Lenten Journal - 2020

This morning, my teenaged daughter, G., messaged me before my first class:  "I'm sad." I opened the chat window to check in. More IMs followed:  "My old camp counselor."    "The janitor was doing inappropriate things and I think they tried to fire him and then he came up with a gun." Then, she sent me a copied-and-pasted link to a news article . I don't know if any of us ever get good at mourning. I tried to tell her that it's OK to grieve a loss like this, even if the person touched your life for a moment or season. It's also OK to rage, when the reason they're gone is something that feels stupid to us, like another person's narcissistic, uncontrolled anger, or mere carelessness. * * * Last night, our priest encouraged us to push past our own navel-gazing and look around at our communities and our world. To mourn for our collective violence, indifference, and waste. Beyond mourning, though, there is a second task the li...

I'm sitting in my office; in a few hours, I'm going to meet a friend for services at my parish -- although I'll admit that I got Ash Wednesday started a little early by crashing the Catholic Student Association's Mass at school. (I know, I know. I'm a weirdo. This is the goth-est holiday of the liturgical calendar, y'all. I'm all about it.) This year, the Lenten season feels especially dynamic, from where I sit. Unsettling, even. It's hard to describe this sense to someone outside my own head; I'm not unhappy or restless in my faith, or even in the more mundane facets of my life, like work. There's a quickening in my soul, though. One of the recurring themes of my life, over the past twenty years or so, has been prophetic witness. I have repeatedly felt a calling toward this sort of spiritual vocation. While I am not, by nature, a confrontational person, I do feel moved to speak uncomfortable truths, to bear witness to topics and events that ...