How a Solo Summer in Europe (Hopefully) Changed My Life

by Erin Conway

What did you do over summer vacation?

It’s a predictable question used by teachers, professors, colleagues, friends, and more at the start of every school year. Responding often seems to morph into a competition, as students (0r adults) try to one up each other, each vacation sounding more fantastic than the last.

And so it’s with this fear in the back of my mind that I now write, at the risk of sounding trite and predictable (and in full awareness of its cliché-ness), that my summer vacation was magical. When I was asked the usual question on my return to school in early August, I said that without a doubt, my summer adventures had the potential to shift the trajectory of my life -- if I allow them to.

No, I didn’t get married or meet the love of my life. I didn’t start a new job or spend deeply important and meaningful time with loved ones. In fact, I spent this summer almost entirely on my own.

As a teacher, I often use the summer months to get a second job, something like teaching summer school or working at a day camp, to rake in that extra dough, but this past summer I decided to pass. Instead, I booked a flight and planned to use five weeks of my six week summer vacation to traipse about Europe (mostly) alone.

A caveat: I’m not a stranger to European travel. I travelled abroad for the first time when I was 16, studied in Greece for a semester when I was a junior in college, and have had the privilege to visit Europe with family at least four other times. My parents jokingly refer to me as their “tour guide” on these trips. I plan the itinerary, learn how the transportation works, do the translating (poorly, but still), find the accommodations, and chose the sites we’ll visit. I say this not to flaunt my travels, but to show simply that I’m no stranger to European adventures. I say this to explain that the power of this trip wasn’t the necessarily the novelty of my experience but of what it taught me about my life and myself.

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It reminded me that I love to write.

Like the true journal hound that I am, I bought a new journal, acquired new pens, and committed (again) to write every day. But, for perhaps the first time ever, I actually did it.

Committed to making writing my “me time” each day, I instead (re)discovered that journaling is actually my “God time.” Although my writing often started as a simple retelling of my day, it usually transformed into God at work in my life... a clarification of my emotions, an understanding of my desires, or a revelation of who I was and what I needed.

Once I started to write, I was amazed to discover how much my mind craved this activity. One of my favorite travel activities became finding the perfect café, bar, park bench, or grassy lawn on which to capture my thoughts. My daily “God time” became a habit that centered me and reminded me of who I was.

It reminded me that it’s okay to stop and take time for you.

One day when I was in Geneva, Switzerland, I booked a ticket for an eight-hour ferry and read a book in a lounge chair ALL DAY on the top deck while staring at a gorgeous lake. That day ranks in the top three of all my adventures, if not my favorite day. But it almost didn’t happen.

When I first stumbled upon this idea, I hesitated. I had only scheduled three days in Geneva and I had a decently extensive list of things I wanted to see and experience. Spending almost the entirety of one of those days on a boat felt almost wasteful.

But thankfully, I paused. If I had been on a “regular” summer vacation, at the beach or the lake, I would likely spend a large number of days sitting in a chair, reading a book, staring at water, and drinking a beer. And gosh darn it, this WAS my vacation. Sure, it was different, it was a chance to explore new cultures and place, but it was also one of weeks I earned, teaching high school seniors 50+ hours a week. I was going back to work when I got home, I reminded myself, so I needed to enjoy the time I had.

I took a step back from what I thought I should be doing, from what I thought was expected as me of a traveler, from my fear that I would miss out on experiences or have regrets and I took time for me. I choose to do the thing I love the most, in the setting I love the most. And wow, was it perfect.

I learned that being anonymous and doing things alone is a powerful thing (and not always as awkward as you expect).

On one of my first days in Europe, after spending an entire afternoon wandering the streets of Madrid alone, I wrote in my journal there is an anonymity to travel that I can’t get enough of, it makes you feel insignificant in the best way, you recognize what little space you actually occupy. I felt this early on, and it quickly became a refrain for my experience.

This anonymity became extremely powerful for me. One of my greatest anxieties in life is being judged by others, of making a fool of myself. And while teaching high school students has helped me release some of that fear (being extra weird is sometimes the only thing that catches their attention), this fear often stops me from acting, from doing the things I want to do.

But when you travel solo through Europe for weeks at a time though, you are forced to do things on your own. Eat at restaurants alone. Go to the movies alone. Ride a ferris wheel by yourself. Sit at a bar alone and have a glass of wine. Go to a beach filled with families and couples and find a spot alone for your towel.

And although I often entered into each of these activities with butterflies in my stomach or a racing heart, I discovered that no one cared what I did. I don’t know why it felt different in a different country, but it did. It sounds simple, but it was freeing to know that even if people judged me, I would quite literally never see them again in my life. This feeling of anonymity freed me up in ways I couldn’t imagine. I did all the activities I wanted to do when I wanted to do them. I remembered that while I’m a person who has other people that care about them, I am not the center of everyone’s world. People are busy living their lives and realizing this helped me to get busy living mine.



I was reminded of what balance feels like.

Anyone who know me well will tell you that my life is often out of whack. The phrase I’ve used often to describe my teaching life is “unsustainable.” Sure, I can power through and survive for the time being - but for two, five, or ten more years? It hardly seems possible and certainly feels unhealthy.

But this summer I felt the magic of a life in balance.

I exercised enough, slept enough, wrote (and prayed) enough, read enough, and took enough time for myself to feel an almost complete lack of anxiety. I still felt like my life had purpose and structure, I wasn’t floundering in the way I sometimes do at the start of a vacation, but it didn’t feel unsustainable.

