Give Locally
Until recently, Alison and I didn’t really have a giving strategy. Each month, we’d go over the solicitations that we’d received from various causes in the mail along with how much we had budget for giving. We’d write checks, send them out in the mail, and that was how we did things. There’s nothing wrong with that strategy. People were helped, good causes were able to move forward, and all was well. Lately, I’ve been rethinking our strategy because what was missing was a feeling of connectedness.
Most of us are not called to be missionaries or to run charities, so instead we support those worthy actions materially. Our charitable dollars go towards enabling those who are directly involved in social work are able to help those who need it most. There is, however, the temptation for us to give money and wash our hands. We need to be connected in a very real way to our giving beyond our signature on the check.
An excellent way for you to be more connected to your giving is to do a sizable portion of it to local charities. Help people in your community, and watch your charitable dollars going to work right at home. This type of giving builds relationships between your family and the charity that you’re supporting, enabling you to perhaps even give of your time as well. Money gets food sent to a food bank, but it doesn’t unbox the food and put it on the shelves. Money buys an ultrasound machine, but it doesn’t talk to the scared pregnant teenager who needs to hear the truth of the baby growing inside of her. We need to do more.
There is great consolation and beauty in giving of one’s time because, in some way, it’s more difficult than giving of material resources. We place a premium on our time, and so when we give it away out of a spirit of generosity, we’re able to better serve the poor and vulnerable. Plus, an hour of volunteering bears more fruit than an hour of Netflix.
I most value the relationship that’s built between cause and donor. When you build a strong relationship, you’re in a position to shape vision, provide even more financial support, and understand that your donations truly are at work, helping people right where you live.
Our lives are busy, but by giving to local charities both materially and of your time, you’ll make a positive and lasting impact right where you live. Even more importantly, involve your children so that they can have a model of generosity that will shape the kind of adults they’ll be in the not too distant future.
Where Are Your Manners?
I follow the work of Shawn Blanc pretty closely. Shawn is a writer based in Kansas City who does a variety of work and writing based on doing your best creative work and the tools to help you achieve that end. Among his sites are Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup. I like Shawn because he and I share very similar tastes, and so if he find a particular app to be very helpful, I will likely do the same. One of Shawn’s sites recently featured a book recommendation, “Emily Post’s Essential Manners for Men: Second Edition” by Peter Post. Emily Post’s writings on etiquette are the gold standard on the subject, and now her grandson, Peter, is carrying on her legacy.
The United States Armed Forces is a professional military organization that focuses as much on customs and courtesies as it does on accomplishing the mission. As the son of an Air Force office, this high level of discipline, attention to details, and the importance of manners was a part of my upbringing. My brother and I were responsible for getting my mom’s car door, I still always use “sir” and “ma’am” and I always send thank you notes. Manners and etiquette are both lost communication arts in modern society, the saddest part of which is that good etiquette reflects a high level of self-confidence and self-worth.
I picked up a copy of the book and am working my way through it with one goal: I want to be better at respecting Alison and interacting socially with other adults. As Alison gets closer to graduation and we begin job interviews, the way that I present myself in various settings will make an impact and could potentially make or break a deal. Beyond that, I want to act appropriately in a way that conveys a sense of respect and compassion.
While many of us fail to grasp fully what etiquette truly is, Peter lays out three exceptional principles that clearly illustrate the spirit of the topic: consideration, respect, and honesty.
Consideration is taking into account how others will feel and react to any given situation. Peter describes it as empathy. For example, if I’m at a dinner and I notice someone being mostly left out of the conversation, I can understand how that’d make me feel. I’d feel a bit awkward, uncomfortable, and frankly, put off. Understanding how that individual may be feeling, I can bring them into the conversation by changing the topic to something within their wheelhouse. If I know anything about them, I can ask a question about that thing and let them open up and feel included and comfortable. In order to be very good at the principle of consideration, it’s important to be a good listener. Hear and file away what people are saying, especially about their backgrounds. This is always a great starting point… who doesn’t love to talk about what they truly care about?
The second principle is respect. Respect is the understanding of how your actions will affect someone else. Our human nature often encourages us to do that which will make us feel good, which is why so many employees leave their companies on a bad note. They say what’s on their mind because they believe it is without consequence, but not action is without consequence. Hurtful words hurt, no matter what. Living in a spirit of respect will cause you to make decision that will build up your relationships with others instead of damage them. Respect may be steering away from topics of conversation that may bring up bad memories, not repeatedly reminding others of their faults, or even winning in a competition with grace.
