What A Load of Garbage — I'm Ecstatic

by Dan Masterton

My older daughter, Lucy, has started kindergarten, full days. And one of the repercussions of her daily six-hour absence is a surplus of energy in my younger daughter, Cecilia, that busts free around 3:30pm each weekday when the sisters are reunited. So one day recently, we managed this frictious time by following Lucy’s simple request: can we play outside?

Yes.

Pretty neat to look inside!

We headed to the backyard, where bickering continued, but now in the fresh air and wide open space of the yard. After a few minutes of trying to help facilitate fun, I decided to step away to a yard job and let them attempt to mediate their own disputes. I grabbed my gloves and a bucket and headed to my compost corner.

When we moved into our this house – our first house – three years ago, I bought an inexpensive compost barrel. I had little ambition of becoming an accomplished landscaper or vegetable gardener (which is good because we have critters galore around here), but I did want to be a good steward and diligent groundskeeper.

My chief goal was and is landfill diversion, reducing our curbside garbage load while returning what we could to the earth. So once or twice a year, plus whenever we pot plants or sow seed, I dig out the humus (the decomposed matter that has become soil again) and spread it around a bit – filling in low spots, adding it to bare spots, leveling out edges, and then scattering bits over the grass. Since kids always like to play in the dirt, they enjoy helping with this part. Here’s some fun stuff I was thinking while my daughters and I played with our new dirt:

Composting is easy and simple.

Three years in, the compost bin is an easy habit. For family, friends, and guests, it’s something I selectively try to invite them to do while over at our house, gradually trying to share the habit. For me, and for my kids who get to learn from scratch, it just feels second-nature.

I scrape the cutting board, the uneaten bits from plates, the stale and moldy bread, and forgotten leftovers, and more into the bin. Add some dried or fallen branches, chunks of leaves, and some evergreen branches from yard work. Put some cardboard or clearly-marked compostable material (like shipping bags or compostable ziplock bags) in there, too. And grab my shovel to mix it all up. The rest takes care of itself!

The natural process is neat.

Eyeballing the pile is interesting. I see the inorganic bits that the wind or neighborhood critters deposited and the bits I may have missed when contributing – nature rejects fruit stickers, potted plant tags, landscape materials, and anything else we coat and layer in chemicals for whatever reasons.

Thicker branches and logs of wood take longer to break down. But smack them with the point of the shovel, and you see the decaying outer coats give way as nature works its way through the layers.

Check out the compostable ziplocks and shipping bags, and you see the bits of progress as edges fade and holes widen.

And those produce peels and rinds? Between hungry animals and nature’s churn, they go pretty quickly!

The natural process is wormy, buggy, and smelly.

Whether you're a fan of the smell or not,
it's not bad to get an inexpensive barrel,
set it up somewhere low-key,
especially if you have a yard,
and get in the habit.

Not gonna lie – the compost smell grows on you. At least it did for me. It’s oddly pleasing. Earthy.

I even think it’s neat to see the worms that pop out as you move the pile and shovel bunches about. It’s cool to see them toiling away at their punchclock jobs.

I don’t love the onslaught of insects that churning the pile unleashes. Nor do I enjoy the itchiness up and down my pasty midwestern legs.

But I can deal.

The cycle is satisfying.

It’s fun to drop my shovel into the pile, punch through some dryness, and churn up hearty, deep brown dirt – and to know that it used to be grape stems, apple cores, and banana peels just a short time ago.

And the process brings a quiet and calming satisfaction – to take that new dirt, fill a bucket, and spread it around the yard.

Then on Monday night garbage night, it’s a simple routine of dumping our compost bin out back, emptying our recycling into the collection bins, and taking what’s usually just one kitchen bag of garbage out to the curb. I enjoy how the diverted matter can cycle back to the earth instead of filling a truck and a landfill, and that this cycle continues on the land that we own and try to steward.

It’s a small way to live out justice, ecologically, and respond to the calls of Christ, the pope, and the Church.

Catholic Social Teaching is our attempt to understand Scripture and Tradition to do justice throughout our lives. And part of this is Care for God’s Creation, being good stewards of the earth as God’s gift to us.

