For almost every Mass on the first Sunday of December I can remember, a (visibly angry) priest would climb to the pulpit and offer a predictable lament. The lament was that “society” had, once again, started the celebration of Christmas four weeks too early; we as faithful Catholics were strongly encouraged not to take part in this abomination.
Of course, over half of the congregation had already accepted party invitations, had presents purchased during Black Friday stashed throughout the house, and had already set up a tree. No matter!!! The priest would challenge the community not to use the “C-word” (Christmas) until December 24. Because Advent is a SERIOUS time! A QUIET time! A time to PREPARE!
Of course when the priest said this I thought to myself, “Of course it’s a time to prepare; that’s what all of the sales are for!”
This attitude did not change much when I arrived at seminary. One December for a prayer service, I led a silent mediation with George Winston’s “December” album playing in the background, a somewhat obscure collection of piano tunes that have never been featured in any Rankin/Bass production. Yet after the service, one of the other students came up to me to let me know just how over-the-top inappropriate it was for me to play Christmas music during the season of Advent… in much the same tone as one might confront another on the inappropriateness of kicking small puppies.
My own opinion in years past has been that before Thanksgiving, I don’t want to see a thing; after the fat man crosses Herald Square in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, then everyone can go nuts. So when I would encounter these rather Puritan attitudes towards Advent in the middle of December, I would just roll my eyes and chalk it up to just another example of people in the church not understanding what the real world was like. That being said, I have to confess that this year I am finally starting to see the point of the foaming priest and the indignant student.
3:17 pm: After a long Metro Ride back (never ride the DC Metro with Joe Williams… bad luck always follows), Joe, Carolyn, and I talk about the place of religion in the public discourse in the hopes we can have a more open conversation as a whole, with people feeling free to both challenge and be challenged. We get back to St. Paul’s College and we drink beer. T’was a grand day!
2:35 pm: We decide to head out. We see someone holding a sign with a picture of Jesus that says something like, “That’s not what I said!” Had to get my picture taken with it.
2:02 pm: It’s funny, because there are so many people dressed up here today, not many people really notice me wearing a collar. BUT they do notice that I have a collar and a microphone. Most people are pretty cool, but a few have their suspicions when a guy wearing clerics want to ask them about religion. I wish I were also wearing a sign that said, “Not trying to sell you anything… just want to find out where you’re coming from!”
1:58 pm: I REALLY want a rally hat… but they are SO far away. So far all I have to show for this even in the way of paraphernalia is a sticker. Sigh.
1:45 pm: one thing that I am noticing from the interviews. I start off by asking about why fear is an aspect of religion and almost everybody has a list of (usually very valid) reasons. What’s been especially gratifying is that when I ask the next question, what is SANE about religion, those same people have another list of very valid reasons. What it’s made me realize is that people are usually asked one question or the other in order to support one’s particular point of view… I hope we can ask the follow up question …
When I was growing up in the 1980’s in Northern New Jersey, there was this infamous—INFAMOUS—series of commercials broadcast throughout the New York Metropolitan Area. His business was electronics and his name was…Crazy Eddie!!! In the good old days of six-station television, the only way it was possible to avoid this foaming maniac of a salesman screaming, “We ARE NOT undersold, we WILL NOT be undersold, we CANNOT be undersold, and we MEAN IT!!!” was if you had your channel permanently set to PBS. And at the close of every commercial came the infamous tagline, “Crazy Eddie… his prices are IN-SA-A-A-A-A-ANE!!!!”
Given that Jon Stewart also grew up in New Jersey during the 80’s (albeit a few years ahead of me), one can assume that he has seen his fair share of Crazy Eddie commercials. And while his “Rally to Restore Sanity”, happening this Saturday in Washington D.C., may not be an event to shed light on the corrupt retailers of the world, one gets the sense that Stewart experiences a great deal of frustration that our political discussion looks a lot less like two scholars quietly discussing PBS over brandies and even more like a Crazy Eddie commercial than it did even twenty years ago.
But of course, the “Rally to Restore Sanity” is not the ONLY rally going on this weekend in the nation’s capital… for Stephen Colbert has merged his “March to Keep Fear Alive” with Stewart’s for one big mega-(albeit thematically confused)-rally. Given that Busted Halo tends to veer more towards the questions of religion and faith over the questions of politics and Washington, we will be at the rally talking to attendees about their faith within the themes of the rally:
“What do you find sane and/or insane about religion?”
“What are you most afraid of?”
“Does God provide comfort when we are afraid?”
