No deep logic or psychological problems tonight... just an update about the weather.
Basically, the phrase "all hell freezes over" pretty much describes the weather we've had today. Snow was falling from before I woke up this morning until supper, at least. It's finally stopped, but the chill wind that was making it extra-nasty has kept up, so there's still lots of drifting going on.
It was one of those really cold winter days that we get here on the northern prairies, and the forecast says we're doomed to have them all week. With the wind chill it was below -40.
Basically, it was cold enough that I wasn't having to scrape off the outside of my car driving to Mass this morning, but the inside, which is infinitely more annoying. I'm glad my car actually started, though, since I apparently didn't plug it in last night, so I guess it's just God being nice to me that saw it start on command this morning--that and maybe a more resilient engine in lower temperatures than my last car. Even so, she took her time warming up this morning.
It'll be a nasty week... let's hope it's better by the weekend, or I won't be going home to speak in the parish, methinks.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Logical Catharsis
We'll see if this post makes any sense... I'm feeling too tired to want to write anything tonight, but restless enough to attempt it, as well as tired of circling around the front of this issue and never pushing through to the conclusion...
Anyway, to set the scene: on Friday, between classes at Concordia, I was whining to a friend how I hate weekends when I have nothing to do. Quite logically, she concluded that I was foolish to be whining, given that it is fully within my power to correct this: if I want something to do on the weekend, it is as simple as phoning someone up and asking "hey! are you doing anything this afternoon? I'm bored!"
Now, for whatever reason, although I recognise the truth of this solution, there is something in me that revolts at the suggestion of it, and says in the bluntest emotions possible that there is no way on Earth I'm ever going to be comfortable with doing that. I would much rather do nothing all weekend and drown in my self-centred misery. I said as much to my friend, and she quite fairly criticised me severely for my unwillingness to change, and for being such a fool as to complain.
The whole situation has been on my mind on and off yesterday evening and today, which is an uncomfortable situation, although not exactly a bad one. The worst of it is that I can't really seem to come to a resolution, but instead keep going over and over the same thoughts and emotions and thus have this horrible sick-to-my-stomach feeling that you get if you watch the same movie four times back to back.
I've tried looking at this as a logical problem to be solved, but if it is just a problem of logic, it's a complicated one, and I'm too lazy to graph it all out into syllogisms. Anyway, the problem seems to be expressed best thusly: "while I seem to really like going out and doing stuff with people, the only reasonable way to do such things is one I seem to be unwilling to take". The "reasonable way", of course, being to invite people to go and do stuff...
The logical part of me wants to make a distinction about the situation and then leave me happy with that. It wants me to say that I don't really want to be out having to interact with people, to talk to them and be an integrated part of some group, but that I simply want to be around people. It presents, as evidence, the apparent joy I got this morning at the Marian Centre during the tea break, sitting there amidst everyone else, but talking to none, and the object of no one's attention, just sort of absorbing the swirl of humanity and relationships around me.
Now, the logical part has a point--I do enjoy people-watching. The obvious solution to my dilemma, then, would seem to be that the reason I don't want to go ask anybody to go and spend time with me is that I don't really want quality time with anyone, but that I want to be around people without any qualifications, and thus that I should just go hang out in West Edmonton Mall tomorrow afternoon, and let humanity swarm all around me.
Though it presents a compelling argument, I have to say this part of me is wrong. Although I am an avid people-watcher, and have indeed spent time in West Ed and such places doing nothing more than walking around, sitting, and watching, this is not at the heart of this matter. No, the issue here is as it seems: I want to engage people on a personal level, but I'm too reticent to seem able to do so.
Where lies the problem then? That it is a problem, I am quite willing to confess at the moment, despite numerous reservations when the same question has come up at different points in the past. I've tried, before, to justify this reticence, but I think my friend is right here in criticising me for complaining when it is fully within my power to do otherwise. After all, I claim to believe in free will--and all I have to do is exercise my free will and either go knock on a seminarian's door or dial the phone... but that sends adrenaline through my system like you wouldn't believe, and I begin trying to excuse myself out of it like crazy.
Let's take it as a given, then, that I'm in the wrong for being reticent, and tackle the related question of WHY I'm so reticent. It's not a problem with the Golden Rule Principle of "Do unto others...", since I would love to have someone call me up and ask if I wanted to do something. It is, probably, something rather more irrational.
I've already had a few ideas present themselves to me as to what it might be. Beginning with my beginning, there's nature and nurture. Whether it's genetic or conditioned doesn't really matter to the situation here, since either way, my parents have certainly affected me. Dad is probably worse than me for initiating any sort of social activity, though every indication is that he doesn't really care for it all that much (Dad's rather a homebody...). While Mom is more than willing to call up a friend for coffee, it's always from a small circle of close friends, not from acquaintances in general. By and large, my family background does not encourage going out there and inviting people to do things.
From that, I would note that I am a lot like my mom, but with the notable difference that while I might be just as willing as her to call up a good friend and go for coffee, unlike her I don't have (m)any friends close by to call up, or, indeed, have many such friends in general. It's a bit of a paradox, I suppose: I won't phone people to do stuff until they're good friends, but they won't become good friends until I've done stuff with them, which requires phoning...
