Random Access Memory (RAM)

by Dan Masterton

Last year, my laptop started to slow down. I’ve found that at about the four-year mark, for whatever reasons, the speed and smoothness of a computer fade. From then on, it’s a showdown between my antsyness to have better, more up-to-date tech and my patience to use what I have to the best of my and its ability.

Rather than succumb right away to spending and materialism that could be excessive, I stubbornly tried to resuscitate and sustain the ol’ machine following tips from online articles. I tried to purge extraneous data from the hard drive and complete regular updates. I did a system restore, totally erasing the computer and starting from scratch with reuploaded hard drive files and a reinstalled operating system. I even downloaded a program whose main purpose was to condense and cleanup the computer and get it humming like new again, only to find that the free trial would only tell me what’s wrong and wouldn’t complete the task of fixing it.

That program frustrated me, but it added a nifty tool to the taskbar on the top of my screen. It would alert me if my laptop’s RAM was near its capacity, and offer to trim the computer’s usage to get the RAM back under control. RAM stands for random access memory, and it’s a facet of computers that more or less (tech junkies can skewer me accordingly) simultaneously runs the various programs and operations that are going at any time.

One fix that many sources suggested was monitoring RAM and adjusting one’s usage to avoid programs that chew up a lot of RAM. That’s precisely what my trial program tried to do by alerting me with a warning about high capacity and offering to get it back down. Other sources disagreed, though. They argued that a computer is designed to complete these computational tasks at high speed and high volume to help its user. The RAM is there to facilitate this, so a computer is functioning well if its user is engaging its RAM capacity with several tasks. At the end of the day, the debate was moot for me -- none of these fixes were helping my computer. And as a teacher at the time, my computer’s inability to run a powerpoint and let me retain my desktop without freezing was the final nail in its coffin. Luckily, I got a good trade-in value and a sales-tax-free transaction through an Oregon company to fix the problem and ease my guilty, anti-materialistic soul.

But the debate about RAM stuck with me. Just because the computer has the capacity to run a certain amount of programs, should I constantly be using it all in order to utilize the full function of the computer? The quandary of multi-tasking is constantly on my mind. In this case, the analogy of RAM seemed so easily applicable to the mindset of a person at prayer.

I pretty much always look forward to going to Mass. I love the immersion in community -- the sign of peace, the cacophony of children and babies, the friendly ushers and ministers. I love the music -- the hum of the organ, the whispy voices of the children’s choir, the old guy two pews back who’s singing way too loud. I love the intentionality -- an hour in which nothing else is expected of me than for me to do Mass.

Yet, a lot of time, I feel like I let the pitch go by without swinging. Before I blink, we’re already seated for the homily. I feel like I blew the chance to make a diligent prayer in the Penitential Rite, like I didn’t key into the readings and Psalm, like I’ll zone out of the homily because I didn’t get a solid basis in listening to the readings.

Homer: “I have a very short attention span.”
Missionary: “Our point is very simple. You see, when…”
Homer: “OH LOOK, A BIRD!”

This is where I come back to RAM. My mind and personal energy are potent. I can do and accomplish and complete a lot of things. Just last Sunday night, after dropping my wife and daughter at the airport for their Thanksgiving flight, I got home at 8pm; I then cleaned out the refrigerator, ran and emptied the dishwasher, took out the trash and recycling, fixed our curtain rods, hung coat hooks for winter, tidied up the family room, and updated our family budget, all by 10pm. So the temptation exists to approach Mass the same way -- in fifteen minutes, I can greet those around me, give praise to God in the hymn and Gloria, come to God in penitence, follow a thread from Old Testament to Gospel, and sit to hear the priest’s reflections on these readings. Check, check, check. Use up all that RAM and get functioning.

But I’m not sure that’s the right way to use my RAM. When sitting at home, even with a big checklist of potential to-do’s, even with social media begging for a fresh scroll, even with the DVR and Netflix queue beckoning, there are times to take a different path. Leave the TV off; set aside my phone; close my laptop. It’s time to grab a book and just read. It’s time to load up Lucy and our stuff and just go for a walk. It’s time to let it be quiet and just play together. There are times when I can let the RAM zero out. Instead of loading up on tasks and execution, I can choose to do just one thing, namely, be present.

I think my challenge with quieting down to pray well becomes clearer through this analogy. I have so much RAM to do so much, to prioritize a list, to do a bunch of things at once, or to do one task after another. And certain things demand some RAM at Mass -- attention to Lucy, awareness of others nearby, etc. I think the challenge in prayer, and especially at Mass, is how to confront my big RAM potential and get it under control to be used well. I either need to acknowledge the capacity I have to do and decide to run zero programs for a bit. Or I need to use that RAM to intentionally run a lean program, one that is just present to the “alerts” and “applications” of presence in that liturgy.

The ideal would be that my capacities can be totally free and available, moved only by the flowing grace of prayer and not tied up by the frantic tasks I conjure and assign. It’s a tall order. I can tear things down and start from scratch when I’m sitting in my family room; for whatever reason, it’s more challenging to redirect the RAM in prayer.

Intolerance and Interdependence

by Tim Kirchoff

When my grandparents moved to Minneapolis soon after getting married, my grandfather was caught off guard by his wife’s insistence that their children attend Catholic schools. More to the point, he was surprised and even a little scandalized by the fact that Catholic schools existed in the first place: they struck him as a colossal waste of resources. He did not understand why Catholics in Minneapolis had built their own schools instead of making use of the public school system that they were already supporting through their taxes.

When he discovered the history of anti-Catholicism in public schools—the ways in which the teachers and curricula of urban public schools tried to turn Catholic children against their parents’ faith—he understood why Catholic parents felt the need to build schools that would pass on their faith, and was a passionate proponent of Catholic education for the rest of his life.

His life experiences up until he moved to Minneapolis had given him no frame of reference to understand religious intolerance. He had grown up in the farmlands of the Dakotas in the middle of the Great Depression; the various farming families would often call upon each other to help in constructing or repairing buildings, assisting in a harvest, or sharing in the slaughter of a hog. He went to school alongside Methodists, Lutherans, and fellow Catholics all the way through college, and their differences in denomination had never been an obstacle to friendship or cooperation.

Rural farmers, although we stereotypically think of them as self-reliant, were tolerant of religious differences precisely because they were conscious of how dependent they were on each other. Their urban counterparts, though they lived in a society with an even more elaborate system of interdependencies, readily discriminated against Catholics. In our global society, meanwhile, we have grown even less tolerant of those with different beliefs, boycotting businesses or cutting people out of social media feeds and sometimes our lives because we find their political opinions obnoxious.