And while I recognize that a life-long sabbatical which involves me living off my savings and adventuring rather than bringing in a salary could not feasibly last more than 3 or 4 months, I realized that this time refocused me on what I really want. I want to feel in control. I want to feel like I have time for myself. I want to feel like I have a purpose. I want to feel excited about each day. The question of where and how I find that outside of my European adventure may be a bit more challenging.

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One of my prayers this summer was the repeated question, how do I bring this experience home with me? We ask this of ourselves and our students after retreats and immersions, but what about spiritual experiences that take the form of our everyday lives? How do we capture the peace of a balanced existence and bring that into the busyness that is teaching, parenting, marriage, friendship, work, and well, life? That’s perhaps what I will carry with me most into the future from this experience.

This summer’s true power will only really be tested as my life unfolds. I’ll know how much it transformed me if I can continue to chase balance, pursue writing, be brave, embrace quiet, and take time for myself.

Three Vocations

by Laura Flanagan

“Actually, I don’t think we need to hire anyone else.”

In April, I had a conversation with the pastor about replacing my soon-to-be-retired administrative assistant, a wise and humble woman who had worked in the various incarnations of this parish’s catechetical ministry for the last 40 years. It included the above statement, which has been the source of my anxiety for the last few months.

Emi was a primary evangelizer of our families with children in public school, who need a dedicated and supportive presence from our parish. This is a huge loss, not simply because of her position but also because of her person. However, the detriment to the detail-oriented, relational quality of our program appears partially avoidable. The simple solution is for me to take on more work and more of her role - and that may be what I am expected to do.

But… put simply, I don’t want to. Work itself doesn’t scare me, but I’m not suited to everything that would be demanded of me. (Our pastors probably have greater right to this complaint.) If I take on this necessary work, I’ll have less time actually to create anything new, to grow the impact of what we’re doing, to rethink and rework what’s not facilitating conversion.

Truthfully, a main reason for my reticence is the greater demand upon the time I have currently set aside for my other vocation: wife and mother in my family. I’m fighting the toxic mentality that we often place upon our ministers: “If you really cared about the parish families, you’d be here more often.” I’m not here all the time because I’m not just working to make our parishioners saints - I’m supposed to be mutually helping along my husband and children too.

Granted, I have the luxury of being able to lengthily discern this. Many people work two or three jobs in service to the basic needs of their family. Yet a cultural shift towards respect for the family by the workplace needs to originate in the Church’s institutions. We need to be the example. Sometimes we do well. Our Archdiocese recently promoted its 100% coverage of Natural Family planning instruction in its health insurance coverage - perhaps an overdue step, but better late than never. My high school is offering an on-campus child care center to faculty and staff beginning this year. These are good steps.

I do like it when my two vocations get a little mixed up out of necessity. I’ve now showed up to the archdiocesan offices a few times with a toddler and said something like, “I have a meeting with the bishop,” to the amusement of the concierge-esque secretary at the entrance. Clare has enjoyed a little date out to Panera, then sat in the booth quietly through a meeting with a potential catechumen. But I do not want the demands of one to push out the possibility of the other.

And then there’s a third, most important vocation - daughter of Christ. Occasionally I go back and reread a post I wrote in 2012 for the Catholic Apostolate Center, about the strange temptation ministers face to skip over prayer in order to “do the work of the Church,” which is naturally impossible to do. At that point, the temptation to be busy on behalf of the parish could have edged out my time for personal prayer, if not for the wise prioritization the Echo program outlined (and nearly enforced) for us.

At this point, I also have the temptation to skip over prayer so as to spend more time with my little family unit. That’s also a dysfunctional practice. One of the best passages I think there is from C.S. Lewis’ fiction is on one of the greatest spiritual dangers I think good people face: treating family as an idol… even that immediate family whom your sacramental vocation calls you to serve.

In the Great Divorce, a saint is trying to prepare a woman in Purgatory for the possibility of entering Heaven. That woman, however, only wants to see her son who had predeceased her. In the midst of their conversation, that saint of welcome (some friend or acquaintance from Earth, but who was purposefully not her son) explains,

‘...there is no such thing as being only a mother. You exist as Michael’s mother only because you first exist as God’s creature. That relation is older and closer. No, listen, Pam! He also loves. He also has suffered. He also has waited a long time.’

Her purification consists of learning to want God for His own sake, and not solely as a means to her son.

My family is a good; a great good; a fantastic good! But they are not THE Good, and I feel my time should also reflect that.

Discipleship will cost everything you have. But how do you split “everything” when you have three different places you’re called to be a disciple?

I think a partial solution is to be present wherever you are. I should be more than merely efficient, but allow my interactions their full weightiness - à la Fred Rogers. A Christlike presence probably involves being conscious but not anxious over the balance of your time, rather than trying to parcel out the best proportional composition of your week as if it were a recipe. This is a life, not a test kitchen.

Prayer, I’ve found, is what makes that presence and peace possible. If you work from rest - if your soul is resting in the peace of Christ - then it doesn’t matter if you eventually need to move to a different job because your current one demands more than you can or should give. Christ is still risen. My husband Kevin said in college that he had the realization that “If God exists, and loves me, then nothing else matters.” I imagine the martyrs would agree.

