Saint Joseph the Worker, Pray for Me

For a long time I’ve felt pulled apart by the extreme demands of, on the one hand a corporate job, and on the other hand the seemingly irreducibly radical demand of the gospel—while muddling through the middle trying to provide for my family including my disabled daughter—feeling like a sellout to my job & a sellout to the gospel. Saint Joseph escapes this dilemma by being constantly attuned to the spirit and doing what he’s asked to do and trusting…

Sailboats, Sunsets, and the Sacredness of the Tacky

A confluence of contingencies found me today on a sailboat in the Cayman Islands among two dozen or so fellow travelers rotating out of the star-spangled situation into crystal waters where anything that falls in (hat, iPhone, jewelry) becomes treasure i.e. you don’t own it anymore.  Being one that carries more in my mind than I do in my pockets (at least today), and preferring to be indoors reading a book or tweeting some feigned insight or whatever, I was attempting to take advantage of this legal fiction by turning my attention to the sea and contemplating the infinite.  Aiding me on this quixotic task was a bit of sonic ambiance of local flavor and foreign tongue.

Just as I was settling in, the Captain descended from his chair and instructed his fellow crew member to adjust the musical section to an abrupt buffet of late-20th-century American Top 40–from Paul Simon to Hall & Oates.  Naturally, this turn of events activated my dormant snobbery–irritated as I was by this interruption of my mystical journey into the horizon.  

Not that I’m against the Top 40–it has its place–but here? now?–really?  

I don’t know how long I sat there silently grumbling until I woke up from my self-absorption and started looking at all of the people around me–talking to each other about things that normal people talk about and generally having a good time.  

And then I remembered something that some church father or someone said a long time ago–probably posted on Twitter/X… … …that God loves each one of us more than the whole universe–including all of the galaxies and planets and seas and horizons.  Even if we’re blaring tacky Top 40 music in the middle of paradise…no especially because we’re blaring tacky Top 40 music in the middle of paradise.  God can make all the paradises that He wants, but we’re much more important to Him than horizons and sunsets–those are His gifts to us–and He’s much more delighted in us than He is in His gifts to us.  The message to me was the same message of the incarnation that I’m always reluctant to embrace–preferring as I do the armchair to the cross–or even to a sailboat for crying out loud.  And that message is that God is not to be found in abstraction and speculation, or at least not primarily there.  God is to be found first of all in a flesh-and-blood human being–Jesus–and all of the other flesh and blood humans that He loves to the extreme–even me.   

LBJ, JFK and the meaning of life.

I had a business meeting today and my interlocutor mentioned that he was reading Robert Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson.

I was familiar with the books from my younger days when I was an aspiring political hack.

Anyway I did a little online reading today about LBJ’s life and times including the last bill that JFK signed before his assassination—which aimed to reform mental health care—including the implementation challenges and the effects good and bad—as best as we can tell.

All of this got me thinking about Karl Rahner’s observation that our lives are unfinished symphonies.

When I first read that line from Rahner, it struck me as a bit tragic and pessimistic.

But it reminded me of some other things that I have read and thought about…including by Rahner & John Henry Newman.

My conclusion (plagiarized at least in part from Rahner and Newman) is that our “symphonies” are not just killing time before the main event—eternity.  By grace they are made into the fabric of eternity itself—which is the only perspective that reveals their final significance and meaning.

a tweet with hyperlinks

The pit of hell, the death drive, can only be destroyed by the fire of Christ. #psychoanalysis #negative-psychoanalysis