Perhaps this polarization and splintering of our society is inevitable: the ubiquity of consumeristic choice has given us the illusion of power, and with it the illusion of independence. We think that, because we can choose to have our needs met by someone else, we don’t need and can freely disparage those with whom we disagree. We believe that we can bend others to our will, even though those we try to influence are just as free to cast us off as Catholic immigrants were to abandon the public school system.

But even if this polarized struggle is unavoidable on the social level, the Church must not accept its logic. The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic—we cannot allow our different theological or political approaches to threaten our deeper unity. St. Paul wrote in 1 Cor 15-21:

"Now if the foot should say,
'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,'
it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
And if the ear should say,
'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,'
it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?
If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body,
every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
If they were all one part, where would the body be?
As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don’t need you!'
And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don’t need you!'"

We cannot splinter into a pro-life church and a social justice church; a church of high liturgy and a church of contemporary liturgy; a church of tradition and a church that reads the signs of the times. We must not fool ourselves into thinking that our sub-group alone represents the future of the Church: the different charisms and different vocations that God has given to us as individuals and as groups complement each other. We need each other. If we want to be able to work through our differences in order to cooperate in living out the mission of the Church, we must recognize that we are dependent on each other through Christ.

On Attempting to Cook Chicken on a Very Hot Stove

by Rob Goodale

A couple of weeks ago, I was on retreat with about 40 teenagers. These retreats are always an amazing, exhausting experience of Christian community, and this one was no different -- I'm so deeply thankful for all of the wonderful people I got to spend the week with.

On the retreat, I facilitated a session about storytelling, learning to encounter God’s love in the stories we share with one another, and beginning to see our stories as something for which to be thankful. For this Thanksgiving, I’d like to share one of my stories with you. Appropriately enough, it’s about food.

A few years ago, I was in a graduate school program called Echo -- it’s this strange sort of living organism of a program that’s part grad school, part service program, part job. We took classes in the summers at Notre Dame, and then from August to June, we were sent all over the country to work in Catholic parishes or high schools.

I spent the two academic years of Echo teaching at a Catholic high school in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is about as different from where I grew up as you can find without leaving the country. For starters, there are mountains -- lots of mountains. There are also Mormons -- lots of Mormons! I eventually grew to be really fond of both, but it took awhile for me to come around, and at first it was all very foreign.

Fortunately, I was not sent to Utah alone. One of the essential components of Echo is living in an intentional faith community with several of your classmates.

Sidebar: Living in an intentional community is a strange and wonderful thing that a lot of service programs ask their volunteers to do, and it’s getting more popular at colleges and universities across the country for both undergrads and grad students. Intentional communities share meals and chores around the house, pray together, and generally serve as a built-in social life. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever gotten to be a part of, and all of my stories from that period of my life are better because of community. If you ever get the chance, you should definitely live in an intentional community.

That first year in Utah, I found myself in community with two other people, Tom and Fred. We lived in a tiny apartment in a massive apartment complex. We had sort of gotten to know each other a little bit over the summer, but there was still a lot of unfamiliarity when we all first arrived that August. I really wanted Tom and Fred to like me, but I didn’t want them to know that I really wanted them to like me, so I started looking for opportunities to impress them and make them think I was cool.

As I mentioned, our community shared meals -- we cooked for one another regularly. I had started tinkering in the kitchen as a college student, and felt like I was really starting to come into my own as an amateur chef by the time I started Echo. Most of that confidence, if I'm honest, came from lying on the couch watching cooking shows on TV and thinking to myself, I could do that, so perhaps I should not have been nearly so sure of myself.

One of the first couple of weeks in Utah, it was my turn to cook for my community, and I saw this as a golden opportunity to wow my new friends with my next-level cooking skills.

I decided to make chicken parmesan. I had never made chicken parmesan before, but the recipes I found on Pinterest didn’t seem that complicated: fry up some chicken cutlets, pour some tomato sauce over them, melt some cheese on top, boil some pasta, and bada bing bada boom, you’ve got chicken parmesan.



I head home from school on that Monday, stop at the grocery store having consulted my trusty Pinterest recipe, get what I need, and arrive home, ingredients in hand, ready to work some magic.

Step one in the recipe is to “assemble your workstation.” So I get out three little bowls, one for flour, one for egg, one for breadcrumbs. Step one, check.

Step two is to “heat olive oil.” So I pour the olive oil in a pan, turn the burner on high, and return to my workstation to coat the first chicken cutlet. Into the flour, into the egg wash, into the bread crumbs, and into the pan of hot oil, where it quickly reaches a pleasing sizzle. Satisfied with my work, I turn to prepare the next cutlet for frying.

Even though I had never tried to make fried chicken before, it turns out my community members Tom and Fred had, and they’re both sitting nearby in our tiny apartment in a massive apartment complex, watching TV in the living room with a growing curiosity about what is happening a few feet away in the kitchen. They know what I don’t: it doesn’t take very long to fry chicken, and the oil shouldn’t be too hot. For the moment, though, neither of them say anything.

I dredge the next cutlet, into the flour, into the egg wash, into the breadcrumbs… but when I turn back to drop it into the pan, I am greeted with a giant cloud of black smoke, billowing off of the stove.

I panic. For some reason, the first thing that pops into my head is that if I don’t find some way to get rid of this smoke, the alarm is going to go off in our tiny apartment in a massive apartment complex, and roughly 500 people are going to be very, very angry at me, which would not be a good way to impress my new community members.

With this thought in the front of my mind, and basically nothing else to keep it company, I grab the pan and frantically but wordlessly shuffle past Tom and Fred in the living room, through the sliding glass door, and onto our balcony -- our tiny apartment balcony on the fourth floor of a massive apartment complex -- put the still smoking pan down onto the linoleum-covered balcony, turn back around, and walk back inside.

Tom and Fred, God bless their beautiful souls, watch all of this happen with absolute tranquility. After I return to the living room, Fred does, however, silently and quickly go out to retrieve the pan before it can permanently adhere to the linoleum-covered balcony, brings it back inside, dumps some baking soda on it -- which is actually what you should do in case of a grease fire, by the way -- and turns back from the kitchen to find me, collapsed into a crumpled heap of shame on the couch.