Another answer probably lies in letting some “mixing” happen - in recognizing that I am not actually three different people called to three different vocations. If I am to imitate the love of God - for what is a vocation but a specific way to do that? - then I have to strive to be the same person in all three areas.

In a book I read recently, the author is counseled by a priest who that day suffered a family tragedy yet seems at joyful peace. Her description evokes the same Lewis quote Rob just used to describe Javy Baez, but I’ll use a different section: “Every so often one meets [saints]... They love you more than other men do, but need you less.” He gives her the advice “Do what God is calling you to do, but do it as one part of something bigger - your family… Unite with your family. Bring them into what you do, and bring what you do into your family.”

Kevin is an excellent listener and clarifier for my jumbled thoughts when working through inspiration on catechesis (whether that catechetical brilliance is meant for my family, for the parish, or both). Clare has begun to be excited about what I tell her I will do at “my school.” If the work matters, they can help.

But I don’t do this well, yet. So I’m not fully present wherever I am. So I fret about what’s required to do these three things and do them well all together. So I don’t pray enough. To start, I’ll take a page from Pope Francis’ playbook and say, “Please pray for me.”

Trying not to Bleed A Lot

by Dan Masterton

“You know, those superficial wounds bleed a lot.”

It was Thursday morning. My wife and daughter were still asleep, and I was heading out to get in one last run before a 5k race that was two days away. Having not run in about a month (two justified weeks of rest while we were on vacation plus two unjustified weeks of laziness), I decided to just get two short, higher-pace runs in during the week before the race, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. Running 2.25 miles instead my usual 3.25 was my way of scaling down what I was asking of my body while hoping the increased intensity would prepare me best in the short timeframe. Unfortunately, the intensified run on Tuesday left my legs a bit more tired than I was accustomed to feeling.

When I set off for my Thursday run, I knew I wanted to run a similar pace to Tuesday but struggled mentally with the weight in my surprisingly heavy legs. My approach to running is predominantly mental. I always make a plan before heading out on a training run or running a race, and I work hard mentally to push my body to execute it. Most of the time, I lean on my long-learned ability to separate pain from injury to try to run hard at the upper end of my capacity.¹ On this particular Thursday morning, my mind was working hard to overcome the sluggishness of my body.

I ran my usual route, a zig-zag up and down quiet our neighborhood's residential streets. Usually, I’m just pouring over some thoughts as I avoid divots and cracks and make sure I’m crossing safely at intersections. Most of my runs are thoroughly uneventful. Unfortunately, this time, the ole sidewalk-crack monster got me.

Heading north, a few houses from turning a corner to run my last length south and into the home stretch, my toe clipped the front end of a raised panel of sidewalk. In what I can only imagine was comical fashion, I athletically and gracefully hit the deck, catching my falling body with my right forearm and elbow, as my right knee and ankle followed closely behind. After about a one-rotation barrel-roll, I was on my back in the mulch of someone’s front lawn. With a couple deep breaths and a chuckle at myself, I was sat up and realized no one was around to see my blooper.² I shook my head, picked myself up, and finished the run.

When I got home, I grabbed the imposing brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and, with my leg propped up on the bathtub, induced a healthy fizz from my road rashes on my elbow and leg. When my wife, Katherine, woke up, she inspected my scrapes while listening to my story. After asking the requisite triage questions, she clinically informed me, “You know, those superficial wounds bleed a lot.” And it sure did.

The hard part to deal with isn’t that I fell. I struggle with arrogance, but I am not beyond self-deprecation and making fun of myself. I’m fine. It probably looked hilarious. The real challenge is learning the realities of my life and gaining understanding and peace. The hard part is realizing new limitations and embracing new opportunities to learn about myself. Whether physically, mentally, or spiritually, these moments can be fruitful to someone who stays grounded in a growth mindset and a lifelong desire to learn, and I hope to take that approach. So how can I stay on that better path? How can running keep me grounded and growing in the right ways?

Well, the increasing physical limitations will be tough. Whereas I think some people pick up running as an adult hobby, I’ve been running since I was 11. I love to run, and I’ve experienced some quantifiable successes. Luckily, I always had coaches and teams in those middle school years who were all about individual growth and improvement as a means to team success. So as I continued to run, for conditioning or training for other sports or eventually as a personal hobby and wellness discipline, that foundation from coaches helped me feel most motivated by “racing myself,” by choosing different distances, races, and training regimens to try to challenge my ability and grow. My new task will be reunderstanding that self-competition as I age.

Typically, I’ve sought improvement by trimming seconds or minutes off of personal best times in races. However, as I get a bit older, the raw time improvements may be harder to come by as my body’s recovery ability slowly begins to fade. In college, I rarely felt the residue of tough runs even just a few hours after they ended, but now the stiffness and soreness lingers more. Thursday morning, as I stretched, I knew I’d need some more mental toughness to keep my pace; I did not realize I was pushing my body past its reasonable ability. Because my legs were so heavy but my mind was pushing them to an excessive pace, I wasn’t picking up my feet the way I needed to do at that pace, and that’s what sent me for that hard tumble. That sort of limitation is a totally new wrinkle in this calculus that I have to incorporate into my mental game. Last week’s race was a first try at this.