The third principle is honesty. Honesty is conveying truth, but done in a courteous way. Instead of calling someone else’s idea stupid or inane, you could politely disagree by stating your disagreement with the idea without the need to attack or debase it. Honesty does require that we’re genuine, but that we are in a way that’s not brutal.
If we’re able to successfully incorporate these three principles into each situation that we find ourselves in, we’ll gain the esteem and respect of those around us, and mutually reap the benefits of positive human relationships. Everyone wins when we walk away from a social situation in which we’re all built up, included, and respected.
The E Word
One of men’s greatest flaws is our inability to express, process, or deal with emotions. We know two emotions: passion and anger. The depth of the human experience is lived through the vast spectrum of emotion, each eliciting a different set of responses and lessons. Our female counterparts are often blamed for being too emotion, but I believe that it’s precisely their ability to intuit and live through their emotions that they’re able to live more fully alive.
I think that men downplay emotions because of how we believe that we will be perceived. We’ve been told that emotions are weakness or that they cloud our judgement. As a result, we’ve come to believe in two types of emotion, good and bad. The problem with marginalizing those emotions that we consider to be “bad” is that they may be telling us something that’s either untrue or a lesson that we need to learn.
I’ve been working on being more perceptive as I approach the end of two years as a stay-at-home dad. I work, yes, but my primary daily responsibility is the care of our children and our home. Benedict is always happy, energetic, and engaging when other people are around, but during the day when its just he and I, I oftentimes won’t get that same level of energy and expression. That makes me feel like he’s bored with me and so I perceive myself feeling the emotions of inadequacy, failure, and disappointment. When I vocalize those feelings to Alison, she reassures me by sharing her knowledge of personalities, adolescent behavior, and human growth.
Consider if instead of processing those emotions, I kept them inside. Those feelings of inadequacy, the most baleful and dangerous that a man can experience, would gnaw at me to the point of obsession. While I’d be sidelining those emotions, I’d likely become more cold, distant, and cutoff from Benedict resulting in a less vibrant relationship. Over time, it would be incredibly destructive, all over emotions that were both unprocessed and based on a falsehood.
This is what’s at stake when we fail to embrace who we are a humans and live through the emotions that we experience. Emotions drive behavior whether we deal with them or not. Although we may not be as perceptive as our female counterparts, we can perceive if we’re sensitive to how the day’s events impact us. The beauty of marriage is that we have a very safe place to express our emotions, to get an outside opinion, and perhaps even advice on how to proceed.
Emotions are not the enemy, failure to process them is. Be connected to who you are and live more vibrantly in harmony with your emotions.
Eucharistic Intimacy
Your faith life has the potential to be the most intimate relationship in your life. It’s a relationship that you have 100% control over. God is standing halfway, unmoved, just waiting for you to come out and greet Him. At the center of this relational treasure trove is the Eucharist. Its humility is unmatched and, while the Eucharist presents itself in simple terms, it’s anything but simple.
I’ve been spending a significant amount of time lately pondering the intimacy of the Eucharist and the reality of receiving the Sacrament. Breaking it down to its most basic level, the Eucharist is the physical presence of God entering into and dwelling within us. That description is deceptively simple. Exploring the reality opens up an entire world of thought and emotion.
Think back on a time when you and your wife were truly in sync. There was low stress, happiness and joy abounded, and you both felt incredibly connected. There was likely lots of cuddling and quality time spent together, and you both felt extremely close to one another. When you were both in this state, you likely wanted to continue to delve deeper into this state of closeness. You wanted to continue to grow closer all the way to the absolute center of closeness. Yet, there is only so far we can go. You can only cuddle so close. Renewal the marital covenant though the loving self-donation of one another in the marital embrace is the physical limit.
The Eucharist breaks down those barriers and takes you to the absolute center that you so desperately crave. There is no closer communion with God than to have the fullness of His presence within you, and you in Him.
I have several Christian friends who are on fire with faith and live the Christian life even better than I do. They crave that closeness and it makes me sad to know that they could have that which they desired if they entered into the fullness of the faith that only the Church can provide. It’s here that we find our calling to spread the Gospel to all nations, including those Christians who have not yet found what they seek, namely the Eucharist.
