what you’ve got.  Amen.

August 8
    Lately, my doubts have grown more serious.  I told Mom and Dad I wasn’t going to stay.  There are other things I would like to do.  Go off to L.A.  Be a real writer.

August 15
    Who would have thought I would wind up in a monastery!  Where will I be a year from now?  Is ambition really such a bad thing?  Even after 14 months in a cloister, I still want so many worldly things.  My thoughts are all questions these days.

August 21
    How many days have I wasted away in sin?  This monastery seems to have brought out the worst in me.  But then, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?  To flush out the demons so I can meet them head-on.
    My most recent demons:
    Demon #1: Whining:“Why are they picking on me?”
    Demon #2: Shifting the Blame: ”He shouldn’t have said it that way...”
    Demon #3: Tepidity: “I just do what I’m told.”
    Demon #4: Self-Deception: “But this is prayer for me...”

August 24
    I have been here over a year and I am still not used to waking up at five a.m.  I need something to end this torturous indecision.  Faith, perhaps.  But since I obviously don’t have enough of that, I’ll ask for a miracle instead.

August 26
    Still no miracle.

August 28  The Feast of St. Augustine
    I had a dream this morning while I was meditating.  I dreamt that I was standing in the middle of a small room.  I was surrounded by vicious, snarling monsters--anthropomorphic and grotesque.  They approached me on every side, poised to devour me.  But instead of defending myself, I lifted my hands to heaven.  And the monsters were whisked away.
    Weird.

October 1,  The Feast of St. Therese of Liseux
    I have made my decision.  I will join the monastery.

October 8
    Today, the novices had a talk with Patrick Barry, the abbot of Ampleforth.   He warned us against constantly “looking over the wall.”  “The modern world is such a world of options,” he said, “that we find it almost impossible to commit to anything.  But doesn’t it all boil down to trust?  Isn’t that the most fundamental thing expected of us?  Some day, you will think of changing your mind, but will trust Him instead.
    Stick to the facts.  Forget your imaginings about the future.  Picture yourself the blind man before the Pharisees: ‘All I know is that I was blind, and now I see.’  Stop arguing with God and trust him.”

October 21
    A beautiful day.  The air is so cool and clean.  Our trees are starting to blush.  It will be winter, then Christmas, and then I will vow my life to God.  The die is cast.  I trust Him.  I will live for Him.
    I feel good.  It’s not the kind of good you feel when you tell a funny joke.  It’s not the kind of good you feel on a first date.  It’s not the kind of good you feel when you hit a home run, or catch a clean wave, or ace a test.  It’s the kind of good that sort of wells up slowly from within so that you hardly realize how good you’re feeling.  Like how Jeremiah found God not in a thunderstorm or earthquake, but in a gentle breeze.

October 29
    We had a “motivational speaker” in our church two nights ago.  He asked, “Is there anyone here who is truly happy?  Is there anyone here who just cannot imagine being any happier?  Of course not.”  I was a little embarrassed because I had almost raised my hand.  I am truly happy.  I can’t imagine being any happier.  As far as I can tell, I am doing God’s will.  What more could I want?

November 15
    What have I learned from my novitiate?  That suffering is the key to real joy.  Strange as it may seem, I could not find peace of mind or heart until I learned (as Saint Benedict had commanded in the Rule) to "accept humiliations joyfully."  Through them, I have participated in Christ's passion.
    This story is over.  The end of my novitiate.  The end of my beginning.  As my Latin professor used to say, “Now there’s a story with a happy middle.”

LAUS TIBI DOMINE