Moving, Churching, Third Place-ing

by Dave Gregory

I’ve moved a lot over the past eight years: the District of Columbia to Syracuse to Bolivia to the Bronx to Syracuse to Maine to New York City to California to Oregon. The frenzied stretch between Syracuse and Maine was all thanks to the bopping around that comes with being a Jesuit novice, and a strong dislike of East Coast cities’ sensory overload prompted my move out West. My general transience has at long last come to an end, methinks: a couple months ago I moved into a first home.

My fiancee and I celebrated receiving the keys by fervently exchanging saliva on the living room floor in the absence of furniture. It occurred to me that this marked a change in basically everything: my nomadic existence was finally coming to an end. I vocalized to Sarah, lying on the hardwood floor as the gas fireplace blazed, “We’re gonna start a family here!” She laughed, and will probably be a tad frustrated with me for this public confession. Sorry, Sare-bear.

Although Sarah isn’t moving in until we get married in June (we are traditional, wholesome, Catholic folk, after all, though the aforementioned make-out sesh might lead some to assume otherwise), she’s begun to make her mark on the building, and I mine. We’re fighting little battles of taste and decor, making compromises. I have shed dustbunnies all over the bathroom floor, where they have collected en masse; I find them rather funny, and refuse to vacuum them for the time being. Sarah was putting my deodorant and hair crap¹ and comb in the drawer whenever she came over, but recently acquiesced to having them live in what would otherwise be a makeup organizer. I hung a marvelous icon (a rendition of Andrei Rublev’s Troitska) from an artist friend in our dining room, and ordered a cute hand-embroidered sign from ETSY informing bathroom visitors, “Please don’t do cocaine in the bathroom.” Sarah has placed tiny myrtle trees on the kitchen counter, only one of which has died so far.

The Liturgical Heartbeat of the Past Decade

High school and college proved themselves to be stabilizing forces in my life. A miserable experience throughout elementary and middle school left me generally friendless. I started practicing legerdemain as a means of escaping the crushing loneliness that came with attending the school that “School of Rock” was filmed at.² Contrary to my expectations, learning magic tricks did not make me any cooler in the eyes of my pubescent peers, who remained obsessed with sports and wrestling. I could never philosophically justify chasing balls around defined spaces, and therefore rendered myself an outcast from the inner circles of elite middle school cliques. My all-guys Jesuit high school, in total contrast, gave me a community of men who would eventually become college roommates, lifelong friends, and groomsmen. College offered a Catholic community to whom I will forever be indebted; although Georgetown is indeed ever so slightly more secular than Notre Dame, it had a supremely committed and vibrant group of papists. It was there that I attended daily Mass at 11:15pm with an eighty year-old Jesuit whom I had heard was rumored to be the inspiration for The Exorcist.³

Although my social circles shifted and my majors changed (biochemistry was simply too practical for my liking; I was looking for something a little bit more useless that would render me unemployable by the standards of free market capitalism), that nightly liturgy became the heartbeat of my collegiate experience. As he showered, a heart attack killed Fr. King the summer after my junior year, and I stowed away the cassock and surplice I had worn each night for two years, because I would never acolyte for him again. Thankfully, a few Jesuits took on a nightly 10pm Mass, and the forty year-old tradition of a late night liturgy lives on at Georgetown.

In retrospect, my entering the Jesuits was in large part an attempt to maintain some reality of these stabilizing forces: faith-sharing groups, liturgical routine, and counter-cultural Christian communities in which I had so firmly planted myself. Daily Mass became coupled to the Liturgy of the Hours, and time became sanctified. The heartbeat that so grounded my collegiate experience inhered and deepened, even growing stronger.

And so, when the fates and my disobedient nature and my novice master colluded to have me leave that world in which I felt so comfortable, a real sort of wandering began. The heartbeat faded, and the business of a teaching schedule rendered me unable to continue partaking in the Eucharist quite so regularly. My whole prayer life consequently dislocated itself, and to this day I have been unable to resume the practice of Examen-ing daily, or praying with Scripture regularly. Even more painful, I lost those folks with whom I studied, worked, worshiped, and labored.

The Pilgrimage of Real Life

Catholic and social communities simply don’t make themselves readily available in the real world. Once the Jesuits and I parted ways, I wouldn’t so automatically be given a tribe to call my own. Adulthood began to sink in, and I could no longer delay the inevitable loneliness that arrives with a one-bedroom apartment. Although religious life does certainly provide an unconventionally difficult and disciplined lifestyle, it did provide me with many of those things that imbue a human life with meaning: labor, relationships, ritual, so on and so forth. At the time, I largely took them for granted, because I had no alternative comparison as a 22 year-old.

For a few months I lived with my parents as I applied for teaching positions, attended a Dominican parish in downtown Manhattan, and dipped my toes in the waters of New York City’s rapidly expanding young adult crowd: a “Love and Responsibility” weekly summer series consumed one evening each week and hundreds of young adults converged at St. Patrick’s cathedral for Mass and drinks monthly. Many of these young adult New York transplants hungered for a significant other; these groups were, I thought at the time, little more than a middle school mixer with liturgical and religious pretenses.

July came, along with a job offer in California. Uprooted from all I ever knew, I moved to a desert, only to find that those who tend to move to the desert attend desert churches: old people⁴ in their final years of life. After three years of dissatisfied hopping between three different parishes (I know, I’m the worst), a couple friends and I started a young adult thing, which took off with a group of approximately ten regular attendees from a region of 400,000.

Thankfully, being a schoolteacher, I found myself in the midst of other schoolteachers. School became our church: each classroom a chapel, each student a tabernacle, each shared meal a eucharist of sorts.

