Going Through A Phase

Yesterday at Mass, I really honed in on the Body and Blood of Christ, as our celebrant raised them up and called us to "behold." Often, a priest will break the main host into several wedge-shaped pieces and choose one to elevate; other times, the priest may break the main host just in half and overlap the pieces to make the classic/traditional mandorla shape. Yesterday, Fr. Peter just held up half of the big host, by itself.

I don't know if it's the fact that I'm generally a geek for astronomy and space, or that the day before my fiancee had treated me to an afternoon at the Adler Planetarium, but I immediately thought of my old friend, the lunar phases.

You see, when you look up at the sky and see the moon, most of the time, you rarely see the whole thing. You'll catch a sliver, maybe a half (actually called quarter moon), or maybe a bigger chunk. But when you see the moon, at whatever proportion, how do you know if it's getting bigger or smaller?

This moment for me was a reinforcement of the power of optimism and the importance of trying to see things from the right perspective. From my view, if the half-circle host was the moon, it'd be getting smaller, on its way to new moon, which is invisible to the naked eye; from his view, it'd be getting bigger, on its way to full moon, the brightest, most visible stage.

Sometimes we can get distracted from the good around us, in our lives, in our friends and family. We care less about what we have and what's going well; instead, we look for and focus on the things going wrong, the things we don't have, the things that could be going better.

One of the biggest changes in my life from this year to last is time. Last year, I worked a great job with plenty of after-hours demands - retreats, coaching (totally elective/optional), and general hangouts at work - but then I simply made the 8-minute drive to my apartment complex, complete with a nice apartment, pool/hottub a 1-minute walk away, and full weight room for my regular use. My "disposable" time was very much flexible toward exercise, reading, guitar-playing, Netflix-watching, and more.

This year, the work demands persist similarly, but now I make a 28-mile commute that piles up to over an hour's drive coming home. I'm a part-time graduate student, which requires going in for class about one night a week and keeping up with reading and papers. Now, I'm not long-distance with my fiancee, so we get to see each other most days rather than boxing Skype time into our days.

The only frustration I entertain is that for my commute, because its only saving grace to me is that it gets me to the job I think I'm called to work right now. I try to redeem it with phone calls to friends, but that only works on later drives home. Even as the commute drains my energy, even as homework looms when I'm tired and want to unwind, even as I decide I need to give up coaching for this part of my life, I fight back the temptations to be disappointed with my time.

Other than that, I regularly re-confront the reality that these are all good things. It's good to live 2 blocks from my fiancee rather than 2,000 miles. It's good to have a scholarship for graduate school to continue my formation and make me a better minister. It's good to have a job, period, let alone a job in which I have a relatively blank check to create Campus Ministry from the ground up. The commute can cramp my style, and the constraints of my current life my keep me away from coaching.

But things are pretty damn good! It's an invitation to be conscious and intentional about my time. It's a challenge to be patient and humble. And it's up to me to keep a steady rhythm of prayer and sacraments to keep that current flowing.

The moon in the sky is only visible to us in as much as it is reflecting the light of the sun based on its position relative to earth. When you look at the moon, if the light is on the left (shadow on the right), then it is waning, or shrinking; if the light is on the right (shadow on the left), then it is waxing, or growing. The moon has no light of its own but works to reflect the light of something greater.

From my priest's point of view, the host-as-the-moon was waxing. From where I sat, it was waning. From the side transepts, they may not have seen much at all. It's all a matter of perspective. God is present, but our viewpoints and the sight lines we create, or neglect to create, can help or hurt us in seeing His presence.

As my fiancee and I left Mass, I saw an old friend just outside the door who lived nearby but I failed to reconnect with in my year in Chicago so far. It was utterly delightful to see her again and trade numbers so we can catch up for real. And as we chatted, another friend from college tapped me on the shoulder to say hello and congratulate us on our engagement. A simple evening of Mass "waxed" the Body of Christ last night, not just in my heart through Word and Sacrament, but through loving encounters with old friends.

Is shadow growing more and more to overtake the Light in your life? Is the Light in your life waning or waxing? What phase is the brightness of Christ taking in your life right now?

May I Have Your Attention Please?

We don't pay attention to much. Whether it's due the proliferation of our technology, especially that which we can hold in our hands, the advent of social media, or just a cultural or generational shift, we're pretty picky and choosy about what we pay attention to.

