On That For Which We Were Made

                 The Second Vatican Council made clear that the vision of the Church is that all of her members, and indeed, all people, are called to live the life of holiness. This is in keeping with our being created in the image and likeness of God. If it is true that we are made to image God, it follows that it is when we are most loving, most poured out, most at the service of others that we are most ourselves. In class, I sometimes use the metaphor of a car: suppose that a car really wants to fly (first you have to allow the possibility that a car can want anything). 

Hey, I may be a car, but that doesn't make me any less of a person.

The car can want this with every fiber of its tires and every piston of its engine, but it simply isn’t made to fly: if it tries to, it will be broken. It is only when the car is doing what it’s made to do - when it is screaming down the freeway or hugging the turns on a California coast road – that the car is fully itself, that it can be completely free. In a similar way, because of Him in whose image we are made, when we are anything less than loving, anything less than saints of towering glory and terrifying beauty, we are broken. If we live lives structured on anything less than the Cross, then we have missed our purpose; we are like that car, in the air after it’s driven off the cliff, believing ourselves to be free because we’ve thumbed our noses at the designer.

F' you, ground! Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom!

                 All of this raises the question of free will: shouldn’t that car be able to choose whether or not it should be able to fly? What right does the engineer have to impose a structure and limits on the car? Or, likewise, what right does God have to call us to holiness? Shouldn’t we be able to choose whether or not holiness is really a worthy model for our lives, rather than being rooted in a world of making and doing, where we can earn our own positions of power and influence? 

Be whatever I want? Like, I could be a horse if I really wanted to? But only for a little while, because then I'd probably want to be a fish after that, and maybe a rock or an island, because a rock feels no pain and an island never cries?

The simple answer is, yes, we do have that choice, but it’s important to remember that when it comes to holiness, the choice is never between freedom and being somehow chained to an unnatural, imposed way of life: rather, it is the choice between loving and not loving.  The problem here is that our culture has redefined “freedom” to meaning “when I get to do whatever I want (as long as I’m not hurting anyone else), then I am free.” In response to this, John Paul II reminded us that true freedom is not “freedom from,” but “freedom for” – in other words, we are only truly free when we are free to love – and, further, when we freely love. This is the freedom of being, of living out our purpose, of realizing the architect’s blueprint. Sure, the car is free to drive over that cliff, but it won’t really accomplish much, and it will only destroy the car’s capacity for any kind of subsequent freedom.

But... I really thought I could fly. Curse you, cruel Auto Engineer in the sky!

                So the universal call to holiness is, as Karl Rahner put it, that “supernatural existential” – it is, because God has loved us into being, a constituent or natural part of who we are as human persons. It is simultaneously, paradoxically, both natural and supernatural: this call to holiness is supernatural because it is simply the call to love, which is to say, to fully live our being made in the image and likeness of God, who is love. There is in all of this a question: if the universal call is to love, are we each given a particular call to one of the particular vocations (married life, single life, ordained life)? I think that the universal call provides a better lens through which to approach this question: because the universal call is to love, it can’t be that the particular call is artificial or externally imposed upon us, but must be organic, grown into and lived out, not shrugged on or off like a garment, because this is how love is: it's not demanded or performed, it is lived and given. Secondly, it’s also important to keep in mind that each of the particular vocations is a vocation only insofar as it allows and challenges us to live love, which is the greatest and most important challenge of all of history, and which is offered to each of us individually, every moment of every day. And nothing could be more natural to us than meeting that challenge, because for this were we made.

And for this were we made: to be social raptors on Biz Cas Friday!

On Twenty One Pilots and the Point of it All

"What's the point?"
"What are you looking for?"
"What did you come here to find?"

Last Wednesday, I saw Twenty One Pilots play a sold-out show at Cleveland's House of Blues, and frontman Tyler Joseph peppered their high-energy, electrifying performance with questions like these, questions which are echoed throughout his lyrics. For a long time I've been meaning to write a post about the band's lyrics, and I've used a number of their songs for discussion in my Morality classes, but being a terrible procrastinator, I've let that thought sit for about a year. Instead, I'd like to say a few brief words about their performance.
The concert itself was built around the song "Trees," the second-to-last track on their sophomore album Vessels. As they took the stage in hoodies and ski masks, a remix of "Trees" was playing in the background. A few songs later, after a number of wardrobe changes and a succession of masks had finally been shed, Tyler played just the first verse of the song on ukulele before launching into "House of Gold." Again, a number of songs later, he sat down a the piano and played just the first verse, before going immediately into another song. Finally, they finished the concert using "Trees" as their encore. Towards the end of the song, the stage hands brought out sheets of plywood with bass drums fixed to them, and Joseph and Josh Dun (the drummer) came out onto the crowd and played them over our heads.