Aching for Third Places

I spent my first number of months in the great Northwest without many friends outside of Sarah’s. The folks I teach alongside tend to be older, with families of their own, and they are unable to welcome a newcomer into their circles given these already planted roots. Sarah and I hunted for a young adult community and found one at the oldest church in Portland: a small Argentinian collection of missionary priests dedicated to the New Evangelization has developed a thriving young adult scene. We made connections, hit it off with some folks, and now meet regularly with seven other individuals to break bread and discuss theological treatises and our faith lives. In addition to this, I find myself in an ecumenical men’s group coordinated by charismatic Catholics. I’ve even gone so far as to pick up the hobby of my teenage years, joining a local group of magicians for monthly meetings; I observe elderly men doing (relatively bad) magic tricks at a Christian retirement home, only to be mocked and teased by their audience of other (mostly) aging magicians. It’s adorable.

Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning -- arguably the most impactful book I’ve ever read -- that three sources of meaning define human existence: labor, relationships, and suffering. The former two obviously form the essential bits of the meaning-making process, the multi-valent orbits of families and romances and friendships and colleagues that all revolve around those beliefs and rituals we most value.

I’ve found that in order to maintain my sanity, I need “third places,” or spaces to dwell in between work and home. It’s about more than finding hobbies, it’s about indulging in leisure for the sake of leisure in and of itself.⁵ I have to remind myself what Fr. James Schall, S.J. taught me in his first lecture for “Elements of Political Theory”: the Greek word skole means “leisure”. We go to school so that we might get a job, and we labor to make money, and hopefully we make enough money to do things we love with people we love when we’re not working. Proper learning, that which consists of the liberation of mind and heart through an exploration of the liberal arts, culminates in third spaces.

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1 My possession of hair product is her fault though. I would have happily kept a buzzed head, but she wanted me to more closely resemble late 2000 Seth Rogen, rather than early 2000s Seth Rogen.^↩

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2 This “Country Day School” whose full name I shall refrain from disclosing here was located 12 miles outside of my neighborhood in Queens, and my parents forced my attendance given the dearth of more solid educational offerings in our immediate vicinity. At least I got to learn Latin. ^↩

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3 Although this was untrue, Fr. Thomas Mulvihill King, S.J. did celebrate an annual memorial Mass for the son of William Peter Blatty, the book’s author, and one particular scene from the movie was filmed in King’s bedroom: Jesuit Damien Karras, intoxicated, collapses on Fr. King’s actual bed, and you can see Fr. King’s actual Teilhard de Chardin poster on the wall.^↩

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4 Nothing wrong with old people, mind you. I just bemoaned the disheartening lack of diversity. ^↩

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5 For recommended reading on leisure, see Josef Pieper. ^↩

#sittingwhileblack: A White Woman Wrestles With Race, Part 3

by Erin M. Conway

This started as a post about Starbucks. About the sadness and outrage I felt at the arrest of Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson in a Philadelphia Starbucks on April 12th. About the helplessness I felt knowing that although I would never have to worry about being arrested for simply waiting for my friend to arrive at a coffee house, many others would. About how I was wrestling with whether a boycott of Starbucks was the appropriate response, whether it would actually make an impact.

But then just days ago, I opened my Twitter feed and discovered another video that had surfaced. I watched, sickened, as Chikesia Clemons was wrestled to the floor and handcuffed by three officers at a Waffle House in Saraland, Alabama. During the process, her breasts were humiliatingly exposed. But no nationwide outcry went up for boycott or justice. And what I wanted to say became a bit more complicated.

I had a conversation with family friends (all white suburbanites) about the Starbucks arrest a few days after it happened. While I was incensed, I was shocked with how little outrage they appeared to feel about the event. I voiced my disbelief and anger at the treatment of these two men. They only had questions.

“Did they order anything?”
“Didn’t they know that restrooms are only for paying customers?”
“Did the police ask the men to leave?”
“Did the men refuse to leave even when they were asked?”

I imagine (although I can’t know for sure) that their responses to the incident at Waffle House would have been similar: questions rather than a defense. It was as if they couldn’t quite wrap their mind around the idea that a police officer or store manager would act in an unjust way. Believing this would in some way shatter what they knew about the world and so they seemed to be grappling for an explanation that would explain the discomfort away.

Their questions pulled me back to another question I’d heard earlier that week, a question posed by a young lady in my senior Theology class:

“Ms. Conway, why do you think it is that no matter how well we present ourselves, how nice we dress or polite we act, white people always seem kind of afraid when a black person talks to them?”

She asked this question with a mixture of resignation, frustration, and exhaustion in her voice. What could I possibly say in response? I found myself trying to speak for (or perhaps defend) all white people - a position that’s neither comfortable nor realistic. All I could come up with is that we live in a segregated world and that human beings often fear the unknown. I felt like I was making excuses.

Because the reality of the situation is that I don’t really understand why white people react this way.¹ I only know that we often do. The reality of the situation is that this type of behavior doesn’t deserve to be excused. The reality of the situation is that skin color is not a good reason to be afraid of someone who presents themselves well, acts politely, and dresses nicely. And the reality of the situation is that things like this do not happen to white people. Asking to use the restroom without ordering a drink will not get us arrested. Arguing over the price of plastic silverware will not get us wrestled to the floor and handcuffed.² Waving around a BB gun like 12-year-old Tamir Rice did will not get us killed seconds after police arrive on the scene.³

I don’t believe the reaction of my white family friends was a result of them being cruel or blatantly racist individuals, and I don’t present their stories to criticize them or suggest some moral flaw in their character. While I was frustrated by their response, I also believe it came from a reality of not knowing what it’s like to be black in America. If you are a white person who has interacted mainly with other white people, it’s hard to see the larger picture. This is likely why in a Huffington Post poll almost half of white Americans (48%) responded that the arrest of Nelson and Robinson was an isolated incident but more than half of black Americans (57%) viewed the actions of the police officers as rooted in a larger societal problem.

The difference between these responses seems endemic of the two worlds writer Mikki Kendall described in a recent piece for The Washington Post. Black Americans and white Americans inhabit different realities. Rashon Nelson, Donte Robinson, Chikesia Clemons and other black men and women live in a world where often “every public space is fraught with the possibility of mistreatment.”