It can be dangerously easy to go to Mass and receive the Eucharist without a moment’s thought about the reality that you’re experiencing, but that is truly a shame. Even just a simple reminder to yourself as you process up to receive the Blessed Sacrament can be sufficient to not only remind you that you’re about to receive God within you. This is the absolute closeness that you crave that nothing else can offer. Cherish it.
How Will You Use Your Fresh Start?
I love this time of year when I and every other writer on the Internet write about goals, resolutions, and fresh starts. It’s part meeting a need and part recognizing that the New Year is the biggest time-based turning point in any given year.
My question for you is, how will you use your fresh start?
Too often, we allow ourselves to be our own biggest obstacles. We believe some myth that limits our potential. We can’t be holy because we’re not a priest, we can’t get ahead at work because someone is conspiring against us, we can’t lose weight because we tried and failed. We hold ourselves back. We let the ghosts of the past limit our future.
January 1st is truly just another day on the calendar, but it’s also Day #1. Instead of being limited by your past, or attempting to overreach with a long list of unrealistic resolutions, I invite you to try using focus. Choose two things or areas of your life where you can really dive in and make a huge impact.
What’s better: attempting six goals and failing at all of them or focusing on two goals and making lasting impacts?
I believe that the two areas where you can really make a difference are spiritually and physically. If you can get your spiritual life and your physical health both on point, you’ll naturally see movement in other areas of your life. Holiness and health combined can improve your marriage, improve your relationships, improve your creativity, improve your career, improve your finances, and improve your intellect.
Instead of chasing too many goals, focus on your spiritual health and physical health and in six months you’ll notice how much of an impact those two dynamics have on your entire life.
Pursing A Daughter’s Heart
I wanted a girl. When the ultrasound confirmed it, I was elated. Her name is Felicity and she’s arriving in June.
My brother has two daughters, one who’s two months older than Benedict and another who just turned one. Admittedly I feel jealous when I see how his girls are just completely in love with him. They gravitate towards him, want to be held by him, and want him to play with them. They are totally obsessed with their father.
The relationship between a father and a daughter is incredibly powerful. A strong relationship with her father results in a woman with high self-esteem. A real expert in this field is the renowned Dr. Meg Meeker, a Traverse City based pediatrician who has written extensively on the subject.
All children need a stable home, loving parents, and to have their emotional needs met. It’s especially important for fathers to pursue their daughter’s hearts, to teach them how to love, and to show them that they are loved. When you look at these emotional needs, they have a common thread. The need for a strong sense of self-respect and self-worth in order to live well adjusted lives. These foundations are first built and later reinforced within the context of the parental relationship. Girls innately gravitate towards their fathers to be affirmed and to learn how to love, meaning that as fathers, it’s up to us to help them in this critical area of growth.
Fathers carry the special responsibility of pursuing their daughter’s heart. That turn of phrase is one that I heard frequently while I was studying at Franciscan University of Steubenville. What was an annoyance then has clarity now. Pursuit of your daughter’s heart is about being intentional about expressing the feelings and emotions that you have about her in a tangible way. As men, we tend to be reserved in expressing soft emotions. Our communication style uses fewer words than women and we use signals to express our approval and acceptance of others. Pursuing your daughter’s heart is recognizing that it’s not enough for her that you feel emotions of love internally: they must be externalized.
I was recently at a dinner with Alison’s colleagues. It was around Valentine’s Day and one of the young ladies shared her father’s tradition of giving a Valentine’s Day gift to his daughters until they got married. This particular young lady, a working professional, is still single and related the extremely heartfelt and thoughtful gift that she had recently received to mark this year’s Valentine’s Day. Her father gets it. Make sure she knows that she’s loved and communicate it in ways that she understands.
In order to truly love one’s daughter, it’s important to model a good marriage. We should first look to how we treat our wives and the courtesies that we show to them because our children are always watching. Daughters in a particular way keenly observe the dynamics of the domestic life. Your marriage is the primary relationship in your family from which all other relationships flow. Make sure you’re working hard to have a great one.
Teach your daughters to love, show them that they have dignity and worth, and give them the foundation that they need to life a healthy and well-adjusted life. While you’re at it, teach your sons to reject the idea that women at their disposal. Boys and girls who are given a model of family, marriage, and love will carry those lesson into their own lives and pass them down to their children’s children.