“Do people just believe in God because they are afraid?”
“Is believing in God an act of sanity, or does believing in God make one the intellectual equivalent …
Any casual glance at Roman Catholic history would be likely to reveal that our Church has a somewhat… complicated… relationship to war. The first example to come to many people’s minds would be the Crusades, that period of history when Western European Christians tried to “evangelize” those living in the Holy Land by force. But another example of that complicated history with violence can be seen in the feast we’ve celebrated this past week: Our Lady of Victory.
On October 7, 1571 a fleet of the Holy League decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire. The five-hour battle was fought off of western Greece, near the Ottoman naval station in Lepanto. The victory gave the Holy League temporary control over the Mediterranean, protected Rome from invasion, and prevented the Ottomans from advancing further into Europe. But credit for the victory was given to the Blessed Virgin Mary because a rosary procession had been offered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for the success of the mission to hold back Muslim forces from overrunning Western Europe.
So when reading more about the origin of this day, my initial thought was to talk about the violence of our world and the degree to which religion is associated with it. In fact, I have a few friends who are atheists and one of the reasons they give for not following any religion is because of how much they associate religion with the violence of war. While those who are among the faithful might say that they are some aspects of religion they are overlooking, it’s hard to deny that they have a point. But the question on how to understand this day gets even more complicated when a Paulist historian reminded me the other day at lunch that many an Ottoman sultan had designs to make St. Peter’s Basilica the central mosque in Rome, just as they had made the Hagia Sophia a mosque in what was then Constantinople. As a Roman Catholic, I’m also glad those plans did not work out.
My memory… it slips sometimes. I wish I could blame it on my advancing age. After all, forty is right around the corner and I’d like to simply believe that as time passes, so do the hard drive of my brain has to let go of some of the storage in order to make room for more up-to-date files… of course then I’d have to ignore my past history, including one of my more infamous episodes from college.
I was visiting some friends after my junior year of school one summer evening and everyone decided to hit the bars… as many of my friends were wont to do during that time of our lives. But since going out in that manner was something I did a lot at that particular time of my life, I volunteered to be the designated driver. We had a good time throughout the night, my buddies downed some beers while I shotgunned Diet Cokes. As the bars began to close, we all go into the car to head home with me driving. Not thirty seconds after pulling out of the parking lot, a police car turned on his lights and we pulled over.
In those days, my personality was more intimidated by authority than it is now… which isn’t to say that I am this currently wild and crazy James Dean, but let’s just say that at that period of my life if Cartman from south Park pulled me over and yelled for me to “respect his autho-i-tay,” I would have most likely given him a timid “yes sir…”
So the officer walks over and asks for my license and registration. I ask why he pulled us over and he said that my back taillight was out. As I exhaled a deep sigh of relief that it was nothing serious, the officer remarked, “By the way, I smell alcohol.” My buddies in the back seat exclaimed, “That would be us… we’re all 21, it’s Okay! He’s our designated driver!!!” Evidentially, the officer was not thoroughly convinced by the testimony of those in the back seat, so he turned …
This past Sunday, some of the Paulist students were invited to participate in a dialog that was held at Park 51, the site of the new Islamic Center in downtown Manhattan that has been getting so much attention in the news as of late. The event was sponsored by Unity Productions, an organization that has been promoting an initiative entitled “20,000 Dialogues,” in which a particular documentary film is watched about the faith of Islam, followed by a discussion. A few days later, I sat down with Craig Campbell, CSP to ask him about the event.
TG: How did you get involved in this dialogue?
CC: I saw their documentary “Talking Through Walls” on PBS. After the airing, the company who made the film would send it out for free to those who would commit to hosting a dialog, so I ended up hosting one when I was on a parish assignment in Toronto and we had a showing last year here in DC. We’re going to be doing it again in Washington on October 29.
TG: How did the event go?
CC: Very well. 75 people showed up for the dialog at Park 51… the building is basically gutted right now with industrial carpeting on the floor in anticipation of the construction that’s scheduled. At 6:30 and at 9 o’clock there was prayer, which was just incredible. The singing involved in their prayer was so beautiful… it was just incredible. In between those times of prayer, we watched the film “Talking Through Walls” and had the dialog.
TG: What was discussed?
CC: Well, we definitely talked about all of the energy around Park 51 right now. And out of that, people were asking if the United States was Islamaphobic. If the America is intolerant with that with which we are not familiar. And right now, the consensus among the people gathered in response to those questions seemed to be yes.