They should yell at me. They should laugh at me. They should tell me what an idiot I am. But they doesn’t. It’s quiet for a moment, and then, Tom asks, mercifully and without a hint of condescension in his voice, “Hey Rob, do you want me to take over for you?”

Defeated and humiliated, I nod, and then proceed to pay very close attention to a spot in the carpet for what feels like the next several hours.

A short while later, dinner is ready -- delicious chicken parmesan, courtesy of the most experienced chef in the community. In the days, weeks, months, and years that follow, this will become one of the most-often referenced stories for our community, a story that always ends in fits of laughter. But for that night, there are no jokes to be made at my expense -- just three community members, sharing a meal and trying to survive our first year of teaching together.

Tom and Fred responded to my error -- an error brought on by absurd levels of arrogance and vanity -- with uncommon mercy and love, and to this day, we pinpoint that story as the beginning of our collective friendship, a friendship that has since been the source of innumerable stories of grace.

The holidays can be a tough and stressful time for a vast number of reasons. When your second cousin or mother-in-law or whoever starts burning the fried chicken, and then tries to melt the balcony, I really hope you remember that she’s probably just trying to get you to like her, and refrain from ripping her up. Just go get the pan, for goodness sake, and smile.

The Creed and Our Mundane Martyrdoms

by Jenny Klejeski

Martyrdom comes up with surprising frequency in my classes (particularly given that I teach English). Young people, in my experience, have a particular fascination with the topic. Most recently, a discussion in my 7th-grade class arose on the feast of the dedication of St. John Lateran as I described the larger-than-life statues of the apostles, who each hold the symbol of their martyrdom. We talked about the various martyrdoms of the apostles, the favorite, of course, being St. Bartholomew, who is often depicted holding his own skin because he was flayed alive. (“EEWWWWW!!!”)

I always try to walk the line between “keeping Catholicism weird” and not becoming fixated on the morbid. When the conversation falls too far into the realm of “Ms. Klejeski, what’s the grossest way to die?” I like to redirect to the conversation to the meaning of the word “martyr,” which literally means “witness.” What were these people witnessing to? Why do we depict them with the instruments of their martyrdom? Not because we have a bizarre obsession with torture and execution; in fact, we morally condemn those things. If we become too preoccupied with the signs themselves, they can become idols of voyeurism. Rather, the martyrs hold the instruments of their martyrdom as a sign of victory, as a sacramental. These witnesses are silently proclaiming that their faith was stronger than the most abhorrent things that the world can conjure up—that nothing was able to separate them from the love of God.

I also like to remind my students that the path to sainthood is not a one-time decision, but is made up of hundreds of fiats (“yeses”) made again and again every day. ¹ It is a matter of denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, and following Christ each day. The martyrs were able to hold fast to the Creed in their final moments because they lived the creed every day. They could say “yes” to God under torture and death because they had been saying “yes” to Him in small ways each day, over and over.

The creed is a funny thing. It’s a beautiful statement of our beliefs, the entire story of salvation history, the sign for which hundreds of thousands of men and women have sacrificed their lives….and yet it’s the part of Mass during which I almost inevitably zone out.

What does it mean to say “I believe” in the Creed? After all, I can ascribe these words to lots of things. “I believe 2+2=4.” “I believe the Earth is round.” “I believe my mom loves me.” etc. etc. Are these statements of belief the same as when I say “I believe in God the Father Almighty…”?

The Catechism beautifully tells us that “[t]o say the Credo with faith is to enter into communion with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and also with the whole Church” (CCC §197, emphasis mine). Thus, to pray these words of the Creed, is not merely to give intellectual assent to a list of lifeless propositions, but actually to enter into the life of God.

Faith is both a divine gift and a human act. Similar to a human relationship, one person extends an invitation to another person, and that other person must freely choose to accept the offer. There is no scientific proof that a person is being authentic in their desire for friendship. If a person says “I love you,” it requires an act of faith ² to believe them and say “I love you, too.”

So, too, God extends to us friendship through His Church. And my saying “I believe” in the Creed is to accept that invitation. In a way, our statement of belief on Sundays is akin to marriage vows. We publicly profess our acceptance of God’s invitation to relationship.

So, too—as with marriage—the “yes” that we give in public must necessarily be substantiated in our day-to-day life. The “yes” given between bride and groom manifests itself as the “yes” of changing diapers and visiting extended family and paying bills and long nights and any number of small deaths to self. The “yes” that we give to God on Sundays must manifest itself as hundreds of little “yeses,” little deaths to self, wherein we witness to, and become martyrs for, the Love in which we believe.

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1 This is an idea that I’ve written about before.^↩

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2 FOOTGranted, this act of faith in another person is categorically different than faith in God, but the analogy stands.^↩

Introducing Additional Restless Hearts

by Dan Masterton

Here they are, everyone, our three new writers: Laura Flanagan, Erin Conway, and Tim Kirchoff. These three will join our writing rotation and author original posts about once a month. I invite you to Like our blog's Page on Facebook, follow our Twitter pages (featured on the blog sidebar and linked here: Dan | Rob | Jenny), or sign up for email alerts on the blog homepage sidebar that will loop you in with new posts.

The work shared on the blog will continue to be broad and varying, reflecting the thoughts at the fore of each writer's mind. Even as the topics and emphases ebb and flow, the core of our work will continue to be our shared faith and our common emphasis on strong theological roots, sustained ministerial practice, and pastoral sensibility. This recipe has slow-cooked some good work from the team of four, and now the symbolic perfection in our new squad of seven will surely continue that. As always, please comment and share with your thoughts. Pageviews can be good for our egos, but engagement and dialogue are best for the soul!

Each of us will write about once a month, with new work appearing each Monday and Thursday here on the blog and with alerts posted on Facebook and Twitter. I'll fill in the gaps with Thursday posts and occasional bonus content as well.

So for each new writer, here's a brief introduction from me followed by each of their answers to some first interview questions (my words in italics) to get the ball rolling for their restless hearts:

Laura Flanagan

Laura and I met as undergraduates while serving as mentors-in-faith through the summer program, Notre Dame Vision. Laura had a spunky self-confidence and incisive wit that drew me in right away. During the conference weeks, Laura delivered a potent witness talk that further showed the depths of her spirit, and in a number of great chats over the course of that summer and senior year, Laura was one of my first people who palpably drew me into a deeper faith through conversation. It does not surprise me at all to see Laura doing so well as a pastoral minister, wife, and mother, living out the gifts of humor, love, and faith that were already so solid in her all those years ago.

