What Does Writing Do For You?

Today one of my favorite people at the CSC reminded me of something I've known for so long but usually somehow forget. She said that while I can be so specific and descriptive in writing about what I feel or think, whenever she asks me in person how I'm doing I inevitably answer in some quiet and vague manner. I'm not as good of a communicator in person as on the page, she said to me tonight.

Like I said, this was hardly breaking news to me or to anybody who knows me. Not only do I come from a family that internalizes just about everything, but for years I struggled with a speech impediment that stunted my confidence and muzzled me even more. Nurture and nature. And to be really honest, I still struggle with it. Every day. I say this openly and frequently, but getting to the point to where I am today--a teacher, retreat director, campus minister, and a coach--is an achievement in which I take more pride than just about anything else I've accomplished. The achievement isn't in the fact that I've conquered anything. Just that I've learned how to harness my fear.

But why is it so difficult for me to open up to a friend in a one-on-one setting? This is never an issue of literally struggling to speak; that's a perpetual gift saved for other numerous opportunities. I wish I knew the answer, because deep down, I long to have that connection. I long to have intimate relationships. I anticipate one of the greatest and deepest joys of my life will be when I find the woman with whom I will share everything. And I've already received great blessings and graces through real and sustained friendship. So it's not that I desire to ever come off as shallow, detached, or worse, uncaring. In fact, when I look at myself in the morning, I look at someone who strives to be quite the opposite.

So what does writing afford me, the writer? What does it do for you?

One thing I love is reading reflections on the art and craft of writing. But real quickly, I believe that the act of writing inherently puts an arrangement around feelings or anchors actions that may lack any other real nucleus. Once written, words allow the writer the opportunity to get a more objective perspective on things that have rumbled around inside of him or her. Once I see what's on my paper or computer screen, I'm more able to find the words to speak about those very things in a more coherent manner. It's a process.

But thanks to my challenger tonight, I'm re-resolved to taking the same risks in conversation that I do on the page. Even though vastly more people could theoretically read what I post on a blog, the real and immediate presence of a one-on-one conversation is somehow more threatening to me. Threatening and scary, but an intimacy that bonds friendships anew and strengthens ones existing. Two things I can get on board with.

Surprise Affirmations

Last weekend I had the opportunity to help lead a grade school retreat at the parish where I grew up. My feelings about it beforehand were certainly mixed. On one hand, this particular retreat is a great model for getting soon-to-be high schoolers plugged in to opportunities with both youth group and developing their own faith. On the other hand, why do I have to be the one? Spending a weekend with 150 screaming teenagers (in addition to the 75 eighth graders, another 75 high schoolers helped lead the retreat) wasn't exactly the way I hoped to spend three-fourths of a four-day holiday weekend.

But here's what I learned last weekend:

1. For me, there is no such thing as a standard 9-5, 40 hour work week. It would be one thing if I worked as a librarian or a lawyer--being surrounded for a weekend by the excitement and pure joy of youth could be a pleasant change once in awhile. But as a retreat coordinator and campus minister at an all-boys' high school, the only thing different between this and how I spend my weeks was the sudden insertion of 100 XX chromosomes, and even a number of the XY'ers were students from school. Being involved in the life of teenagers isn't something I'm able to leave at the door Friday afternoon. I'm learning that can be both exhilarating and exhausting.

2. I have a long way to go on my own faith journey. I tend to complicate my faith too much. Maybe this is a product of my decision to make theology a large part of my own education, and as a result get lost in what I sometimes call the "head-rosphere," but this weekend helped remind me of the simplicity of our situation: God loves us, all of us, and just wants us to accept a relationship with him.

3. I was affirmed. Standing in a dark gymnasium, alone in the middle of a spontaneously formed, hand-linked circle of 150 people all praying a beautiful song about the unity of God's children, I had a powerful realization.

With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I had just finished my part of a talk on the subject of "God's Love." Now, I figure I've probably given nearly 40 talks at retreats over the past eight years, but never before had I attempted to place words on something so immense. Hours before, my stomach was in knots. I had to leave dinner, stepping outside into the cold night to ease my nerves.