TG: I know there has been a lot of discussion in the press surrounding the original name of the location, “Cordoba House.”
We often talk about the need positive role models in the media today, but we rarely talk about the need for priests as role models; they are largely absent from today’s modern media landscape. And when they do happen to be included in a television show or a movie, they are frequently presented as older gentlemen spaced out on God who insists on calling everyone he meets “my child” and who inhabit a world few if any of us could reach… and might not want to if we could. Characterizations that on some visceral gut level has the opposite effect of being inspiring.
Which is one of the many reasons I am grateful for the release of the new Robert Rodriguez film Machete. In the interests of full disclosure, films by Robert Rodriguez have been guilty pleasures of mine for a very long time. But when I first saw the trailer for Machete with Cheech Marin as a vigilante cleric…
Priest: “I took a vow of peace… and now you want me to kill all of these men?”
Machete: “Yes bro… I mean, Padre.”
Priest (shrugging): “I’ll see what I can do.”
That’s right, this priest does not only pray for justice… HE DISPENSES IT!!!
Okay, I can imagine that my Christian morality teacher is somewhere reading this with his head buried in hands, sobbing uncontrollably, and wondering how he had failed me. But that’s why it’s a guilty pleasure. Besides, there has always been a tongue-in-cheek, comic book unreality to Rodriguez’s movies in which the director lets his audience know that even HE knows what is being presented is ridiculous. Trust me, I did not find ironic entertainment when I saw the very realistic violence of Saving Private Ryan…and I’ve still been a little too nervous to see The Hurt Locker, as important as both of those films are.
Of course, I am also not actually suggesting that a gun-totting Cheech Marin is a positive role model for priests. When the trailer alone …
The big thing in the news right now is the debate on the Islamic center in lower Manhattan. I have to say that I’ve been struggling for a few days with what to say on this topic, but too much has been going on to not say anything. After all, if I write a blog for an online magazine for spiritual seekers, it’s kind of hard not to comment on an issue that focuses so much on faith.
I do have to say that my first response to this issue was not as of a spiritual seeker, not as someone who is devoting his life to religious life, but as someone who is an American. It was hard for me to not see this as a freedom of religion issue. While I do understand the arguments by some who are against this project—those of course who are not obviously using the issue to stoke fear for their own political gain by calling us down to our lowest common denominator instead of up to our highest values—I would still have to argue that the Bill of Rights does not exist because it assumed that people of different faith traditions would usually see eye-to-eye, it exists because our history reminds us that many people wouldn’t.
It’s a history I wish some Catholic politicians would remember before they decide to offer a full-throated support against the project. In the 1840s and 50s, there existed a political movement in the City of New York known as, ironically, the Know Nothings. While their name may sound more descriptive today of the quality of their arguments, it actually is derived from the response its members would give when questioned about their sometimes violent activities, “I know nothing.” Their main organizing principle was to organize against a faith tradition that was seen to be outside of the mainstream and therefore a threat to the republic. Their argument was that members of this faith tradition, in addition to being different from the mainstream, were actually agents of a nefarious foreign power. …
One of the exciting ministries of my community, the Paulist Fathers, is the film production studio in Los Angeles. In 1960 Fr. Ellwood “Bud” Kieser founded Paulist Productions and over the course of fifty years, created projects that have featured such stars as Raul Julia, Martin Sheen, Carol Burnett, Patty Duke, John Amos, Carroll O’Connor, Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, Blair Underwood, Jane Seymour, Tim Matheson, and Ron Howard.
Last week while at our community’s house in Lake George, some of us decided to go see a movie and one of the people in our group was one of the former presidents of Paulist Productions. And as I sat next to him while the previews flashed across the screen, something occurred to me; this person had met a lot of people in Hollywood… which made me realize that I potentially had the opportunity to move up a VERY important list. So I asked him the question.
Part of our Catholic tradition involves a concept known as “natural law,” a term used to describe a “right” ordering to the universe. As a life-long Yankees fan I had never had any trouble understanding that concept, especially during the late nineties, where World Championships were like Christmas… they happened every year. It was a “right ordering” of the universe that had never really been challenged: some teams are usually up, some teams are usually down, and no matter how good the Boston Red Sox ever get, they will always play second fiddle to the greatest sports franchise in world history (Manchester United be damned).
So you can imagine my… my… what’s the word… “shock” and “surprise” just seem too soft to describe the experience of having one’s entire universe re-ordered… abject horror when, in 2004 the Boston Red Sox overcame a three game deficit—something NO TEAM had ever done in either baseball or basketball—to win the American League Championship Series (ALCS) against my beloved Bronx Bombers.