In the other world, the one inhabited by white men and women, you can visit Starbucks stores across the country, sit for hours at a time, and never once be challenged about your presence. How do I know this? Because this is exactly what “Starbucks observer” and author Byrant Simon did while writing his book Everything But the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks. Simon, who is white, told NPR that after visiting over 300 stores, he observed two groups of people who were confronted about whether or not they had bought anything: black men and people who appeared to be homeless.

For white Americans, myself included, this split reality might only be noticed if you intentionally slow down and look for it. My ability to see these two worlds, as I mentioned in a previous piece, has evolved as I’ve listened to the voices and stories of my (mostly black) students. I have not always seen it, but now that I know that this split exists, I want to help others see it too.

So I challenge all of my white readers to consider this - any time you see a black man or woman portrayed or arrested on the news, check your bias. Imagine you are the one in this situation -- if you behave the exact same way, does it yield the same results? Examine your immediate assumptions about the situation - what do you assume about the outcome and individuals involved and why do you think this is where you mind goes? Consider other possible explanations. Listen to black men AND women when they share their stories. And finally, speak out when you see injustice happening.

We need to be like Melissa DePino and speak up for the victims of institutional racism. After witnessing the arrest of Nelson and Robinson, DePino spoke out both on social media and in television interviews, defending the men and reiterating the fact that they did nothing wrong or inappropriate. And although I’d rather live in a world where the testimony of a white witness wasn’t the trump card in any given situation, the reality is that what white people say matters. The reality is that we have the power to protect our black brothers and sisters if we are willing to do so. Let’s use it.

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1 I recognize that not every white person would react this way, but for the sake of simplicity, I have to speak in general terms here.^↩

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2 I’ve read more about the arrest of Chikesia Clemons since I began writing. Witness and police testimony suggest that the story is more complicated that it first appeared- that she was potentially intoxicated and belligerent. Be that as it may, I still feel comfortable in asserting that had she been a white woman, the outcome would have been much different.^↩

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3 I use Tamir Rice’s story here because he was shot and killed in Cleveland, where I teach, in a park not far from where some of my students live. He represents, in this case, any black man or woman who has been a victim of police brutality. ^↩

Into the Whirlwind

by Laura Flanagan

In my freshman year of college, two of my three roommates had been unto that point lifelong California residents, meaning they had never experienced a tornado warning. However, tornado watches and warnings were just as common in our new home of South Bend, Indiana as they had been in Indianapolis where I grew up, and we encountered one early in our “Notre Dame experience.” As a person who was familiar with what those sirens and clouds meant, it was amazing to watch these two enlivened by the experience of a tornado-engendering storm. They were torn between following this Midwestern girl's advice to head to the safety of the dorm basement, and sticking their heads out our 4th floor window to experience the strange, unknown weather.

Pictured: A man with similar instincts to Laura.

It is the beginning of tornado season, and even as an older and supposedly wiser, adult, I too desire to stand outside as a storm approaches. A tornado – and the kind of storm which accompanies them – offers a blustering wind, then some ominous calm, but throughout there is generally a perpetual sense of clarifying danger. It’s electrifying, and I enjoy it.¹ It’s standing before the whirlwind.

I know a few people who would think I’m foolish for putting myself a few steps further away from the safety of the basement in order to feel the power of the storm. I’m not on the level of storm chasers, mind you, but it is relatively foolish. It’s hardly true danger; I know that in 99.9999% of cases, I should still have plenty of time to take the few steps to safety should a tornado appear. But there’s always the thrill and the danger of the 0.0001%.

“If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.” 

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. 

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

This passage from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where the children first hear of Aslan, the Great Lion² explains what I think the mere act of standing during the liturgy - our default posture - should evoke. We have the privilege of standing before God because he lets us, because he has taken the step to call us not slaves but friends,³ a beneficent gesture only He could make. By all rights we should be not only on our knees, but prostrate on the ground before “the holiest object presented to [our] senses.”⁴ I understand why quiet reverence for the Eucharist wins out, but I also understand blogger Rick Becker’s perspective on the magnetic draw, the almost crazed joy that we should feel in approaching the Eucharist - similar to the awe we feel over the chance a tornado might sweep us away. Yet I fully acknowledge that like most, I am often not “there” spiritually or mentally.

As someone who forms families for children’s First Communions, it saddens me to see that mental distance from the miraculous often exists even that first, glorious time.

Last week, our parish held practices for the almost-Communicants prior to the First Communion Masses on the weekend. In my mind, we practice to alleviate worry about how to approach. We practice to let them more easily focus on Christ than on when they are supposed to leave the pew, or where exactly to bow, etc. (because on some level, a Mass where the Communion distribution is abnormal will require a little bit of those logistics). I also attempt to help them understand at each step of the way to Whom all the bowing is supposed to be towards, and why it makes sense to bow.

When we come to the reception of Communion itself, I use Cyril of Jerusalem’s line from his mystagogical catecheses: “Make of your hands a throne.” With this spiritual and physical direction, I hope to translate these eight-year-olds’ natural worry back into a recognition of Christ’s presence.

If they think of their hands as making a throne, hopefully they then make the leap to recalling Who the throne is for, and why he is deserving of a throne.

Then, if he is the King of Heaven and Earth (and Creator of the weather systems which reflect a little of his power), then I hope the children make the next leap to the love involved in approaching him in the Eucharist: We not only stand before this King as friends at his will and behest, but through his gift we become more intimately connected than we would have ever thought possible.

He’s not safe, but He is good.

But why does the stress over a First Holy Communion exist in the first place? With what am I contending? I understand natural concern over a momentous event, but unfortunately, I believe a fair amount of the anxiety is misplaced. Rather than being filled with the “fear of the Lord,” or “wonder and awe” as some listings of the gifts of the Spirit put it, they fear embarrassment. I fear that in much of their experience up to this point, orderliness in church and school is prized over true reverence, and so the children worry about “doing it right” in front of all the watching and waiting family and friends, and often lose the potency of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ into their own Body and Blood in the process.

