I've been thinking about trying to write this post for a long time.
There's a lot of begging in Rome. There are scammers too, but with the scams that I usually get, I guess because I look like a good 'ugly American' mark, I've grown wise and I turn the tables and frustrate the person and try to playfully shame him."What would your mama say? Going around tricking foreigners!"
But it's the begging that troubles me more.
Showing posts with label Punk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Punk. Show all posts
June 27, 2012
Get Fat And Dye My Hair
This is another ramble, I guess. But I also guess that I won't apologize. I'm reminded of one of my favorite things anybody has ever said to me about preaching: after lamenting to an older priest that I thought I had rambled a little in my Sunday homily, he said, "Sometimes you're the arrow, sometimes the shotgun."
Living in Assisi is a funny business. I think it's doing things to me. Like the light and space of Vietnam did to Mr. Clean, I think it's putting the zap on my head.
Everywhere you go it's St. Francis. Franciscan friars, Franciscan sisters. Pace e bene. The Tau cross. "Welcome to Assisi, City of Peace," you see as you spend your euro to take the bus up to Piazza Matteoti, noticing once again that you could have gotten away with not validating your ticket. I guess it all strikes me because Francis's own relationship to the place was so much more ambivalent. I think of his participation in the civil disturbances to his youth, and especially of his leaving town to show mercy to the lepers, thereby making himself unfit for respectable, public life.
Reflections along these lines arrive in my Franciscan heart especially when I find myself around Santa Maria degli Angeli, where I have often been in my free time, praying, going to confession, or just enjoying a flat place to walk and think. I pray by the Portiuncula and try to think of it as it might have been at the time of Francis and the first companions. Out in the tranquility and danger of the woods, just the homely little chapel and maybe some huts for the brothers. Just a place, as they would have said, not a convento or a friary or a studium, curia, collegio, or anything, really. No big beautiful church, no amazing bookstore where you can buy a tau cross or someone's acts of canonization or latest volume of the critical edition of Scotus, no sellers of religious articles and internet meme t-shirts, no pizza, no nice lady reigning as queen of the habit rosary and breviary cover racket. Just the insecurity and openness of not-city.
I guess Santa Maria degli Angeli is just one of those places for me, a place where the boundaries are thin. Maybe it's also because it's the starting point of my favorite travel story, which I have told many, many times over the years. Praying there these days I also keep thinking, for some reason, of Simone Weil and her experiences there. There was a spell when I was a novice when I became quite enamored of her and her writing, but I haven't thought much about her since. Maybe it means something, maybe not.
Is it gauche or bad form to make a second oblique movie reference to the same movie? I guess I don't care.
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way. Francis got off the boat. He split from the whole program. Francis got out of town because it was there, with the lepers, that he found the sweetness of beginning to do penance. He went to meet Jesus where he was to be found, outside the camp, and bore his reproach.
We all know the irony of the mendicants then becoming the experts in preaching and pastoral care in the new complexity of urban life. And in some ways all the truths and myths of that still obtain. But I think for me it's still Francis's departure, his leaving the city, his getting off the boat, that draws me to him, that draws me to want to follow Christ in his footprint and his poverty, according to the pattern of St. Francis of Assisi.
Living in Assisi is a funny business. I think it's doing things to me. Like the light and space of Vietnam did to Mr. Clean, I think it's putting the zap on my head.
Everywhere you go it's St. Francis. Franciscan friars, Franciscan sisters. Pace e bene. The Tau cross. "Welcome to Assisi, City of Peace," you see as you spend your euro to take the bus up to Piazza Matteoti, noticing once again that you could have gotten away with not validating your ticket. I guess it all strikes me because Francis's own relationship to the place was so much more ambivalent. I think of his participation in the civil disturbances to his youth, and especially of his leaving town to show mercy to the lepers, thereby making himself unfit for respectable, public life.
Reflections along these lines arrive in my Franciscan heart especially when I find myself around Santa Maria degli Angeli, where I have often been in my free time, praying, going to confession, or just enjoying a flat place to walk and think. I pray by the Portiuncula and try to think of it as it might have been at the time of Francis and the first companions. Out in the tranquility and danger of the woods, just the homely little chapel and maybe some huts for the brothers. Just a place, as they would have said, not a convento or a friary or a studium, curia, collegio, or anything, really. No big beautiful church, no amazing bookstore where you can buy a tau cross or someone's acts of canonization or latest volume of the critical edition of Scotus, no sellers of religious articles and internet meme t-shirts, no pizza, no nice lady reigning as queen of the habit rosary and breviary cover racket. Just the insecurity and openness of not-city.
I guess Santa Maria degli Angeli is just one of those places for me, a place where the boundaries are thin. Maybe it's also because it's the starting point of my favorite travel story, which I have told many, many times over the years. Praying there these days I also keep thinking, for some reason, of Simone Weil and her experiences there. There was a spell when I was a novice when I became quite enamored of her and her writing, but I haven't thought much about her since. Maybe it means something, maybe not.
Is it gauche or bad form to make a second oblique movie reference to the same movie? I guess I don't care.
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way. Francis got off the boat. He split from the whole program. Francis got out of town because it was there, with the lepers, that he found the sweetness of beginning to do penance. He went to meet Jesus where he was to be found, outside the camp, and bore his reproach.
We all know the irony of the mendicants then becoming the experts in preaching and pastoral care in the new complexity of urban life. And in some ways all the truths and myths of that still obtain. But I think for me it's still Francis's departure, his leaving the city, his getting off the boat, that draws me to him, that draws me to want to follow Christ in his footprint and his poverty, according to the pattern of St. Francis of Assisi.
May 25, 2012
in aliam terram ad faciendam poenitentiam
cum benedictione Dei, of course.