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It’s likely that after years of dating and marriage, your wife understands you and can intuit that you love her in the times in between displays of affection or tokens of love. Your daughter doesn’t have the benefit of that experience with you, so those times when you’re not expression external emotions or giving her tokens of love, she can discern no sense of love, thus leading to confusion.
Never let your daughter think for a minute that you don’t love her.
This by no means should be taken as weakness or that boys are more self-reliant. Instead, it should be appreciated within the scheme of the grand design. Girls innately understand that they need to learn how to love and they gravitate towards their father for these lessons.
How you express your feelings of approval and love is how your daughter will grow emotional and feel secure. It’s from this place of safety that she can define who she is, answer life’s biggest questions, and learn to process healthy emotions. From this place she’ll learn how to live an integrated life and make excellent life choices.
Fathers must give their daughters special attention because of the gravity of the consequences. If your daughter leaves your house at the age of 18 with a poor sense of self-worth, she’s going to try to find it somewhere else, and typically that’s in the form of substance abuse or abusive relationships. She’ll get into relationships with deadbeats because they display the model of love that was given to her. Your daughter is worth so much more than that.
Antonin Scalia: America’s Thomas More
“In every interaction you have with people, you can either give them life or take some away.” -Toby Mac
The passing of Justice Antonin Scalia is a great tragedy. Although all things are done in God’s time, I, along with many others, selfishly wish that he could have been permitted to remain with us longer. His death raises many interesting lessons that we can apply to our lives. Truly this was a man who lived the haunting words of Christ, “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.”
Justice Scalia was truly America’s Thomas More. A well-read scholar of the law, he understood the wisdom of the Church and carried his faith with him to work each day. Combining his faith with reason, logic, and knowledge of the law, he followed his conscience regardless of the winds of social and peer pressure. He wrote boldly despite the vicious attacks that he faced in the media, among pundits, and from everyday Americans. This was the life of Thomas More. More lost his head and Scalia lost his reputation. This is the mark of a martyr: unwavering proclamation of truth in the face of power.
Justice Scalia has nine children, one of his sons is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington. I was grieved by the fact that almost immediately, his enemies began to publicly celebrate his passing. The chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice is one of the most lasting impacts of a presidency, but the sinister nature of celebrating the death of one man for the gain of one’s own objectives is both revolting and deeply sad. In this way, I think that Justice Scalia had one more lesson to share with us.
In evaluating my own responses, I was deeply ashamed to realize that if one of my enemies were to die, I would feel a sense of relief. This deplorable reaction is beyond selfish and is a betrayal of what it means to be human. We must consider that there are two sides to every event. While enemies may celebrate, one’s family is in mourning. How callous to dance on the grave while a family is grieving. We’ve lost the ability to divorce one’s actions from one’s personhood and dignity. This is the exact challenge of the Christian life, the call from Christ Himself to love our enemies calls us back to this point. People are not the enemy, actions, decisions, and sin are the enemy. Christ wasn’t calling us to be best friends with our enemies, but rather to recognize that behind the course of action they were pursing was a child of God, created as we are in God’s image and likeness, who has innate dignity regardless of their actions or affiliations.
Our success in the Christian life is based on more than just our personal actions. The things and the people that we surround ourselves with is just as important as the actions we take. Less than 12 hours after the news broke of Justice Scalia’s passing, one of my favorite websites, The Onion had a disparaging headline about the man. They are doubtless a comedy organization and their mode of operation is to push the limits, but by running the headline, I realized just how insensitive they are. I unsubscribed. They took some of my life away and I refuse to give them any more web traffic which can be leveraged into advertising dollars.
The legacy of Justice Scalia is clear. One’s faith should not be left out of the workplace, even the most complex problems can be solved with logic, and the likelihood of being martyred by one’s country should not dissuade us from relentlessly pursing truth. Justice Scalia was a brilliant legal mind, a devout Catholic, and a brave American who would upheld the principles that our Nation was built upon. He was truly our Thomas More who humbly went about his work for the American people. He will be deeply missed.
A Balanced Social Life
The interview season is in full swing for Alison. We’re about 18 months from graduation and her schedule is full of calls, phone interviews, and soon we’ll be travel to conduct site visits. It’s very exciting to finally see all of her work paying off, but it’s also exciting for us on the social front as well.