So what is the real danger of standing before God, the hazard we often forget? What is the peril of the whirlwind? Is it to be swept into a call which takes all of us, body and soul?

Then [the apostles] prayed, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.”⁵

I love the way that the apostles describe Judas - not as a person irredeemably evil (which he wasn’t) or who made the one unforgivable choice (which he didn’t), but as someone who ultimately decided to “turn away and go to his own place.” He turned inward, as opposed to being drawn out from himself, towards Christ, towards others.

This is the way that I often describe our free will to my students, both young and old. It is a matter of whether you turn towards God, and turn outwards toward his children, or turn inwards to yourself and your own desires. Conversion is this turning outward, and it feels thrilling if we immerse ourselves into the experience of it. It feels dangerous. Put frivolously, Judas chose not to enter the Danger Zone, either to cast in his lot with Christ from the beginning when all looked bleak for His earthly realm, or to take the terrible, humbling, painful step to acknowledge his betrayal of God Incarnate and ask for forgiveness.

When we receive the Eucharist, we should understand that we are throwing in our lot with Christ - and that alignment with Him should feel dangerous, if only to our own self-involvement.

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1 ...lightning pun intended.^↩

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2 If you should somehow be unfamiliar with the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is a character serving as allegory for Christ in a fairly obvious way - more obvious than was to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien’s taste. ^↩

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3 John 15:15^↩

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4 Excerpted from a fantastic Lewis quote which is actually less about the Eucharist than about human dignity. The full quote, from the Weight of Glory, is “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” In another passage, he says, “...the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” If we would be strongly tempted to worship our neighbor when we see him properly, we should definitely be worshiping the Eucharist Lewis places ahead of him. ^↩

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5 Acts 1:24-25^↩

On Chreasters and God's Mercy

by Jenny Klejeski



"The creche is gone and all these lilies are here! It's a miracle!"
-The Chreasters' mystical experience, according to one of my professors.

A few years ago at Easter, I found myself particularly annoyed with the Chreaster (Christmas and Easter) Catholics. Writing that down makes me realize anew how horrible that is, but it's true. I'm not perfect.

My reaction to them was not unlike the semi-annual phenomenon that would take place in undergrad during finals week when all of the study spaces would be packed with people. Oh, *now* you feel like studying. How nice for you. Where were you all semester? And all those cozy nooks and crannies that I had called my own were filled with strangers, who—I don't know—had decided to stop fooling around or partying or whatever and get serious about their studies or something. Of course this was not true of everyone, but these were the thoughts in my stressed out, annoyed, sleep-deprived mind.

And I have sometimes experienced the same thing at Christmas and Easter. I have to come to Church early just to get a seat? Who are all these strangers? Is someone sitting in MY pew? Ugh...

Again, I'm not perfect.

I became self-conscious about my cynicism fairly early on and made a deliberate choice to be charitable. But even when I tried to do that, it was very disingenuous. Aw, that person keeps using the responses from the old translation; that's cute. It's so "great" that you're here!

And so, I prayed the only prayer that I could think of, which was "Lord, help me to see these people as you see them." And how does God see the person who hasn't been to Church in months, or years? As the prodigal. As the lost sheep. As the missing coin. With the unharnessed, unconditional joy of a child.

And who am I? The older brother, sulking outside because of some hurt sense of entitlement. The Levite, keeping a safe distance from the uncleanness. The rich young man, confused as to why my strict adherence to the law hasn't merited me eternal life.

I think of the parable of the workers in the vineyard.¹ The workers come at various points in the day (at sunrise, the 3rd hour, 6th hour, 9th hour, and 11th hour) and work until sunset. Those who worked the shortest amount of time get paid first and get the full day's wage. The other workers are excited because they think this means they'll get even more than a full day's wage, but are upset when they get the exact same pay as those who worked the least. (Let me tell you, if you want to get a room of high schoolers worked up about the Bible, use this passage. They'll be mad.)

The Landowner in the parable has a wonderfully pointed response: "Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

And it's then that I realize YES! OF COURSE I AM ENVIOUS! Why the hell do I even bother if You're so generous??

I need to be reminded often that we're not Pelagians. No matter what I do, I cannot—by definition—earn grace. It's freely given. And it's just as freely given to me as the person who hasn't been to Church in months. The saving mystery of Christ our Passover slain for us, and His triumphant victory over death is proclaimed to all people of every nations, and not just those of us who have kept the pews warm on Sundays.

As John Chrysostom reminds us, “If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.”²

Now, of course, none of this means that we shouldn't go to Church, or follow the law, or perform acts of charity, assuming that hey! God will give us a big party anyway, as long as we repent at the last minute. Grace is, as I said before, freely given. But it must be accepted. Grace is not imposed upon us against our will. We accept the gift of grace in our observance of the law, in our reception of the Sacraments, in our loving interactions with others. In so doing, I am properly disposed for the grace to take effect in my life. It's not pointless. It is efficacious.

But as soon as I start to tally up my works subconsciously, as soon as I check boxes, as soon as I find myself annoyed at the people at Church who haven't "earned" their spot there...That is when I have effectively put God, and His mercy, into a little box to fit my small-minded definition of what it ought to be. And thank God (literally) that His mercy is not that limited, because if it were, we'd all be screwed.

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1 Matthew 20:1-16^↩

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2 Sermon by St. John Chrysostom^↩

The Trouble With Milking the Clock

by Rob Goodale

Good news, friends -- I finally filed my tax returns! The seven days I had to spare this year marks a career high, to the best of my recollection. I’m super proud of myself, and I’ve decided to reward myself by writing a blog post and having a bit of weeknight whiskey¹ (a rare occurrence ‘round these parts).

You see, for the vast majority of my life, I have been a serial procrastinator. When I was in college, I would often wait until the night before big papers were due and thrive off of the adrenaline coursing through my veins as deadlines approached to whip up something passable but mediocre.² I am the king of *shrug* “Good enough.”