When a letter of obedience suddenly made this new assignment in Rome real a few weeks ago, there were many practical details to look after. Attending to all of them, I didn't really think to become anxious or even excited about the move. As of today almost everything is done and squared away: I'm just about packed, with just some minor questions about what's going to fit and what will have to be left behind, other things have been stowed in a friary basement, the car I've been using has been passed on to the next friar, my American cell phone has been disconnected.
It's funny how the unfolding of life shifts how one looks at the past. I first moved to Boston from the old Capuchin novitiate in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin, at the end of the summer of 2002. Five years later I had an MDiv and an STL and had made my final vows in the Order. As I went to my first assignment in Yonkers, New York, and was ordained priest there, I had a strong sense of having arrived, of having landed in the place to which I had been journeying--whether I knew it or not--for a long time. Three years later I was back in Boston starting another degree program. At that point my time in the parish ceased to be a landing and began to be an interlude, a kind of blessed break between academic assignments.
As I experience the shock of this new assignment now becoming real, memories of prior moments in Italy come up in prayer as matter for re-vision in the Spirit. One evening twenty years ago this spring, I was on a city bus in Florence with my college girlfriend, on our way to see the Ramones. I remember another kid on the bus trying to strike up a conversation by addressing me quizzically: "Punk Americano?" In those days I wasn't even baptized, though I would be just a few months later. I was thinking about that night yesterday when I got a shout-out and good wishes for my journey from a local college radio legend here in Boston, Joanie of the Late Risers' Club on WMBR.
The following spring I found myself in Italy again. Having taken our Easter break from University College Galway as a chance to wander around on the continent, this kid Travis and I eventually found ourselves in Assisi. It was there that we split up; he wanted to try to go skiing in Switzerland and I wanted to stay in Assisi to make a retreat of sorts. I spent almost a week getting to know the place and attending prayers and Masses in various Churches. I remember one afternoon I was hiking around on the trails out around the Carceri. I paused in my rosary to notice the beauty and solitude of the place. I thought about how nobody in the whole world knew where I was or what I was doing, and how secret was my prayer. I experienced a refreshing sense of being at home, of being where I belonged. At the time I interpreted this as an attraction to the Franciscan family, and this was certainly true. But the Holy Spirit knew it was even more than that, as He always does.
When a letter of obedience suddenly made this new assignment in Rome real a few weeks ago, there were many practical details to look after. Attending to all of them, I didn't really think to become anxious or even excited about the move. As of today almost everything is done and squared away: I'm just about packed, with just some minor questions about what's going to fit and what will have to be left behind, other things have been stowed in a friary basement, the car I've been using has been passed on to the next friar, my American cell phone has been disconnected.
It's funny how the unfolding of life shifts how one looks at the past. I first moved to Boston from the old Capuchin novitiate in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin, at the end of the summer of 2002. Five years later I had an MDiv and an STL and had made my final vows in the Order. As I went to my first assignment in Yonkers, New York, and was ordained priest there, I had a strong sense of having arrived, of having landed in the place to which I had been journeying--whether I knew it or not--for a long time. Three years later I was back in Boston starting another degree program. At that point my time in the parish ceased to be a landing and began to be an interlude, a kind of blessed break between academic assignments.
As I experience the shock of this new assignment now becoming real, memories of prior moments in Italy come up in prayer as matter for re-vision in the Spirit. One evening twenty years ago this spring, I was on a city bus in Florence with my college girlfriend, on our way to see the Ramones. I remember another kid on the bus trying to strike up a conversation by addressing me quizzically: "Punk Americano?" In those days I wasn't even baptized, though I would be just a few months later. I was thinking about that night yesterday when I got a shout-out and good wishes for my journey from a local college radio legend here in Boston, Joanie of the Late Risers' Club on WMBR.
The following spring I found myself in Italy again. Having taken our Easter break from University College Galway as a chance to wander around on the continent, this kid Travis and I eventually found ourselves in Assisi. It was there that we split up; he wanted to try to go skiing in Switzerland and I wanted to stay in Assisi to make a retreat of sorts. I spent almost a week getting to know the place and attending prayers and Masses in various Churches. I remember one afternoon I was hiking around on the trails out around the Carceri. I paused in my rosary to notice the beauty and solitude of the place. I thought about how nobody in the whole world knew where I was or what I was doing, and how secret was my prayer. I experienced a refreshing sense of being at home, of being where I belonged. At the time I interpreted this as an attraction to the Franciscan family, and this was certainly true. But the Holy Spirit knew it was even more than that, as He always does.
March 21, 2012
My Despicable Beard: A Capuchin Dubium
In the course of this past winter Ordinary Time, a confluence of factors led me to stop shaving altogether. Since the spring semester of 1993, around the time of my twenty-first birthday, I've been sporting the Grunge-inspired Van Dyke, and I just decided--as I say, for a number of reasons--that such was over for me.
So I started to let a full beard grow. Such is, of course, como Dios manda for a Capuchin.
But here's the problem. It's not going very well. It's patchy, incomplete, and looks pretty bad. At least it looks pretty bad so far. Of course the brothers don't point this out to me. This is because they are gentle souls but also because they know well the anarchistic and contrarian tendencies that will make me want to do something even more once it is criticized. Be strong, be wrong, as Nomeansno famously put it.
So here's my question. In the oft-quoted precept from our Constitutions of 1536, Capuchins grow beards because they are "manly, austere, natural, an imitation of Christ and the saints of our Order, and despised." If my beard is despicable, and thereby all the easier to despise, doesn't that make it more Capuchin?
So I started to let a full beard grow. Such is, of course, como Dios manda for a Capuchin.
But here's the problem. It's not going very well. It's patchy, incomplete, and looks pretty bad. At least it looks pretty bad so far. Of course the brothers don't point this out to me. This is because they are gentle souls but also because they know well the anarchistic and contrarian tendencies that will make me want to do something even more once it is criticized. Be strong, be wrong, as Nomeansno famously put it.
So here's my question. In the oft-quoted precept from our Constitutions of 1536, Capuchins grow beards because they are "manly, austere, natural, an imitation of Christ and the saints of our Order, and despised." If my beard is despicable, and thereby all the easier to despise, doesn't that make it more Capuchin?