As I drove to Saturday’s race and got ready to run, I was thinking about reasonable expectations. My PR for a 5k is 21:08, which I ran as a 25-year-old. I know I probably won’t come close to that again. Last year, in this same race, I had run a 23:34, and I thought that was possible again. With mile-by-mile split clocks on the course, I hoped I could get 7:20 splits, which would put be ahead of that time and down toward a 23:00 finish. As I rounded a corner toward the Mile 1 clock, I saw 7:20 had passed, and I was starting mile two at about a 7:35/mile pace.³ Thinking about what’s reasonable, I resolved to push what I could to at least run even splits.⁴ I held my pace until the last quarter or half mile or so when I let up a smidge to ensure I could burn it up for the final sprint, my favorite part of a race. And when I rounded the corner to enter the football/track stadium, I had the head of steam I wanted and finished with a properly strong sprint.

My 23:58 (7:44/mile) that morning is the slowest official 5K time I’ve run.⁵ Engaging with my abilities that morning helped me learn to start racing my future self (the me that is slowly aging) rather than my past self (which an old running buddy once described as a “jackrabbit”). I’m learning that while it’d be awesome to race the me from years past, the more effective competition (and the one less likely to cause me injury) will be between me and my aging self. How do runners’ times change as they age? Can I stay ahead of the curve? Can I run at the top of my ability, even if it doesn’t mean beating PRs from past years? The goalposts need to move, and I’m learning how to reset them. A reasonable start is to run in a manner by which I don't wound myself and bleed a lot.

Thinking about all of this called to mind the elderly relatives I’ve seen age (and some already pass). It makes me think of the ways that the younger generation or two that cares for and accompanies them often hopes for the best in older age… Man, I hope I’m that sharp when I’m her age! … Please tell me if I’m being that unpleasant when I’m old… Poor guy, just doesn’t realize he can’t control everything anymore. As with most things in adult life, mature perspective only comes when we invite, welcome, and engage it. I think these small moments of limitation are great for humility and reality within me. It helps challenge me to separate that which is in my control and that with which I need to find peace.

To a certain extent, my body’s health is my responsibility. By eating reasonably, exercising regularly, and stretching properly, I can keep my cardiovascular health in decent shape and mitigate certain health risks. Yet, sometimes, my muscles may be sore for longer and recover more slowly, and I may not be able to execute the duration or pace I want to achieve. My mental processes and my self-discipline have to stay attuned to keep knowing the difference between pain and injury, to distinguish what’s pushing myself and hurting myself.

For most of my life, running has been a way to challenge myself to physical growth, athletic success and improvement, and mental exercise. It can continue to be all of that. But it now even more so is becoming a way for me to understand myself, my body, and my limitations, and a way to engage peacefully and actively with what I can handle. Running will continue to be a good heartbeat rhythm to embrace and a way to continue being a lifelong learner. And if my head gets too big or I stop paying attention, I may just fall and bleed a lot again.

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1 Pain is soreness, stiffness, fatigue, etc. Injury is a strain, a pull, an -itis, etc. One can run through a certain amount of pain to sustain a workout and build stamina and endurance. One should not run through injury, which usually can be aggravated or worsened with exertion. Also, I realize that it’s sentences like these that make non-runners hate or otherwise not understand runners.^↩

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2 On the one hand, I’m glad, because I imagine the sight could’ve freaked someone out. On the other hand, I think it could have been a great laugh to the right spectator.^↩

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3 Can you why my running career thus far has focused on improving my times? The numbers game comes naturally to me, and I enjoy it a lot. Though, even with times, I’ve softened, as I used to time all my training runs; now, I only time races and take the training runs at natural, mentally set paces.^↩

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4 Often, longer races cause runners to deteriorate gradually, such that each successive mile is run more slowly. Some runners train or run to have negative splits, where they preserve themselves early and exert more later to run faster in the latter part of the race. Even splits simply means that you try to sustain one pace for the duration of the race.^↩

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5 Again, I race primarily against myself. To those who can run faster, mad props to you. To those who run more slowly, don’t worry about my time versus yours. For all of us, let’s race our ghosts, and work to be healthy, well, and growing.^↩

Reflections on a Presentation by Sr. Helen Prejean

by Tim Kirchoff

I attended the second iteration of the Life and Justice Conference this past weekend, just as I said I would in my last post. As happened last year, I feel like I left the conference with a number of fragmentary thoughts— puzzle pieces that I know make part of a bigger picture (or seamless garment), but I don’t yet know precisely how.

Sr. Helen Prejean’s keynote was the most engaging part of the day. There is much from her presentation and from the other sessions that I haven't fully processed yet. What follows are my most fully-formed thoughts and reactions.

As I arrived on Saturday morning, there were about 6-8 people standing outside the venue, holding various hand-drawn signs accusing Sr. Prejean of distorting Catholic teaching. As I passed them, one informed me that Sr. Prejean supported pro-abortion politicians. I had been vaguely familiar with the idea that Helen Prejean is not particularly admired on the Catholic Right, though even now I have trouble understanding precisely why they hold her in such suspicion.¹

The Speech Itself

Sr. Prejean mainly focused on capital punishment, discussing how she became involved in the issue and several arguments for and against it.

Ministering to and empathizing with death row inmates led her to recognize that the basic human dignity of death row inmates is not obliterated even by their heinous crimes. Furthermore, she saw that capital punishment brings no real comfort to victims’ families.

