Why I fret no more

The long story begins early sophomore year.

I hadn't started singing till sophomore year musical in high school, and I never sang in a choir until senior year. But I learned enough on the fly to become serviceable, and my combo of personality and ability landed me a spot in this superb choir at college. As a member of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, status quo at the time dictated that I could effortlessly apply for and be accepted to Notre Dame Vision as a musician/mentor.

This summer program brings 1000+ kids to Notre Dame in four one-week sessions to explore their faith in small groups and as a big group, by living on campus and eating in the dining halls. It needs 60 students to work as mentors, 15 or so serving as music mentors, carrying the load in providing music all day and night.

Naturally, since most-every Folkhead that had offered themselves to the program thus far had found a summer job serving the kiddies, I figured it was my time to climb aboard and join the team. I put the usual solid work into my application and essays and waited for my audition to come, the last Friday before fall break. It was a loud Thursday night, one of the biggest party nights of each year, that included our music director telling us Folkheads at choir rehearsal that she anticipated not getting to take all of us to her band, and Friday morning brought the stress and frustration of The Gr8-Man Flood (lest we forget). I dragged my rear end to the audition and vocally did pretty "meh." The concurrence of circumstances left me on the outside looking in, given the "wait-list" spot that would never turn into an offer.

Bitterness was the primary reaction. It lasted for a good few weeks. I looked at the tenors who were accepted, and I wondered how they leapfrogged me to snag those spots in the group. They were Folkheads, too, but newbies. I wondered what they did better than me, knowing full well that their musical abilities likely exceeded mine by a solid margin. Delightfully, two of these guys are now in the handful of best friends I still carry with me from Notre Dame. Good one, God.

Eventually my bitterness was processed. It didn't evaporate; rather, it transitioned into peaceful perspective. I was really coming into my own vocationally, taking more and more strongly to my theology classes and knowing that I had chosen the right academic path, one that was forming me in faith, in reason, in understanding, and also in my potential ability to minister in my Church. I was discovering the specificities of my call, and it was becoming sharply clear.

Music was certainly a gift, but it wasn't one of my primary gifts. It was meant to be part of the equation but not the thing I do.

It was humbling and slightly frustrating. I had cruised pretty comfortably to this point. I started the musical journey as the sophomore who showed up to high school musical auditions because his girlfriend tried out, getting a part just for my maleness and ability to carry a tune. I made it from a 5-line-character to a featured part the next year and then a supporting lead as a senior. In my one year in chorus, I became the section leader and the go-to guy for my director to consult on tricky rhythms. Then at college, I got accepted to a competitive choir in my first week on campus. Now in this crossroadsy moment, I had finally hit a wall, a limit, a point at which my gifts might have been maxed out.

It's not that I couldn't continue improving my voice, my ear, my blend, my ability to read music, my capacities as a music minister; it was that my progress had to be halted to give me the opportunity to refocus myself.

At Vision, the final speaker encourages everyone gathered to reflect on non-physical compliments they have received and to compare those with the times they feel most alive in order to gain clarity on vocation. The aftermath of my Vision rejection did just this for me. Friends offered the usual consolation, affirming my singing voice and wondering why I wasn't selected. This was nice, though probably some pity rather than truth (I was simply was not one of the best tenors to audition!). The key was when they asked me about my application:

Assuming I would be a slam-dunk for music mentor, I applied only in that capacity rather than doing the double app for small-group mentoring. My friends were shocked that I didn't apply to be a small-group mentor, a mentor who works entirely with the participants rather than splitting time between musicals/liturgical music and small groups. They assured me I'd be a slam-dunk for that, and it really made me feel solid again (though stupid for not applying as such the first time). The conclusion to that piece is that I worked as a small group mentor-in-faith in Summer 2010 and again as a veteran mentor in Summer 2011. And it was the perfect fit for me.

