Philosophy
Kill the Golden Calf
Everyone hates the polarized culture, but no one wants to give an inch. We blame the other side as the source of all of our problems. Perhaps we should try seeing their point of view as being valid. The friction that keeps us from accomplishing anything meaningful together isn’t the mindless droll, it’s our obsession with our golden calves.
Political arguments always begin with everyone planting their flags. Oftentimes, it seems like the argument gets as far as opening arguments and then completely stalls. We think it makes us people of integrity, that we have our view points and will not move off them, but really, it makes us foolish.
There’s a real difference between being blinded by ideology and having a sincere belief. In fact, I think that we must have issues that we refuse to change positions on, but only on the biggest and most important of issues. Tax policy holds a different moral weight than life issues.
When you strip away the rhetoric and the one-liners, we can actually find a great deal of common ground. We can take opportunities to work together, to give a little, and to agree to a compromise that takes us both closer to where we want to be.
When everything is a golden calf, nothing gets done.
Weakness
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor 12:9
As a part of my study of St. Joseph and his life, I picked up a copy of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Letter Patris Corde (With a Father’s Heart) that was released in December. In the letter, the Holy Father established this year as the Year of St. Joseph. While reading through, I came across this passage from the second letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians.
Jesus’ words to Paul really struck me. Even in our victim culture, weakness is a negative. Claiming victim status is an assertive position, a way to ironically claim power over another. Weakness is something to be avoided, and yet it’s unavoidable. The nature of the human person is weakness.
What does it mean for power to be made perfect in weakness? It reminds me of Socrates. His intellectual prowess is undisputed, but he claimed to know nothing. Thomas Aquinas, after a mystical experience, said his theological writings were like straw. These two men provided the intellectual underpinnings for Western thought through thousands of years, and they did so by embracing their weakness.
The power of the human person, fully alive, is only unleashed when in proper relationship with God. By taking our place in service to God, we can be His instrument in our world. All good gifts come from Him; we are His body, His hands, His feet. We feed the hungry, help the oppressed, console the hurting. We do this all through our weakness because He gives us the grace and the strength to carry out His saving mission.
When we accept and embrace our weakness, we make our hearts and minds one with God. We seek to do His Will, and are more ready to accept the graces that we need to carry out His plan. Pride is a deadly sin, the antidote to which are the virtues of humility and weakness. God did not make us to be strong on our own, but to be channels of His grace for our hurting world.
Milestones
This week will mark the eighth anniversary of this blog. We live in a hurried and distracted culture, one in which we assume that longevity means success. I don’t think that’s true in general, and it’s certainly not true with this blog.
In many ways, this blog is the journal of my adult life. I started it months before my first child was born. Now, I’m at home with four little ones and running our homeschool operation. As I write this post, I look out the window and see three of my children playing cooperatively, and happily, in the backyard. The lessons that I’ve learned, and in many cases relearned, are woven in posts throughout the years.
Catholic Husband is a rough draft. Imperfections can be found in each post, whether they be grammatical errors or the transparency of my mistakes. Taking the time to write about my life and experiences gives me an opportunity to process events and understand the deeper lessons. The blog has grown with me, and will continue to do so.
Spring is upon us, with flowering trees heralding the change in season. As I start to look two years down the road at the 10 year milestone, I want to continue to improve. I want to continue learning life’s lessons as they come, day by day. I also want to firm up and modernize this blog. The nature of life is impermanence, but it’s within my control to ensure that this blog stays on the web. I will be going through the more than 800 posts and correcting grammatical mistakes. I’ll also be taking steps to bring this blog into conformity with modern web standards, ensuring that it can continue to be accessible fare into the future.
While I’m still young, the reality of adulthood slowly creeps into my conscience. When Alison and I are at Mass, and we’re simultaneously praying and wrangling four kids, I often marvel at what we’re able to accomplish. We started this project together, and together we’re raising our family. It’s my sincere hope that by continuing this blog, I will keep growing in my vocation to love, lead, and serve my family.
Off the Wagon
After years of practice and observation, I know the keep components that I need to build up physical health. I need to walk for an hour daily, drink lots of water, read in the evening before bed, and go to sleep and wake up at about the same time. These are not new ideas, they are not even really negotiable. When I do them all over a sustained period of time, usually two weeks, I feel the difference.
The body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the living Tabernacle that welcomes Christ the King to physically dwell within it each week during Mass. St. Francis was, by modern standards, notoriously stingy. He eschewed almost all comfort and certainly any degree of wealth. He taught his brothers to beg for everything: project materials, food, shelter, clothing. However, when it came to spending on things for the Lord, he was extravagant! Francis insisted that the Churches be furnished with things that befitted the King of the Universe. If God comes to dwell within me, I should prepare myself spiritually and physically to receive him.