It's not fair, however, to lay the blame for this situation at my parents' feet, though it may explain my disposition some. My own history has played its part, no doubt. Though never well-disposed to such things, I also had little opportunity before I was about 14, since we lived in the country, and when you're a kid who can't drive, the initiative to invite people over or to go in and do stuff really isn't in your own hands. Consequently, when we moved to town at age 14, not only was I not inclined to such things, I had pretty much no experience. Although never quite a social pariah, I was always acutely aware that I wasn't quite the most popular kid in the social circle either, quite aware of not being invited to some events and of having to miss others because of inability to come, or of being less than the life of the party when present... all of which leads to a certain amount of insecurity when deciding to plan something, and makes it that much more crushing when you plan something, and it doesn't work out. And, inevitably, it didn't. What can I say? It was junior high school... the most tender years of a psyche's life. I think it was just something as trivial as no one being able to go to a movie except the people who'd already been to it. Or I'm inventing some situation that never happened. Anyway, there's long precedent in my life for associating pain with attempting to start/host anything social. Also, for most of my teenage years, I didn't really care for too much in the way of social life, so what stuff other people invited me too was often enough to satisfy me.
So, knowing all that you might think I'd find it easier to get over this mental hang-up and just do something--right? Wrong. I may be a mature adult now, but the "PAIN!" klaxon still sounds when I start thinking about asking somebody to do something, and avoiding pain is generally something we tend to do.
To delve a little further into the "PAIN!" instinct, it can be also articulated with the idea that I am afraid to impinge too much on my friends. When I mentioned this to my friend yesterday, she laughed at me, and rightly so, and told me (if not in so many words, in impressions), that would they really be a friend if they disliked my presence that much? Either they would be able to do something, and then we would, or they'd not be able to, and then no hard feelings--right? Well, maybe looked at sensibly, but I have difficulty looking at it that way, because although I get along well with people, and can generally making amiable acquaintances easily, I really take a while to develop friendships, and I guess you could say I have a paranoid fear of losing a friendship by taking advantage of it too often. Or, to put it another way, though it may not be true I am so oblivious, I have a fear that I am completely unable to judge just how tolerated/liked I actually am by a friend, and thus I back off completely so as not to lose whatever I do have.
A very foolish and insecure way of looking at friendships, I fully realise, but it is a habit, and bad habits are the hardest to break. As someone who doesn't make close friends easily, and as someone cautious by nature, I don't want to jeopardise ANYTHING. I know this means I'm never going to actually build a close friendship if I keep to the same tack, but that doesn't make it much easier to change my ways, alas.
On top of these predispositions, I have the added problem of being a seminarian. Now, this isn't REALLY a problem--look at most of the others here to demonstrate how having friends is entirely possible for a seminarian--but it does give me quite a few more excuses to utilise in my attempts to defend myself from having to change my ways.
First of all, there is the schedule. It's not that it's so super-full that I never would have time to get out, it's just that it's well-sprinkled across the week. I have mornings off... but that's when I have (and I really do have) to read for my classes. I have evenings... sorta. Night Prayer kicks in three days a week, and I have a night class on a fourth and Community Activities with the seminary on Fridays. These are all good things which I generally enjoy doing, but they all effectively prevent me from going out and doing anything. Now, Night Prayer isn't until 9:30, but I tend to view social events a lot like friendships: I'd rather them rarer and richer than many and fleeting. Consequently, from the above, most of fun people-spent-with time is between classes at school, and after the community event on Fridays, which are fun times to be sure, but which certainly don't fill the gaping void of the weekend.
However, empty weekends being what sparked this whole conversation, it should be apparent that time isn't what I need in life, but a new mentality. Carrying the "being a seminarian" problems farther, there is definitely a philosophical problem for socialising that comes with being a priest-to-be. As such, I have a mentality that says I have SHOULDN'T be socialising too much, getting too close to friends. It says that while I should be everyone's friend, and get along with all, I shouldn't be obsessing over having close friends and worrying about social relationships, since, after all, once I'm ordained, I'm not going to have time to waste on hanging out with people. It also says that I am liable to be moved around Edmonton, around Alberta, even around the world, if they send me to Rome or something, and I'm only setting myself up for pain by making friendships I'll have to cut off at sometime.
Now, I am well aware, particularly if I start thinking sensibly as I'm trying to do right now, that this is a VERY dangerous way to be thinking. Quite apart from needing to be an island unto himself, a priest needs to have a balanced life with good friends, and he needs to be able to relax away from the parish--both with priestly friends and with other friends and family. And when I look at it in this balanced lighting, I only become more concerned, since I'm not doing myself any favours by not taking care of myself socially, that I'm setting up some foundations for my burning out and becoming a bitter, bitter man if this continues too far.
So here, at last, we more or less reach the end of the thoughts that, in some form or other, have swirled around my brain this past 36 hours or so. Some of it is much older, and has been recycled for years, but now is the first time that I've managed to synthesize it all together and make some sense of it logically. Before I move on to the logical conclusion, however, let me add an addendum that just occurred to me to add.
First, a note on seminarians. Now, most of the above issues apply to my relationships there. I have the same reticence problems with my brothers as I do with friends in general, but unlike with friends in general, I seem to be doing a bit better... either because we're thrown together more, or because I've made a more concerted effort of it, I don't know, but although there's still a lot of room for progress, I really don't have much to fault with myself there. The real issue here, insofar as there is any immediacy to it, is with other friends.