But so continued the ongoing struggle to find the context for whatever gifts I did have in music. I struggled through the usual ebbs and flows of wanting solos in choir, then scorning solos, and then delighting in getting a few toward the end of my four years in the group. I struggled with being friends with brilliant musicians who could play by ear, jam out on guitar, and harmonize ad lib, oscillating between serious jealousy of their gifts and contentment that I had never genuinely desired those kinds of things. I found peace with the vocals because I hadn't been a singer for long.

But I had been playing instruments since 3rd grade. I knew most of musical inclination came from that. I knew I could do that well. At least, I used to...

By early senior year, I was at the brink. I knew I had to pick something up and get back to playing music. I had the capability and the potential, and given my strong grasp on college academics and life balancings, I had the time. I knew I had to pick up piano or guitar because I wanted something that was practical, able to be used and played in commonplace, not just in formal situations and not just when you bring the instrument with you. I remember going to see a friend play an acoustic set, slightly reluctantly, going just to be in solidarity with another friend who wanted to get out. That rendition of Mumford and Sons put me over the edge. I needed a guitar.

I approached my best buddy Kurt, who proudly loaned me his six-string baby for a few weeks while I waited until Thanksgiving break to acquire a guitar of my very own, from a high school friend who never got around to learning to play. I struggled my way through the basic chords, studying my CAGED diagram until I could do it by memory, and laboriously practicing a few simple songs over and over - a lot of Wolves by Josh Ritter (D Em G) and then Please Come Home by Dustin Kensrue, which continues to be my go-to song as it's the one I've played the most and for the longest.

I made my way through the first obstacles, learning that much like learning to ride a bike, you just fall a bunch of times during your many attempts and then eventually you can just ride. Within a few months, I could sight read four-chord songs and a lot of stuff in basic keys. I was just looking to be able to play the songs I liked and to be able to pitch in during sing-song jam sessions with songs that people would enjoy hearing and singing along with.

I was settling into learning a gift that had been initiated off of my own desires and my own drive. I was doing it how I wanted to do it, without responding to any pressures in any way. I continued playing and practicing and improving over the next year, getting much better during my extended practice sessions while living in Ireland and playing on a guitar worth more than my bank accounts.

The social pressures set in when we'd end up in an Irish sing-song. Everyone there - regardless of what they let on in their Irish bashful sheepishness - can sing pretty solidly, knows tons of songs, has a pretty good ear, and can probably play at least one instrument, if not more. I felt regularly inadequate and often anxious, knowing I'd be called on to play my "party piece" as a guitar was hastily moved into my hands. I'd do my thing, often missing on some chord changes, not landing my fingers cleanly, or screwing up the order of the song somehow. And I never played them a song they knew because my repertoire was stuff I liked. I was always affirmed solidly enough, but I could never shake the feeling that I had been an interruption to the steady momentum of the evening to that point, momentum that had to start fresh after I took the night off course a bit.

We were often called on as a community - the four of us Americans - to sing a song together. I struggle a cappella and can't settle in well without the support of at least a solid starting note. We'd muddle through Down to the River to Pray and be applauded all the same, but anxiety accompanied that inevitability as well. I'd always just want it to be over.

Once, we had good advance notice - we were invited (expected) to contribute a song to the St. Patrick's concert at the Notre Dame Dublin party, so my only request to the group was that we pick a song well ahead of time and practice it to mitigate my anxiety with sight-reading and slapped-together performance. This is a tough sell to two music majors who are proficient on piano and vocals and a fellow who's been playing guitar since early puberty. We dragged our feet on picking a song and slapped together Falling Slowly in time to provide a decent rendition. However, I was unsettled the whole night, as was abundantly clear with my aggravated and repeated requests for us to slow down during our brief rehearsal, struggling to move my left hand at the proper pace to pluck out the notes.