Medical school and residency are not conducive to a robust social life. Certainly there is time for socialization and many of her classmates have been successful in pursing social adventures. However, the changing nature of the schedule, along with onerous work and long hours preclude us from having the type of social life that we desire.
All of that is about to change. In recent weeks we’ve been talking about our future and our plans, and we’ve come to the realization that our lives are about to fundamentally change in a way that we’ve never experienced in our married life together. Our schedule is about to be our own… how will we use it?
I think that Alison and I both share a deep longing to be an active family in our parish and to connect with other young families. We’ve had some success so far, but not in the way that I experienced as a child growing up. After Mass we’d always spend time standing around and chatting with friends from the parish, our priests would be regular guests in our home, and we often went out and about town on errands.
Now that we have a family, and now that we have two cars again, I’d like to see us step into that level of engagement. It’s the way we as humans are made. We’re social beings who long for interaction, engagement, and connection. I want to share our table with friends and help in the local community.
A social life as a family is very different from the social life of a student or a young professional. It’s refined and has the objective of engagement as opposed to interior objectives. Having a solid social life is more than just beneficial for the parents; it’s a great life for the children who get to experience what it means to be human.
What Great Things Will You Do in 2016
I’ve asked you how you will use the fresh start that the New Year gives you, but today I want to ask you a different question. What great things will you do in 2016?
Achieving greatness requires two things: planning and execution. No project or goal achieves its objectives without a detailed plan. No plan brings results without execution.
A plan is more than just a commitment. A plan shows you how realistic your huge goal is. If you set a goal to lose 40 lbs, you’ll quit. But if you set a goal to lose 40 lbs and then plan on losing 1 lbs per week for 40 weeks, you realize just how possible it is.
Having a plan to lose 40 lbs is great, but if you have your fancy plan and keep eating the way you currently do, you’ll never make it. Execution requires discipline. But there’s a hidden gem in execution. It requires zero decision making. The decisions have already been made in your planning! So you don’t need to decide if you should eat that cake or go for a walk on any particular day. The plan says cake is only on Sunday and walks are every day, so execute!
We get tied up in the belief that we can’t achieve great things, that planning is a bore and execution is a straight jacket. The reality is planning helps us clarify the vision, the execution helps us meet the objective and together, we achieve greatness.
You have the perfect opportunity today to dream big, make a plan, and set it in motion so that in December you’ll have done something truly great with the time that you’ve been given this year. So the question remains, what great things will you do this year?
Stay the Course
If there’s one thing that we can count on, it’s change. Perfectly laid plans are disrupted by unforeseen events and suddenly, they aren’t so perfect anymore. The decision that we must make in times of change is if we’re going to stick to our guiding principles or if we’re going to throw out the playbook and do something completely different.
On April 5, 2005, my uncle took delivery of his brand new Prius. Over the following years my parents bought it and then I did. 10 and a half years and 254,000 miles after he took delivery, I got some very bad news. The check engine light had come on and after diagnostic testing, it was determined that the entire exhaust system needed to be replaced, a $3k repair job on a car that on its best day is worth $2,500. It was the end of the line.
I felt sad. It is just a car and Alison and I had agreed that we’d run it into the ground, but I still wasn’t prepared for it to happen so soon. This was my first car, the car that took me faithfully to and from work as I traversed the countryside. It was the car that became the symbol for my growing business and the star of my rap videos. Yet, as with all good things, it was over.
Alison and I enjoyed our month of being a two-car family. Certainly the budget had to absorb the additional expense, but the ability for us to operate independently, especially for Benedict and I, brought happiness to both of us. We had a choice to make: we could abandon our guiding financial principles and take out a note on a car, or we could stay the course and save up for a new one.
The trouble with financial planning is that it’s impossible to know the future. What’s true today may not be true tomorrow. Layoffs, raises, unknown incomes and medical bills are all a factor, and they all shift on a daily basis. True financial management is about mitigating risk. If you don’t overextend yourself, and if you have somewhat of a fallback position, you’ll be fine. We all get into trouble when we sign ourselves up for things that will work, but only if everything is perfect.
When plans get interrupted and changed, maturity requires reasoned thinking, proactive decision making, and adjustments to keep you on course. This story ended with a twist. Although we planned to be a one car family for half a year or more, a reliable car came up for sale and we bought it. Life happens that way and its best to roll with the punches.