October 18, 2011
What Eric Thunk
For a 'music captures prayer' post, mutatis mutandis, "I saw a hippie girl on 8th Ave." by Jeffrey Lewis
August 25, 2011
Why I Stay
It's a commonplace in religious life to say that why you came isn't exactly the same as why you stay.
This is largely because religious life wasn't quite what you thought it would be. But perhaps more importantly, you also find out that you weren't exactly who you thought you were. Some of this is can be a painful purification. When the honeymoons are over and first fervor is gone, afflictive emotions that arise in community life reveal to us that our attraction to religious life wasn't entirely pious and pure. We realize our mixed motivations, that our hearts are mysterious and messy fields of weeds and wheat. We can let this teach us patience with each other and humility for ourselves, or we can refuse growth and just flail around in a doomed project of trying to get our disorderly emotional needs met. But no matter which we choose, we find ourselves a different person than we were when we started.
And so, because religious life doesn't turn out to be what we had imagined, and because we become different people within it, why we came usually isn't why we stay.
I was just thinking about this stuff because someone challenged me the other day with the question, "Why do you stay?" It's a good challenge, and the response ought to be dynamic and growing, parallel to the work of grace in a vocation. So here's where I am right now:
I'm a religious because it gives me peace to know that I have disposed of my life on earth. One of my confreres in the Order likes to say that my primary desire in life is to feel 'all set.' By my perpetual profession and my vow 'to give myself to this fraternity' I feel all set. I may be living it less than adequately, but I have dealt with and disposed of my earthly life. How much time have I wasted in life already, and how poor a steward of my life have I been! Who knows how much time is left? The time to begin preparing for my death is now.
I'm a Franciscan because I am convinced that the Franciscan way is my antidote to the world. I have always been looking for an alternative to the bleak and pointless tastes and attitudes that are the given in this world. When I was eleven I thought the answer was to escape into fantasy. When I was fourteen I thought it was the alternative taste and uniform of Heavy Metal. When I was seventeen I thought it was in the uncompromising cultural critique of Punk. When I was nineteen I began to become convinced that the only coherent answer was Christianity. Soon after that I met St. Francis in a history class, and ever since then it has seemed to me that the Franciscan way has been the best way for me to be a Christian.
I'm a priest because in living my priesthood I have become convinced that the vocation to priesthood has been God's way of redeeming my particular humanity, and making me useful for his work in the world.
This is largely because religious life wasn't quite what you thought it would be. But perhaps more importantly, you also find out that you weren't exactly who you thought you were. Some of this is can be a painful purification. When the honeymoons are over and first fervor is gone, afflictive emotions that arise in community life reveal to us that our attraction to religious life wasn't entirely pious and pure. We realize our mixed motivations, that our hearts are mysterious and messy fields of weeds and wheat. We can let this teach us patience with each other and humility for ourselves, or we can refuse growth and just flail around in a doomed project of trying to get our disorderly emotional needs met. But no matter which we choose, we find ourselves a different person than we were when we started.
And so, because religious life doesn't turn out to be what we had imagined, and because we become different people within it, why we came usually isn't why we stay.
I was just thinking about this stuff because someone challenged me the other day with the question, "Why do you stay?" It's a good challenge, and the response ought to be dynamic and growing, parallel to the work of grace in a vocation. So here's where I am right now:
I'm a religious because it gives me peace to know that I have disposed of my life on earth. One of my confreres in the Order likes to say that my primary desire in life is to feel 'all set.' By my perpetual profession and my vow 'to give myself to this fraternity' I feel all set. I may be living it less than adequately, but I have dealt with and disposed of my earthly life. How much time have I wasted in life already, and how poor a steward of my life have I been! Who knows how much time is left? The time to begin preparing for my death is now.
I'm a Franciscan because I am convinced that the Franciscan way is my antidote to the world. I have always been looking for an alternative to the bleak and pointless tastes and attitudes that are the given in this world. When I was eleven I thought the answer was to escape into fantasy. When I was fourteen I thought it was the alternative taste and uniform of Heavy Metal. When I was seventeen I thought it was in the uncompromising cultural critique of Punk. When I was nineteen I began to become convinced that the only coherent answer was Christianity. Soon after that I met St. Francis in a history class, and ever since then it has seemed to me that the Franciscan way has been the best way for me to be a Christian.
I'm a priest because in living my priesthood I have become convinced that the vocation to priesthood has been God's way of redeeming my particular humanity, and making me useful for his work in the world.
June 23, 2011
Heavy Metal Cloister
One of the little spiritual boundaries I try to keep for myself is not looking at any social or news media before I've said my prayers and done my spiritual exercises in the morning. One of the funny side effects of this is that sometimes on days when I go to offer morning Mass at the Poor Clares, I first hear about big news stories from them. Today it was Whitey Bulger. Some weeks ago it was Osama bin Laden. It gives a friar a shot of goofy vanity in the morning, to think that he is so unworldly as to get his news of current events from cloistered nuns.
It reminds me of the great graces of my life, and one of the periods when God was working very hard on me. Not that I knew it at the time; in fact, I was almost totally ignorant. I was like an anesthetized patient; grace was operating on me and I was unaware of it.
At some point in early 1987 I had a dramatic conversion that was to have far-reaching effects in my life. Around the time I turned fifteen, I became a metalhead. I grew my hair long, I took up the uniform, I turned the radio dial all the way to left, from the popular music stations down to WNHU from the University of New Haven, which had an all-day Heavy Metal show every Saturday. Distracted by the noise and macabre mood of it all, I was distracted from the grace God was working in me: the experience had firmly rooted me in a critical turn with regard to tastes and values; I had discovered that the things everybody did, liked, and believed were not necessarily the right or best things.