The peace began to come in a stronger, fuller dose when we made concrete plans to establish Clonard Parish's youth group - a bunch of 12-18 year-olds who'd come sing a Saturday night mass once a month and stay after to hang out and talk about faith by discussing a movie or TV show we'd screen. We'd have 3 rehearsals ahead of time, so I knew this could be the chance to make my first public contribution to liturgical music on guitar. I'd have sufficient chance to practice and get comfortable. It was a great decision. I even got to play 2nd guitar and just strum simply behind the piano and lead, a comfortable place for me to plug in and offer what I could.

I had found an appropriate balance, a way to offer my gifts in a complementary way. I was giving what I had without being counted on to be the best or to be the lead. I was finding happiness in my own playing, learning songs I'd always loved and gaining more and more skills to expand my abilities and repertoire. And here I had found a proper entry point for what I can ably do to give glory to God, to make a return to Him for all He had given me.

And last weekend, I finally found the zone, the happy place where I could offer myself and my gifts in proportion to my ability.

I was invited to lead the evening prayer time by a set of our freshmen retreat leaders at the high school where I work. Faculty members are tasked with offering a reflection on prayer, a Scripture passage and/or song, and the guidance for a meditation. I decided to pull the Parable of the Lost Son from Luke and then play Please Come Home. It went wonderfully, and I kept my guitar out to fill in the space around their spoken, shared prayers. I plucked out a quiet and sparse rendition of Fred Jones, Part 2 by Ben Folds followed by a bit of Rainslicker (keyed down) by Josh Ritter as the background to their spoken prayer.

It was smooth, easy, and appropriate. It was my contribution made on my offer. I was doing something that was fitting, glorifying God, and firmly within my abilities.

It's hard to describe the rightness of this simple contribution. Tracing the trajectory of my wrestlings with music, I hope it shows where I came from and where I am. I went from an overly presumptive amateur to a self-taught, humble instrumentalist. I went from someone struggling to understand how his gifts could minister to others to someone who put them into right action.

I found a place where, for others, I could peaceably and joyfully give musical voice to the love and presence of God.

Whatshouldwecallme?

As you may have noticed from earlier posts, I'm a big fan of our names. There's a significance to our first names. Not to belittle our family names, but our first names are given to us at baptism as our Christian Names - these are the names by which God knows us and calls us (see Isaiah 43!).

One my favorite things about our names is how effectively they can become adjectives. So often, I find that my friends are possessors of such unique behaviors, senses of humor, and characteristics that simple adjectives no longer work really well for them. "Funny," "quirky," "awkward"... they just don't quite capture the essence as well.

I've found that when you have friends like the ones I tend to gather to myself, the only word that works to describe them is their own name. I'd be honored if someone reacted to my tendency to burb excessively loudly or wax theologically or dress in an unusually high quantity of orange or Chicago-sports-related clothes with "wow, what a Dan thing to do."

Why, thank you!

I love that my friends are strange and unique. And I don't think I'm special in having that kind of friend. I think most, if not all, of us possess this kind of one-of-a-kind-ness. However, not every friendship takes vulnerability and honesty to heart in a way that allows both people to see each other for their true selves. That's where I believe I'm spoiled - I have friends who bare their souls and hearts to me in a way that let's me see them pretty close to the way God sees them (with heaven's eyes!). I see their personalities in the context of the gifts God gave them and how their gifts are meeting the needs of the world around them. It gives me the chance to say, "That's so Jason!" or "What a Steph thing to do!" or "How Kurt of you!"

I love the way in which someone's name comes to be so intimately identified with my love for them, invoking good times, memories, laughter, and love. Their name carries a weight to it that isn't heavy but joyful. And the fun of using someone's name as an adjective to describe themselves invokes all of these good things.

I really find my friendships to function as a kind of organic, peer-led spiritual direction. My conversations and shared experiences with them add up to a beautifully positive influence in forming my faith. Jesus has a place in what we share, and the Holy Spirit operates through our interactions and carries our prayers back and forth between each other and God.