When I’m off the wagon and out of sync, it’s difficult to get back on track. I have my share of false starts and, though I’m tempted to give up, I somehow persist. Eventually, I get back on track and staying the course becomes that much easier, it becomes routine.
The same should be true in our spiritual life. I’d be willing to bet that all of us are still confessing at least one sin that we’ve struggled with for more than a decade. Every time we go to Confession, it’s on the list.
From the outside, a fair critique would be that we ought to give up on trying to erase that sin. If we’ve confessed it for the better part of a decade, why not just accept it as a character flaw and focus on something else? Though we may be tempted to feel this sense of hopelessness (and even despair), it’s at that precise moment that our faith tells us to carry on.
Holiness is the work of a lifetime. By our returning to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, month after month, year after year, we attest to the fact that we’ve not yet given up. We seek another fresh start to try to overcome. That is the true Christian life: constant examination, constant work, constant renewal.
Physical health and spiritual health are two sides of the same coin. The human person is integrated, each component and system symbiotically impacting and effecting the other. To care for the physical self is to care for the spiritual self. To care for the spiritual self is to care for the emotional self.
When we’re off the wagon of our daily routine, or off the wagon of our spiritual routine, we must have the courage and hope to persist. One day, with the right combination of actions, we’ll be back on track and ready to welcome the King on Sunday morning.
Carrying Too Much
As I sit to write this post, I’m at the kitchen counter in our new house. We’re in the midst of a move. I’ve moved more than a dozen times in my life and this is the first one that can be considered a local move. It’s an experience I’m familiar with, but one that I still don’t particularly enjoy.
The weeks leading up to the move were quite stressful. I had my normal duties along with common moving tasks like lining up housing, coordinating schedules, and handling utilities. Of course, I still took care of the kids and managed schoolwork throughout the day. I also layered on additional preparation jobs, like sorting and organizing. I’m glad to be very near the end of this journey.
As I worked among the boxes, both before the move and while unpacking, there were many times that I was struck by the sheer quantity of things that we’ve gathered. We’re a family of six, so packing light isn’t exactly possible, but the accumulation is remarkable. On an ordinary day, we might walk into a store and buy something, only to still have that thing five or ten years later. We pick things up, but so rarely lay them down.
Advent, like Lent, is a season of preparation. It’s a season in which the liturgy points us towards the hope that is the Incarnation, God with us. But it’s also a penitential season. St. John the Baptist is still in the wilderness, crying out to us to make straight the path of the Lord. Advent is another opportunity for us in our year to lay things down.
Original sin is with each of us, and from it we derive our inclination to sin. This is known as concupiscence, a sort of tendency towards sin away from virtue. In our lives, as we go about our days, we pick up vices. We take on these bad habits like holding a grudge or giving into road rage. We pick up vices big and small, never really laying them down.
Advent is the time to lay down our sinful habits, big and small. It’s a call to reorient ourselves towards God, to be reminded of our identity as His children. It’s an excuse to break even the smallest of vices that keeps us from living in the true freedom of God’s law.
Live Today
Jesus told us to not worry about tomorrow, that it would take care of itself. I wrote a few weeks ago about how it’s time for us to move past the paralysis of COVID. The trap of living in the past or future is that it steals our today.
There’s nothing wrong about recalling the past to learn its lessons or relish its memories. Planning for the future is a wise thing to do. If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you adjust your trajectory? The problem is when you obsess over either.
Each day is a gift, one of only a few thousand that we will get to experience. If I waste today, it’s easier to waste tomorrow. If I don’t stop to enjoy the beauty and graces around me, I waste the energy that God put into creating them. My children are only young for so long. I have such a small window to enjoy their sweetness.
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow will be here in its time. How will I choose to accept the gift that is today?
Time to Go
Life in March was paralyzing. The incessant flow of negative news stories crashed over us like a tsunami. Our society endured the first global health threat of our lifetimes, and we did not adapt well.
Even now, months on, we hold our hope for a vaccine to return things to the way that they used to be. We pine for the ability to walk into a store without a mask, to go and see a movie with our friends, or even to sit in a crowded restaurant to enjoy a good meal. Sadly, the robust economy of January and February is on hiatus, and we’re back in the 2009-2011 world of an economy only starting to heal from a recession.
It’s easy to still be paralyzed. I’m guilty of this. Before, once or twice a week we were about town on some adventure. The easy days of picnic lunches at Mom’s office, or even just surprising her with a coffee run, are gone, for now. Now I rarely leave the house with my kids.
The situation is worsened by all of our new free time. The election cycle seems particularly brutal this time around, but that’s only because we have less to distract us. We’re living emptier lives, allowing the darkness on the internet and in the news to fill that gap with abjectly negative emotions. We let our anxiety dictate our lives and spend that extra time judging others.