The greatest environmental change can and will come as businesses and corporations make changes. Better standards and processes on their end with manufacturing, production, and the whole capitalistic chain will make the most significant impact. And political movements and government shifts can help incentivize and lock in this progress, with funding access, policy, and enforcement.

Yet, we as individuals, families, and communities should not wait on that alone. And we shouldn’t use the comparably smaller impact we have as an excuse to hit snooze on our own habits. To put it simply, our call is to do good and avoid evil, to be holy in that we are seeking to do good and do God’s will.

Our choices, to reduce single-use plastic materials, to be more mindful consumers, to compost, are one way we do what is right and just. One block of a neighborhood making just changes can’t lower the earth’s average temperature, but those people can be a positive, attractive model, a way to demonstrate actions and habit changes that are doable and worthwhile, and a model of goodness and justice.

While we have an excess of
invasive, sprawling weedy bits,
we also have some lovely
low-maintenance perennials,
many that bloom in fall,
and hope to add more native bits
over the next few years.

For Catholics, if we’re to live out our Gospel values, if we’re to acknowledge our call to care for God’s Creation, if we’re to heed the teachings of our Church’s lead teacher Pope Francis, then we ought to be asking ourselves about our habits. For me, as a new homeowner, it was a good time to incorporate this, and it has become a simple, enjoyable element of homeowner chores. For you, it could be a different habit, a different way to adjust your consumption or stewardship. What is a way that you can be a better steward of Creation?

If not you, who? If not now, when?

Abundance, not Scarcity: Chapters 10-13

by Dan Masterton

A wise spiritual mentor once suggested that we need to practice "little discernments."

With all due respect to the big choices -- marriage or religious profession, college choice, major choice, accepting a job offer, moving towns -- the smaller daily choices we face are not to be overlooked. In these smaller moments when we decide how we spend our time, how to stay connected and engage with loved ones, and how we choose to treat others, we are finding things about ourselves. Both the process and the action are helping us learn who we are and giving us opportunities to learn to love God, others, and self better.

If we do these little discernments attentively, the big moments are still big, but they are more readily faced by drawing on this flowing stream of faithful living. Our discerning heart is alive and nimble, ready to engage in a more complex or deeper question.

In the final chapters of this book, Noah has to put something together. He doesn't have a deadline, but he does have quite a stream of discernment momentum. The blessing is that, as he makes a choice to try a path, he can do so in a way that's free of undue pressures, that gives him an optimal way to make a choice and engage deeply.

* * *

Grab a free copy of both of my fiction stories via free eBook here, or order a paperback copy to be sent to you by mail here.

Listen to Hear Here! Dan's Audiobook Podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Apple, shared also in embedded links below: 

Abundance, not Scarcity: Chapters 5-9

by Dan Masterton

Recently, I was helping with a program for Catholic teens, one that largely focuses on helping them consider God's ongoing invitations for them in their lives.

During a period of prayer with Adoration, I started to think about my ministries -- 7 years in Catholic high school campus ministry at different schools with different students and in different roles, and now 3+ years in pastoral support and communications for a religious congregation. The contrasts rose prominently, between the fast pace and high-buy-in-high-reward work in the schools and the intentionally slower-paced, less person-facing work I do now to balance being a stay-at-home parent.

Generally, I imagined going back to full-time work whenever our youngest child reached kindergarten, which if we are able to have another kiddo would still be several years away yet. And so I thought about being a stay-at-home dad, from (just tossing a number out in my mind) age 28 to age 41, for over thirteen years. While it comes with very little regret, and with zero desire to go back in time and change any fundamentals, it can come with some imaginative wondering -- about what could've gone differently, what other paths might have been there, and also, without any changes, what paths lie ahead, not just in parenthood and family life but in a more robust return to work.

This sort of vocational imagining, that entertains various scenarios as one looks forward, is the kind of immersive vividity I think we could use as we pray and reflect on decisions to make for the future. This is what the middle of this story lands upon, as Noah continues to see in technicolor some of the gifts and passions God has already placed in his heart and now projects and magnifies for him to marinade upon.