From this my ongoing conversion proceeded in stages: to thrash, crossover, second wave hardcore, punk, Oi!, anarcho-punk, spirituality, Christianity, Catholicism, Franciscanism.
I rehearse all of this personal mythology just to make another point. When I first fell into the metal subculture, I became separated from popular culture. From early 1987 or so, I became almost totally unaware of popular songs, television, and movies. In fact, I didn't come to be aware of these things again until I entered religious life the first time in the fall of 1994. This was one of the things that made my adjustment to religious life so hard the first time I tried it; I was surprised to find televisions in friaries, and even more shocked to see things like People magazine. For years, it hadn't even occurred to me to watch television or pay any attention to the vapid popular culture of the world. At the time I thought of my entrance into religious life as a kind of culmination of a conversion process; how was it that I found therein a culture that seemed more entwined with the world's inanities?
All of that is another story and another complaint. I only bring it all up because I want to thank God for inspiring the flight from the world that was my 'cloistered' period. That awareness helps me to remember to keep good boundaries with this world's media.
It reminds me of the great graces of my life, and one of the periods when God was working very hard on me. Not that I knew it at the time; in fact, I was almost totally ignorant. I was like an anesthetized patient; grace was operating on me and I was unaware of it.
At some point in early 1987 I had a dramatic conversion that was to have far-reaching effects in my life. Around the time I turned fifteen, I became a metalhead. I grew my hair long, I took up the uniform, I turned the radio dial all the way to left, from the popular music stations down to WNHU from the University of New Haven, which had an all-day Heavy Metal show every Saturday. Distracted by the noise and macabre mood of it all, I was distracted from the grace God was working in me: the experience had firmly rooted me in a critical turn with regard to tastes and values; I had discovered that the things everybody did, liked, and believed were not necessarily the right or best things.
From this my ongoing conversion proceeded in stages: to thrash, crossover, second wave hardcore, punk, Oi!, anarcho-punk, spirituality, Christianity, Catholicism, Franciscanism.
I rehearse all of this personal mythology just to make another point. When I first fell into the metal subculture, I became separated from popular culture. From early 1987 or so, I became almost totally unaware of popular songs, television, and movies. In fact, I didn't come to be aware of these things again until I entered religious life the first time in the fall of 1994. This was one of the things that made my adjustment to religious life so hard the first time I tried it; I was surprised to find televisions in friaries, and even more shocked to see things like People magazine. For years, it hadn't even occurred to me to watch television or pay any attention to the vapid popular culture of the world. At the time I thought of my entrance into religious life as a kind of culmination of a conversion process; how was it that I found therein a culture that seemed more entwined with the world's inanities?
All of that is another story and another complaint. I only bring it all up because I want to thank God for inspiring the flight from the world that was my 'cloistered' period. That awareness helps me to remember to keep good boundaries with this world's media.
June 6, 2011
History of the Concept of the Soul
I had totally forgotten about this song. When I happened on it again this afternoon, it made my day. You don't have to agree with everything, but the very idea of putting footnotes into a song, how can you not love that? Listen for the "Ibid" at the very end.
Mr. T. Experience, The History of the Concept of the Soul
Homer didn't have a comprehensive word for mind.
the psyche and the conscious self had not yet been combined.
He understood events as repetition from the past,
and individual consciousness was not a part of that.
But early Greek thought played a role in the complicated history
of the concept of the soul. (1)
By the time of Plato these ideas had taken shape.
The Phaedo and Timaeus are works which demonstrate
the consious separation of the knower from the known
and the dual nature of the body and the soul.
Modern thought was possible:
the complicated history of the concept of the soul.
Whoa!
Pythagoras and Orphic doctrines all came into play,
because Plato was a mystic in his own Platonic way.
The pre-Socratic Naturalists saw things in terms of "stuff".
But Plato's metaphysics showed that this was not enough.
This is the incredible complicated history of the concept of the soul.
Rock and roll! (2)
(1) For an interesting discussion, see E.R Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, (Berkeley, 1953), pp. 45-150.
(2) ibid.
Mr. T. Experience, The History of the Concept of the Soul
Homer didn't have a comprehensive word for mind.
the psyche and the conscious self had not yet been combined.
He understood events as repetition from the past,
and individual consciousness was not a part of that.
But early Greek thought played a role in the complicated history
of the concept of the soul. (1)
By the time of Plato these ideas had taken shape.
The Phaedo and Timaeus are works which demonstrate
the consious separation of the knower from the known
and the dual nature of the body and the soul.
Modern thought was possible:
the complicated history of the concept of the soul.
Whoa!
Pythagoras and Orphic doctrines all came into play,
because Plato was a mystic in his own Platonic way.
The pre-Socratic Naturalists saw things in terms of "stuff".
But Plato's metaphysics showed that this was not enough.
This is the incredible complicated history of the concept of the soul.
Rock and roll! (2)
(1) For an interesting discussion, see E.R Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, (Berkeley, 1953), pp. 45-150.
(2) ibid.
May 29, 2011
When I Sing, I Sing Real Go-oo-od
One of my joys over this past year back in Boston has been getting to know the "Schola Amicorum" which sings for the Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the cathedral. When I have been free, I have enjoyed their hospitality and the chance to learn to sing a little chant.
I was there this morning. During a break from our practice (we rehearse in the bishops' crypt, which is just too cool) I was reflecting on why the old chants grab me so. That's when I noticed something funny within: Gregorian chant reminds me a little of the Misfits.
I remember first hearing the Misfits when I was about fifteen. The whole thing caught me right away; the classic rock and roll song structures, the campy horror shtick, and especially the loopy, crooning vocals of Glenn Danzig and later on (in the reconstituted Misfits) Michale Graves.
I've been singing along to Misfits songs for years. They are eminently singable. YouTube is full of kids covering them in garages and girls playing them on the ukelele. Really. Look for yourself. There are similarities with the chants for Mass: the looping phrases, the centering of phrases on long, drawn-out vowels, and the signature descending triads.