And now, the conclusion:
I need to change. For the second time this year, in casually defending a not-thought-through practice of mine, I have come to a conclusion that calls for change. Last time, it was trivial: in order to maintain my opinionated rhetoric, I had to start going to chapel at Concordia. This time, it seems to entail a great deal more: clearly, if I want to enjoy friendships on weekends, the onus is on me to DO something and not WHINE about it. This is hard, I am really feeling, since while my other issue about chapel meant I had to change my actions in order to maintain my opinions, here I have to change my opinions AND my actions in order to achieve the effect I want.
I don't even know where to start, but having--at enormous length--reached this conclusion has drained me for tonight. I'm also rather terrified at the prospect; facing your deepest, darkest fears is not particularly easy. I have no idea how I'm going to do this... if I can. I don't WANT to stay as I am, but change really, really hurts... it's like setting a broken leg: neither the broken leg or the setting feels at all pleasant, but only one is good for you.
Wow... all that took a LONG time to write... that was really cathartic, though.
Anyway, to set the scene: on Friday, between classes at Concordia, I was whining to a friend how I hate weekends when I have nothing to do. Quite logically, she concluded that I was foolish to be whining, given that it is fully within my power to correct this: if I want something to do on the weekend, it is as simple as phoning someone up and asking "hey! are you doing anything this afternoon? I'm bored!"
Now, for whatever reason, although I recognise the truth of this solution, there is something in me that revolts at the suggestion of it, and says in the bluntest emotions possible that there is no way on Earth I'm ever going to be comfortable with doing that. I would much rather do nothing all weekend and drown in my self-centred misery. I said as much to my friend, and she quite fairly criticised me severely for my unwillingness to change, and for being such a fool as to complain.
The whole situation has been on my mind on and off yesterday evening and today, which is an uncomfortable situation, although not exactly a bad one. The worst of it is that I can't really seem to come to a resolution, but instead keep going over and over the same thoughts and emotions and thus have this horrible sick-to-my-stomach feeling that you get if you watch the same movie four times back to back.
I've tried looking at this as a logical problem to be solved, but if it is just a problem of logic, it's a complicated one, and I'm too lazy to graph it all out into syllogisms. Anyway, the problem seems to be expressed best thusly: "while I seem to really like going out and doing stuff with people, the only reasonable way to do such things is one I seem to be unwilling to take". The "reasonable way", of course, being to invite people to go and do stuff...
The logical part of me wants to make a distinction about the situation and then leave me happy with that. It wants me to say that I don't really want to be out having to interact with people, to talk to them and be an integrated part of some group, but that I simply want to be around people. It presents, as evidence, the apparent joy I got this morning at the Marian Centre during the tea break, sitting there amidst everyone else, but talking to none, and the object of no one's attention, just sort of absorbing the swirl of humanity and relationships around me.
Now, the logical part has a point--I do enjoy people-watching. The obvious solution to my dilemma, then, would seem to be that the reason I don't want to go ask anybody to go and spend time with me is that I don't really want quality time with anyone, but that I want to be around people without any qualifications, and thus that I should just go hang out in West Edmonton Mall tomorrow afternoon, and let humanity swarm all around me.
Though it presents a compelling argument, I have to say this part of me is wrong. Although I am an avid people-watcher, and have indeed spent time in West Ed and such places doing nothing more than walking around, sitting, and watching, this is not at the heart of this matter. No, the issue here is as it seems: I want to engage people on a personal level, but I'm too reticent to seem able to do so.
Where lies the problem then? That it is a problem, I am quite willing to confess at the moment, despite numerous reservations when the same question has come up at different points in the past. I've tried, before, to justify this reticence, but I think my friend is right here in criticising me for complaining when it is fully within my power to do otherwise. After all, I claim to believe in free will--and all I have to do is exercise my free will and either go knock on a seminarian's door or dial the phone... but that sends adrenaline through my system like you wouldn't believe, and I begin trying to excuse myself out of it like crazy.
Let's take it as a given, then, that I'm in the wrong for being reticent, and tackle the related question of WHY I'm so reticent. It's not a problem with the Golden Rule Principle of "Do unto others...", since I would love to have someone call me up and ask if I wanted to do something. It is, probably, something rather more irrational.
I've already had a few ideas present themselves to me as to what it might be. Beginning with my beginning, there's nature and nurture. Whether it's genetic or conditioned doesn't really matter to the situation here, since either way, my parents have certainly affected me. Dad is probably worse than me for initiating any sort of social activity, though every indication is that he doesn't really care for it all that much (Dad's rather a homebody...). While Mom is more than willing to call up a friend for coffee, it's always from a small circle of close friends, not from acquaintances in general. By and large, my family background does not encourage going out there and inviting people to do things.
From that, I would note that I am a lot like my mom, but with the notable difference that while I might be just as willing as her to call up a good friend and go for coffee, unlike her I don't have (m)any friends close by to call up, or, indeed, have many such friends in general. It's a bit of a paradox, I suppose: I won't phone people to do stuff until they're good friends, but they won't become good friends until I've done stuff with them, which requires phoning...