* * *

Grab a free copy of both of my fiction stories via free eBook here, or order a paperback copy to be sent to you by mail here.

Listen to Hear Here! Dan's Audiobook Podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Apple, shared also in embedded links below: 

Abundance, not Scarcity: Chapters 1-4

 by Dan Masterton

Discernment is a fun word. I think I heard it so much from mentors and friends in college that it almost may have lost some meaning if it weren't for the positive impact it has on one's spirituality. Generally, I'd say discernment is about making decisions in a way that makes intentional space for God and God's will, and for one's vocational reflections, especially as nourished by prayer and conversation.

For me, it impacted everything from deciding on volunteer placements and job offers to deciding to propose to my now wife when we were dating. It's a mindset that serves one well individually and in one's friendships, and I'm grateful to have had so many friends who invite this sort of conversation dynamic into regular chats.

In my story Abundance, not Scarcity, discernment becomes an emerging practice for Noah, but in a way unlike what I experienced personally. Noah finds his prayer bringing him to vivid places where he sees paths that may be before him in technicolor, starting with a reignited connection to Christ. Chapters 1-3 start us down this path, and I think you might enjoy walking with Noah as he unexpectedly starts down these paths.

Listen to Hear Here! Dan's Audiobook Podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Apple, shared also in embedded links below:

Abundance, not Scarcity: Another Invitation to Read and Listen Along

by Dan Masterton

In my first year of teaching, I remember hearing about a lot of Twitter beefs – keep in mind, my juniors and seniors in 2012-13 were either really young Millennials or the oldest Z’ers, and this was the pinnacle of social media buzz at the moment. As I prepared to take my first job in campus ministry the following year, I was dead set on creating social media accounts.

Watching them showed me the negativity they wrought over these apps, but I could also see how they were building community and creating additional connections. And while I didn’t want to endorse the downsides, I wanted to infiltrate the sphere.

My goal was to get students to follow the campus ministry account and then infuse their feeds with some faith. Leaning heavily on pictures of their friends doing ministry and service and creating beautiful things for our community, I wanted to make students double-take, mid-scroll, and acknowledge their faith while treading in an area where it previously had perhaps been absent.

I was able to follow through on my part, sharing early and often and creating a steady engagement with the school community; I was never prouder than when I finally laid down after directing a four-day Kairos and had the pleasure of liking and retweeting post-Kairos love tweets from students, rebroadcasting them out into everyone’s feeds – one fleeting but potent reflection of the way faith could and would seep into these arenas.

I have written over the years about the importance of showing up, about how even if I’m not the best network-builder or the wisest, most eloquent writer, I am steady. When I have an idea and a marked desire to be present, I can and do follow through to make it happen. I always hope that, in some strange or goofy way, that my relentless practice of writing is continually sharpening my soul and perhaps providing a bit of flint by which another may sharpen theirs in turn.

It’s in this same vein that I once again dove into the NaNoWriMo challenge in 2021.

In 2020, as the pandemic dragged on, I decided to take a first swing at fiction writing, approaching it, as always, as another way to try to bring faith into something. As the calendar flipped to 2021, I took my draft off the shelf and had a lot of fun writing and editing, and then goofing around with recording the story, and writing silly ads for the audiobook podcast. What There Is to Be Done was an honest, slightly idealistic, definitely based-on-experience reflection on some of the realities of educational and campus ministry, and young adult discernment overall.

As I prepped to write in NaNoWriMo 2021, the threads of discernment kept spinning. I found myself stewing on the breadth of multipotentiality. I was looking at the graces of my own marriage and family, of my own ministry and career, and thinking about capacities versus passions, about “soulmates” versus choices. And seeing the increased social understanding of mental health, and the growing comfort with naming and discussing it, I thought about how often (Millennials especially) end up trying to discern in times of drought and famine, when we’re down or tired, rather than in the midst of joy and stability. The result this time is a bit different.

Abundance, not Scarcity is a story of someone who realizes their stagnation and complacency, and turns to prayer to recognize unrealized capacities and unexplored passions and desires, all of which helps him toward a new decisiveness.