I only bring up this very random connection to suggest how God prepares us remotely to minister to his glory. Long before I had any idea of even being a Christian, God was using this crazy music to form my singing heart, and to put into my own musical imagination a sense of tone and phrasing that He would one day put to work for divine worship.
P.s. I would have posted the song from which I derived the title of the post, but I thought its name and subject too vulgar (not to speak of diabolical.)
I was there this morning. During a break from our practice (we rehearse in the bishops' crypt, which is just too cool) I was reflecting on why the old chants grab me so. That's when I noticed something funny within: Gregorian chant reminds me a little of the Misfits.
I remember first hearing the Misfits when I was about fifteen. The whole thing caught me right away; the classic rock and roll song structures, the campy horror shtick, and especially the loopy, crooning vocals of Glenn Danzig and later on (in the reconstituted Misfits) Michale Graves.
I've been singing along to Misfits songs for years. They are eminently singable. YouTube is full of kids covering them in garages and girls playing them on the ukelele. Really. Look for yourself. There are similarities with the chants for Mass: the looping phrases, the centering of phrases on long, drawn-out vowels, and the signature descending triads.
I only bring up this very random connection to suggest how God prepares us remotely to minister to his glory. Long before I had any idea of even being a Christian, God was using this crazy music to form my singing heart, and to put into my own musical imagination a sense of tone and phrasing that He would one day put to work for divine worship.
P.s. I would have posted the song from which I derived the title of the post, but I thought its name and subject too vulgar (not to speak of diabolical.)
October 31, 2010
Happy Halloween
What's Halloween without a surfy cover of the eponymous song by everyone's favorite Rock and Roll guilty pleasure, the Misfits?
October 26, 2010
Church Music Rant
The other day I got into a conversation with someone on one of the standard conflicts of the parish ministry: music for funerals and weddings.
The conflict goes like this: the engaged who are preparing for their wedding or the bereaved preparing for the funeral Mass of their family member decide that they want a certain song in the liturgy. The pastor, priest, or music director objects, saying that such-and-such a song is not appropriate for divine worship because it is secular, sappy, vulgar, etc. Then the counter objection is made: on the contrary, this song 'mentions God' or is 'very spiritual.'
The first objection is easily dismissed. Just because a song 'mentions God' doesn't make it appropriate for the liturgy. Black Sabbath's "After Forever" (written by bassist Geezer Butler, a Catholic) mentions both God and Christ, and contains senses of eschatological urgency and counter-cultural belief in God that one rarely hears with such sharpness even in church, but this doesn't mean I want Ozzy to sing it at my funeral. For the blog, however, it's a fine inclusion. My funeral music is planned anyway, in a way.
The second objection, that an inappropriate song is 'very spiritual,' is a little harder. Here we are up against a flattening abuse of the term 'spiritual' which goes largely unchecked by preachers and pastors of souls. To the world, something is spiritual when it refers to the non-material life of the person, or the relation of the person to God or the divine in a very general way. For us Christians, however, the term is more specific. The 'spiritual life' and 'spirituality' refer specifically to the activity of the Spirit, the formal principle of the Church Who prays in her and as her both corporately and in her individual members.
But here's my challenge to pastors of souls and music directors on this issue. Who gets to decide which songs are suitable for the liturgy? Is it OCP or GIA? Who gave them this tremendous authority over the theological and catechetical formation of the praying assembly? If they, who are neither God nor the magisterium, can decide that a song is appropriate for liturgy, why not the couple preparing their wedding or the folks trying to mourn the loss of a loved one?
You see, I am begging the question. There is any easy way out of this problem, which is to begin to give up on the option of replacing the actual proper chants of the Mass with songs in the first place. Unfortunately, the option of replacing them has become so normalized that many priests no longer even recall that it is, in fact, a substitution.
Therefore, if pastors are unwilling to even investigate or begin to let go of this option become norm, and are also unwilling to try to preach a corrective against the flattening of the generic uses of 'spiritual' and 'spirituality,' then it's not fair to deny ordinary folks the option of substituting the music they think they want.
The conflict goes like this: the engaged who are preparing for their wedding or the bereaved preparing for the funeral Mass of their family member decide that they want a certain song in the liturgy. The pastor, priest, or music director objects, saying that such-and-such a song is not appropriate for divine worship because it is secular, sappy, vulgar, etc. Then the counter objection is made: on the contrary, this song 'mentions God' or is 'very spiritual.'
The first objection is easily dismissed. Just because a song 'mentions God' doesn't make it appropriate for the liturgy. Black Sabbath's "After Forever" (written by bassist Geezer Butler, a Catholic) mentions both God and Christ, and contains senses of eschatological urgency and counter-cultural belief in God that one rarely hears with such sharpness even in church, but this doesn't mean I want Ozzy to sing it at my funeral. For the blog, however, it's a fine inclusion. My funeral music is planned anyway, in a way.
The second objection, that an inappropriate song is 'very spiritual,' is a little harder. Here we are up against a flattening abuse of the term 'spiritual' which goes largely unchecked by preachers and pastors of souls. To the world, something is spiritual when it refers to the non-material life of the person, or the relation of the person to God or the divine in a very general way. For us Christians, however, the term is more specific. The 'spiritual life' and 'spirituality' refer specifically to the activity of the Spirit, the formal principle of the Church Who prays in her and as her both corporately and in her individual members.
But here's my challenge to pastors of souls and music directors on this issue. Who gets to decide which songs are suitable for the liturgy? Is it OCP or GIA? Who gave them this tremendous authority over the theological and catechetical formation of the praying assembly? If they, who are neither God nor the magisterium, can decide that a song is appropriate for liturgy, why not the couple preparing their wedding or the folks trying to mourn the loss of a loved one?
You see, I am begging the question. There is any easy way out of this problem, which is to begin to give up on the option of replacing the actual proper chants of the Mass with songs in the first place. Unfortunately, the option of replacing them has become so normalized that many priests no longer even recall that it is, in fact, a substitution.