Laura's work will appear every fourth Monday, beginning on December 4.

Tell the people a little about yourself.

I grew up in Indianapolis as the eldest child of a family for whom I am extremely grateful; in addition to being generally loving, delightful, hilarious people, they rooted me in the faith very well.

After my undergraduate stint in theology and a secondary major in pre-med, I apprenticed in the same Echo program as Rob and Jenny (although slightly before their time). Those two years gave me an appreciation for the East Coast -- my placement was in the Diocese of Camden, NJ -- and a still greater appreciation for the Midwest. Now I live in St. Louis, just celebrated my third anniversary with my greatest takeaway from the University of Notre Dame, and am in the midst of my fifth year as director of religious education for a parish.

Hospitality is an unexpected joy for me -- unexpected in that I wouldn’t have predicted it for myself. I love that now that we own a larger house, so we can essentially have anyone come into town on little notice and have a bed in our house. I also keep wanting to invite people dealing with homelessness back to my house for a bed and a shower, but I have yet to figure out a way to do that which is acceptably safe to my husband. Let me know if you have tips.

Beyond that: I’m learning how to use a compound bow. It’s primarily for target shooting right now, but who knows, maybe I’ll make the leap into deer hunting at some point. Pray for all involved.

Why did you choose to study theology?

Theology is the discussion of Pilate’s famous question, “What is truth?” I can’t think of a more weighty question and one which I was more eager to investigate and discuss. This realization came thanks to a fabulous history professor, who was given license by the honors program at Notre Dame to teach whatever he thought important to a seminar of 16 students for a year. Included in our reading of classics were literature, philosophy, and theology, and at the end of the year I decided to major in theology before having taken any actual theology classes. The theology department did not disappoint, but I have to give credit to Dr. Gregory for the initial impetus.

How do you live out your ministry?

By emphasizing in my work whatever God places in front of the minister. Seriously, everything tends to become relevant. Over the course of a short period of time, I will find materials and gain insights which turn out to be almost implausibly connected, and I go with it -- the Spirit must know I and the parishioners need this point spotlighted right now.  

My time in Echo confirmed for me that what I love about the parish setting is its intergenerational diversity. Here young and old find the conduit of grace that is the sacramental life and must form a community comprised of more than just one life stage. This nature of the parish adds variety to my work and keeps me from getting bored.

However, most initiatives or growth do happen slowly in my ministry. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s quote, “Trust in the slow work of God,” has to be applicable here. Luckily, as I enter my fifth year, stability is beginning to come about, and I can build on relationships and flesh out plans for which prior initiatives laid the foundation. I feel grateful that we have an institutional memory (something difficult to build in a purely student ministry situation) even when that slows us down. It’s closer to a microcosm of the Church, even if this particular incarnation is mostly suburban and white.

What kinds of things will you write about in your posts?

Everything? There will definitely be some reflections on our nuclear family life (I’m currently incubating our second child and also have a two-year-old), but I also spin tales from my family of origin (a gold mine of loving service) and from my ministry. I’ll let myself reflect on wherever the Spirit has blown me lately. Said reflections may often be filtered through the lens of the Psalms, 20th century British writers, liturgical theology, or other favorites.

Really, I’m using you, readers. I mean, I hope my posting will be mutually beneficial, but the main reason for contributing here is less to “help” you and more for myself. I imagine that the necessity of evaluating how best to communicate to you anything worthwhile I stumble across will force me to comb out my thoughts, articulate better, and engage with the Lord in a deeper way.

Erin Conway

Erin's path and mine crossed in small ways at Notre Dame, but we didn't totally sync up until we moved 2,000 miles west. At the incubator for vocation that is Xavier College Prep in Palm Desert, CA, Erin and I lived in the same apartment complex and worked together on retreats, social justice ministry with students, and even coached junior varsity baseball together. Erin's grace and patience with vocation helped her answer calls to teaching and mentorship in ways that more selfish, antsy people would miss. Some people are groupies to bands or fangirls to celebrities; Erin would trade it all to team up with Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, and the homies and would probably get a literal tattoo on her heart to boot.

Erin's work will appear every fourth Thursday, beginning on December 7.

Tell the people a little about yourself.

Although I joke to my students all the time that I only became a teacher to have a captive audience with which to talk about myself, deciding what’s important enough to share with audience you don’t know is pretty intimidating. As a result of this struggle, what follows is a random assortment of facts about me, Erin Marie Conway, some more serious than others:

• I was born and raised in the greatest city on Earth, Cleveland, Ohio, home of the 2016 NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers. (If you’re unfamiliar with our great city, feel free to check out this tourism video or 30 Rock’s Tribute to the Cleve.) I am, without a doubt, a midwest girl at heart.

• I am the oldest child of two incredible parents, humans whose patience and love is something I can only hope to capture a fraction of when I have my own children. The older I get the more I realize how much of me is because of them.

• I have a younger brother who has been and always will be cooler than me.

• I have a life size, posable, stuffed yellow lab named Dan. He is named after my father and was purchased for me by four girls in my freshman theology class who didn’t want me to be lonely since I was living so far from my family at the time.

• Corny jokes are my first language. You can ask my students if you don’t believe me. There is nothing I love more than a good pun or dad joke.

• There are few things in my life that make me happier than climbing a mountain or sitting beside a lake. This summer my cousin and I went on a national park adventure, visiting four parks in Utah and hiking over fifty miles in seven days. I almost didn’t come home.

• I started my teaching career at a Jesuit middle school, and the more I learned about the Jesuits, the more I realized how Jesuit my entire life had been up until that point; I just hadn’t know to call it that. I’ve never looked back. I often wonder how different my life would be if I had the option to enter Jesuit formation.

• In the 9 years since I’ve graduated from Notre Dame, I’ve worked in three different schools in three different cities: Baltimore, Maryland; Palm Desert, California; and Cleveland, Ohio. People ask me all the time why I moved all the way across the country for a school I’d never visited or why I left the sunshine of California for the gray skies of Cleveland, and my answer is always a simple one: God. I’ve been unbelievably blessed to be called to do God’s work in some incredible places and with some really wonderful people. They’ve broken my heart open in more ways than I can count and they’ve loved me into the person I am today.

Why did you choose to study theology?

