Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.
Category: Catholicism
Hey Mom, let me know if you want this post to be #1 in the Google results for their names
There are certain words I never expected to see my mother use in print, and “pimped” is one of them. Just one reason why I’m happy to see her blogging again.
If you read Mo-Jo, you’re already aware that after years of mounting mismanagement, condescension and outright lies from the diocesan administration, my mother’s willingness to stand up for her school and her students finally got her fired. She has another job now, but (no offense to any booksellers present) she deserves a better one; if you happen to be aware of teaching or library-related jobs in central Kentucky for someone with an MAEd (but not an MLS), please let me know and I’ll pass the news to her.
For Lent I am giving up my headphones. In addition, I have two places where I can catch a bus home: right out in front of my work building, or a twenty-minute walk away on Bardstown. The buses on Bardstown are faster and more frequent, and I actually enjoy the walk a lot, but I am lazy. I am giving up not making the walk every day. Without my headphones!
The general approach most Catholics I know have toward these forty-day abstentions is a mix of self-denial and self-improvement–I gave up soda several years running, because I like soda, but avoiding it is good for me. This year I’m doing one thing for denial and another for the benefit. It’s object-oriented Lent.
God to align the God
“By the energy of the alcohol
the virgin Mary was made man.”
The Nicene Creed, babeljacked. Man, I don’t know whether it’s funny or a million stories waiting to happen. Or maybe just a stupid Dan Brown book.
Also, “babel-” totally needs to be a prefix in the Futurologian Congress. PS Dear Leonard: can the Eater of Meaning maybe do this someday?
Not many people will understand how hard this is
Right, Lent. I’m giving up french fries. Starting tomorrow because I didn’t know I was doing it when I got lunch.
On Saturday, Father Joseph Pilger was found beaten to death in his home in Lexington. That the article mentions his criminal history is a pretty clear indication that the AP has already decided on the motive; it barely mentions the fact that oh yes, he’d been living with an unnamed younger man for a month, and also his car is missing.
Father Pilger wasn’t someone I knew, but he could very well have been. It’s frightening. Lexington’s not a great town, but it’s not a hot spot for priest-murder, either.
Reconciliation service tonight–aka drive-through confession.
Until I was about eight, I lived in a very Catholic community–I went to the same Catholic elementary school as most of my friends, lived down the street from the church, CCD, prayer at dinner and bedtime, the works. After we moved to Richmond, and especially when I started going to Model in seventh grade, that world got bumped around a little. I started realizing that not only were most people not Catholic, but that a few of them believed some pretty absurd things about what I’d grown up with.
So I’ve been explaining (or trying to explain) stuff like reconciliation and communion for what seems like a long time. I think I let my own self-deprecation bleed into it too much, actually, so it’s kind of a surprise how good I feel after something like this. It wasn’t a real confession, talking straight to the priest (no, you don’t have to have a screen) and getting stuff out in the air… but it was something.
Before we got started, everybody in church (sixtysomething sinners and a couple of priests) got together in the middle of the pews, held hands and said the Our Father. There was something about the sound and the timbre of all those people saying the same thing, so close together–I could feel it humming, reverberating in my lungs. It was palpable. I forget sometimes how much simple human power and trust there is in ritual.
Explanations aside, I don’t talk about my beliefs much. But the fact is that I take a very deep and quiet joy in being Catholic.