How can we describe this life we live? What word can we assign to a life of faith, of companionship, of breaking bread with one another, whether in person, over a Skype call, or in the Eucharist?

We follow the example of the God-who-became-man, of the Word-made-flesh. We live our lives in the penultimate chapter of salvation history: God gathered a people to Himself and led them by pillar of fire and by the Law and the Prophets; then, God became man and walked among us, living, serving, suffering, dying, and RISING from the dead; and now, God established a Church, a social community in which we live, love, and serve with one another and with Christ. We are led by the Holy Spirit, having been founded by Christ and on Christ.

We are Christians.

Jesus shares Himself with us fully. By dying on the cross, He opened salvation to any who come to Him. He comes to us by changing bread and wine into His Body and Blood. He provides us such a unique example and inspiration. How do we describe this beauty and joy!? We use the very name of the One who is all of it.

Christ.

We can only define ourselves as being Christians. We can only become fully aware of the great potential and love of this God, the God who became man and who inspires us with His Spirit, by calling ourselves after Him.

And our hope endures as Christians. We hope that by becoming what we receive - Christ really with us in the Eucharist - that we can be as "other" Christs. Taking on his name not just in baptism or religious affiliation but completely onto our persons. And in the end, Christ will gather His people to Himself: The New Israel, not just ethnic Jews but any and all whose freedom has led them to follow the Christian example.

All in the name of Jesus Christ.

Our Inseparable Communion

Late last week, I was asked a simple but profound question by one of my students: "What's the biblical basis for saints?" I had just taken the class on a local tangent to the process of sainthood, pairing the complex and formalized process of canonization alongside the simple understanding of a saint, which I explain as "someone we believe is bound for Heaven or already in Heaven." I wanted to get to the bottom of this, both for my student and for me (and all of you readers!).

My cursory searching pointed me first to the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus, told by Luke in 16:19-31. The spark-notes version is that the Rich Man ignores Lazarus, a poor man who lives at his door. When they die, Lazarus goes to Heaven while the Rich Man goes to hell, where he can see the beggar in Heaven. He begs Lazarus to intervene with his living relatives and warn them against selfishness. The indication here is that those in Heaven do have some capacity through which they can communicate with the still-living.

This link between the living and the dead-in-Christ is reinforced by the beauty of Romans 8, imagery wonderfully enshrined in the amazing hymn Jesus Lives (arranged by Fr. Chrysogonous Waddell, o.c.s.o and performed by the Notre Dame Folk Choir). Romans 8:38-39 tells us, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

We believe that Christ connects all those in heaven with the souls of purgatory and the living on earth; this is the communion of saints, the amazing body bound by Jesus the Lord. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes this beautiful mystery: "[I]t is that the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the constant faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods." This exchange is manifested in our prayers, which rise from our hearts to our saintly brothers and sisters gathered to the Lord.

Furthermore, Jesus tells us that He will be seated at the right hand of the Father, an image in Revelation that is foreshadowed earlier in the Bible; e.g. Romans 8:34, where we learn Christ is at God's right hand interceding for us. Similarly, those who die in Christ realize eternal life in Him through His Resurrection, which redeemed us, and we believe that they share this place with Jesus in some similar capacity. Revelation 5:8 speaks of "elders" bowed down before the Lamb (Christ) with bowls of incense that hold "the prayers of the holy ones," so they certainly offer prayers though they are already in heaven. On faith, we say they can offer our prayers with/as their own. Revelation 8:3-4 describes similar imagery.

James 5:16 adds, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful." Here, we are encouraged to be praying for each other, inspired by the efficacy of the righteous persons' prayers. This doesn't explicitly indicate heavenly intercession, but the previous Scripture passages suggest a continued capacity for interaction and intercession by the holy dead. Finally, Job 5:1 reads, "Call now! Will anyone respond to you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?" Perhaps, this is an exhortation for people to invoke the help of the saints in heaven?