It's not fair, however, to lay the blame for this situation at my parents' feet, though it may explain my disposition some. My own history has played its part, no doubt. Though never well-disposed to such things, I also had little opportunity before I was about 14, since we lived in the country, and when you're a kid who can't drive, the initiative to invite people over or to go in and do stuff really isn't in your own hands. Consequently, when we moved to town at age 14, not only was I not inclined to such things, I had pretty much no experience. Although never quite a social pariah, I was always acutely aware that I wasn't quite the most popular kid in the social circle either, quite aware of not being invited to some events and of having to miss others because of inability to come, or of being less than the life of the party when present... all of which leads to a certain amount of insecurity when deciding to plan something, and makes it that much more crushing when you plan something, and it doesn't work out. And, inevitably, it didn't. What can I say? It was junior high school... the most tender years of a psyche's life. I think it was just something as trivial as no one being able to go to a movie except the people who'd already been to it. Or I'm inventing some situation that never happened. Anyway, there's long precedent in my life for associating pain with attempting to start/host anything social. Also, for most of my teenage years, I didn't really care for too much in the way of social life, so what stuff other people invited me too was often enough to satisfy me.
So, knowing all that you might think I'd find it easier to get over this mental hang-up and just do something--right? Wrong. I may be a mature adult now, but the "PAIN!" klaxon still sounds when I start thinking about asking somebody to do something, and avoiding pain is generally something we tend to do.
To delve a little further into the "PAIN!" instinct, it can be also articulated with the idea that I am afraid to impinge too much on my friends. When I mentioned this to my friend yesterday, she laughed at me, and rightly so, and told me (if not in so many words, in impressions), that would they really be a friend if they disliked my presence that much? Either they would be able to do something, and then we would, or they'd not be able to, and then no hard feelings--right? Well, maybe looked at sensibly, but I have difficulty looking at it that way, because although I get along well with people, and can generally making amiable acquaintances easily, I really take a while to develop friendships, and I guess you could say I have a paranoid fear of losing a friendship by taking advantage of it too often. Or, to put it another way, though it may not be true I am so oblivious, I have a fear that I am completely unable to judge just how tolerated/liked I actually am by a friend, and thus I back off completely so as not to lose whatever I do have.
A very foolish and insecure way of looking at friendships, I fully realise, but it is a habit, and bad habits are the hardest to break. As someone who doesn't make close friends easily, and as someone cautious by nature, I don't want to jeopardise ANYTHING. I know this means I'm never going to actually build a close friendship if I keep to the same tack, but that doesn't make it much easier to change my ways, alas.
On top of these predispositions, I have the added problem of being a seminarian. Now, this isn't REALLY a problem--look at most of the others here to demonstrate how having friends is entirely possible for a seminarian--but it does give me quite a few more excuses to utilise in my attempts to defend myself from having to change my ways.
First of all, there is the schedule. It's not that it's so super-full that I never would have time to get out, it's just that it's well-sprinkled across the week. I have mornings off... but that's when I have (and I really do have) to read for my classes. I have evenings... sorta. Night Prayer kicks in three days a week, and I have a night class on a fourth and Community Activities with the seminary on Fridays. These are all good things which I generally enjoy doing, but they all effectively prevent me from going out and doing anything. Now, Night Prayer isn't until 9:30, but I tend to view social events a lot like friendships: I'd rather them rarer and richer than many and fleeting. Consequently, from the above, most of fun people-spent-with time is between classes at school, and after the community event on Fridays, which are fun times to be sure, but which certainly don't fill the gaping void of the weekend.
However, empty weekends being what sparked this whole conversation, it should be apparent that time isn't what I need in life, but a new mentality. Carrying the "being a seminarian" problems farther, there is definitely a philosophical problem for socialising that comes with being a priest-to-be. As such, I have a mentality that says I have SHOULDN'T be socialising too much, getting too close to friends. It says that while I should be everyone's friend, and get along with all, I shouldn't be obsessing over having close friends and worrying about social relationships, since, after all, once I'm ordained, I'm not going to have time to waste on hanging out with people. It also says that I am liable to be moved around Edmonton, around Alberta, even around the world, if they send me to Rome or something, and I'm only setting myself up for pain by making friendships I'll have to cut off at sometime.
Now, I am well aware, particularly if I start thinking sensibly as I'm trying to do right now, that this is a VERY dangerous way to be thinking. Quite apart from needing to be an island unto himself, a priest needs to have a balanced life with good friends, and he needs to be able to relax away from the parish--both with priestly friends and with other friends and family. And when I look at it in this balanced lighting, I only become more concerned, since I'm not doing myself any favours by not taking care of myself socially, that I'm setting up some foundations for my burning out and becoming a bitter, bitter man if this continues too far.
So here, at last, we more or less reach the end of the thoughts that, in some form or other, have swirled around my brain this past 36 hours or so. Some of it is much older, and has been recycled for years, but now is the first time that I've managed to synthesize it all together and make some sense of it logically. Before I move on to the logical conclusion, however, let me add an addendum that just occurred to me to add.
First, a note on seminarians. Now, most of the above issues apply to my relationships there. I have the same reticence problems with my brothers as I do with friends in general, but unlike with friends in general, I seem to be doing a bit better... either because we're thrown together more, or because I've made a more concerted effort of it, I don't know, but although there's still a lot of room for progress, I really don't have much to fault with myself there. The real issue here, insofar as there is any immediacy to it, is with other friends.