But when it was my turn to speak, when the words I had labored over started to flow, I felt as if it was no longer me speaking. It felt natural. I truly felt a hand on my shoulder. In some way, what was coming out of my mouth was even new to my own ears. I've had this sensation of being surprised by what I was saying a few times before, but never before had I felt I was actually lifted above myself.

So as I stood alone in the middle of that circle, sweat falling down my forehead, I smiled and even laughed a little. The experience of talking about God's love had in some way brought exactly that closer to me. At that moment, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

Even though this retreat wasn't sponsored by my job, the parallels are both obvious and affirming. I constantly have opportunities to do similar things on retreats and prayer services at school. A week from now I'll spend four days, "on the clock," with 55 students and four faculty members at a Kairos retreat--a powerful getaway regarded a favorite hang-out of the Spirit.

My vocation as a teacher and campus minister wasn't the only thing affirmed last weekend. My vocation as a child of God, humbled and awed by His love, also got a little amplification, a little spiritual gasoline.

My Super Bowl Hangover

I always try to stay a safe distance from the massive corn and cheese of the Super Bowl, but sitting around the lunch table at work today made me realize another layer of it that I'm just exhausted with.

The commercials.

And not just the extravagance that Super Bowl advertising represents, though that in itself is gag-worthy--100 grand for a one-second ad of a fat dude? C'mon, Miller.

But here's what's really remarkable to me.

People were going around and chiming in about how "disappointed" they were with a "sub-par" batch of Super Bowl ads. What did I think of the ads? I couldn't care less--I was too busy watching one of the most exciting games I've ever seen on the big stage. And even the outcome of the game is never something I lose any sleep over.

Now I'm all for a Super Bowl party with good friends and tasty food 'n' drink, but how much energy can we possibly appropriate to dissecting a 30-second advertising spot for Doritos or Pepsi like it is a short story by Faulkner? The only thing more ridiculous than AB-Inbev shelling out three million bucks for a 30-second ad is the amount of energy and attention it inevitably gets from a general population that, amazingly, seems to have nothing better to do or think about for a two-day stretch of their lives every year.

I hardly ever consider myself a moralizer, but this just seems at a whole other level of indulgent decadence that almost transcends my realm of understanding. Let's just enjoy the Super Bowl experience for what it is--a ritual where we get together with friends and enjoy a game and each other's company (and even get a chuckle at a few commercials)--but can't we just leave it on the field with the final whistle?

Note to anyone who reads this: I promise I'm not usually as curmudgeonly as this makes me sound.

Life at the Limen

Jamey’s excellent post below got me thinking. Saying goodbye is one of my least favorite things to do—perhaps because I don’t think I’m very good at it—and for those around the CSC bracing to make their own goodbyes, I feel your pain.

I was lucky to have a similarly strong faith community where I went to school in Chicago. Much like at the CSC, Sunday night Mass at Madonna della Strada was an event, the pinnacle of the week ahead. For my group of friends, Madonna della Strada—in Italian, “Our Lady of the Road”—became synonymous with the unity and support we felt together alongside our own treks. In the days after the pomp of the graduation ceremonies had died down, one by one these people packed up and left. By the time I said my last goodbyes, I was surprised to discover just how deep my well of tears dipped down.

Jamey suggested trusting your gut and having faith in yourself when making those big decisions which lead you to make those goodbyes. I’d echo that. But above all, you have to trust in the healing and clarifying power of time. Things might not start out easy.

I trusted my gut, turned down a job with Teach for America that would have sent me deep to the soul and blues of the Mississippi Delta, and went back to Chicago, unsure where that first paycheck would come from. Staying around town and finding most people I was closest to spread around the world, I felt a distinct difference when I’d go to Mass at Madonna—if I’d go to Mass at all. The absence of my peers suddenly made the chapel feel significantly less welcoming than it ever had before.