Two aspects of her criticism of capital punishment strike me as particularly pertinent and worth repeating:

1. Racism: 70% of executions today are in states that formerly practiced slavery, states in which Jim Crow laws attempted to perpetuate racial oppression. The majority of cases in which the death penalty is actually enforced, moreover, involve a poor defendant of color, often in cases where that person of color kills a white person. Whether intentionally or not, capital punishment seems like a continuation of Jim Crow.²

2. Collateral damage: it forces good people serving on juries or as prison guards and wardens to participate in killing a fellow human being who has already been rendered helpless and harmless. She spoke of jurors who are haunted by their choice and of prison guards who are unable to sleep after participating in an execution. Participating in capital punishment, in itself, can be deeply traumatizing.

Abortion’s Collateral Damage

During the Q&A session, one woman asked her about her stance on abortion. In response, Sr. Helen returned to a point she had made about murderers—that they are more likely to be motivated by panic or desperation than callousness—to suggest that it is important to have genuine empathy for mothers in difficult situations, and that we should focus on assisting them in their circumstances, rather than assuming that their choice stems from a callous disregard for the life of their child.

Sr. Prejean’s response to the abortion question struck me as incomplete in two ways. First, she missed what struck me as a natural extension of her discussion of the collateral damage of the death penalty: if the recognition of the inviolable human dignity of the death row inmate results in jurors and prison guards being haunted by the experience even years later, then ought we not expect that the recognition of the humanity of the unborn might lead to similar effects among all those involved in abortion?

Building a post-abortion society, ultimately, means more than making abortion illegal, and more than making sure that mothers and children have adequate care available to them. It will also mean recognizing and addressing abortion's collateral damage. Women may feel guilty decades later for getting an abortion. Men may have pressured their partners into abortions, or their partners may have procured abortions against their wishes. Parents might convince their daughter that abortion is her only chance at the future she deserves. Abortionists and abortion clinic workers are told by law and society that they are helping people exercise their own fundamental rights, but at the cost of innocent lives. These varying forms of guilt and grief are all wounds that will remain for decades after the end of abortion.

In this sense, ministries like Project Rachel, which provides retreats and counseling for women who have had abortions, will be crucial in helping us understand what a truly post-abortion society looks like. Sr. Helen's ministry to victims' families and prison staff as well as death row inmates ought to give clues, or at least encouragement, in pursuing post-abortion healing for both individuals and society.

A Tired Canard

If post-abortion healing is an under-explored subject, the proposition that pro-life activists need to empathize with and support women in crisis pregnancies has been discussed to death. What troubles me about it is that this argument is often delivered as if it is novel, when in fact pro-life activists took it to heart long ago.

Saying that pro-lifers need to provide support and resources for women considering abortion is a bit like saying that the Catholic Church in America needs to implement practices to prevent the sexual abuse of children. The various institutional ministries of the Church in America have already implemented VIRTUS training to recognize all of the signs and grooming behavior associated with sexual abuse. Not everyone in the pews can identify grooming behaviors, and many bishops haven’t yet been held accountable for their failures, but to say that the Church isn't trying to prevent abuse ignores the diligence and vigilance of so many people who work in Catholic institutions.

Similarly, the pro-life movement on the ground is spending considerable effort and expense taking care of women in very difficult situations. Even if many supposedly pro-life politicians and pro-life voters haven't yet learned this lesson, Sister Helen's proposition was hardly revolutionary among the people in the audience who focus their activism on trying to end abortion.

Usually, when I hear people talk about how the pro-life movement needs to take care of women in crisis pregnancies, it comes across as a challenge to the movement or a reason for rejecting it, seldom acknowledging the degree to which their recommendations are already reality.³

Stepping Back

But perhaps I am not being fair in my interpretation of Sister Helen's statement. The woman who asked her seemed to be proceeding from a similar mindset as the half-dozen people who had been protesting outside-- namely, the assumption that Helen Prejean is not a friend of efforts to end abortion. The question was an attempt to extract an affirmation of the idea that abortion is, in fact, bad. I can't imagine how many times she has had to answer a similar question, and her response, on some level, was an articulation of what kind of pro-life activism she would be most comfortable with. She was asked to give a conceptual affirmation to anti-abortion efforts, and she gave precisely that.

But conceptual affirmations are not enough when we are talking about ministries that people pour their lives and souls into. Helen Prejean's ministry is deserving of admiration for her personal virtues and wonder at the way God has worked through her. The same is true of anti-abortion activism, especially to the extent that it involves empathizing with and accompanying women facing monumentally difficult situations.

We shouldn't be seeking affirmation from each other the way the woman at the conference sought affirmation from Helen Prejean, as if it were squeezing blood from a stone. Nor do we really gain anything by taking the approach of the protestors outside-- critiquing each other without for a moment appreciating the work God does in and through each of us.

At the risk of being even more insufferable than I usually am, I want to close with a challenge -- a challenge to look closely and charitably at a ministry related to a topic you're not entirely comfortable with. Look at issues of race or immigration or abortion through the eyes of someone like Helen Prejean who has dedicated their life to understanding the issue and ministering to people in their greatest need. Look for the ways the Holy Spirit is at work in their ministry, and hold on to that perception.⁴ Look for things to admire more than reasons to criticize.