And now, the conclusion:
I need to change. For the second time this year, in casually defending a not-thought-through practice of mine, I have come to a conclusion that calls for change. Last time, it was trivial: in order to maintain my opinionated rhetoric, I had to start going to chapel at Concordia. This time, it seems to entail a great deal more: clearly, if I want to enjoy friendships on weekends, the onus is on me to DO something and not WHINE about it. This is hard, I am really feeling, since while my other issue about chapel meant I had to change my actions in order to maintain my opinions, here I have to change my opinions AND my actions in order to achieve the effect I want.
I don't even know where to start, but having--at enormous length--reached this conclusion has drained me for tonight. I'm also rather terrified at the prospect; facing your deepest, darkest fears is not particularly easy. I have no idea how I'm going to do this... if I can. I don't WANT to stay as I am, but change really, really hurts... it's like setting a broken leg: neither the broken leg or the setting feels at all pleasant, but only one is good for you.
Wow... all that took a LONG time to write... that was really cathartic, though.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Busy as a Beaver
I can't believe how busy life is right now... It's not that it's full of hard things, but it certainly FULL! Now, having one more course than a full course load will help you in that direction, but I don't think it's the extra schoolwork so much as it is everything else.
Part of the problem is that I don't seem to have free weekends anymore. Well... that's not perfectly true. Turns out that I fluked into getting this weekend off when I was expecting to spend it all in a parish, but even so, the fact is that my weekends are almost looking like they need to be gone into without the expectation of doing homework... which means that all my readings (and they are many) and all my papers (which will be several), need to be focussed into my mornings and evenings, which push in nice and tight on the afternoons I spend in school. Of course, school isn't the only thing in my life. January is always a nasty month for me with car re-licencing and driver-re-licencing. As a result of booking a test to upgrade and get my "mature" licence, I've had more stuff going on to drag me out of homework this past week, and it's impacted nastily on my being caught up on readings.
I probably shouldn't have bit off a key role in the Philosophy Club's public debate, but I allowed myself to be flattered into it--aided by my egoistic self-concept of myself as one of our better public speakers.
As I said... life's not hard... but it is full. I sleep really well at night.
Part of the problem is that I don't seem to have free weekends anymore. Well... that's not perfectly true. Turns out that I fluked into getting this weekend off when I was expecting to spend it all in a parish, but even so, the fact is that my weekends are almost looking like they need to be gone into without the expectation of doing homework... which means that all my readings (and they are many) and all my papers (which will be several), need to be focussed into my mornings and evenings, which push in nice and tight on the afternoons I spend in school. Of course, school isn't the only thing in my life. January is always a nasty month for me with car re-licencing and driver-re-licencing. As a result of booking a test to upgrade and get my "mature" licence, I've had more stuff going on to drag me out of homework this past week, and it's impacted nastily on my being caught up on readings.
I probably shouldn't have bit off a key role in the Philosophy Club's public debate, but I allowed myself to be flattered into it--aided by my egoistic self-concept of myself as one of our better public speakers.
As I said... life's not hard... but it is full. I sleep really well at night.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
An Amazing Gift
Well, my first part week of school is now done, and I'm not really sure what to think about this semester. I really didn't go in with a lot of eagerness, like last semester. I wasn't dreading it... the holidays were plenty long enough, and there were a couple days once the retreat was over and the other seminarians had all gone back to classes when it occurred to me that I really needed some sort of purpose to my daily life.
I've got it now, I guess... in the form of two English courses, three Philosophy courses, and a night course in Art History. It's an overload of courses (five is the normal limit), but this is the semester to do it, since these are all courses I can more than reasonably expect to do well in, and the Art History, which was added last, is known as an easy course (the complementary course which I took last year was).
There's not really much to say yet about school. I'm still getting used to the seismic shift in my class times which has seen all my classes gravitate towards the end of the afternoon. My earliest class is 12:05 pm (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) or 1:55 pm (Tuesdays and Thursdays). And, of course, any semester means changes in who you hang out with between classes, and where.
Tonight, though, my interest isn't really in school. Actually, it isn't really there at all. In part, my interest is on the "Musician's Spirituality" post I wrote a couple months ago. I didn't get a lot of comments, but the few I did were quite positive, and I shared it with my spiritual director, who was quite intrigued, and suggested I continue my train of thought and see what else comes up, so I'll probably delve down that mineshaft again soon. Tonight, though, I've a different topic in mind.
Last night, after a long evening of looking eagerly at the plans for the new seminary and enjoying some deep conversations on various topics, I got involved in a long discussion with the Rector and a couple of the other seminarians that went on for a very long time (well after midnight... though it probably wasn't much before that we started) on the topic of the Seal of the Confessional.
For those who don't know, the Seal of the Confessional is the term which refers to the utter secrecy surrounding the Sacrament of Penance (also known as Reconciliation or Confession), and can also be invoked outside the sacrament, such as in spiritual direction. Concerns about accidentally letting something slip as a priest has probably worried every serious seminarian ever, though real experiences suggest it isn't such a huge issue once you're ordained, and breaches are extremely rare--and sometimes apochryphal.
Anyway, the discussion started out with "what if" scenarios, and was generally about how the Seal of the Confessional works, how you keep it, whether you could get around it, how far extended, and so forth. It was an educating conversation, certainly, but my chief interest and reflective thought was about the remarkable privilege it is to be a priest, and to hear confessions.