Therefore, if pastors are unwilling to even investigate or begin to let go of this option become norm, and are also unwilling to try to preach a corrective against the flattening of the generic uses of 'spiritual' and 'spirituality,' then it's not fair to deny ordinary folks the option of substituting the music they think they want.
October 4, 2010
Francis, Punk, and Conversion
As we have approached another feast of St. Francis I've been reflecting a little bit on how it is I got to be a Franciscan. It's always an interesting reflection for me, for at least a couple of reasons. On the one hand, my interest in and desire for the Franciscan life goes back almost to the beginning of my Christianity. On the other hand, my first priest, who had care of my soul as a pre-catechumen and again as a neophyte, insists to this day that I am a Benedictine at heart. I don't think he's correct, but perhaps there might be those of my confreres who would agree with him.
As I have thought about it over the years, I have come to the provisional conclusion that Francis caught my desire and imagination so strongly because I found in him a synthesis of punk rock and Christianity.
I first met St. Francis in a history class during my sophomore year of college. I was not yet a Catholic, though I was on my way. I had begun to read the New Testament the summer before, found it compelling, and had decided that I wanted to become a Christian. I didn't know what sort of Christian, however, and didn't even know how to make such a decision. As it turned out, this impasse was a great gift of grace, as it became my first school of prayer and helped me to learn that this wasn't something I was doing, but my first steps of surrender to God. In the end I didn't so much as decide to become a Catholic Christian but only confessed that I had been led in that direction.
But I also have to admit that having met Francis of Assisi, the 'thoroughly Catholic and apostolic man' was an influence in my surrender to the Catholic I had become.
Punk had taught me to question. It had showed me that the given value, that what everyone said or thought was the thing wasn't necessarily the right or best way to go. Even the geography of punk life spoke to this: the record stores were hidden away on second floors of buildings. The bands played in basements. It was an intensely liberating discovery for me. No longer was there the anguish of feeling like I didn't fit into the world around me; punk made me realize that I didn't want to fit in anyway. Punk was stern in in its social critique; the injustices of our society were unacceptable. Opting out of the dehumanizing system was the only option; the situation was beyond compromise.
But though punk taught me a critical turn against the world and gave me a desire to opt out of the 'system'--"Death to the World" as the Orthodox 'punks to monks' used to say--punk didn't seem to me to present much of an alternative. We critique, we opt out, but then what? What would a better world look like? True, some punks had some idea of this, such as the brighter and more committed anarcho-punks and others who took starting points like veganism to their logical conclusions and even became pro-life, but most of us didn't. It was all rage against the system but little plan for a renewed or healed world.
For this I needed Christianity, and Francis became the model, or 'pattern' to use a more Franciscan term. Francis lived in a society with deep parallels to our own. Violence was endemic and increasing. The reinvention of the money economy was creating new injustices. Like a good punk, Francis opted out. Recovering from the illness that had come upon him as a prisoner of war, he began to pray. He sought God, finally renouncing his own place among the new wealthy of his time. He stood naked before his neighbors, calling only on God. He lived with the lepers, renouncing his welcome among those who were called decent and healthy.
Against the evils embedded in his own society, Francis had done what punk had made me want to do as a response to mine. But unlike the punks, Francis had a durable and workable alternative. He would live as the Lord revealed to him he should, secundum formam sancti Evangelii, according to the form of the holy Gospel. (Testament, 14)
Punk rock taught me that human society and culture were subject to critique, and that compromise with its anti-human, anti-life 'horrendous policies' was not an option. The radical Christianity of Francis of Assisi showed me where I could go with this insight, and God has given me the grace of an opportunity to follow the Gospel according to his pattern.
Holy Father Francis, deacon, founder of the three Orders, pray for us!
As I have thought about it over the years, I have come to the provisional conclusion that Francis caught my desire and imagination so strongly because I found in him a synthesis of punk rock and Christianity.
I first met St. Francis in a history class during my sophomore year of college. I was not yet a Catholic, though I was on my way. I had begun to read the New Testament the summer before, found it compelling, and had decided that I wanted to become a Christian. I didn't know what sort of Christian, however, and didn't even know how to make such a decision. As it turned out, this impasse was a great gift of grace, as it became my first school of prayer and helped me to learn that this wasn't something I was doing, but my first steps of surrender to God. In the end I didn't so much as decide to become a Catholic Christian but only confessed that I had been led in that direction.
But I also have to admit that having met Francis of Assisi, the 'thoroughly Catholic and apostolic man' was an influence in my surrender to the Catholic I had become.
Punk had taught me to question. It had showed me that the given value, that what everyone said or thought was the thing wasn't necessarily the right or best way to go. Even the geography of punk life spoke to this: the record stores were hidden away on second floors of buildings. The bands played in basements. It was an intensely liberating discovery for me. No longer was there the anguish of feeling like I didn't fit into the world around me; punk made me realize that I didn't want to fit in anyway. Punk was stern in in its social critique; the injustices of our society were unacceptable. Opting out of the dehumanizing system was the only option; the situation was beyond compromise.
But though punk taught me a critical turn against the world and gave me a desire to opt out of the 'system'--"Death to the World" as the Orthodox 'punks to monks' used to say--punk didn't seem to me to present much of an alternative. We critique, we opt out, but then what? What would a better world look like? True, some punks had some idea of this, such as the brighter and more committed anarcho-punks and others who took starting points like veganism to their logical conclusions and even became pro-life, but most of us didn't. It was all rage against the system but little plan for a renewed or healed world.
For this I needed Christianity, and Francis became the model, or 'pattern' to use a more Franciscan term. Francis lived in a society with deep parallels to our own. Violence was endemic and increasing. The reinvention of the money economy was creating new injustices. Like a good punk, Francis opted out. Recovering from the illness that had come upon him as a prisoner of war, he began to pray. He sought God, finally renouncing his own place among the new wealthy of his time. He stood naked before his neighbors, calling only on God. He lived with the lepers, renouncing his welcome among those who were called decent and healthy.