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1 This is also true of right-wing contempt for Fr. James Martin. I have no particular affection for any Catholic celebrity activists, but neither do I see much point in heaping contempt on someone just because they have the admiration of other Catholics whom I happen to dislike. Based on what other people at the conference said later, part of the excuse for disliking Helen Prejean is based on her signing on to a draft of an anti-war statement that was then revised to include support for abortion and published without notifying her of the changes. If she also happened to support politicians who happen to be pro-choice on abortion, that’s… a different issue, but not worth denouncing a person’s entire public ministry and activism.^↩

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2 The New Jim Crow has been on my reading list since college. Still haven’t read it. “Whoops” doesn’t seem to cover it.^↩

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3 It would be nice, just once, to see someone not involved in the pro-life movement acknowledge the existence of crisis pregnancy centers without accusing them of being absolutely evil.^↩

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4 Editor's Note: Here at The Restless Hearts, Erin has shared reflections on race, from her perspective as a white educator working with students who are people of color: Part One | Part Two | Part Three.
Also, I brought back some reflections from the US-Mexico Borderlands on immigration as well as thoughts on development from an immersion in Uganda.^↩

In Appreciation of El Mago

by Rob Goodale

The wheel of time has spun round once more to that most favored time of year -- early autumn -- and with the waning days of the ninth month comes my most revered ritual -- writing about the Chicago Cubs. Apologies to the less baseball-inclined among you.¹

As the season wends its way toward its conclusion at the end of September, the Cubs cling to a slim division lead over the Milwaukee Brewers. The third best team in the National League is the St. Louis Cardinals, who are awful at everything and hated by everyone also in the Central Division. If you are like me (which, for your general wellness, I sincerely hope is not the case), the next few weeks are going to be harrowing.

It isn’t hard to imagine this season careening off a magnificent cliff, nor is it particularly difficult to envision a 2018 fandom rife with misery. The team has looked out of sorts all season. Our most beautiful sparkle-eyed MVP has missed almost half of the season with a mysterious shoulder injury. Our starting rotation is held together with roughly $38 million dollars worth of paper clips and chewed up bubble gum. Our big mid-season acquisition is a bat-first second baseman who apparently also tries to play second base with a bat instead of a glove.²

It could be a grim season. But reader, it is not, and there is one reason for that. That reason’s name is Ednel Javier Baez: human GIF, invader of dreams, and literal magician.

Javy Baez is the most valuable player, not only in the National League, but in my soul. He brings peerless exuberance and frivolity to every play, whether he be at second base, third base, or shortstop -- three positions he plays better than just about anyone alive. He hits colossal home runs and scores from first base on weakly-hit bloop singles. His mere presence on the basepaths reduces the opposition to high school JV teams who are going to start running laps as soon as they chase down all of the wild throws they’ve scattered around the edges of the field.

It would be a mis-characterization for me to say that the rest of the Cubs have been a black hole of despair this year. They haven’t been. All of my favorite players are still my favorite players -- but for most of the team, the season has felt a lot like C.S. Lewis’ grey town: dreary and twilit, rainy not quite raining, neither day nor night. It’s been a slog. I know I made a lot of these complaints last year, too. Maybe this is just what it feels like to be a fan of a good baseball team.

Javy is the antidote, man. In a way, I imagine that watching him play baseball is the tiniest bit like watching a saint live.



I don’t mean to say that Javy Baez will be canonized in the Roman Catholic Church for being able to hit a ball with a stick; I am merely remembering the way Lewis describes saints in Mere Christianity. “Their very voices and faces are different from ours: stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant,” he writes. “They begin where most of us leave off.”³

Javy plays like he’s the only one in on the secret: that it’s a children’s game, and he gets paid to play it. His reckless contagious unbridled disruptive magnetic joy is so dang fun to watch, I fell in love with him two years ago when he was only half this good.

Normally, when an athlete reaches that transcendent level of performance, it feels like a titanic feat. LeBron James, Tiger Woods: these men exerted their physical dominance with a grimace, and we give them more credit because we can see how hard they work. Javy is more buoyant, taking himself more lightly, than anyone else I’ve ever seen play professional sports, and his joy makes me want to live the way he plays baseball. No matter how the 2018 season ends, I’ll always have that.

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1 Editor's Note: As the chief baseball fan Restless Hearts, Rob and I are from time to time self-indulgent in our baseball-based writing. Be assured, we could end up writing about baseball with much greater frequency. What you see from us amounts to what is actually great restraint.^↩

2 His defense is embarrassingly bad, is what I’m saying. Oh, he also said some stuff about a gay former baseball player back in 2015 that made a lot of people really angry.^↩

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3 Mere Christianity, book 4, chapter 11.^↩

Lessons from “Calvary”

by Jenny Lippert

One of my all-time favorite films is the 2014 drama “Calvary.” It follows a week in the life of a Catholic priest, Fr. James (played by Brendan Gleeson), who pastors a small town parish in rural Ireland. The movie provides a very dark look into fallen human nature. The characters of the town are about as broken and sinful as they come. As we follow Fr. James in his ministry, the movie deals with heavy issues like suicide, sexual abuse, domestic violence, adultery, alcoholism, atheism, homicide, prostitution, and even cannibalism. (Perhaps you’ve inferred that this is NOT a family-friendly film.) Other than Fr. James, the people of the town of Sligo approach faith as something—at best—nominal, and—at worst—foolish and contemptible. Each character lives out his or her own kind of despair.

This darkness is more than just individual despair. A major issue in the film is the clerical sexual abuse crisis in Ireland and the failure of the Church to respond. References are made to it throughout the film and even though Fr. James is innocent of any sort of abuse, he endures cruel, lewd remarks, unfounded suspicions, and even a death threat. The hierarchy of the Church is portrayed as disconnected from the concerns of real people and more interested in maintaining a status quo. Despite Fr. James’ seeming impotence in the face of human brokenness (even his own), we see him faithfully, quietly, and humbly serving the people around him.