That year, I jumped around to a few jobs—none of which factored in to what seems to be my career path—but as I struggled, that year I learned more about me, and how to find instances of happiness amidst serious personal doubts, than I probably ever have in any other single year. That year, I aligned myself much better with a sense of who I was. Separated from this community that had helped me for so long, I was forced to take the training wheels off and go into my own solitude to realize that what I most wanted next was what was on my heart all along. College had continued seeing me formed and fashioned, and it just took me a little separation to realize that.

Jamey’s right. These first jobs after college will profoundly influence your future. Just not in the way you might expect. Post-graduation life is difficult; there’s no denying that. But go ahead and take a few chances. Take a job that will challenge you, engage you, and force you to step outside of yourself—even if it’s something you’ll only do for six months or a year, and never again. The lessons waiting for you there are vast and just as important as what you learned in the lecture halls and laboratories. If you don't feel challenged or engaged, odds are you're barking up the wrong tree.

One caveat: truly do make the most of the time you have remaining. Don’t wake up in six months and carry regrets about things you wanted to do. Let the friends and people you love know how much they mean to you. This is a special time in your life that you’ll look back on with soft eyes and a warm heart. And even if it hurts, trust your gut and live each moment for what it is—a beautiful, sometimes painful and awkward, but always instructive and life-giving, expression of the gift of life that God has given us.

My Little Pineapple

I'm a big believer in new opportunities and fresh starts. I don't need to remind anyone that sometimes, well, life can just suck and not make a whole lot of sense. But luckily, I don't think that this mud and glop are things we have to toss back and forth for any longer than we want to.

Do you remember your All-Time Classic Heartbreak? Sure you do. Mine happened sometime in that interminably long and fuzzy part of my life between the times I walked across the stage at my college graduation and the moment I felt even a bit confident about the direction my life was taking. By the way: nowhere in my life manual do I remember reading that life in your 20s would be so confusing. Where's the self-help literature here?

One of the major redeeming factors in that interim, dark part in my life was a job I had working in a short-term day care at a posh athletic club in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Believe it or not, it wasn't the brown diapers or spit-up that most appealed to me (though, after leaving this job, I truly do believe I am now officially Mr. Mom-certified), but of course, it was the people that I met at the club that made the difference.

One particular difference-maker was a little fuzzy new pineapple named Jack. Jack and I bonded over the baby swinger, the bopper, and romping on the floor with the orange and blue plastic rings. Jack's mom also took to me, really helping make me feel welcome in her young family and reassuring me about my own future. Literally, I made a wonderful new friendship that helped pass me through the Chicago winter. But it wasn't until I connected the dots on Jack's birthday that I really had an ah-ha moment.

It was the very night of Jack’s birth, in a nearby part of Chicago on an otherwise typical and brutally cold December night, that my heart took its devastated u-turn. Just as Jack and his parents entered a world of their own firsts, I entered my time of beginnings.

To me, Jack represents the promise and amazing possibilities that accompany any change. The winter months weren’t easy, but as I grew closer to Jack and the other kids and staff at my job, I slowly uncovered a new path that would brighten my days, a path that would lead me to where I am today. A place that I feel pretty damn good about.

I'm starting to feel more and more confident that God's love is like this--only better. No matter what happens, no matter how badly we screw it up, God waits, and indeed wants, to hold and guide us. Now, on the nights when I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, too anxious to sleep, I try to recall the promise that last Sunday we heard once came crashing down from the skies over the River Jordan:

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

Brian G, clocking in

My name is Brian G, and apparently I've volunteered to contribute to this blog.

Introduction? I'm a teacher and campus minister at an all-boys high school, and I absolutely love my job, despite how much I grumble when I'm grading essays or, even worse, prefecting freshman lunch. I'm an American Catholic (thank you, Fr. Gary) who happened to land this sweet gig living at the Catholic Student Center over a Bud Light and a game of cornhole. Living in such close proximity to Forest Park is both a blessing (because I love to run) and a curse (because my excuses not to run carry much less weight). And: Virgo all the way.

Becca Veto and I are currently tied atop the RCIA perfect attendance list. I'm going to have to miss next week because of a retreat. I may or may not arrange to have Becca's soup poisoned at Mass and Soup. I don't like to lose.