The communion of saints is certainly grounded in Scripture, and the references to this mystery have been unpacked and reflected upon by our great Tradition. I am not accomplished enough in constructing doctrinal argument from Scripture, but there are some nice passages out there to uphold our belief in the communion of saints and intercessory prayer. I find great consolation in Romans 8 as the inspiration to remember that nothing separates those who are united in Christ. Whether dead, living, or being purified, Christ has bound us inseparably, and we who live in Him live in Him and with each other forever.

Main sources:

New Advent

Wikipedia (for bible passages' chapter-verse)

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Veil Is Gone

"Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom." -Matthew 27:50-51

I've been in Palm Desert for a month now, and to use a worn-out expression from my first months in Ireland, I'm "all settled in." I've found my new stomping grounds for Sunday mornings, too. I go to Sacred Heart Parish every week, enter through the parking lot doors, veer to the left, and grab a spot for myself in the pews nearish the pianist and cantor, turning my head a little to the right, looking toward the sanctuary at a slight angle.

The masses I've gone to at various times of day are delightfully packed, with families of varying ages and the usual dosage of gray-haired faithfuls. The mass is well-executed, most often by our dear pastor, Fr. Lincoln, a man who often cites his switching from Protestantism to Catholicism earlier in his life (I say switching because you can't really convert religions unless you change religions, according to sociologists). He makes an explicit welcome to non-Catholics each week before he begins the Opening Rites of the mass, and his zeal for the Catholic faith poured through his Bread of Life homilies the past few weeks, when he emphatically upheld the Real Presence of Christ in our Eucharist as something evident in Jesus' words in John's Gospel.

One of Fr. Lincoln's diligently practiced conventions comes after the end of the Eucharistic Prayer. Before inviting the gathered faithful to pray the Lord's Prayer together, he issues another invitation. Fr. Lincoln invites all the children in the congregation to join him in the sanctuary to pray this cherished prayer together. For those who have the patience to wait a minute while the children make their way up there, this is just awesome.

At the 9:30am mass, a loyal mother takes her special needs son by the hand and slowly escorts him to the altar, taking her time, even if they don't make it before the prayer starts. This morning, another special needs boy was helping serve the mass and hastily made his way to Father's side, praying the words loudly and proudly. There are big sisters toting little brothers; moms nudging kids toward the altar; kids waiting until halfway through the prayer, not wanting to be the first ones; or this morning, a boy from the family next to me making his way toward me down the pew and gently saying, "Excuse me, sir."

It's just awesome.

I was reflecting on the visual of this beautiful manifestation of Jesus' words in the Gospel:

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” -Matthew 19:13-14

Here is a consecrated man, our priest, acting in persona Christi to bring the Word-Made-Flesh among us through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he is literally physically emulating the action of Jesus in the Mass. This is the tearing of the veil of the sanctuary.

When Jesus died on the cross, St. Matthew tells us that grand events took place: Creation even knew its Savior had died - the earth quaked; darkness fell. The Centurion professes the true identity of Christ, the Son of God. Also, the veil is torn that separates the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple, that space reserved for sacrifice by high priests. No longer is the awesome, profoundest presence of God confined to one special space or meant only for the select few. Christ brought the Love and Salvation of God to everyone. Anyone who confessed the faith, as the Centurion at the foot of the cross did, could know God and be with Him forever.

Some people may prefer that the Mass just continue from the Great Amen straight into the Our Father, and maybe it would be smoother and more apt to the order of the Mass. For me, I'll enjoy this gesture as an extension of the Mass that exists within its order. I'll relish the lack of the veil, the fact that no barrier exists between us and God beside our own stubborn wills. As long as we practice reverence and seek Christ in our hearts, He is there for us, out in the open, without a curtain to give us pause in our return to Him. These children come to Him, giving us a beautiful example as they walk unabated toward the God who calls.