We’re living a new normal, and it’s time for us to act like it. We can’t move about as freely as we could before, but we can still get out. Parks, hiking trails, even some of our favorite amusements are available, albeit under new restrictions. What about our backyards or the buckets of toys that we have to play with in our garages?
The Sunday obligation to attend Mass is suspended, and a weekday liturgy is even more of a stretch, but why not try? Don’t let your Sunday slip into just another Saturday.
What about those great ideas that we never had time for before all of this? Starting a reading aloud habit, scheduling one-on-one time with your kids, establishing a solid morning and evening routine, or regular family prayer? Now is the time! Now is the _opportunity_.
A vaccine will help us get over this hump, but global events like these tend to form new behaviors and routines. We may not be able to go back to the old ways, but we still have the gift of today. How are you going to spend it?
Focus
The opportunity to gain clarity in your life is rare. The busyness of the world and daily distractions easily get us to lose focus on our objectives. We’ve got too much going on in the present to be concerned about tomorrow, the broader future, or even what’s just on our periphery.
My family is growing in the next few weeks with the birth of my fourth child. One of my favorite parenting techniques for helping my kids prepare for the birth, and the dramatic changes to come, is to pull out baby gear in phases. I start with the car seats. First, everyone gets their new seat assignment. A week or two later, the new car seat base is installed. More time passes, and the empty seat is fully installed. It gives them a chance to adjust and takes the edge off when the new baby is finally here.
One of the benefits of impending birth is the gift of focus. I know that my whole routine is going to be upended, so I make a detailed study of what’s working now and what isn’t. I’m looking out for blind spots and pitfalls. With that information, I process what changes will be necessary. It also gets me to think about my future. Insurance coverages are reviewed, plans are checked, and other important things come to mind that I haven’t considered in months, or even years.
Another opportunity for clarity came with the pandemic. I went to Confession the weekend before everything shut down. In those six or eight weeks when the parish doors were shut and locked, and I knew that the Sacraments weren’t available to me, I thought differently about my actions. I readily acknowledged the grace present within me, and labored to grow in virtue. It worked. I was engaged, consistent, and committed to my personal spiritual growth. When the doors re-opened, I lost some of my spark. It’s not a loss, though. That focus proved something to me: I can do it. All I need to do is re-implement the plan.
Focus is breathing room. It’s the space that we need to process the events of our lives and chart a path forward. While some major events naturally tend to lend focus, giving yourself a momentary pause to catch your breath and evaluate your life might be all that you need to course correct and get moving in the right direction.
A Few Extra Minutes
Taking care of children is no easy task. Apart from the heavy lifting of moral and character education are the daily mundane tasks. These are the repeating things that I do every day without a thought, like getting dressed, taking a shower, or brushing my teeth. When I do them for myself, it requires almost no effort, but doing them for all three of my children is a heavy lift.
I have a bias towards my children. I can get my kids up and dressed every day. I can get their little teeth brushed, and even help them pick up their rooms. The problem comes when it’s my turn. The care of my children is too often to my own detriment. They’re dressed nicely for the day, but I look like a slob. Their teeth are brushed, but mine, well, I’ll get to it later.
Part of the equation is energy and part of it is time. If I’m short on time, it’s easy to skip shaving or picking out an outfit for myself. It gets me on to the next thing that I need to do.
After letting this process play out over several months, I’ve come to a conclusion. Taking care of myself does take a few extra minutes and a little more effort. That investment of time and effort makes a big difference in my day. By slowing down and enjoying those moments getting ready for the day, I subtly acknowledge my own importance. I acknowledge that I deserve to be taken care of, too. Plus, doing the math, skipping these things saves me five or ten minutes, tops.
The way that we treat our bodies plays a big role in the way that we see ourselves. Even in the rush of morning, make sure that you have the time you need to get yourself a nice shower, fresh shave, and a comfortable outfit that makes you feel great. Then you’ll be ready to take on the world (and your kids).
Some Gave All
Memorial Day marks the official start of summer. While the holiday weekend is typically filled with travel and cookouts, this year the celebrations are muted. In this time of upheaval, it’s a wonderful chance for us to rediscover the meaning of the holiday.
All across America, there are families whose loved ones have given the ultimate sacrifices. Sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, these fallen soldiers gave everything that we might live in freedom.
As trite as it may sound to give everything, nothing could be more true. They gave up their entire lives. They gave up their families, their relationships, and their friendships. They gave up their possessions, homesteads, and livelihoods. They gave up their dreams and their futures. Many gave up the opportunity to form a family and welcome children of their own.
Today, just like every other day, the families that they left behind go about their lives, trying to adapt to their new normal. Nothing can ever replace the loss that they have offered for the safety and security of our Nation. These fallen heroes deserve our admiration, and their families deserve our support.