One of my favorite ways to kill time back in the day was by playing video games. I never quite got into the first-person shooters like Halo or Call of Duty because I was bad at them. My go-to game was always EA Sports’ NCAA Football.³ Beginning in middle school, my yearly back-to-school ritual included the purchase of two things: a new pair of shoes, and the latest version of NCAA Football. I would spend most of every fall racking up virtual championships and filling virtual record books. With each passing year, the developers worked to add new features to update the gameplay and give teenagers talking points when it came time to make their case to their parents about why they needed to buy the same game every August.

Warning, we’re about to enter some serious football geekiness here for a paragraph or two.

One of the most interesting features that was introduced along the way was a setting that affected how the play clock and game clock would run when your team was on offense. The standard setting ran off about ten seconds each time you huddled to call a play, but there were also “aggressive” and “conservative” settings. The aggressive setting basically put your team into an up-tempo, no-huddle offense that maximized the number of plays you could run. The conservative setting, on the other hand, made the play clock and game clock automatically run down to six seconds each time you broke the huddle and came to the line of scrimmage.

The aggressive setting was helpful if you wanted to run up the score, or if you were trying to come back from a deficit late in the game. The conservative setting, on the other hand, was helpful if you wanted to use as much time as possible not playing football, most of the time because your team was leading late in the game. This tactic, which is known as “milking the clock”, is frequently used in real life late-game situations,⁴ and it was cool to have this bit of reality included in a video game.

The trouble with the conservative clock setting, though, is that you end up wasting a heckuva lot of time. It’s also really tough to switch back and forth between milking the clock and trying to score efficiently -- both in real life and in video games.⁵ Once you’ve adopted the time-wasting mentality, it’s pretty easy to get stuck there.

In video game football, wasting time is not the worst thing in the world -- though it pains me to admit it, none of the things that happen in video games are real or matter, like, at all. Wasting time is, I suppose, the general point of video games. But in recent days, I have noticed that I tend to put my actual real life in conservative clock mode.

Years spent perfecting the art of procrastination with Twitter, Netflix, random games on my phone, and taking naps have given me a particular set of skills when it comes to milking the clock of life. Whenever I’m stressed out, or don’t want to deal with a particular problem, I turn on conservative clock mode and waste time until I can busy myself with something else.

These distractions aren’t bad in and of themselves -- there are situations that undoubtedly call for Twitter and naps -- but when they become a means for me to try to escape life, I detach myself from the present. My old arch nemesis Screwtape has some thoughts about the present which seem relevant here:

The humans live in time but [God] destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things: to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present -- either by meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

Milking the clock detaches me from the Present -- from the nasty bits which cause stress and frustration, to be sure, but also from the good parts as well: from the Cross, from grace, from God. Sooner or later, I will have to re-engage with the Present, and all those things which I hoped to avoid -- taxes, lesson plans, blog posts, etc -- will undoubtedly be waiting there for me. There is no escaping the Cross, and thank God for that.

The motto of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the religious community that founded Notre Dame and various other schools throughout the country, is Ave Crux, Spes Unica -- Hail the Cross, Our Only Hope. Blessed Basil Moreau, the founder of the congregation, recognized the incontrovertible fact that the best thing about Christianity -- indeed, the thing about Christianity -- is the resurrection. Trouble is, at least for us weak-willed procrastinators, is that there is no resurrection without a crucifixion. And therefore the Cross, which on its surface appears to be a grotesque weapon of torture, execution, and terrorism, is in fact the only path to achieve eternal life, and is therefore the source of all of our hope as Christians.

The Cross with which Our Lord commanded each of us take up and follow him is, to say the very least, uncomfortable. If I imagine myself standing with the disciples and hearing Jesus’ exhortation to follow him in this way, my first instinct probably would have been to start playing Sudoku in the dirt. Sure, I’ll take up my Cross eventually, but first I really need to find out what seventeen different beat writers tweeted about the Cubs game today.

The all-important prelude to carrying my Cross and discovering the hope and grace that reside in it is to take it up, to exercise some fortitude when Netflix asks if I’m really still watching re-runs of New Girl, stop milking the clock, and live in the Present. It is only in doing so that I can hope to encounter the freedom promised me by Perfect Love.

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1 Tonight’s spirit of choice: Not A King Whiskey, from Journeyman Distillery in Three Oaks, Michigan. Journeyman is a hallowed ground among my friend group, and this particular whiskey uses George Washington’s original mash bill from his private distillery at Mount Vernon. I can neither confirm nor deny whether I’m listening to “Right Hand Man” from Hamilton as I sip and type.^↩

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2 This is definitely also how I write lesson plans and blog posts. We all have areas for growth.^↩

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3 The NCAA Football series was discontinued in 2013 as part of the NCAA’s ongoing moral quandary about using the likenesses of student athletes to make stacks of cash without paying the same student athletes who were generating all the income. Yet another reason the NCAA is trash.^↩

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4 Or, if you’re Kirk Ferentz and my childhood favorite, the Iowa Hawkeyes… for entire games. Because Ferentz and Iowa are both extremely and endearingly boring, and in both cases your best option is often to do absolutely nothing for as long as possible.^↩

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5 There’s another version of this clock-milking strategy in basketball, which I almost used as the central example. Teams who lead late in games will often abandon the strategies that gave them the lead, and adopt a stalling tactic known as “four corners,” where four of the five players literally go stand in separate corner and generally stop doing anything that resembles playing basketball.^↩

When You Don't Like Your Liturgy

by Tim Kirchoff

I found myself dreading Easter this year. Not because I had any particular fondness for my Lenten discipline, but because I knew that liturgical musicians at my home parish would once again start singing my absolute all-time favorite (I’m being sarcastic) song—a cover of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah, re-written to be about the Passion.¹ They can’t sing it during Lent because of Catholicism’s no-Alleluia-in-Lent tradition, but from the Easter Vigil up through Pentecost, it’s likely to be the communion reflection hymn in any given week, and there’s a chance that they’ll play it on any given weekend in ordinary time.