Think of it! A priest is given the opportunity not only to observe people at their weakest, most broken, most unshielded--at their most trusting. Quite beyond simple observation, a priest is EXPLICITLY trusted with that. Sometimes the trust is routine, people go in with a "get in, get absolved, go home" mentality, but the very complacency of the routine should be awe-inspiring. A priest is ROUTINELY trusted with information that could shatter people's lives if used.
(Aside: of course, if a priest ever broke the Seal, good luck getting trusted like that again... but still...)
Going beyond the routine, every priest will have one or two or many times when it won't be the ordinary, but extraordinary, when he will be able to witness and help in a pivotal moment of change in someone's life, those confessions of the sort where someone hasn't been in twenty years or thirty years... or longer. And in these situations, where more often the trust must already be correspondingly greater to match the extent of the sins confessed, the penitent probably isn't someone the priest knows very well at all.
Protestants find the idea of Confession to be rather abhorrent. Why confess to a man when you can talk straight to God? Now, there's a whole theological discussion regarding that, and obviously I'm solidly in the Catholic camp, but even someone who has a completely different religious perspective has to admit that it must be utterly humbling and awe-inspiring to hear Confessions. It is an amazing, wildly crazy gift, the sort of gift that only someone as deeply in love as God is would ever give.
And He has--and I don't really just mean the chance to be a priest and hear Confessions, but also the opportunity, for anyone in the Church, to go TO Confession. And this, I know, is truly a divine gift. While it is certainly possible for God, in His infinite power, to forgive someone after they just confess their sins in the silence of their heart... but doesn't that seem like LESS of a gift than Confession? Indeed, I am convinced that it would be less of a gift. Forgiveness without the sacrament would never yield the same opportunities for improvement and the same graces for strengthening, or the same beautiful glimpse into the wild love of the Divine.
I've got it now, I guess... in the form of two English courses, three Philosophy courses, and a night course in Art History. It's an overload of courses (five is the normal limit), but this is the semester to do it, since these are all courses I can more than reasonably expect to do well in, and the Art History, which was added last, is known as an easy course (the complementary course which I took last year was).
There's not really much to say yet about school. I'm still getting used to the seismic shift in my class times which has seen all my classes gravitate towards the end of the afternoon. My earliest class is 12:05 pm (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) or 1:55 pm (Tuesdays and Thursdays). And, of course, any semester means changes in who you hang out with between classes, and where.
Tonight, though, my interest isn't really in school. Actually, it isn't really there at all. In part, my interest is on the "Musician's Spirituality" post I wrote a couple months ago. I didn't get a lot of comments, but the few I did were quite positive, and I shared it with my spiritual director, who was quite intrigued, and suggested I continue my train of thought and see what else comes up, so I'll probably delve down that mineshaft again soon. Tonight, though, I've a different topic in mind.
Last night, after a long evening of looking eagerly at the plans for the new seminary and enjoying some deep conversations on various topics, I got involved in a long discussion with the Rector and a couple of the other seminarians that went on for a very long time (well after midnight... though it probably wasn't much before that we started) on the topic of the Seal of the Confessional.
For those who don't know, the Seal of the Confessional is the term which refers to the utter secrecy surrounding the Sacrament of Penance (also known as Reconciliation or Confession), and can also be invoked outside the sacrament, such as in spiritual direction. Concerns about accidentally letting something slip as a priest has probably worried every serious seminarian ever, though real experiences suggest it isn't such a huge issue once you're ordained, and breaches are extremely rare--and sometimes apochryphal.
Anyway, the discussion started out with "what if" scenarios, and was generally about how the Seal of the Confessional works, how you keep it, whether you could get around it, how far extended, and so forth. It was an educating conversation, certainly, but my chief interest and reflective thought was about the remarkable privilege it is to be a priest, and to hear confessions.
Think of it! A priest is given the opportunity not only to observe people at their weakest, most broken, most unshielded--at their most trusting. Quite beyond simple observation, a priest is EXPLICITLY trusted with that. Sometimes the trust is routine, people go in with a "get in, get absolved, go home" mentality, but the very complacency of the routine should be awe-inspiring. A priest is ROUTINELY trusted with information that could shatter people's lives if used.
(Aside: of course, if a priest ever broke the Seal, good luck getting trusted like that again... but still...)
Going beyond the routine, every priest will have one or two or many times when it won't be the ordinary, but extraordinary, when he will be able to witness and help in a pivotal moment of change in someone's life, those confessions of the sort where someone hasn't been in twenty years or thirty years... or longer. And in these situations, where more often the trust must already be correspondingly greater to match the extent of the sins confessed, the penitent probably isn't someone the priest knows very well at all.
Protestants find the idea of Confession to be rather abhorrent. Why confess to a man when you can talk straight to God? Now, there's a whole theological discussion regarding that, and obviously I'm solidly in the Catholic camp, but even someone who has a completely different religious perspective has to admit that it must be utterly humbling and awe-inspiring to hear Confessions. It is an amazing, wildly crazy gift, the sort of gift that only someone as deeply in love as God is would ever give.