Against the evils embedded in his own society, Francis had done what punk had made me want to do as a response to mine. But unlike the punks, Francis had a durable and workable alternative. He would live as the Lord revealed to him he should, secundum formam sancti Evangelii, according to the form of the holy Gospel. (Testament, 14)
Punk rock taught me that human society and culture were subject to critique, and that compromise with its anti-human, anti-life 'horrendous policies' was not an option. The radical Christianity of Francis of Assisi showed me where I could go with this insight, and God has given me the grace of an opportunity to follow the Gospel according to his pattern.
Holy Father Francis, deacon, founder of the three Orders, pray for us!
July 27, 2010
Are You There, Lucifer? It's Me, Charles
I'm sure that I've shared in the singing of Dan Schutte's "City of God" more than any other single piece of church music, excepting perhaps the Sanctus from Marty Haugen's "Mass of Creation." With it's giddy activism and joyful sense of eschatological transformation, it's a classic. Besides, I'm pretty sure it substituted for the entrance antiphon (what a mercy from God was my ignorance of such things at the time!) at every Sunday Mass for the three semesters that I was a Catholic in college.
Singing it today at Morning Prayer, though, an uncomfortable lyrical parallel came to mind. Consider the second verse:
We are sons of the morning, we are daughters of day
The One who has loved us, has brightened our way.
Now consider some 'horror punk.' This is the beginning of the later Misfits song "Speak of the Devil:"
Traded in my bible for a little black cat
The time of Armageddon's here
Some call me the son of the morning
God knows I'm the angel of light
The reference is to Lucifer, who is indeed sometimes called the "Son of the Morning." This is an uncomfortable parallel for sure!
Singing it today at Morning Prayer, though, an uncomfortable lyrical parallel came to mind. Consider the second verse:
We are sons of the morning, we are daughters of day
The One who has loved us, has brightened our way.
Now consider some 'horror punk.' This is the beginning of the later Misfits song "Speak of the Devil:"
Traded in my bible for a little black cat
The time of Armageddon's here
Some call me the son of the morning
God knows I'm the angel of light
The reference is to Lucifer, who is indeed sometimes called the "Son of the Morning." This is an uncomfortable parallel for sure!
July 20, 2010
Praying Toward Death
I liked the concluding oration for Morning Prayer today: "Increase in us, Lord, the faith you have given us, and bring to a harvest worthy of heaven the praise we offer you at the beginning of this new day." (I don't know 'what the prayer really says' because I'm staying with my parents and don't have my Liturgia Horarum with me.)
Everything we do contributes to who we will be at the moment of death when our lives shift from time to eternity. What we choose to do makes for habits, both of thought and behavior. Our habits define what sort of people we are in this life. Death, from the perspective of morality, is the moment at which our lives cease to be subject to revision. At that point, like it or not, we have decided who we have been in this life. Punk rockers The Vandals described this in negative terms in their song, "People That Are Going to Hell:" When their lives are over and they've done what they've done, they're the people that are going to hell.
For us who are still on the pilgrimage of this life, this is good news. Our lives are still revisable. We can avail ourselves of grace and do our best to consent to become saints at the moment of death. But there is urgency to this; as moments and days and years go by, our lives become that much less revisable. Since we do not know when we will die, let us surrender to the sanctity that God delights to give us. Let us give in to the destiny that Jesus Christ is dying to give us, and become the harvest worthy of heaven.
Everything we do contributes to who we will be at the moment of death when our lives shift from time to eternity. What we choose to do makes for habits, both of thought and behavior. Our habits define what sort of people we are in this life. Death, from the perspective of morality, is the moment at which our lives cease to be subject to revision. At that point, like it or not, we have decided who we have been in this life. Punk rockers The Vandals described this in negative terms in their song, "People That Are Going to Hell:" When their lives are over and they've done what they've done, they're the people that are going to hell.
For us who are still on the pilgrimage of this life, this is good news. Our lives are still revisable. We can avail ourselves of grace and do our best to consent to become saints at the moment of death. But there is urgency to this; as moments and days and years go by, our lives become that much less revisable. Since we do not know when we will die, let us surrender to the sanctity that God delights to give us. Let us give in to the destiny that Jesus Christ is dying to give us, and become the harvest worthy of heaven.
May 20, 2010
Theism
These days I've been in an email conversation with an old friend who is one of the most sensible and brightest people I know. He's also an atheist, and so we are able to have honest and intriguing talks about God and faith and practice. I wanted to share some of one of my emails:
The question of a/theism intrigues me these days, even more so after working as a parish priest for a few years. Some of my colleagues imagine that we are in a struggle with atheism, but for me I'm not so sure of this. My diagnosis is that many people, both religious and not, seem to have absorbed an image or idea of God which isn't credible, and sometimes isn't even attractive. So of course they become 'practical atheists,' because there is nothing compelling or lovely in the idea of God they think they are supposed to believe in.
To me the standard question of theism, 'Do you believe in God?' doesn't even seem to work anymore. Of course I believe God, in the sense that I believe what he has revealed about himself, but to believe in God seems too suggestive of God as some kind of object or some-thing that is sitting some-where waiting for me to assent to his existence. To me God is too immanent for all that. Indeed I think this is precisely the message of Christianity; that God has abandoned everything it ought to mean to be God on our human terms (i.e. honor, power, coercion, etc.), and has emptied and sacrificed himself into our humanity, in order to blaze for us a path out of the misery we insist upon for ourselves with our selfishness and violence. I guess this is part of why Christianity works for me and why I enjoy preaching it; it is a sustained critique and subversion of an idea of God created in our image, of what human beings tend to do and become when given absolute power over others. I'm still just a punk rock kid you know!