Once again, I’ll be offering an audiobook podcast, sharing one chapter a week over Apple, Spotify, Google, and my blog. But what’s more, I’ve also formatted the book not just as a paperback you can order but also as a free eBook, optimized for reading in the Books app on iPhone or iPad. (Or visit my LinkTree for these links collected in one list.)

My hope now, as it was then early in my career, is that you’ll invite my work to infiltrate your feed. Follow my Twitter or Facebook Page for alerts on new episodes (each Tuesday), and follow the podcast in your preferred app. I don’t think my story will change your life, but I think listening to it might be a welcome break and a potential improvement over the quagmires of doom-scrolling, the excesses of political immersion, or even the infinity of listening to playlists.

Add it to your feed or save it to your Books app – and next time you’re riding the train or sitting in the terminal or waiting to see the doctor, or even winding down to relax before bed, open this up instead of a social app or a streaming service. And see how reflecting might draw you toward the Spirit moving in you.

Fewer, not More

by Dan Masterton

When I discussed gun rights and gun violence with my high school students, I would often ask a big question: do you think gun violence is more likely to decrease with more guns or fewer guns?

Students’ answers varied, and I, as always, would reserve my personal opinions until the end, if I shared them at all. Some look to disarmament for peace while others seek to carry and self-ensure their own sense of protection. In this discussion, I would eventually share that I thought the solution to gun violence rested in decreasing the amount of guns in our society.

In an effort to bust American kids out of a narrow mindset, I would describe my year living abroad in Ireland. There, the police equivalent is the Garda Siochana, an Irish phrase that means “guardian of the peace.” Your typical beat cops and visible officers carried no guns, just a nightstick and pepper spray among their belt’s worth of equipment. In an extreme situation, they could call in tactical support with weaponry, but it was far from the default action, and a rare occurrence. Typically, this story was met with a combination of disbelief and skepticism.

We as Americans have an inherited deep entitlement to gun rights. Because of the context of our country’s founding, our early leaders enshrined a right to bear arms in our Bill of Rights. In the centuries since, I believe that concept has been warped, extrapolated, and placed on an undue pedestal.

When we are the only country in the world that faces mass shootings on a regular basis – avoidable tragedies that often kill not just adults but children – the root causes must be examined. While mental health, racism and racial conflicts, and other exacerbating factors are at play, we have to apply Occam’s Razor: it’s the easy access to very dangerous guns with little to no oversight that is the simplest explanation and at the heart of the problem. Guns may not kill people, but people with guns certainly do kill people. And guns provide an easy avenue by which white supremacists, racists, and vigilantes turn evil thoughts into profoundly evil actions.

I have never been more struck by an editorial board than when America Magazine came out with a profound suggestion for the plague of gun violence: repeal the Second Amendment. I think this approach would not necessarily have to zero out all gun rights, but it may be one of the only ways that reasonable gun control can have a chance. Even the consensus built in the wake of mass shootings has not been sufficient to force legislative leaders to pass basic common-sense moves like requiring background checks, limiting assault-style and high-capacity weapons, and cracking down on interstate gun traffic. Stripping away this amendment would force a reset in the foundational legal arguments in favor of gun rights and perhaps create a fresh chance at a new baseline for more limited, sensible gun rights. Ideally, this would be led by ideologically conservative Americans who are responsible gun-owners and gun-users who would rather start from scratch with better societal norms than allow “bad apples” to keep skirting laws and using guns to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, this essay is nine years old, and little has changed legally while mass shootings continue barely checked.

Click the link above and read the whole essay.

On a grassroots, cultural level, an un-nuanced gun-obsession mentality is toxic. Violence is a downward spiral; if someone believes they must have a gun to protect themselves from other people who may have a gun, then we end up with a lot of guns, a much greater likelihood for gun accidents, thefts, and misuses, and a society that’s just about a powder keg. Peace can be an upward spiral; if people can shift their attitude toward disarmament and relationship building, and entrust weapon-driven protection to a reasonable police and military force, we can have fewer guns and a more sure shot at greater peace. That latter path surely sounds naive and rosy, but it's the core of the better way.