This film has been on my mind in the wake of the current crisis in the Church. As news began breaking earlier this summer, anger, sadness, and disgust filled me by turns, as well as questions of why, how, and who were involved. I have felt helpless and frustrated and betrayed. I oscillate between a desire to bury my head in the sand and the urge to be responsibly informed.

I will be the first to admit that I am not as knowledgeable about our current crisis as I could be. I have avoided social media and most news outlets because they seemed to show such reactionary, political, and divisive accounts. I find myself overwhelmed by questions of who to trust and what to do. In answer to the doing part of that question, the example of the fictional Fr. James—the silent, faithful ministry of presence—has been edifying.

My first response, too, is silence. Not silence in the sense of remaining unresponsive, but silence as I listen mournfully to our brothers and sisters who have been betrayed—listening without pretensions of an easy fix through human effort. For me, this has not meant seeking out every testimony of abuse that I can get my hands on, but rather has meant keeping informed and truly mourning and standing with victims.

My second response has been fasting and penance. Jesus commands this, and even says that some evils can only be cast out with these weapons. If the Church is truly the Body of Christ, then the things that we do (for good or ill) impact her. We are so profoundly instrumental in the life of the whole. This is why this scandal hurts so much; members of this body have done harm in a very real way. It has reminded me in a sobering manner that my sins, too, harm this sacred body in a real way. And yet it has also given me great hope. While sins and failings cause harm, fasting, prayer, and penance can heal. I am not powerless in the healing of the Church.

When news first broke about former Cardinal McCarrick, I felt a quiet invitation from the Lord at daily Mass to fast that day, and to offer my fasting specifically for him. I have felt that invitation deepen as this period of the Church’s suffering continues. This, by no means, is something great and heroic on my part, but I do believe it to be an invitation to take part in something real and powerful, by the grace of God. Nor does my participation in the Church’s process of spiritual conversion need to be purely invisible.

My husband and I had the opportunity to attend a prayer service for the victims of abuse, organized by a grassroots young adult group. We knelt at the steps of our Cathedral with dozens of other Catholic young adults, petitioning God for healing and guidance. The atmosphere of unity and peace among that group of young adults invoking the graces of the Holy Spirit, was another testament to the power of God working in even the weaknesses of His Church, bringing renewal out of brokenness. That experience of His Spirit at work in a physical gathering, a physical ministry of being present, was another note in the fullness of being Catholic in difficult times.

Perhaps the most comprehensive response to the scandals (so far) has been, for me, to live out my Christian vocation to the best of my ability. To love the people God has put in front of me at each moment. To seek holiness through my marriage, my teaching, my relationships. To glorify God in the little moments of opportunity that He gives me, through little acts of love. To sanctify my small corner of the world, and to till my garden.

The end of the movie “Calvary” is a silent montage of all the various characters, before the movie leaves them to their own devices. Much like real life, the loose ends of all these characters’ stories are not neatly tied up—the issue is still in doubt. There is not a clear moral of the story, and the viewer may be left to wonder if Fr. James made any impact at all. The only hint of his influence is found in one brave person who silently struggles to imitate his example, with what success or sense of fulfillment, we do not know. And yet, it seems to me that his steadfast, quiet presence in the midst of great sin and despair, opened up the possibility of redemption to all those he met. He opened up for them the possibility of selflessness, of finding oneself in giving oneself away, and the possibility of hoping even against apparent hopelessness. As Fr. James says to one despairing penitent, “God is great and the limits of his mercy have not been set.” The decision to receive that mercy or not would remain their own.



Throughout the film, the stunning cinematography pans the rocky crags of Ireland, holding out with the gray waves tirelessly beating against them, a powerful image of God’s mercy on a stony heart, while a few souls venture out to surf the depths. Words attributed to St. Augustine appear on the screen: “Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.” The mercy of God still beats on our hearts, and in receiving Him, we can be one more instrument of His besieging of the hearts of the cold, the hurt, the broken, the sinner.

Christ still lives in His broken earthly body. Christ wants to live in you and me.

Lessons from Visiting the Bones of the Patron Saint of Teachers

by Dave Gregory

Sarah tolerates a lot from me, the least of which is my religious fanaticism. Not being a cradle Catholic herself, GingerFace (as her appellation now goes approximately 90% of the time these days) still marvels at my absurd obsession with body parts enclosed in precious metals. On our honeymoon, I opted for the most romantic of destinations on our penultimate day in Europe: the motherhouse of the Lasallian Christian Brothers. I just really needed to see the remains of the patron saint of teachers, Jean Baptiste de La Salle, and I hoped that the Generalate would offer me some insight into the spirituality of the Brothers of the Christian Schools so that I might deepen my own affection for their particular charism.

When I moved into Lasallian education from the realm of Ignatius, I knew that a whole new world of lingo and terminology would come with the transition; and indeed, in two years’ time as a Lasallian, the unfamiliar virtues of “piety” and “zeal”¹ have gradually replaced those once familiar terms of cura personalis and the magis in my imagination, despite the fact that I have always protested against the notion of becoming a pious zealot.

The mother church of the Brothers rests in a relatively unassuming brick structure on the outskirts of Rome. Let past the gate by a man wearing shorts and a t-shirt, Sarah and I asked the receptionist if we could pay a visit to the chapel. She kindly directed us onward, and as we made our way through the Generalate, Lasallian educators wearing conference shirts milled about.