How many tabs are open on your browser right now? How many applications do you have running on your laptop or mobile device? Is your TV on too? How many electronic devices are within 10 feet of you right now? At best, this is productivity; often, this "multi-tasking" is scatter-brained and dilutive. Sometimes I have to stop myself at work as I realize that I've stopped reading an e-mail halfway through because I pulled up a Word-doc that I need to edit but then left my table to go grab something  else from my desk. I try to get myself to slow down and do one task at a time before my focus gets split across several things. (Even while writing this blog post, I was shifting apps back to my work e-mail and thinking about what polo size to order from our school secretary who is organizing our apparel for next year.)

Even when we do pay attention, it's often carefully crafted. If we want to watch a show, we DVR it or pull it off OnDemand instead of watching it live. If someone wants to show us a funny YouTube video, we drag our feet, wonder how long it's going to be, and try to figure out why this person thought this was so funny in the first place. Personally, I have a bad habit of starting leave a room before my conversation with a person is over; I start to move toward the door as I wrap up what I'm saying, regardless of whether or not the other person is finished.

One of the worst ways I see this is in the teenagers I work with. Most often, I'm in front of them to issue an invitation, welcome them to Mass, or occasionally, to lead a lecture/discussion in the classroom. Their blankness of face and lack of eye contact is just a baseline - that's not unique to the traits of any particular generation or culture. Rather, it's an external sign that can't be read into too deeply to discern interest levels; people who look engaged are probably interested, but people who look glazed over aren't necessarily checked out.

The tough part is when they're faced with a question - whether obvious and based on information presented just moments earlier or a deeper, thought-provoking question that invites personal insight - they're largely unresponsive. They will stare right through you and offer no verbal response. Occasionally, after some teeth pulling, they'll answer; or they'll catch up with you later and thank you for what you said. But in the moment, their apparent apathy is profound.

Now I know to some extent, this is a timeless issue that can be found anywhere. But here I think it can be tied to a particular trend in modern society: we insist on our attention being earned at our specific consent. We almost refuse to simply be attentive. Something has to draw us in for us to care.

I was raised to pay attention and give respect to anyone who is talking, whether directly to me or addressing a larger group. I'm not sure if it's because I'm a child of the 80s/90s or because of my parents, but when someone talks, I listen. I'm certainly guilty of texting while conversing or spacing out at times, but my default is that others deserve my direct attention and eye contact.

The trend I see and hear from students at assemblies, in classrooms, and on retreats is that they only pay attention when they feel like it. If something makes them laugh a certain way, if they are in control and not beholden to anyone else's directives, if they have little structure and set their own course, then they are much more attentive. When it comes to listening to readings or a homily at Mass, to following a teacher's lecture (especially in non-math/non-science when you don't need to follow along as closely), or to hearing announcements or instructions, they just don't give a hoot. And then they follow up with questions specific to the things that they spaced out on. If they're not in charge of themselves, they won't give their attention and energy.

This behavior troubles me because sometimes I'm most impacted and formed by things that I'm not expecting. For example, this past semester, I was simultaneously frustrated and enlightened by my Christology class for graduate school.

I struggle with edgy, radical theology, and our professor heaped on liberation theologists, feminists, and authors who were nearly silenced by the Vatican. At the same time, he provided us reading from encyclicals, from traditional theologians, and from the CDF, specifically their replies to these radical writers. The dialogue that ensued in our forums, in my short papers, and in my term paper brought me to a much more diverse understanding of Christ that definitely broadened my foundation beyond basic Chalcedonian (orthodox) thought.

If I had looked at the syllabus and dismissed these new voices rather than giving them patient attention, I could not have learned much. I would have denied myself potential growth. I would have missed out on growing closer to God.

So when you get to Mass and loathe that a particular priest that you don't prefer is saying Mass, we need to get over ourselves and pay attention even more closely to his homily. When a friend or family member or co-worker sends an email or message or talks to you, increase your patience and search for God working in that moment. When your roommate is watching a particular show or sport that doesn't thrill you, sit down and watch with them anyway.

Let go of the need to be in control all the time and embrace the opportunities to learn from someone, something, or somewhere unexpected. God is always looking for us, giving us opportunities to love one another in His name. Don't miss out on an opportunity to love just because you don't feel like paying attention!

Finding Solidarity Anew

For the third and final time this school year, I took a group of high school upperclassmen on a service-learning immersion field trip to Chicago that I call The Margins (search #TheMargins or @BNICM on Twitter for photos and tweets from our trips). Across two days, we...