But it didn’t make sense to me…. in years past it seemed as though that the Lord Almighty always intervened to ensure that His favorite team on the planet would end up victorious. Jeffrey Maier would make a crucial catch to ensure victory, Derek Jeter would make the ultimate flip play to keep the followers of Moneyball from becoming too haughty, and Aaron FABULOUS Boone (yes, I substituted in my own F-word, deal with it) would clinch victory in extra innings to ensure a World Series berth. I could not shake the feeling that SOMETHING must have happened SOMEWHERE to cause such a radical disordering in the fall of 2004.
Watching my television screen that autumn… it’s like I FINALLY understood the meaning of the Christmas special, “A Year Without A Santa Claus.”
Two years later, my universe was re-ordered again when I entered the Paulist Fathers. During those first few weeks, the novitiate (freshman) class went on a road trip to different Paulist parishes and foundations, and one of the final stops on our trip was …
I had exactly seven days left in Austin and I had not yet eaten the second greatest burger in Texas according to Texas Monthly Magazine. Why I thought I would have room in my stomach for the second greatest burger in Texas I do not know… the last few weeks had been a gastrointestinal marathon of good-bye lunches, dinners, and breakfasts with the good parishioners of St. Austin Parish. Not that I was an unwilling participant in all of restaurant hopping, mind you.
One of my favorite Paulist preachers here in Washington, DC used to be the rector of our parish in Rome. One of the reasons I like his preaching so much is that he usually has great stories to tell, especially on the topic of saints; he almost always comes up with some interesting aspect of the saint’s life that’s not usually found in the official listing. But it is obvious where his heart is because many of his homilies start out with the phrase, “There is this church in Rome…” I only bring that up here because I can imagine a time in the future in which I repeatedly fall into the trap of starting most of my homilies with the phrase, “There is the taco stand in Austin…”
So I am sitting at the Counter Café on Lamar with Bob, who has insisted that I have to experience the second greatest burger in Texas before I leave; one half pound of grilled meat topped with cheddar cheese, jalapeno peppers AND a poached egg. And I am grateful to God not only for the feast before me, but for His grace in providing extra Prilosec OTC in my life so that I would even be able to enjoy this fine banquet. Legendary Austin musician Charlie Sexton comes in to the restaurant and sits behind me. Life is good… indeed, beat NOT so lonely.
As lunch begins, Bob and I begin to talk and “somehow” the conversation turns to all of …
Over the past few weeks, I have been on a culinary tear through the “Cheap Eats” Capital of the world: Austin, Texas . You see, on the east Coast, cupcakes are NOT served out of a trailer. On the east Coast, our idea of barbeque involves defrosting hot dogs in a microwave. On the East Coast, a breakfast taco is simply when you eat leftovers from Chili’s the following morning. So I have been spending these last days in Austin frantically visiting all of my favorite places… Amy’s Ice Cream, Torchy’s Tacos, Taco Deli, Iron Works… you name it. Someday I’m going to write a book about my experiences over these past few weeks: I’m going to call it “Eat, Pray, Austin.”
So I’ve taken up golf this past year in Austin. I have mixed feelings about this development in my life. Yes, I am enjoying the game… but I still can’t shake the feeling that this is somehow a natural progression of my priestly formation. Priests and golf seem to be so synonymous that I wouldn’t be surprised if the bishop handed me a seven iron right after putting the oils on my hands during the ordination service.
This development in my life makes me wonder what will be coming next. Seriously, it CAN’T really be wearing cardigans. So many priests I know wear cardigans, but that can’t be allowed to happen. Catholic teachings on the sanctity of life aside, I am really going to have to find some trusted friends who will agree to give me the business end of a Colt 45 if I ever start to wear cardigans. (Okay, maybe I’m being extreme, but I would would hope that someone would at least slap me.)
But in the area of golf, I suppose if the President of the United States has also taken to golf recently—someone who regularly plays basketball with pro players and had Jay-Z at his Inauguration—then maybe it’s safer to move into this new form a recreation than I originally thought.
Still, I do see direct links between the game of golf and my impending priesthood… most notably in the area of prayer. For example, a few weeks ago I walked up to the first tee and pulled the driver out of my bag. After setting the ball, I took a moment and blessed myself with the sign of the cross. I didn’t necessarily hit the shot of my life, but the ball did not do the wildly to the right like it usually does, so I decided to keep up my petitions for Divine intervention throughout the day.