Christ the Child

Having passed through corridors lined with portraits of various Brothers General, we met Christ the child, who greeted us at the chapel’s entrance. Wearing a simple tunic, the prepubescent Nazarene steps forward, raising his hand in benediction. It seems almost as if he is still learning to offer blessing, for although his right hand’s fingers curl in the typical iconographic gesticulation of such, his hand does not yet extend toward the person standing in front of him. It’s not so much trepidation on his part, given the serenity with which he steps forward, but that gray area that defines one’s coming of age.

He reminds me of the call to find Christ in each student I educate. Throughout my half dozen years as a teacher, I have been told to find God in students, although this phrase remained sort of veiled in my mind. How could I tear down the defenses of the most surly, difficult, tired, traumatized student and find the divine breaking through their teenage fissures? The key, I think, lies not in looking for God, but in looking for the student. Cliche though it may sound, education is a thing that requires relationship above and beyond any other quality. Important though mastery of and enthusiasm for content may be, a real teacher knows that his or her students will potentially forget almost everything they are taught. Ironically, I cannot remember much of anything from my own high school theology classes, but those teachers made an indelible mark. Relationship does not so much require that I be “liked,”² but that a student finds my presence worthwhile, at the very least. Finding the kid involves coming to develop an understanding of their quirks, their eccentricities, their passions, their weaknesses, and offering to meet them where they’re at. Find the student, and then I’ll find God. Doing it the other way around, at least for me, results in the vice of thinking myself holy.

A Humble Reliquary

The empty chapel struck me with its simplicity and gentleness, for the palette of creams and ivories proved a stark contrast to the ostentatious nature of most Roman churches and basilicas. It seemed fitting that this chapel, serving as a reliquary for the bones of teacher-saints, would architecturally resonate with the very vocation of being an educator: simple, straightforward, without pretense. We walked the perimeter of the chapel, and paused before the small side altars dedicated to the various Brother martyrs, men who had quite literally died for love of their students; for these men, teaching was a seriously dangerous business, though they deemed the risk of empowering children on the borders of culture and society to be an important one to take. Being new to their world, I remain unfamiliar with their stories, but the beauty of the communicated message hit hard. It would be nice to die in the classroom, with my “boots on” as the saying goes, and here were folks who had done just that.



Sarah and I approached the sanctuary, where graceful angels bore the relics of Saint Jean Baptiste aloft. This dude, I thought, three and a half centuries prior, had corralled men whom society deemed unfit to become teachers into teaching youth deemed unfit to be taught. And here were his various remnants: skull, vertebrae, other bones I could not identify. Eyes that had once looked on the world, meeting the eyes of those who would educate and be educated. I paused for a few minutes, kneeling and praying for my own school and its various needs.

Before we left, Sarah and I sat in the second pew, gazing upward. The resurrected Christ hovering above the altar, I noticed, wasn’t Christ at all, but rather Jean Baptiste transfigured. Over the course of his life, he had become, in the words of C.S. Lewis, a “little Christ.”

The Abiding Teacher

Before we departed the Generalate, we wandered a bit more and discovered the room vaguely resembling a gift shop, where Abraham from Ethiopia, who had spent much of his life working at the Generalate (no doubt after having been educated in a Lasallian school), helped me out. Nearby, Sarah and I discovered an odd statue of Jean Baptiste, arms raised high, with various cavities throughout his body. I walked around it, peering into these holes, and realized their significance.

Smaller figures filled these spaces: a child growing into teenagerdom, falling in love, becoming a husband and a father and an old man, and beside each of them was Jean Baptiste, grinning. He accompanies each student a Lasallian educator has ever taught, through each part of their lives. He becomes part of who they are and who they become. My eyes teared, and my memory flooded with all the teachers who had impressed their lives into my own: Dr. Carew, Mr. Watson, Ms. Johanson, Mr. Acosta, Mr. Talbot, Professors Mitchell and Ambrosio, and Fathers King and Schall. I have never taken a single course in teaching or education, but have modeled my own labors after theirs.

I’m not paid to teach, really, and neither were these men and women. Strangely, I think a Catholic educator makes his or her living by loving students into their humanity, just as my own teachers had loved me into existence. Their lives abide in ours, witnessing joyously and generously to what a life well-lived means. And unconsciously even, we absorb these models into our own ways of proceeding and being.

Who Would Know?

My dad, himself a professor of labor and employment law of over thirty years, liked to quote A Man for All Seasons when discussing his vocation. Richard Rich approaches Thomas More to discuss the profession, and More probes, “Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.” Richard replies, “If I was, who would know it?” and Thomas fires back, “You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.”

The classroom is a place where magic occurs. It’s one of few remaining places in the world where minds can meet without any sort of intermediary. Students and teachers hold truths in front of them, pondering and questioning. There’s a sort of intimate enchantment in this process, and like any real enchantment, it’s not broadcast for all to see. And the beauty of it all lies in this: the work of a teacher is to make it so that they are no longer needed, no longer necessary. There is, however, a tension here. Although our teachers phase themselves out of our lives, they remain entirely and wholly necessary.

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1 St. Jean Baptiste offers twelve virtues of a Catholic educator; these virtues were widely publicized to many Catholic teachers into the early part of the twentieth century in various media, but they have since fallen my the wayside outside of Lasallian education.^↩

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2 More than any other prayer, Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val’s Litany of Humility has aided my teaching.^↩