Most of my theological “studies” have taken place as a theology teacher and minister and not as a student. I picked up Theology as my second major while at Notre Dame because as a public school kid I wanted to learn more intentionally about my faith. Because my primary major was PLS (the Program of Liberal Studies, our version of a Great Books Program), however, my Theology classes fell to the the background. Although I took classes in Theology, it didn’t truly take hold of my heart until much later. 

My true conversion to a student of Theology came after three years of teaching 7th grade English as an Americorps volunteer. Unemployed and living with my parents for the summer, I stumbled upon a posting for a Theology teacher at a school I had never heard of before: Xavier College Prep. Although I had never really considered teaching Theology before (I loved talking about books too much), I had hit the point in the summer where I felt desperate. So knowing I had at least enough knowledge on paper to talk to kids about God, I sent my resume and cover letter to the head of Xavier’s Theology Department. 

Thankfully, Xavier took a chance on me. During my three years in the desert, I learned more about a lived faith and the power of Theology to transform lives than I ever thought possible. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the teacher, friend, and human being I am today is a direct result of Xavier. I learned the ins and outs of Catholic Social Teaching alongside my students, I accompanied young people on immersion trips that transformed my understanding of our world and of God, and I was blessed to work with colleagues (Dan and Dave included) who challenged me and taught me more about my faith than I thought was possible. I learned to recognize God’s fingerprints all over my life, and I found that nothing gave me more life than that. To paraphrase the great Pedro Arrupe, SJ, I fell in love and it changed everything.

How do you live out your ministry?

The short, but not so simple answer, is that I live out my ministry by accompanying young people on their journey. This takes many forms.

Primarily, this happens as a teacher in a classroom. I currently teach senior Theology at Saint Martin de Porres, Cleveland’s Cristo Rey High School. My course is a combination of social justice and vocational discernment. Each day, I get to talk to young people about the ways in which God is calling them to transform the world around them. I get to share pieces of my own story and relationship with God, but more often, I find myself sitting back and listening to their stories, marveling at their resilience, and admiring their faith. The world throws so much at them, and they have yet to be toppled by it. We spend time together in prayer, reflection, and conversation, attempting to build community in a world that sorely lacks it. In short, my job is to love them. 

I’ve also had the opportunity to accompany students in a variety of other ways, as a volleyball coach, a Kairos director, a summer camp counselor, an immersion trip leader, and most recently, as a youth minister at my parish. I am grateful for each and every opportunity I get to put my love into action.

What kinds of things will you write about in your posts?

Much to my friends and family’s delight (dismay?), I find myself unable to have conversations about anything other than the students that I have the honor to accompany each day in the classroom. I honestly don’t know what “normal” people talk about in their daily conversations. Everything in my life seems to circle back to my kids. 

That being said, you should expect to read lots of posts about these beautiful human beings, from the ways they challenge my understanding of the world (I am constantly humbled by the burdens our world asks them to carry) to the way they show me God’s love, from the ways they challenge me to be the best version of myself to the often less than helpful dating advice they like to provide (it was recently suggested that I sign up Farmer’s Only because dating a farmer would allow me to acquire unlimited corn). Loving them takes up most of my life, and I love to tell people about them. 

In addition to my students, I really enjoy writing and thinking about Jesuit Spirituality, liberation theology, and Father Greg Boyle. I love thinking about and talking about what our faith looks like lived out in the world.

Tim Kirchoff

Tim wrote to me in response to our posting, and it was intriguing to read Tim's work. We have a mutual friend in Jenny and a mutual background in Notre Dame, but we have never met. Tim has a very mature and smart writing style that brings a sharp intellect alongside an earnest faith. I was also impressed to read one of Tim's finest articles, which appeared on the website of America Magazine, a well-renowned Catholic publication and one of my favorites. I'm delighted to get to know Tim better through bringing him on to our team.

Tim's work will appear every fourth Monday, beginning on November 27.

Tell the people a little about yourself.

I grew up and still live in Berwyn, IL, twenty minutes from downtown Chicago, and still attend Sunday Mass at the same parish where my four brothers and I went to grade school. I read several books by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton my freshman year of high school, and from then until I graduated high school, I spent entirely too much (or perhaps not nearly enough) of my free time on the Internet either reading Catholic bloggers or trying to convince strangers that the Catholic Church is right about everything.

By the time I graduated high school and started attending Notre Dame, I had my fill of arguing just for the sake of winning the argument and wanted to explore ideas just for the sake of improving my own understanding. I picked up a major in Political Science after a remarkable freshman seminar on just war theory, and I ended up adding both a major in theology and a minor in the Catholic Social Tradition. My post-graduation life has mostly consisted of living off of the patience and charity of others (not least my parents) while I write and do volunteer work.

I enjoy puns, baking, and laughing maniacally.

Why did you choose to study theology?

The Theology professor I had for my first Theology course at Notre Dame was unafraid of the truth, no matter where he found it. He was willing to struggle with whatever truths secular knowledge could uncover about, say, the historicity of the Bible, without falling back on easy answers. At the risk of overstating his influence, he convinced me that studying theology wouldn’t just be about answering objections. Instead, it would be characterized by an honest search for truth. Other theology professors proved to me that his attitude was indeed representative of the department, which in turn drew me deeper into the study of theology.

Theology is the discipline that allows me to listen to and understand people with whom I have deep disagreements, to see the truth in what they say even if I don’t know how to integrate it with the Truth of the faith.

How do you live out your ministry?

In general, by striving to live out my vocation in the here and now rather than by looking for my vocation in another state of life. My time and my talents are gifts to be put at the service of others. As for specific ministries, whether it be volunteering at the Newman Center at a nearby college, leading my parish’s pro-life committee, or moderating a Facebook group about Catholicism and politics, I still haven’t worked out all the details.

What kinds of things will you write about in your posts?

I’m most interested in looking for common ground between the Church and secular society or between different groups within the Church. I might also reflect on current (political) events or personal experiences... in addition to whatever else Dan will let me get away with.

Postscript

While we're excited about our three new crew members, the four of us will continue writing as well:

• Jenny will write every fourth Monday, resuming on November 20.
• Rob will write every fourth Thursday, resuming on November 23.
• Dave will write every fourth Monday, resuming on December 11.
• I will write about every second Thursday as well as on other occasions.

Room to Grow

It was about a year ago that things evolved at this here blog.

The singular title became plural, and three similarly restless hearts enlisted to join the fray. After about seven years of writing and editing on my own, Jenny, Rob, and Dave joined me and have made a fine crew. Their work, both in the great posts I get to publish for you each week and in the behind-the-scenes editing and collaborating and group messaging, has helped to grow the reach of our reflections, and I'm grateful for the wider ways that we are gaining to connect to others.