The question of a/theism intrigues me these days, even more so after working as a parish priest for a few years. Some of my colleagues imagine that we are in a struggle with atheism, but for me I'm not so sure of this. My diagnosis is that many people, both religious and not, seem to have absorbed an image or idea of God which isn't credible, and sometimes isn't even attractive. So of course they become 'practical atheists,' because there is nothing compelling or lovely in the idea of God they think they are supposed to believe in.
To me the standard question of theism, 'Do you believe in God?' doesn't even seem to work anymore. Of course I believe God, in the sense that I believe what he has revealed about himself, but to believe in God seems too suggestive of God as some kind of object or some-thing that is sitting some-where waiting for me to assent to his existence. To me God is too immanent for all that. Indeed I think this is precisely the message of Christianity; that God has abandoned everything it ought to mean to be God on our human terms (i.e. honor, power, coercion, etc.), and has emptied and sacrificed himself into our humanity, in order to blaze for us a path out of the misery we insist upon for ourselves with our selfishness and violence. I guess this is part of why Christianity works for me and why I enjoy preaching it; it is a sustained critique and subversion of an idea of God created in our image, of what human beings tend to do and become when given absolute power over others. I'm still just a punk rock kid you know!
March 9, 2010
Unclehood
In becoming an uncle, I realize that I have entered into a new moment in my religious life and priesthood.
For several weeks now I have telling my Latin gag about how though an uncle I have no obligation to be avuncular. When one woman I know got it and laughed out loud, I wanted to quote one of the great anti-heroes of my youth, Henry Rollins, and say, 'I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow,' but that, of course, would have been inappropriate. The sentiments were there, though, in a chaste way.
When I first came into the culture of religious life, I was surprised by several aspects of how religious related to their families of origin. First, I was relieved to discover that it was entirely normal to have family members who were hostile to the religious vocation; in fact, it was often the ones from Catholic families who were given the most trouble! Second, I was surprised to see sets of siblings in religious life. I guess I had thought that a religious vocation was such an odd thing that there would never be more than one from a single family. My intuition about this was entirely wrong. I have met several sets of brothers in the Order and have known many who had sisters in religious life. Just the other day I met a young diocesan seminarian with a twin brother who is a cloistered Carmelite.
But most of all, I noticed the way religious and priests talked about their nieces and nephews. It was sort of like how other people talked about their grandchildren, rejoicing in the milestones of their lives and providing a curious, extra-parental connection to the preceding generation. When I ever had a spare moment to have a thought during the three days of obsequies for Fr. Bernard last week, I would reflect also upon his unclehood. His nephews formed a kind of inner circle of family as it related to him, and their griefs and gratitudes were so strong. One of my prayers for his passing has been to ask his prayers to obtain the grace of good friar-uncleness for me.
For several weeks now I have telling my Latin gag about how though an uncle I have no obligation to be avuncular. When one woman I know got it and laughed out loud, I wanted to quote one of the great anti-heroes of my youth, Henry Rollins, and say, 'I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow,' but that, of course, would have been inappropriate. The sentiments were there, though, in a chaste way.
When I first came into the culture of religious life, I was surprised by several aspects of how religious related to their families of origin. First, I was relieved to discover that it was entirely normal to have family members who were hostile to the religious vocation; in fact, it was often the ones from Catholic families who were given the most trouble! Second, I was surprised to see sets of siblings in religious life. I guess I had thought that a religious vocation was such an odd thing that there would never be more than one from a single family. My intuition about this was entirely wrong. I have met several sets of brothers in the Order and have known many who had sisters in religious life. Just the other day I met a young diocesan seminarian with a twin brother who is a cloistered Carmelite.
But most of all, I noticed the way religious and priests talked about their nieces and nephews. It was sort of like how other people talked about their grandchildren, rejoicing in the milestones of their lives and providing a curious, extra-parental connection to the preceding generation. When I ever had a spare moment to have a thought during the three days of obsequies for Fr. Bernard last week, I would reflect also upon his unclehood. His nephews formed a kind of inner circle of family as it related to him, and their griefs and gratitudes were so strong. One of my prayers for his passing has been to ask his prayers to obtain the grace of good friar-uncleness for me.
February 16, 2010
People That Are Going To Hell
Leave it to the self-ironic pop punk of the Vandals to take what would otherwise be a very crass pious thought and make it amusing, safe, and comforting.
A little levity for Pancake Day. Very solemn Ash Wednesday post will appear in the morning.
Some people are bad and they don't give a damn what they do or who they hurt
they go through their lives and don't apologize
for the stuff that they've disturbed
but they don't bother me at all
cuz i know quite well-
when they're lives are over and they're done what they've done
they're the people that are going to hell
they go through their lives and don't apologize
for the stuff that they've disturbed
but they don't bother me at all
cuz i know quite well-
when they're lives are over and they're done what they've done
they're the people that are going to hell
A little levity for Pancake Day. Very solemn Ash Wednesday post will appear in the morning.
October 31, 2009
Happy Halloween
This wonderfully complicated day cannot pass without some tribute to the greatest of Rock and Roll's guilty pleasures, the Misfits, and their eponymous song. Here it is (sort of) in German:
October 23, 2009
Considering My Next Conversion
I'm contemplating my next conversion: becoming a hockey fan. Not that I'm especially attracted to the game, but I've noticed over the years that hockey fandom seems to produce a remarkable amount of fun and catchy old-school punk rock. Who knew? If stuff like this is the soundtrack, it must be the right thing.
These guys are actually the great Nomeansno in disguise:
Then from Canada to Philadephia:
Finally, going back to some of the deep roots of punk rock, my brother Connecticutians, The Zambonis:
These guys are actually the great Nomeansno in disguise:
Then from Canada to Philadephia:
Finally, going back to some of the deep roots of punk rock, my brother Connecticutians, The Zambonis:
October 6, 2009
Feast of St. Bruno
For the great Bruno of Cologne, I couldn't resist posting this song from one of all-time favorite records:
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