And He has--and I don't really just mean the chance to be a priest and hear Confessions, but also the opportunity, for anyone in the Church, to go TO Confession. And this, I know, is truly a divine gift. While it is certainly possible for God, in His infinite power, to forgive someone after they just confess their sins in the silence of their heart... but doesn't that seem like LESS of a gift than Confession? Indeed, I am convinced that it would be less of a gift. Forgiveness without the sacrament would never yield the same opportunities for improvement and the same graces for strengthening, or the same beautiful glimpse into the wild love of the Divine.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
2007 in Review
It is thirty days since I last posted here. Normally, this past semester when I've finally logged in to put up another post, I've been amazed at how long it's been, sure that it can't be THAT long since I wrote something. Typically, such episodes happen about two weeks after the post previous. Not this time. This time, I can totally believe it. I simply haven't felt like writing anything of length online is so long. The Barrow-Downs cannot really be said to have felt my neglect, since I hardly write there other than in the oft-neglected "Tapestry of Dreams" RPG, but I haven't even been logging in. Now, a large part of this has to do with having been back in Olds for the majority of the month, where the internet has been shifty and slow at best this past month, and that following right on Finals... but the truth is that I just haven't felt that interested in writing anything online.
However, let's try and turn that around a little bit with a look at 2007. My 20th year came to an end on February 11th, with my birthday, and I ceased being a teenager. I now feel well and truly an adult and high school is becoming an ever more distant memory, a fact I do not regret in the slightest. For some people, high school are "the best years of their lives", but if that were the case, then I would be shuddering in terror at my future.
Mind you, 2007 was no bed of roses. Although it was an excellent year academically, which saw me achieve high grades and immense fun, the four months between school years was marred beyond much recovery by the broken leg.
All the same, though the broken leg was utterly undesirable, the fact is those four months were probably the most notable ones of 2007. Not because they were exciting. As far as interesting goes, they were rather lacking. No, it was the routine elements of the summer that were the most important for the future course of my life, I suspect. The broken leg, first of all, gave me a good, long look at my vocation and forced me to slow down. It also forced me to deal with being dependent on people and incapacitated, and it gave me a much greater empathy for those who are ill or injured.
Furthermore, as a result of breaking my leg, I ended up working in the Archdiocesan Archives, which is pretty much my dream job and on which I learned tonnes about the history of the Archdiocese, and Western Canadian history in general. I also moved into the rectory at Annunciation Parish, which was an excellent experience and would not have happened otherwise.
The few excursions out of daily routine during those summer months were weekends, and they saw me at various landmark occasions in people's lives: ordination, marriage, graduation. Attending them highlighted the changes in my own life: Andrew's ordination was the first I attended of a fellow seminarian, a tangible sign of my own solid placement as a seminarian. My brother Daniel's grad brought home in a gut-punching kind of way that fact I really and truly have moved on from school; now my siblings are starting to graduate, and with two of us gone and the rest poised to go off like dominoes, my family has definitely slid into a different demographic. The weddings also highlighted the same. Andrea and Aaron's wedding was the first one of friends in more-or-less my peer group. Give it another year or two and I will start attending weddings of people my age from school (be it high school or college). My cousin's wedding was a foreshadowing of sibling weddings to come.
I returned to seminary in the fall older and, I hope, wiser. It has been a completely different year from my first, despite having ended up in the same room and being on the same place in the social pecking order (ie. the bottom). Half the seminary is composed of seminarians new to Edmonton, and this combined with a confidence in my knowledge of how the place works has led to a much different sense of how I fit into the community, which has changed its face dramatically from last year.
At Concordia, the changes are vastly greater. Whereas last year I was something of a loner, academically keen but socially shy, this year has seen me with scarcely a moment when I have no one to hang out with. Mostly, this shift has developed parallel to my near-accidental involvement in the Philosophy Club, but there is also a conscious change of mind behind it. Part of it stems from the groundwork laid in the winter semester, before I broke my leg, when a year of classes with people drew to a close and I began simply through dint of time to get to know people, but most it is attitude. Possibly it comes from the aloneness of the broken leg, possibly from the exuberance of being back in school after a dreary summer, possibly I just grew up, but I have been a different person. Not seriously different, perhaps. Maybe not different at all to the outside viewer... but on the inside I feel dramatically different.
And now 2008 dawns.
I have modest expectations for this year. I will finish my 2nd year of college with a six-course semester, then do a spring course which will make up for my under-coursed first semester. I hope to be working in the Archives again and to live in a rectory in Edmonton. I have my name down for going to Quebec City in June for the International Eucharistic Congress, and while I expect that to be excellent, I'm not really looking towards it at the moment. In the fall I'll be back for my last year of my undergraduate degree.
Beyond those external developments, there are of course personal objectives I'd like to fulfill, but none are of a weighty nature. Mostly, it's not about major change, but about staying the course and gradual improvement. I lost weight over the summer when I was on crutches, and although I kept it off until Christmas, I'd like to not only keep it off in the coming year, but possibly get into a more active life. I'd like to start developing a personal prayer life outside of the Liturgy of the Hours, though with an eye to staying the course, it might be best to pray that I keep on track with saying that, for the moment.