But after crossing myself for a few more holes, I began to ponder what I was doing. I was saying—through my actions—that what I was about to do was actually …
If you’re like me and have been reading the news over the past couple of years, it is hard not to be concerned about the bees… or more importantly, the lack thereof. The phenomenon of “Colony Collapse Disorder” has been going on for at least the past few years as the nation’s beekeepers have noticed a steep decline in colonies with each progressing year.
So, being the student for the priesthood, I thought recently that I would do what a man in my position could do; I prayed for the return of the bees during the prayers of the faithful. When I offered this petition to God, I did hear some giggling in the pews after offering my intention, but I did not care… these are Biblical issues we are dealing with.
After Mass at dinner, a fellow Paulist brother could not help but comment on my somewhat unconventional prayer. The main gist of the commentary was that I could have been praying for something more important, a petition for “world peace” for example. That perspective, however, landed on a particular nerve.
“I hate praying for World Peace. I mean, it’s kind of a BS prayer that very few people ever mean….”
My unexpected response to his evaluation of my prayer life resulted in a very emphatic yet indignant, “What?!?!”
“Seriously, how long have people been praying for ‘world peace’? And after all of that, do we still have war? It seems to me that God has given His answer on the issue of ‘world peace,’ so I figure that we might as well move on to other matters.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“It’s just a cliché prayer, that’s all. It’s just one of those prayers that people dust off when they have to come up with something ‘profound.’ It’s as if people say ‘I have to come up with three original prayers during service today and I have NO idea what to say… what the heck, let’s just pray for world peace.’ It turns Mass into a Miss America pageant.”
In 1630, a ship named the Arbella left England bound for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On board the ship were religious dissidents who wanted to reform the Church of England by creating a new more purified community… otherwise known as Puritans.
Before the boat landed, Governor John Winthrop gave a sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity.” When he gave this sermon, he wanted to remind the people on board of why they were traveling. And in so doing, he established one of the central ideas about the meaning of this new land that would be passed down for generations. He said to these early colonists:
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken… we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God… We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us… til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going.
The Puritans who heard this sermon on board the ship already had a sense that they were embarking on something profound. In fact, they saw parallels between the Israelites who were given a promised land by God and this new place to which they were heading. But Winthrop wanted to remind the voyagers on that boat the other aspect of that story: the gift of a Promised Land was not a privilege but a responsibility.
Because part of Israel’s story in the Old Testament centers around the times they forgot this important truth. And the longing we hear for the lost Jerusalem in the Book of Isaiah occurs during a period of exile, when the Israelites were removed from their Promised Land because they were unfaithful to God’s covenant. Because they had forgotten “what the Lord to do justice, to love kindness and to …
As many of you know, I am from the great state of New Jersey. And when I share that with people I have met at my current assignment in Austin, Texas, one of the things I have been frequently been told is that I don’t SOUND like I am from New Jersey. Which I understand… in the many years I have spent living away from the land of my birth, I have come to appreciate that the window most people view my home state either has involves Tony Soprano or someone named Snooki (whom I have since learned is actually from Marlboro, New York).
Having grown up in a country-suburban environment, I was largely insulated from incorporating into my speech the verbal-stylings that Frank Sinatra helped make famous. Still, there are times when my cultural origin sometimes slips out. It happens when I’m in a Starbucks and I order a cup of CAW-fee. It also happens when I get mad; one of the many wonderful traits that people from my home state are known for is the frequent use of… ummm… colloquialisms. Colorful colloquialisms. Colloquialisms that would sound inappropriate coming from someone who dresses like I do on Sundays. Yes, Johnny Cash also dressed in black and frequently used those kinds of words, but he didn’t wear a white tab below his neck. Consequentially, a lot of my time in priestly formation has been spent cleaning up the truck-driver mouth.
So a few months ago, I gave a reflection during daily Mass. During the reflection, I mentioned that because of our limited human nature, we all have a propensity to screw up. And because none of us are perfect, we all need the help of God for not only the guidance to do better in our lives, but also to have the will and the strength. After the Mass was over, I was feeling relatively good about my commentary on the sinful condition… but the pastor who was presiding wanted to talk to me afterwards about what I said.
The following is a reflection for the Feast Day of St. Thomas More, June 22.
In 1952, director Fred Zinnemann released a film that was eventually selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The movie was called High Noon, and it starred Gary Cooper as a retired lawman who was being hunted down by a criminal he once brought to justice. In the film, Gary Cooper had to make the decision whether or not to stand up to this criminal and his posse… or leave town. While everyone in the town begged him to do the “smart” thing and leave, Gary Cooper decided to stay and face the bad guys in a gun battle to the death.