There is always the lurking temptation to pander or for me to turn our post titles into click-bait or to otherwise succumb to cheaper ways to drive traffic. The ways our technology can quantify pageviews et al are immense (and worthwhile as limited tools), but that can never and will never be the reason I (or my teammates) keep writing and sharing. I write because I love to write. I write about theology and ministry and spirituality because it's what cries out most strongly from within me. I share it with others because it's how I was wired by my Creator -- even as a little kid and an aspiring journalist, I would memorize temperatures, schedules, and sports standings from the morning newspaper and share them with classmates, teachers, and my family as my desire to report was already strong. My hook question as I engaged people with the news: "Wanna know?!"

On a related note, thank you to everyone who likes, shares, and comments our stuff to keep the spiritual ball rolling. Those engagements are more than just statistics to me. They're small markers that your social media time and capital, which makes up an increasingly large share of our days, is going toward dialogue with our work. And I don't take your clicks and reads for granted. Please keep those bits of feedback going and give it to me straight as you marinade over what you find here and share it with others. To get a full helping of goodness, Like our Facebook Page and/or follow me on Twitter (you can also keep up by following Jenny and Rob).

by Dan Masterton

As I plug our likes and follows (and affirm that I won't quit my day job and become a marketer or salesman), I also want to reiterate that my primary goal is to infuse your feeds with good, faith-based content. While we all need to get a decent helping of our friends' recent photos and some funny GIFs and videos, I think our social media consumption benefits from including some more thought-provoking content as well. That way our itch for social updates and humor, which can otherwise devolve into gossip and black holes of time-wasting, gets a healthy complement of things that make us think (see this archived post for more recommendations).


So, in that vein, I once again have the privilege of growing this blog's crew and bringing new writers into the fold. We'll follow up with that news on Thursday, when I formally introduce new team members, and our new friends will join our writing rotation, offering a new piece about once a month, in addition to the 2-3 times I will still be posting. Come on back in a few days to meet the new folks!

In the meantime, I thought it fitting to share this great quote, which has been the banner of this blog since its inception. Pulled from a great work of theology that my college professor had my class reading at the time, Origen gives us some solid marching orders as we navigate the seas of vanity and superficiality to try to write and share humbly, richly, and authentically:

The spoken word, even if it is true in itself and very persuasive, is not sufficient to affect a human soul unless some power is also given by God to the speaker and grace is added to what is said. It is only by God's gift that this power is possessed by those whose preaching is successful.

--Origen, Contra Celsum, 6.2

Encounter

by Dan Masterton

Your view of something or someone changes when you encounter it or them personally.

You can imagine how vast and majestic the Grand Canyon looks. You can see pictures of the plazas and churches of Rome. You can hear about how ghastly and stark the abandoned concentration camps in Poland feel. But when walking those grounds and personally seeing and feeling those places, their visceral profundity emerge and sink in more fully.

You can imagine how it might feel to hold your child. You can see pictures of friends and family meeting their kids. You can hear about the emotions and surreality of that moment. But when that moment unfolds (if your call and God’s grace lead there), the ontological reality of parenthood activates potently.

So, too, you can imagine the struggles of homelessness and hunger. You can see and share pictures of those who struggle. You can hear about the discrimination and neglect that people face. But when meeting them face-to-face, learning their names, and spending time with them, their realities become all the more real to you, and in solidarity, encounter invites, instigates, and fuels metanoia as your human heart moves and changes.

Encounter.

Much like any profession or career or discipline, the realm of Catholicism has its vocabulary. Whether theologian or minister or clergy or everyday believer, religion comes with its special words. I love to read and write and use language creatively and effectively; I love to engage in conversation that moves forward and gains depth, using my words to comment and ask questions of another person that identify those thoughts, emotions, and ideas that can be difficult to articulate. So, naturally, I love the vocabulary of faith.

Often, the words of our beliefs become buzzwords and/or get super-charged with polarizing meanings. Take transubstantiation for example -- it’s a beautiful word to describe the change in inner content that occurs when the bread and wine of the Eucharist are validly consecrated in our anamnesis (like, memoralizing) of Christ’s Last Supper and the celebration of Mass. Yet, it can become a wedge word, used to differentiate and divide some Christians from others.

I like to lean on Catholic Social Teaching, not just because it is prophetic and countercultural but because its words articulate truths that match broader justice desires of all people of good will, in a way that can fuel the craving for justice that transcends religious boundaries. Solidarity describes the desire of so many to acknowledge all people of all races, ethnicities, religions, orientations, and more as brothers and sisters of the same humanity; marginalization and preferential option explain how we ignore, belittle, or silence certain people and need to explicitly consider them to restore the unity of society; and encounter elegantly and simply describes the ideal we should pursue and practice for engaging one another openly with humility and compassion.

This is the legacy of Francis (so far) to me, my spirituality, and my ministry. I always think back to Francis’ metaphor about the Church as a field hospital. In battles, armies have to set up these medical areas, where wounded soldiers would be carried for triage. When a soldier arrived with critical wounds and deteriorating health, the response from a good medic wouldn’t be to criticize and question the person; it would be to treat the wounds and stabilize the soldier. Once the soldier was stable, then the army leaders could question him to figure out what happened.

Likewise, our Church ought to be a place of welcome, a sort of spiritual triage. Rather than interrogating people on how they got so sinful, we should invite them to engage with the Church -- plug into the community, join in prayer and worship, avail themselves of the Sacraments, likely by starting with an earnest and humble Reconciliation to repair one’s relationships with self, others, and God. Francis’ desire for a Church that is bruised, hurting, and dirty happens when our lived faith is built on encounter, grounded in engaging with others and receiving humbly and compassionately.

I sometimes imagine how, as a high school campus minister, I have to be a bit of a catch-all, struggling to integrate what can be so many disparate things into one ministry. I’m sometimes preoccupied by the desire for affirmation and prestige. I’m sometimes flustered by the constraints of my reality preventing me from doing what I think is best or necessary. But through the lens of encounter, everything of my ministry -- and in a sense, everything of who I am made to be and called to be -- comes into better focus.

I need to facilitate encounter with God through worship, prayer, and Sacraments. I need to facilitate encounter for my students with one another through discussion and socializing in holistic communal context. I need to facilitate encounter for us with the ignored and marginalized by reimagining service as interpersonal, as accompaniment, as relationship-building, and work hard to plan outings that emphasize those ideals.