At school I expect to continue to do well academically--that goes without saying, but with regards to extracurricular life, staying the course is a bit more of a challenge. Being back in Olds, old friendships have been a lot on my mind of late, and I find myself distressingly apathetic about people I knew before I left for seminary, and even somewhat similarly about online friends. This concerns me, not so much because I dislike being out of touch, but because friendship--close friendship--is not something I've ever achieved easily or often, and I fret over whether a similar apathy will affect the friendships I'm making in Edmonton, a concern which simultaneously makes me wonder if its worth the effort and terrified at losing people dear to me.
Finally, today at Mass I decided I want to get to know Mary better this year. The Virgin Mother of God figures large into the culture of the Church and the lives of the Saints are littered with stories of devotion to her. As a future priest, but also as an individual, I want a greater share in that.
However, let's try and turn that around a little bit with a look at 2007. My 20th year came to an end on February 11th, with my birthday, and I ceased being a teenager. I now feel well and truly an adult and high school is becoming an ever more distant memory, a fact I do not regret in the slightest. For some people, high school are "the best years of their lives", but if that were the case, then I would be shuddering in terror at my future.
Mind you, 2007 was no bed of roses. Although it was an excellent year academically, which saw me achieve high grades and immense fun, the four months between school years was marred beyond much recovery by the broken leg.
All the same, though the broken leg was utterly undesirable, the fact is those four months were probably the most notable ones of 2007. Not because they were exciting. As far as interesting goes, they were rather lacking. No, it was the routine elements of the summer that were the most important for the future course of my life, I suspect. The broken leg, first of all, gave me a good, long look at my vocation and forced me to slow down. It also forced me to deal with being dependent on people and incapacitated, and it gave me a much greater empathy for those who are ill or injured.
Furthermore, as a result of breaking my leg, I ended up working in the Archdiocesan Archives, which is pretty much my dream job and on which I learned tonnes about the history of the Archdiocese, and Western Canadian history in general. I also moved into the rectory at Annunciation Parish, which was an excellent experience and would not have happened otherwise.
The few excursions out of daily routine during those summer months were weekends, and they saw me at various landmark occasions in people's lives: ordination, marriage, graduation. Attending them highlighted the changes in my own life: Andrew's ordination was the first I attended of a fellow seminarian, a tangible sign of my own solid placement as a seminarian. My brother Daniel's grad brought home in a gut-punching kind of way that fact I really and truly have moved on from school; now my siblings are starting to graduate, and with two of us gone and the rest poised to go off like dominoes, my family has definitely slid into a different demographic. The weddings also highlighted the same. Andrea and Aaron's wedding was the first one of friends in more-or-less my peer group. Give it another year or two and I will start attending weddings of people my age from school (be it high school or college). My cousin's wedding was a foreshadowing of sibling weddings to come.
I returned to seminary in the fall older and, I hope, wiser. It has been a completely different year from my first, despite having ended up in the same room and being on the same place in the social pecking order (ie. the bottom). Half the seminary is composed of seminarians new to Edmonton, and this combined with a confidence in my knowledge of how the place works has led to a much different sense of how I fit into the community, which has changed its face dramatically from last year.
At Concordia, the changes are vastly greater. Whereas last year I was something of a loner, academically keen but socially shy, this year has seen me with scarcely a moment when I have no one to hang out with. Mostly, this shift has developed parallel to my near-accidental involvement in the Philosophy Club, but there is also a conscious change of mind behind it. Part of it stems from the groundwork laid in the winter semester, before I broke my leg, when a year of classes with people drew to a close and I began simply through dint of time to get to know people, but most it is attitude. Possibly it comes from the aloneness of the broken leg, possibly from the exuberance of being back in school after a dreary summer, possibly I just grew up, but I have been a different person. Not seriously different, perhaps. Maybe not different at all to the outside viewer... but on the inside I feel dramatically different.
And now 2008 dawns.
I have modest expectations for this year. I will finish my 2nd year of college with a six-course semester, then do a spring course which will make up for my under-coursed first semester. I hope to be working in the Archives again and to live in a rectory in Edmonton. I have my name down for going to Quebec City in June for the International Eucharistic Congress, and while I expect that to be excellent, I'm not really looking towards it at the moment. In the fall I'll be back for my last year of my undergraduate degree.
Beyond those external developments, there are of course personal objectives I'd like to fulfill, but none are of a weighty nature. Mostly, it's not about major change, but about staying the course and gradual improvement. I lost weight over the summer when I was on crutches, and although I kept it off until Christmas, I'd like to not only keep it off in the coming year, but possibly get into a more active life. I'd like to start developing a personal prayer life outside of the Liturgy of the Hours, though with an eye to staying the course, it might be best to pray that I keep on track with saying that, for the moment.
At school I expect to continue to do well academically--that goes without saying, but with regards to extracurricular life, staying the course is a bit more of a challenge. Being back in Olds, old friendships have been a lot on my mind of late, and I find myself distressingly apathetic about people I knew before I left for seminary, and even somewhat similarly about online friends. This concerns me, not so much because I dislike being out of touch, but because friendship--close friendship--is not something I've ever achieved easily or often, and I fret over whether a similar apathy will affect the friendships I'm making in Edmonton, a concern which simultaneously makes me wonder if its worth the effort and terrified at losing people dear to me.
Finally, today at Mass I decided I want to get to know Mary better this year. The Virgin Mother of God figures large into the culture of the Church and the lives of the Saints are littered with stories of devotion to her. As a future priest, but also as an individual, I want a greater share in that.
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