A long time coming...

Wow! Has it really been so long? Being that my most of my readership knows me in person, perhaps it doesn't seem so, but as midterms approached, and thereafter finals, I have not had time to update until now.

Dear friends, my fall semester has finished and I am enjoying a small and greatly appreciated break before I embark upon what will be my third semester in my master's program. My past semester's research topics were the feminine person in the work of Hildegard von Bingen, liturgical inculturation, and psalms of lament and cursing, and while these were interesting, I must say that the knowledge I gained in regard to these topics pales in comparison to what I have gained through listening to the lectures of Eleonore Stump, reading Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, talking with the Dominican student-brothers of the Central and Southern provinces, and preparing for my wedding alongside my fiancée. In these things I have been convicted of my own place as a pilgrim, and all the roles that are demanded of me: companion, preacher, seeker, student, and all the rest which call to compassion, contemplation, discipleship, love, and virtue. These themes, above all others, have I been convicted of.

This pilgrimage is far from easy, however. I feel like a small child, or even a small animal (a raccoon comes to mind), distracted by the newest shiny thing, even when I know something of surpassing brilliance is on the horizon. How I long to abide with that most shiny of shiny things! Yet, am I am constantly distracted by something much less brilliant, much less fulfilling, just a little off the path. As I struggle against my own sinfulness, I am astounded by the immense mercy of God, who is compassionate to his easily distracted child.

It is in this vein that I ask for help:

St. Jacob the Greater, Patron of Pilgrims, pray for me...

St. Thomas, Patron of Students, pray for me...

St. Gabriel the Archangel, God's messenger, pray for me...

Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for me...

My Journey of Faith: Part Two

Let me preface this section by saying that this leg of my spiritual journey was a desert, and despite their role in making it so, I love my family dearly and have long since forgiven them. Nevertheless, to adequately tell this story, all things here must be included.

My adolescent life could be described accurately as tumultuous.

My parents divorced when I was nine, and I had six addresses in a span of seven years. My mother behaved as if she saw her divorce as a casting off of the shackles that bound her to her former mundane roles as stay-at-home mother and housewife. In many ways it was, and she wasted no time bringing around a new boyfriend that would, a handful of years later, become my step-father.

The newfound freedom my mother enjoyed did not include a lot of child-friendly fun. She and my future step-father would go out together, sometimes all night, sometimes without leaving my brothers or me a clue of where they were or when they'd return, and often they would return drunk, yelling at each other, yelling at us. This was what we grew accustomed to over a span of seven years. If my parents' divorce had put in me a suspicion of authority, the next seven years continued to erode what trust was left in me.

There were at least two bright points that are crucial, however, to the rest of this story, and I'll mention them both at once.

The first crucial item is that my step-father is Catholic. He has not always been the best witness to the faith (have any of us?), but he is a mass-going Catholic, nevertheless, and because of this, I attended Mass sporadically during my teenage years.

The second crucial item is a conversation that I had with my mother, one day when I was fourteen. I don't remember the whole context, but I remember standing in the entrance to the kitchen, as my mother sat at the kitchen table, drinking either diet coke or sweet tea, and her saying to me, "Jake, I've raised you and taught you what I believe, now your salvation is your responsibility."

This mini, personal, pseudo-confirmation ritual had a great impact on me. I often wonder if, because my brothers did not get the same release, it somehow gave them greater reason to rebel against faith. From then on, however, my salvation was mine to "work out with fear and trembling."

It was also at this time that conversations about religion and faith began to take place among my friends at school, and I remember first articulating what amounted to doctrinal differences with my peers when it came to the question of the "Perseverance of the Saints," or, as they would have put it, "Once Saved, Always Saved." I rejected this, though, among my friends at this point, mine was a minority view.

The very general faith I possessed was slowly becoming more specific, but I did not attend services regularly, I did not read the Bible often, nor did I identify myself as any specific type of Christian. I merely prayed, as I always had, in the same, conversational manner, thanking God for what was given, asking for blessings and protection of loved ones, sending messages to deceased loved ones, telling him that I loved him.

Meanwhile, at home, my parents spiraled deeper into alcoholism, and while we had ignored for so long the mental damage that we were made to suffer, when the clear and obvious threat of physical harm not only presented itself but was actualized, we left. On 30 November 1999, after returning from a school function, my brothers and I grabbed our things, and left. My father's house was a safe haven - one we'd initially rejected because of the relationship one forms with a stay-at-home mother, then later one we rejected because of our established friends and school, but one we weren't going dismiss any longer.