Encountering God changes the way we view religion, faith, and ourselves. Encountering others softens our hearts, breeds compassion, and magnifies God’s love in our world. Encountering people who have marginalized forces us beyond stereotypes and preconceptions, proliferates solidarity, and evaporates some of the buffering distance we have inserted between ourselves to gradually build God’s Kingdom. Authentic encounter grounds and orients our perspective and transforms our hearts.

Haikus from the Mouths of Babes

by Dave Gregory

For a couple of years now, I’ve offered my students the option to write haikus for extra credit points on each exam; despite the fact that I offer examples of the form in addition to detailed instruction, for some reason my fourteen year-olds often remain incapable of adhering to the technical necessities, so please forgive their occasional inability to count syllables on their fingers. In order to receive full credit, their poems must meet two criteria: they must be funny, and they must be theologically relevant.

Their humor and candor are shining representations of why I love teaching, and I save my favorite ones in the hopes of publishing them in a collection one day. This week, I am proud to offer you a selection with some brief commentaries. (Editor's Note: The students' haikus are in italics, and Dave's glosses follow after each haiku or set of haikus in non-italics.)

The Eucharist thrives
like honey on a beehive
my Father, my Lord 

Yeah, that about epitomizes a Eucharistically reverential attitude. 

(Jesus): Christians suck a lot
(Me): But you made them, Jesus
(Jesus): You’re right, you suck too 

(Jesus): Why is Mass so long?
(Me): How long was the Last Supper?
(Jesus): You make a good point. 

The above haikus are incisive dialogues between the student and Jesus. If haikus invite my students into colloquy with the Nazarene, I cannot ask for anything more. This fourteen year-old essentially paraphrases Karl Rahner here: “Those who proclaim Him with their words and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.”

Jesus is my God.
He brings me ecstasy, the
Eucharist is yummy. 

Not to be taken out of context, this was written for an exam that included discussion of Teresa of Avila. Slash I dunno if they’ve consumed any consecrated hosts of late, but I certainly would certainly not describe them as “yummy.” This student must be some sort of mystic.

Theology’s cool.
My teacher is Seth Rogen.
He has some weird memes. 

Mr. Gregory:
making us do too much work,
forcing us to write. 

They know me well.

My ritual is
going to Mass on Sunday
and sleeping through it. 

At least she’s honest. And at least she understands what a ritual is. Sort of.

You won’t understand this haiku.
Theology theology theology theology theology theology theology.
I don’t like making haikus. 

And I don’t like reading bad attempts. Eh, wait... I guess I do.

I am a good boy.
Crack is very bad, and we all
know Jesus was black. 

The non-sequitur haiku for the win. I mean, major props; it’s hard to have three totally unconnected thoughts contained within a mere 17 syllables.

Love is much like God
because you have to do things
to make him notice. 

Yeah, I mean, I guess.

Well hello Jesus.
You look like you lost something.
Do you want some help? 

Yes, I need some help.
Did you look in the up dock?
Up dock? What’s up dock? 

I cannot help but appreciate a student who creates a coherent dialogue in a miniature series.

“Jesus Jesus Jesus is Jesus”
is what I hear down the hall
coming from your class

I get it, kid. I’m loud and obnoxious.

I hate tests so much.
It will be easy, Zhada,
you will be fine. 

When I take a test,
Jesus likes to stress me out.
He says that is right. 

Ah, the student’s prayer. Finding God in all things, indeed.

Mr. Gregory
does not have a majestic
beard. Get over it. 

Mr. Gregory’s
beard is so great that I will
trust in God again. 

Thirteen was super
easy, you just gave that one
to us, thank you man. 

On one multiple choice question, I gave students an option that read “because Mr. Gregory’s beard is so majestic,” and the above three haikus responded to this self-indulgent assertion. Who says facial hair can’t be an effective means of evangelization?

Ezekiel saw
the vision of the dry bones.
Ewww, now real people. 

Yeah, Ezekiel’s pretty trippy/gross.

The prophets are cool.
They are way too cool for school.
They get all the girls. 

Take note, players. Women appreciate a good prophetic voice.

If God is perfect
and God is love, then why is
my sandwich bad? 

The question to end all questions: the problem of suffering reduced to the most potent of simplicities.

Freshmen kind of suck,
I guess you are out of luck;
at least it’s God talk. 

The prophets were pure,
unlike anyone in here.
Just kidding, not really, 

One particular freshperson apparently does not appreciate their classmates. At least she appreciates Original Sin.

Isaiah really sucks...
Amos was really good at not
sucking. He real dope. 

We all have our favorite prophets, I suppose.

Purpose is power.
Wrong, this is not our purpose:
our purpose is love. 

This kid nails a critique of “might makes right” in three lines. This gives me the warm and fuzzies.

Ezekiel, one
Isaiah is the second
Jeremiah, three 

Chronologically out of order, but I appreciate the style here.

Ezekiel ate
the scroll, it must have tasted
weird. 

Yup. I do have to wonder why that third line isn’t finished. Something to do with apophatic unknowing? Or just teenage laziness?

Why do we suffer?
We can only hope and pray.
Well, thanks Isaiah. 

Ladies and gentlemen: Isaiah in a nutshell.

There are prophets, yeah.
I am really tired of
poetry. That’s all. 

I hear ya, kiddo.

“Ezekiel, eat
this scroll made out of some skin.”
“Yeah sure, hold up, WHAT?!” 

When you see “dead” bones
and they start coming alive:
“It’s not Halloween!” 

Girl gets it. Ezekiel’s a freakshow.

Ezekiel needs
something very usable.
Refrigerator. 

At least he stuck to the syllabic requirements.

God likes me to learn.
That’s why he gave me a brain,
but does my brain work? 

I can’t really tell if she was getting at free will or mental disorders. Maybe both? Paradox.

Theodicies, dumb
Innocent suffering, dumb
Everything, dumb 

This student lost her father not too long ago, and produced her own haiku of lamentation in light of experience.

Prophets were known,
so guess how many prophets.
Not 9, lol. 

Correct, though one syllable off.

Daniel disrupts
and wants to fight with you.
Welp, that is theology. 

Daniel likes to shadowbox me every time he enters a classroom, but this young woman does not appreciate his antics, apparently.

Oh theology!
We learn about God and things.
Long, long days of work. 

