(no subject)
1. Weeding in the backyard yesterday after mass, up with a dandelion root came a little breakthrough. I'm in Portland right now, for a reason: I am waiting for a call. I don't know where I'm going, and I am trying to listen. I don't believe using this kind of language (call, discernment, vocation) neccesarily entails going behind a convent wall (Vatican II happened for a reason). I know that for the long term, it's not for me, at least any time soon. But I'm still trying to keep my ear trained for whatever's on the distance. Whether it be helping with youth group, teaching school, spending a year at a Worker house, or this month out with the Trappists, I think there is a mystery to the waiting, and by God I'm going to search it out.
2. The readings from Sunday's mass were incredible. " Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Love one another." Listening to Saint John left me feeling as if I were hearing the unwritten words to the Second movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Swirling, swirling; back to love.
3. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is pure, spiritual, convert crack-cocaine. I'm hooked, and not by what I expected to be hooked on. Walker Percy has been fascinating so far, and I'm identifying with him more than even Dorothy or Merton. "I wanted to go home, but I had no home," he wrote when he was a little older than I am now. "I just kind of washed up on shore- no home, hadn't fought in any wars like others my age, no profession, but had the scars of a mysterious illness I never suffered from." Or, as Paul Elie sums up- he saw his wandering "as a general sort of condition, and himself as a rootless modern... He would be an existentialist, not a systematizer; a believer, not a knower; an individual, not a type." A part of me loves Elie for writing this book. Another part is jealous to the core.
4. I spent half the weekend making and selling 2,000 tamales with A. and the parish youth group. I've been home before one am only twice in the last week, and up at eight almost every day. Next month I'll be living by the five Cisterician rules, so these weeks before are about time with friends, travel, sushi, whiskey, and red meat. Love and baseball. Yesterday was special, so much that Matt Cain's one-hit shut out, the best-pitched game this season, wasn't even the top of the heap.
5. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because Christ says, I am the way." - Saint Catherine of Siena
6. Marcy from JVC East called, and my interview went almost two and a half hours. I tried to minimize my craziness, but good luck with that. It all seemed to go smoothly, and though I'd probably be better off finanacially getting a teaching job and calling it a career, I want this first year to see where it leads. They call back tomorrow with the news.
7. I'm biking downtown for postage to mail a postcard to Marino and the folks at Camaldoli. Voluntary poverty can afford to take a break for Italian air-mail.
2. The readings from Sunday's mass were incredible. " Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Love one another." Listening to Saint John left me feeling as if I were hearing the unwritten words to the Second movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Swirling, swirling; back to love.
3. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is pure, spiritual, convert crack-cocaine. I'm hooked, and not by what I expected to be hooked on. Walker Percy has been fascinating so far, and I'm identifying with him more than even Dorothy or Merton. "I wanted to go home, but I had no home," he wrote when he was a little older than I am now. "I just kind of washed up on shore- no home, hadn't fought in any wars like others my age, no profession, but had the scars of a mysterious illness I never suffered from." Or, as Paul Elie sums up- he saw his wandering "as a general sort of condition, and himself as a rootless modern... He would be an existentialist, not a systematizer; a believer, not a knower; an individual, not a type." A part of me loves Elie for writing this book. Another part is jealous to the core.
4. I spent half the weekend making and selling 2,000 tamales with A. and the parish youth group. I've been home before one am only twice in the last week, and up at eight almost every day. Next month I'll be living by the five Cisterician rules, so these weeks before are about time with friends, travel, sushi, whiskey, and red meat. Love and baseball. Yesterday was special, so much that Matt Cain's one-hit shut out, the best-pitched game this season, wasn't even the top of the heap.
5. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because Christ says, I am the way." - Saint Catherine of Siena
6. Marcy from JVC East called, and my interview went almost two and a half hours. I tried to minimize my craziness, but good luck with that. It all seemed to go smoothly, and though I'd probably be better off finanacially getting a teaching job and calling it a career, I want this first year to see where it leads. They call back tomorrow with the news.
7. I'm biking downtown for postage to mail a postcard to Marino and the folks at Camaldoli. Voluntary poverty can afford to take a break for Italian air-mail.