Now, why am I talking about a 50s western? Because in 1966, the same director released a movie that would not only win him an Oscar for Best Director, it would win Best Picture. The film was called A Man For All Seasons and it was based on the life on the saint whose feast we celebrate today: Thomas More. Much like Gary Cooper’s character in High Noon, Saint Thomas More was faced with making a principled decision, a decision that no one wanted him to make and a decision that could cost him his life. Again, all around him—even his family—begged him to do the “smart” thing and just go along with the crowd: support the divorce of King Henry the Eighth of England like everybody else and just get on with his life.
What Gary Cooper’s character and Thomas More had in common in both stories is that they both lived up to Jesus’ admonition to “enter through the narrow gate.” However, while they both went through the narrow gate and stuck true to their principles, Thomas Moore challenges us to reflect on the WAY WE FIGHT our battles. Because while Gary Cooper’s character chose to fight his battle with a gun, Thomas More fought his battle with his wits …
I usually make a CD mix for long trips that attempt to capture the “theme” for the particular vacation. On a road trip through Arizona and Mexico, the mix featured “South of the Border,” “Rosalita,” with some Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers thrown in; the “Big Apple” mix for the 2006 weekend in New York was loaded with Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, and George Gershwin. So as last year’s Spring Break trip to Berkeley, California approached, the iTunes was fired up and yet another digital heirloom was created.
Because this vacation was partially an exercise in nostalgia, the songs selected leaned heavily on music I was listening to during my Lenten apostolate two years ago. Near the top of the list was “Beautiful World” by Colin Hay, a song that had been played over the airplane speakers during my first flight to Berkeley. It’s a fairly obscure number, but I had been listening to it a lot during my first year in seminary and hearing it over the cabin speakers at that particular momentserved as one of the many reminders that year that I was not as alone as I had been fearing.
The original intent for this trip, in addition to visiting old friends, was to drive down the Pacific Coastal Highway. I had made a similar trip two years ago but because of scheduled meetings and community gatherings, a turnaround had to be made upon reaching Big Sur. On this particular trip, time constraints were not a factor; weather on the other hand was—seven days of stormy clouds appearing at the top of the weather.com page essentially washed away all ideas of a “Fast and Furious” adventure.
Fortunately, there was a Plan B. Before leaving for vacation, a visitor to the Washington house told me that if I was going to Northern California I just had to drive up north to get a mud bath. Because …
Last year for spring break, I headed back to Northern California. I know, Berkeley is not exactly Daytona; there are no houses rented by MTV featuring free shows by Snoop Dogg and the tie-dyed culture seems somehow incompatible with wet T-Shirt contests. But the Cal Newman Center was the location of my Lenten apostolate two years ago and a part of me wanted to head back to the place where this life was newer than it is now, a time when I was still just wading into this pool called religious life… with both hands gripping the railing. And upon arriving in Northern California Peet’s Coffee was the first item on the checklist.
The checklist was an exercise in nostalgia: a list of the things I used to do, food I used to eat, and places I used to visit during that time when my only responsibility in life was to discern a life of priesthood in Northern California over an In N’ Out cheeseburger. But upon waking up on my first jet-lagged morning in Berkeley, it became obvious that I needed certain forgotten toiletries before coffee, so I made my way to the Long’s Pharmacy on Shattuck Ave. Yes, there was a Walgreen’s much closer to the house but… well, they don’t have Long’s on the East Coast and I was trying as local as I could be without flunking any blood tests.
The digits to the left of the decimal point were a lot higher than one would expect for assortment of deodorants offered; who knew that a pharmaceutical chain would take such blatant advantage of basic human needs so close to a college campus? But after getting over my moral outrage, I started looking over the selection; that’s when the label for Old Spice jumped out at me:
I was working on my homily that I would be giving on Pentecost Sunday and doing what I usually do when I am preparing homilies… procrastinating on the Internet. So while browsing Busted Halo’s offerings, I noticed that fellow blogger Monica Rozenfeld posted something on the Jewish festival of Shavuot.
As I’ve mentioned before, this past summer I worked as a chaplain in a New York hospital along side two rabbinical students. Having that experience gave me an even deeper appreciation for just how Jewish our Christian faith really is, especially the Catholic faith. All of this makes sense if you think about it… but, truth be told, until my theological studies and my experience this summer, I hadn’t really thought about it.