Oh theology!
Please don’t ever miss a class
or that is your ass. 

She gets what my class is all about: rigor.

What the Irish Taught Me About All Souls Day

by Dan Masterton

When I think of the word “anniversary,” images of weddings readily pop into my mind -- pictures of the kiss at the end of the Mass, big smiles from the reception, beautiful memories from a honeymoon. Anniversaries are culturally associated almost exclusively, or at least primarily, with the commemoration of a wedding. During my year living in Ireland, however, the invocation of an anniversary was more likely related to death.

For reasons that exceed my limited knowledge of my Irish heritage,¹ the Irish are profoundly comfortable being intimate with death. While I feel like Americans, for the most part, often have a steady desire to keep death at arm’s length and only confront or consider it when utterly necessary and at hand, the Irish do not hide from the reality of death. During my volunteer year of ministry and catechesis in Ireland, our first opportunity to participate was singing with our parish folk group at a fundraiser and awareness event for suicide prevention, an opening glimpse that showed the cultural consciousness of death, in this case seeking to confront a growing epidemic in Irish society.

On a wider scale, death is something talked about with what felt to me like a very casual quality. Whether conversing in the parish office or sipping a mid-morning tea with friends, there was almost an inevitability that death would somehow come up. It was rarely a moment to mope or vent; rather, it was a not quite detached but certainly not overly emotional reference to a friend, family member, or neighbor who had passed away. Something in a story or memory would call to mind a dearly departed person, and the Irish assembled there would play the remembering game, piecing together the pertinent details that small-town folks carefully track -- spouse’s name, names of children, address or general whereabouts, and years since their passing. The whole discussion was somewhere between good-natured gossip and clinical record-keeping. It felt foreign to me, but on the whole, it demonstrated the love and care for neighbor that is a hallmark of the Irish people.

In terms of piety, the Irish fervently practice Mass dedications. Like many of my friends and family here, my Irish friends were keen to visit the parish office and make a donation to celebrate Mass in the name of someone who had passed away. This instinct among the local faithful was so strong that my parish had to discontinue the practice of each Mass being celebrated for one particular person. The quantity of requests for prayers and the desire for Masses to focus on one specific person became too much, so the parish had to expand the books to allow for multiple dedications per day. This process reflects the earnest pastoral care of the Irish people, who so steadily check in on one another and live out mutual support.

And this is where the Irish piety is so strong. Masses weren’t just requested for those who had passed recently. People made donations in the name of those who had passed away one month ago, a practice known in Irish parlance as the “month’s mind.” People came in to request Masses for others on their anniversaries -- not to commemorate a wedding but as a nod to the date of that person’s death many years ago. And so the parish came to celebrate multiple people and their lives at each Mass, with ever popular prayerful sentiment from the faithful to memorialize their loved ones.

The most powerful encapsulation of this piety came in November.


When people would ask me about the Church in Ireland, I’d describe the general scene using the pervasive problem of “Sacrament hopping” -- people come to the Church for marriage, disappear until they baptize their babies, disappear again until First Communion, disappear once again until Confirmation (at age twelve mind you), and finally reappear when they want to get married and then start the cycle over again; this is a problem that the wider Church continues to face, but in a country where Catholicism is culturally entrenched, the issue of the Church only being involved at milestone moments felt more dangerous.²

The nuanced layer beyond this generalization was the Irish turned out in strong numbers for sacramentals -- celebrations accompanied by a visible sign of those invisible realities. While some might respond that each Eucharist and Mass involves sacramentals, I’m talking here about Church celebrations that come with a different sacramental. The local people particularly flooded our Church in disproportionately high numbers for ashes on Ash Wednesday, for take-home shamrocks on the feast of St. Patrick, and for the rituals of remembrance on All Souls Day.

Each year, around the November 2 feast of All Souls, a special parish Mass included a reading of every late parishioner’s name, one-by-one, in chronological order from last November all the way up to that week. As each person’s name was read, someone would bring a photo forward of that person to display for a parish remembrance and All Souls Day prayer. The staff and community worked together to ensure that each person had someone ready with a picture so that no person would go un-memorialized. And so, over what was likely a long period of time that passed like kairos with intentionality, the litany of the dead was read, and the procession of the faithful moved in parallel with it as the community carefully remembered each of its late members. The dimly candle-lit church, the body language of those who came forward, the mismatched collection of photos, the packed-to-the-walls congregation -- all of it was an imperfect parish, comprised of inconsistent yet faithful members, making a beautiful prayer to God for their loved ones.

The Church in America, while flawed, struggling, and evolving, has a lot going for it -- robust and growing professional ministry, a substantial place for the laity, an active role in education at all levels, and more. But a fading facet of our identity is piety. We’re not as intimate with the Rosary; we don’t as often utilize the Liturgy of the Hours or novena prayers; we struggle to incorporate Adoration into our worship. The Irish, though facing issues of generational transition and transmission of faith, retain these beautiful pieties with zeal, shown beautifully here by their commemoration of All Souls.

This never meant more to me than when, eight months after leaving Ireland following my volunteer year, my mom passed away at the age of 60. And as word traveled across the pond to the priests and parishioners who had been such close companions, our dear parish priest wrote to me. He said that they had rung the great bell from the parish tower in prayer for my mom that night, and in the way that only the Irish can, he put her forth in memorial at Mass the next morning.³

Love you, mom.

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1 I’m a first-generation American. My dad was born in Ireland, and I can claim dual citizenship and an Irish EU passport, a privilege my older brother utilized. Pretty neat and a big point of pride for my brothers and me.^↩

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2 Sacraments start to feel like birthday parties or social gatherings when the religious and spiritual elements become so shallowly rooted. The content of the Mass and Sacrament seemed to become thoroughly second fiddle to the showy outfits, photo opportunities, and ostentatious social events that followed Mass. Again, not a uniquely Irish problem, but one that felt different in a country where Catholic is synonymous with one’s nationality, different than the Protestant/pluralistic American norms.^↩

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3 My mom had visited me in Ireland with my dad and older brother for a week during my volunteer year. We spent a few days in Ireland, but what was extra-special was the three-day trip we took to sneak away to Poland. I had been the first descendant on her Polish side of the family to return to the Polish soil a few years prior, and so together, we visited Krakow and Auschwitz. She passed away less than a year later. After my mom's memorial Mass and internment, one of her best friends told me something I already knew but cherished anyway -- that mom LOVED that special trip.^↩