• Learn. Visiting a residency and support home for at-risk youth to learn about their ministry and see their setup; visiting a Catholic university as well as a Newman Center at a state school to learn about how we can live our faith in college.
• Experience. We undertake an urban immersion exercise in which we imagine we're homeless and must walk a neighborhood to decide what to do to eat, sleep, warm up, and go to the bathroom; we stay over in the city, sleeping on the floor in safe but simple lodging.
• Serve. We assist with the setup and distribution at a food bank and pitch in as server/cleaners at a soup kitchen.

The whole trip attempts to expose students to organizations, experiences, and service sites that bring them close to life on the margins. After meeting these people face to face, talking with them for moments, and seeing their dispositions and context, it becomes harder to ignore the realities in our culture, and inspires the students to consider greater action. These trips are perhaps the most enjoyable part of my job. It combines a family road trip with the profundity of direct service as well as the impact of a well-informed and actively processed spiritual experience.

This past Monday, I was making final preparations and confirming all the details for our Tuesday-Wednesday trip. As I finished folding laundry and packing late at night, I got an email from a student who had gone on the last trip, linking me to a news story. On her trip, we had added a new site visit to a community center in a rough neighborhood on Chicago's south side where we learned about peace circles, reconciliation, and the intensity of neighborhood and gang boundaries and its ramifications.

On Monday afternoon, a teenage girl, upset with another girl over social media activity and a boy, shot and killed her rival. It has since emerged that she obtained the gun from her uncle, who willingly bus-ed to meet her and give her the gun. When she pointed to fire, the gun jammed. She gave it to her friends who quickly fixed the mechanisms. She took the gun back and successfully fired shots, wounding her rival, lethally, in the back and another girl in the arm. The shooting occurred about 5-6 blocks from the site we had planned to visit.

Instinctively, I wanted to go. This whole trip is about bringing students face-to-face with life on the margins and the people that society forces to live life like this. Here was a potent, real example of life, and what an impact the realness of this would have.

Then, thinking more slowly, and talking to smarter people than me (my fiancee and my brother), I realized that I couldn't bring 7 sons and daughters into this dangerous of a situation. Thinking back to our driving tour of the neighborhood, the threat of senseless violence and the starkness of gang and ethnic boundaries weighed heavy. Liability and safety concerns had to win out, so I called the chaplain at the community-reconciliation ministry center to tell him that we weren't coming.

I'll tell you - I love tensions. I enjoy when two competing forces have to be confronted and sorted out, when moderation, shades of grey, and compromise have to be found amid a culture that so often demands extremes. In this case, up-close solidarity butted heads with safety. Could the risk be taken that retribution, copy-cat violence, or follow-up gunfire wouldn't happen during our time in the neighborhood? Could we go into the area to try to learn about the realities of violence in these people's lives knowing that subsequent violence was likely to recur nearby?

As usual, the best answer was a both-and, not an either-or. Solidarity isn't checked at the door. We don't need to be up-close and personal in order to reflect and understand. Though such ostensible encounters are deeply impactful, in this case, we had to find a way to delve into it all from a safer distance. I hate the message that my decision sent, that stable people seeking to learn more about those we've marginalized chose to keep their distance. However, solidarity is not about proximity but about depth and magnitude of heart.

After a delightful Q&A and tour at the home for at-risk youth, we asked to stay in the cafeteria to talk together. After I recapped the story that prompted me to cancel our visit, we launched into a hearty conversation about the realities surrounding such events:

• Why do we react so severely to social media activity?
• What pushes someone to get a gun? Once you have one, you have already decided that you're ready to kill someone.
• Why do we assume that it's all males? This perpetrator is a female.
• Do we solve these problems with less guns or more guns?
• Why are we afraid to talk to someone before taking violent steps?

And so it went on for almost an hour. The kids wanted to go, but they couldn't. So they talked. Seven teenagers and their casually observing campus minister spending time in reflection in solidarity with the perpetrator, victims, families, and neighborhood. Practicality and safety forced us to keep our distance, but our hearts insisted that we confront the reality of that day. We couldn't visit the reconciliation center; we couldn't visit the site to leave flowers. But we could confront these issues, examine our thoughts and opinions, and learn from each other about how to face violence and opt for something better.

For a moment between our site-learning-visits and our shifts of service, we found solidarity through conversation. It's less than perfect; it's more challenging; it's a tall order for a sacramental people whose hearts respond to the visible symbols of invisible realities. But it was what we had in that moment, and God taught us something through it.