A society that insists upon unregulated gun ownership as a fundamental right is a failed experiment, indicative of excessive individualism and an aversion to becoming and being neighbors. The seamless garment of the dignity and value of life demands greater peace in society, and that can only come with common-sense gun control and a solidarity that dares to trust in things besides weapons and their veneers of false masculinity or contrived self-defense. Putting one’s faith in fewer guns may feel risky or dangerous, but it is a lesser danger and a brighter path than whatever the hell we are on now.

Still Hitting Closed to Home

by Dan Masterton

Ok, I’m still thinking about this school closure. So are other folks around here – local news reports, social media activism, a yard sign campaign, and now a letter from the superintendent with explanations for the closing and a townhall at which he’ll be available planned for school families tonight.

One of the interesting threads of my conversations is the variety of structures out there for Catholic elementary school tuition.

This school that closed, and another we looked at in the next town over, have a base rate of tuition and then a lower rate for registered parishioners. The definition isn’t formally listed, but I believe it just means that you’re registered at a school-sponsoring parish.

Our old parish in the city had a base rate of tuition and then a lower rate for “active parishioners.” These families were distinguished by being registered at the parish, logging a minimum hours of volunteer time at the service of the parish, and giving consistently to the Sunday collection.

Our old suburban parish had a base rate of tuition and then a lower rate for baptized Catholic students. Rather than distinguishing committed parishioners from nominal ones, or parishioners from non-parishioners, this structure just discounted tuition for Catholic kiddos who submitted a baptism certificate with enrollment.

Perhaps most radical and profoundly evangelical is the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, Kansas. Years ago, the diocese made Catholic schools tuition-free for active parish families. The expectation was that parishes would collectively take on the burden of funding Catholic education, not just families with school-aged children. The parishes then use their collections to fund the schools more widely.

Looking at Catholic high schools specifically, many have robust financial aid programs that lean on endowments, large gifts, and alumni donors to help defray the rising costs of high school tuition. Even more significant, some schools, like Regis Jesuit in New York, cover tuition for all accepted and enrolled students. There’s also the prophetic financial and work-study model of Cristo Rey Network high schools and the emerging efforts stemming from Arrupe College’s two-year higher ed model in Chicago.

People are trying to be creative, constructing different structures with varying levels of success. One reason I infer for the relative strength of stability in our neighboring town with their elementary school is the multi-parish approach, by which five parishes subsidize the school, which is located on its own separate campus. Yet, our closed school was a two-parish school our parish has never had its own school and thus we’ve never had to merge down), and not even two feeder parishes both sending subsidies could keep it afloat; in fact, our partner parish was struggling to afford the subsidy within its own operations.

As a former campus minister, it was always difficult to find a balance, or even a connection, between the high schools where I worked and our local parishes. Often, there was some basic health in the feeder connection, like bringing middle school kids on campus for Catholic Schools Week Mass and shadow days, but the ties largely ended when their parish kids became students at the high school. The families’ parishes were largely an afterthought, if we knew them at all.

The future could be strengthened by stronger parish-school ties. We likely need to stop clinging to the one-to-one connection in which a single parish supports a namesake school (except maybe where it continues to work robustly, but maybe not even there) and look instead to pooling our communities more collaboratively.

The Diocese of Wichita offers a profound model for places where there is an appetite for massive, dynamic outreach and redesigned mission-forward ministry – another place where greater emphasis on mission-centered advancement, development, and marketing is likely much more valuable than narrow ministry offices. And the Church will likely have to reckon with a wider, deeper collective responsibility for Catholic education if we want it to have a future.

On a simpler basis, in a town like ours, now left with two parishes and no schools, we need to forge new ties with neighbors. It’s an invitation to look outside ourselves, beyond the historical status quo and a model that was weaker and more broken than we realized. It’s a chance to find new partners with whom we can try to start fresh and build more strongly. It’s also a place to start from prayer and discernment, so that cold calculations can be warmed by spirituality and hopeful optimism.

Sometimes, a clean slate, a rebrand, or a new start can reenergize a sleepy base. Based on the fits of activism in the past week, even if this is too little and too late, maybe there’s newly stirred energy that can be parlayed into what comes next. Hopefully this glass is half full.