Each night for months forward, on the hide-a-bed in my father's basement, I fell asleep crying and praying into my pillow desperate and anguished pleas for help and mercy for my brothers and myself. When I remember those nights, I can feel the tightness in my jaw, the sting in my eyes, and the cool sheets in between my tightly clenched fingers as I sobbed my petitions and wondered in between them why we had to hurt so much.

This crisis stripped from me every familiar support. Despite being safe and loved in my father's house, I felt forsaken. If God was going to answer me, it was going to be in a manner that would be new, and therefore visible.

More to come.

My Journey of Faith: Part One

Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan spoke of conversion as a wholly unrestricted state or moment of being in love. To Lonergan, the convert, at the moment of conversion, is "a subject held, grasped, possessed, owned through a total and so an other-worldly love." Conversion experiences are not merely moments that dapple our lives, but even the processes of falling in love again and again.

Stories of conversion are the heavenly romances of our faith. The Old Testament speaks more to us of people answering God's call, the New Testament tells us of this, in addition to Paul's dramatic conversion. The stories of the saints, especially St. Augustine's conversion story, as well as more modern Christians, like John Henry Newman, C.S. Lewis, and numerous others, continue to share with us the power of love to surround and transform our very being. I'm going to begin my story at my very beginning. I hope that someone, if only in some small way, might be encouraged or helped by it, as I am encouraged reading the stories of others.

Before I was born, my mother prayed for the privelege of having a child. I'm not exactly sure of her exact words, but the story she tells is that she even prayed for my face to have certain characteristics... That the life in my grandmother's eyes would be in mine, that I would have a face like my granddad's, and so on. My mother, in these prayers, promised to dedicate me to God should she be so lucky that they be granted.

Whether by chance or providence, when I was born in the wee hours of a Late-May Saturday in 1983, the sparkle of my grandmother's eyes, and my granddad's nose and jawline were mine, just as my mother had prayed. And I was dedicated to God.

I was Christened at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Vandalia, Illinois, not long after I was born, but it was my mother who took the responsibility of attending church most seriously. My father, having grown up quite poor, felt uncomfortable in church, among people he viewed as cut from a different, wealthier cloth than he. My mother, however, despite not coming from much means herself, did not, and made certain that as I, and later my brothers, grew up, we were involved in the life of our small country church.

As far as raising me to be Christian, by the time I have memories of church and prayer, my parents had done an outstanding job - my prayers to God, as far back as I can remember praying, were conversational prayers. I didn't have a living great-grandpa, but I figured that God must be something like that, but stronger, and a whole lot older. When I imagined God it was always as the Father, alternately appearing as an elderly, bearded man (similar to Santa Claus), or as Michael Landon, after I had watched enough "Highway to Heaven." When my grandparents died, I asked God to care for them and to tell them I said "hi."

My creed, until age 9, written as I approximate I may have articulated it, were I that age:

I believe in God the Father, who made everything (even dinosaurs!).

I believe the stories in the Bible are true and that it is God's word, and God knows everything (he's smarter than Dad)!

I believe in Jesus, His Son, who loves everyone.

His mommy was Mary and her husband was Joseph

We celebrate his birthday at Christmas and give gifts like the three wise men did.

Jesus had twelve disciples and taught good things and did miracles.

Jesus died on a cross and came back to life three days later

So that good Christian people can go to Heaven,

We celebrate this on Easter.

He went back up to heaven but will come back again someday.

People should be baptized, and then they can take communion.

I believe in the Holy Ghost

I believe that the Devil and Sin are bad.

My parents divorced when I was nine. My grandfather had just passed a way a year earlier. We stopped going to church because my mom feared being shunned, judged, or treated with intolerance; perhaps she felt ashamed, or feared the gossip mill would smear her name in our small town. I realized that when my parents promised me that they'd love each other forever, it was a lie. I also knew by this time that Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were also lies. I didn't understand what was going on, I knew it wasn't my fault, but I at that point learned that my parents were fallible in ways that could hurt me.

It was a horrible couple of years that I came through alright, despite developing a keen suspicion of authority. Nevertheless, I kept praying. It surprises me that the existence God never crossed my mind as something that may have also been a lie. In retrospect, I'm not certain why I didn't doubt, except perhaps that God, to me, even at that time, was just as real as the ground beneath me or the sky above me - a fundamental fact of the universe that seemed silly to deny.

...It wasn't really until I was fourteen that I had to begin to ask questions of my faith.

More to come.

A Good Night

Last night, Jackie (my girlfriend) made an unexpected and quite pleasant visit. The beginning of the visit consisted of me finishing a delicious Mothership Wit, listening to Led Zeppelin, and admiring her.

Later, we watched Voltron.

Life is good.

Here, experience my joy:




and




Grace and Peace,

Your Everfaithful.