This isn't their only song that annoys me, but it is the only one that has ever made me feel an urge to shout an obscenity in the middle of Mass. In fact, I almost missed Easter Mass last week. I didn't want to go to my home parish because I assumed (correctly, according to my family who attended) that they would sing the song, but wrongly assumed that nearby parishes would still have their usual Sunday evening Masses: I ended up commuting an hour both ways to a 7 PM service, just in order to avoid hearing a few minutes of singing.

I hate this song. It distracts me from prayer as I go up to receive the Eucharist. But it's just as clear that not everyone in the parish shares my distaste for this song: some people evidently love it, and it deepens their experience of prayer as they receive the Blessed Sacrament. The choir certainly likes it, and I’ve noticed that one of the ushers will gently sway to the music and hum along as he guides the communion line.

But knowing that other people are edified by it hasn’t changed the fact that I don’t like the song or the way it’s performed, and each passing year has only intensified my dislike and made it harder to pinpoint exactly what about it I dislike. As the Romans used to say, “de gustibus non est disputandum”—taste is not to be argued over.

Once, back in my undergraduate days, a friend joined me for a daily Mass at my dorm, only to leave shortly before Mass started when she learned that the priest was going to use the offertory table—moved to a position about 5 feet in front of the seats—as the altar. She was disturbed by the idea of foregoing a perfectly good altar in favor of an unconsecrated offertory table.

As for me, I was already accustomed to this priest’s style of liturgy, and I could intuit why he did what he did. He wanted to make the liturgy more intimate, to let us witness the Eucharist up close. Plus, I think he didn’t like the idea of having only two or three congregants sitting 15 feet away from the altar when the whole Mass could take place within only a few square feet. But whatever his intentions, his attempt to make the liturgy more intimate and accessible served to alienate my friend.

There are some who would say that it’s wrong to try to use a secular song in a liturgical context, or that using an offertory table as an altar is liturgical abuse. That was the mindset through which I was originally introduced to thinking about the liturgy (aside from grade school catechism), but I no longer see much point in entertaining those thoughts.

My distaste for certain songs or deviations from liturgical rubrics is not the result of some well-developed philosophy of musical aesthetics or even a sense of liturgical reverence. In liturgy, what uplifts one person may annoy, distract, or even disturb another. Some act by liturgical minister may make it easier for one person to see God at work, but another person might see that same act as the minister trying to draw attention to themselves. Even if their choices make that liturgy distinctly unappealing to me, as long as the person is trying to draw people into actual participation in the Mass, then I don’t have it in me to condemn them. I’ve found myself drawn into liturgy by priests’ ad libs as well as by the prescribed texts of the Mass. Sometimes my prayer is facilitated by what a liturgical minister says or does, sometimes it's despite their actions, but in the end a valid Eucharist is a valid Eucharist.

Conversations about liturgy too often try to universalize subjective aesthetic or theological tastes. It’s one thing to write an essay about either traditionalist or contemporary forms of liturgy in order to make it easier for an audience to understand how to engage that style fruitfully, but it's quite another to dismiss or demean—even implicitly—other legitimate ways of celebrating the Mass.

I’ve seen people on both sides of the liturgy wars accuse the other side’s ministers (be they lay or ordained) of celebrating the liturgy as a way of drawing attention to themselves rather than Christ and the Gospel. But they never recognize how their own preferred style can be similarly exploited by ministers who are more into performance than drawing people into participation, or how the other side's preferred liturgical forms can help lead people to an experience of God's presence that might be harder for those individuals to access in other styles of liturgy.

At this stage in the Church's history, all Catholics celebrate the same Mass, but not in uniform ways. That's not necessarily a bad thing: it means that it's more likely that a person will be able to find a liturgy that they can genuinely participate in, rather than one they must endure for the sake of fulfilling their obligation.

I once found it easy to overlook the use of an offertory table in place of an altar for the sake of making the Mass more intimate, but now I cannot stand musical choices that so many of my fellow parishioners find beautiful and emotionally resonant. Given the choice between wishing for or trying to effect a change in my parish, thus denying these people something that draws them deeper into prayer when I am in no position to provide an alternative, and wishing praying that I could find value in the music, or at least tolerate it a little better, I know which I ought to prefer. If only it were that easy.

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1 One of the verses goes as follows: The soldier who had used his sword/ to pierce the body of our Lord/ said 'truly this was Jesus Christ our savior'/ he looked with fear upon his sword/ then turned to face his Christ and Lord/ fell to his knees, crying 'hallelujah!' ^↩

Why I Walked

by Erin M. Conway

Author’s Note: I wrote the bulk of this reflection after the Women’s March in 2017, following the election of Donald Trump, but never had a chance to share it. In the spirit of my recent series A White Woman Wrestles with Race as well as the increased activism of young people surrounding the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I decided to revisit my thoughts and share them with you today.

This past weekend, the day after the inauguration of our new president, thousands of women, men, and children across the country gathered and marched in support of women and other marginalized groups. Over 350 marches took place. My mom and I joined the march in Cleveland.

People chose to march for a variety of reasons -- anger, love, frustration, a desire for change, and many more. Everyone had their own story. This is mine.

Before I began teaching at Saint Martin de Porres, Cleveland’s Cristo Rey High School, I worked both in the city of Baltimore and in the Coachella Valley of Southern California. In all three places I have been exposed to people and places that I’d previously known nothing about. In addition to time spent getting to know the stories of the young men and women in my classroom, I accompanied students on trips to El Salvador; Washington, DC; East Los Angeles; and Nogales, Mexico. Above all else, these experiences taught me the value of listening to other people’s stories. Father Greg Boyle, my personal hero and the founder of LA’s largest gang intervention program, Homeboy Industries, writes that “it is impossible to demonize someone you know.” A quick reflection on the way hearing other’s stories has changed my life reinforces my desire to share my own with you.

I have the immense privilege each day to teach Social Justice and Morality to juniors and seniors at Saint Martin. In class this week we’ve tried to wade through the flurry of our world since Donald Trump’s inauguration – executive orders, protests, press conferences, Google searches (what is an executive order anyway?), tweets, and so much more. We’ve found ourselves exhausted and overwhelmed. How do we make sense of a world where most news comes at us in 140 character bursts (now, sometimes 280) and we’re constantly being told stories are fake or journalists are unreliable? How can we find the truth in a world that constantly demonizes anyone who doesn’t agree with me?

In our conversations these past days, I’ve challenged myself and my students to look deeper, to put in the not so fun work of reading full articles, of watching the news, and perhaps the most challenging of all these, listening with open ears to what the other side is trying to say. Of course, the thing I’ve done the most during these past few weeks is listen.

I’ve listened because hearing people’s stories matters. I’ve listened because teaching has shown me that I know a lot less about the world than I think I do. I’ve listened because our world often doesn’t often listen to students that look like mine. I listened because high schoolers have no patience for hypocrisy. If I am asking them to listen to the stories of others, I better be doing the same thing. I listened, most simply, however, because I love them.

Perhaps the most remarkable challenge that has come out of listening to my students has been coming to grips with my own privilege. I speak of this often, but the young men and women who have accompanied me on my own journey have challenged me to see my life for what it is. They have shown me the ways in which our world has helped me, even when wasn’t conscious of it. The other delightful challenge of working with high schoolers is that they constantly challenge you to put your money where your mouth is. They watch every move you make, and I’ve never been more afraid of my own hypocrisy then when I step into a room 0f 15-25 teenagers. I’ve learned that if I tell them I care about their fears and their lives, I better go out and put these words into action.

So when I walked the streets of Cleveland on Saturday morning alongside my mom and 15,000 others, I did not walk because I was immediately concerned for my personal well-being or that of my family. I walked because I love my students and needed to put this love into action. I walked because my Facebook and Twitter feeds are flooded with messages of uncertainty and frustration from former students who don’t like the way the world talks to and about them. I walked because each day I have the immense privilege to share a classroom with 124 juniors and seniors who trust me with their stories and their fears. I walked because these students, many of whom are asked to carry much more than they should have to, much more than I could bear, still find it in their hearts to write things like this:

"I am constantly doubted because I am a African American female. It would not surprise many if I was expecting a child and didn't have plans to attend college. But little do many know I AM going to college. Because I have these clichés against me I crave to be different." 

“I am a black strong-minded beautiful young lady who wants to make an impact on the world. But I am scared to live in this dangerous would, where hate crimes against blacks are so popular. I could easily be Sandra Bland, who was pulled over and killed in police custody, or Myra Thompson, who was caught in a mass shooting while attending church.”

“I will use my success to show young black girls that you can achieve things, just as they see on television, and be a part of the way our world runs. This is important to me because I want to inspire young women and change the negative light that is shown on black women in the media.”

“This reminded me that if I continue to work hard, I too can show all of the people who made me feel less than that I am something.”

“I want to show kids in the community that your situation doesn’t define you or what you think you have to do because it’s your life. What’s really authentic and special is being about business, focusing on getting education, taking care of your family, helping others or sparking others to further their knowledge.”

I walked because my students share their stories every day. I want them to know that I am listening.

This reflection is dedicated to the Saint Martin de Porres Class of 2017 who helped my to find my own voice while I thought I was simply listening to theirs.

Reflections in Cruciform

by Dave Gregory

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Light separated from darkness, waters divided, atoms coalesced into molecules, molecules into the building blocks for organic life, building blocks into creatures possessing consciousness. From these nascent, orchestrated movements, all things took on the Word, and more specifically the Word’s cruciform¹ shape. The Cross, however would not occur for billions of years after the Bang. In the words of Sebastian Moore, O.S.B., evil finally crystallizes and nails the All Holy to the Cross, thereby manifesting the meaning of the entire cosmos in uncompromising clarity. It is, of sorts, a second Big Bang. Good and evil collide. Evil pours out its entire strength on God, who takes it on in order to drain the Enemy of his power. The stark illogicality of that event, its paradoxical stuff of bizarre nonsense, would draw into focus what the cosmos was created for, why the Big Bang even banged to begin with. Beauty and horror would coalesce in a revolutionary point of singularity.

All things are cruciform, so say the Paschal Mysteries. A few weeks ago, my juniors wrote a prayer service for the Stations of the Cross, seeking to identify human suffering with the calumnious inflictions imposed on Jesus, and the several acts of generosity that marked his path to the Cross. With the sort of genius that can only come from the marginalized and oppressed, these students explored a wide variety of ways in and through which people around the world suffer their own crucifixions, and in these cruciform experiences of humanity, God’s solidarity with humanity becomes readily apparent. Although I cleaned their writing up, keep in mind that the following reflections² come from the minds of seventeen year-olds. It’s all proof that the Cross casts a shadow over the human condition, and that it can be seen lingering if we squint our eyes just right, or open them just wide enough.

Stations of the Cross as Told by High School Juniors

In 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen year-old boy from Chicago, was murdered. Carolyn Bryant, a twenty-one year-old woman, claimed that he whistled at her and attempted to flirt with her on the street in a Mississippi town. Bryant's husband and brother-in-law abducted Emmett in the middle of the night, beat him, and left his body in a river; it was found three days later, bloated and disfigured beyond recognition, and brought home to Chicago, where his mother insisted on holding an open-casket funeral. Tens of thousands came to see Emmett, and his death sparked the Civil Rights Movement of the past century. Carolyn Bryant later confessed to making up a lie: Emmett had never whistled at her.

Across the United States, countless innocents have been condemned to death, either within the legally sanctioned justice system, or extra-legally. Our nation’s citizens have taken it upon themselves to judge these guiltless lives as not worth living, but rather as worthy of graphic and public execution. Jesus, deemed guilty of treason by the Roman government, though innocent, prefigures any and all such condemnations and deaths. We cannot forget that just as Emmett’s death led to the battle for civil rights, nor can we forget that Jesus’ death led to freedom from death. Beauty can be forged from the fires of suffering, but only if we choose it. Crucifixions occur all around us. May we have the grace to see them, and allow them to inspire our action.

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Around the country, hundreds of people have been murdered by domestic terrorists who are overwhelmingly male, white, and Christian. Their educational systems failed them: those entrusted with their care failed to notice signs. Their government failed them: lawmakers granted them easy access to weapons. Seeking revenge on their world, these terrorists do the unspeakable: despairing, they slaughter the innocent. Families of victims are left breathless, mourning the loss of young lives. The Stoneman Douglas shooting is just the latest of these horrendous evils. This image portrays a mother and her daughter outside of the high school, ashes placed on their foreheads for Ash Wednesday, soon after Nicolas Cruz murdered so many students.

Jews in Israel had been occupied for centuries by various empires: the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and during the time of Jesus, the Romans. Women had seen their children suffer, bearing the weight of Roman persecution. And now Jesus, the Galilean preacher and miracle-worker, was just the latest in a string of Jewish deaths. He was crucified just as so many others had been. And mothers and sisters and daughters looked on, mournfully. As he carried his cross to the mountain, Jesus met these women. In years prior, he had healed them, restored their dignity, included them passionately in his message of love and forgiveness. And here, Jesus meets them for the last time.

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When Jesus’ clothes were being taken away, a part of him was also being taken away. This act made him vulnerable and exposed to everyone: he was crucified naked for the world to see. This image shows how people in our world are similarly stripped.

Families, adults, and elders flee their countries because of ongoing violence and war. They are forced to flee to try to avoid getting hurt. What some don't realize is that it's not easy to just drop everything and move. Refugees have to leave family, friends, their belongings, their homes and their whole lives. The only life they know is the one they have lived in their homeland, so when war disrupts their lives, it takes away all they have known. They feel weak and vulnerable, the same as how Jesus felt vulnerable when his clothes were stripped from his body.

Refugees don’t have a say in what should be done. They can’t have an option to stay, because if they do, they face the chance of getting hurt. In this image you can see families walking with their children. These children probably don't know or don’t understand what is going on. Imagine being a kid and not knowing why your family is leaving. Refugees are stripped of their livelihoods and their ways of living.

Some of Dave’s Thoughts on Mark

This weekend, the Easter Vigil’s Gospel was taken from the Markan narrative, the shortest and most stylistically hurried of the Gospels. Mark punctuated his story with rapid transitions, moving quickly from one event to the next; he leaves out much of Jesus’ preaching in favor of a profound story-telling mechanic. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus instructs various people to keep his messianic identity a secret. Jesus clearly does not think that his role of the Anointed One can be completely understood in the midst of his ministry. We cannot see this reality early on, because it has not yet become cruciform.

In chapter 8, almost perfectly halfway through the entire Gospel, Jesus heals a blind man: sight comes gradually, for at first he can only see walking trees³ before the healing reaches its fullness. Immediately after the healing, Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah (only to be silenced), and then Jesus proceeds to preach on the way of the Cross. Life cannot be found unless it is lost. Jesus transfigures, he drives out a demon, predicts his death yet again, preaches a little bit on the Kingdom, and then the Passion narrative begins, which consumes a bit less than half the Gospel. His preaching from here on in points to the Cross. As the cat-o-nine-tails tears through muscle, and as the nails penetrate flesh and bone, the Kingdom rips its way into the created order, penetrating through time and space.

The excruciating nature of the passion has been ingrained in our Catholic imaginations, and Mark makes it quite clear that all he has written comes to its conclusion on the Cross. Jesus hangs there for the world to see, a Roman soldier approaches and declares, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” Be this sincerity or sarcasm, we cannot be sure. But Mark believes it to be true.

The full identity of Jesus can only be recognized when crucified. As he unveils this detail that changes all things, the centurion cannot be silenced.

Mark’s lovely resurrection account, in its original form, ends with verse 8, as was read at the Vigil liturgy; some later editor added the full resurrection story with Mary of Magdala and the eleven apostles, but the evangelist left his readers waiting in suspense with his first edition of the Gospel. Jesus leaves behind the empty tomb for his followers to behold and the Gospel ends.

This is all too true of our experience as well. We wait here, unsure of the Resurrection. There is no proof of Heaven, no surety surrounding the immortality of the soul. All we can do, really, is behold all things in their cruciform shape, and tremble with hopeful anticipation.

A Final Word

Jesus’ wounds inhere in his glorified body, as evidenced by Thomas’ poking and prodding. Churches with crucifixes depicting Jesus ascending heavenward tend to drive me a bit nuts, because they tend to lack these salving wounds.

I wonder, along with Augustine, if our resurrected bodies will bear our wounds as well. These are the defining signs that we have given our lives in service of justice, or endured persecution and martyrdom, or have grown close to Christ in his own suffering. Nothing but our woundedness can teach us the art of surrendering our presumptions of self-control and self-mastery. When I visited my dad on Good Friday, I wondered if his own resurrected body, for example, will still be marked in some mysterious way by Parkinson’s disease.

These wounds make us who we are, after all. They are sacramental. They mark our path to Heaven. And even that, my friends, may be cruciform.

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1 A brief note on this term: by “cruciform,” I mean the shape of the cross. For example, churches are typically built such that their walls form a cross when viewed from a bird’s eye perspective. In this bit of reflection, I’ll be using “cruciform” symbolically rather than literally.^↩

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2 For the sake of brevity, I’m only including three: Jesus Is Condemned to Death, Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus, and Jesus Is Stripped of His Clothes.^↩

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3 Tolkien, anyone?^↩