Given the prominence they gave this song, I think it bears looking at:

                                                                          "Trees"

I know where you stand
Silent in the trees
And that's where I am
Silent in the trees.
Why won't you speak
Where I happen to be?
Silent in the trees
Standing cowardly.

I can feel your breath.
I can feel my death.
I want to know you.
I want to see.
I want to say, hello.

The song itself is fairly simple, repeating these two verses several times as the music builds. At the climax of the song, Tyler repeats the "hello," moving from wanting to say hello to actually saying hello. But to whom?

The first time I heard this song, I was struck by how much it reflected my own spiritual state as one who stands silently among the trees. This song is probably the best example of Twenty One Pilots' overall project, which seems to be a constant sitting with mystery in order to encourage their listeners to think (but don't take my word for it, take theirs, under "band name meaning").

This song is clear evidence of a deep personal struggle, the struggle with one of the most fundamental questions surrounding God's existence: if God exists, why is he silent? The interesting thing that Tyler does here is to recognize that he is also silent in the trees. While he sits with and suffers God's silence, he also sees that his own silence is that of a coward. At the same time, he recognizes that the place where he is, the silence, isn't permanent; it's only where he "happens" to be.

In fact, there may be an implied connection between the fact that God is silent and that the speaker is "standing cowardly." Standing is static, a refusal to move. In some cases, this can be a sign of strength, a refusal to be swayed or led astray. Here, though, the speaker is standing out of cowardice, hiding in the trees, refusing to be led at all. Even in his cowardice, even in God's silence, though, he still feels God's presence, and his own death looming. In light of the fact that he will die, he realizes his own mortality, the fact that he is not God, and because of this, he longs to encounter God.

The song reaches its climax and conclusion at the end, as Tyler chants the last hello's, moving from wanting to say to saying: he is no longer silent in the trees, but is reaching out, seeking relationship with the God whose presence he already knows, because when we know there is a God, we long to know that God.

While they never mentioned God once in the concert or very often in their lyrics, what Twenty One Pilots do is a very subtle form of evangelization. By constantly confronting the culture with the aspect of mystery ("What's the point? I promise you there is one, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. When you find it, though, it is beautiful"), Twenty One Pilots are ultimately confronting the culture with God, who is the Mystery, the entirely Other, the One from whom our meaning and purpose come.

Why is it that they are able to get rooms packed full of people to sing along about things that they may or may not believe or even understand? I think that it's because their sense of mystery touches a deep longing in our hearts, a longing for meaning, for intimacy, and for belonging, all of which are answered and fulfilled in God.

By reaching the culture and holding on to mystery, Twenty One Pilots is already participating in building up a culture of life and hope, and one in which they can softly plant the seeds of an awareness of God's presence. This isn't secret knowledge (they're not gnostics, after all), but their listeners have to think in order to pick up their message, which is, after all, their whole point, calling people out of complacency and into new relationship, especially with God.

Verse From "Car Radio"

There are things we can do
But from the things that work there are only two
And from the two that we choose to do
Peace will win
And fear will lose
There's faith and there's sleep
We need to pick one please because
Faith is to be awake
And to be awake is for us to think
And for us to think is to be alive
And I will try with every rhyme
To come across like I am dying
To let you know you need to try to think

On What I Did On My Last Weekend Before School Kicked in Again, Or, The Giftedness of Being

Last weekend, after sitting around for about a week and a half and, predictably, having done little to no preparation for the coming school year, I took four days out and drove the six hours from Clevetown out to Scranton, PA for a retreat with Msgr. John Esseff, a retired priest of the Diocese of Scranton who has spent much of his ministry in giving retreats to priests, seminarians, and religious. Back in the 80's he met Mother Teresa, who sent him all over the world to give retreats to her sisters. He also served as her spiritual director and confessor for a time. Here they are, back around the time when I was born:

Msgr. Esseff is the one on the right.

When he was younger, Msgr. also had the great fortune of having St. Padre Pio as his own spiritual director. All I'm saying is, the guy's got chops, and I feel deeply blessed to have been able to spend a few days praying under his direction.
There were really a number of important things that I learned on this retreat, and I will spend a long time with my notes from the retreat, unpacking it all and letting God's grace continue to unfold. For now, I just want to offer one image from prayer, even though it may seem quite obvious to most people who stumble across this blog.
Msgr.'s direction was to spend 4 hours a day in prayer and then meet with him for an hour to reflect on the prayer. During those 4 hours, he gave me 3 scripture passages (the 4th hour was to revisit the previous 3) and instructed me to pray to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and Mary, in that order. I took him literally, and spent about 15 minutes an hour with each of them, looking at the passage, and just talking back and forth. This was a new experience of prayer for me & one which I will no doubt write a future post on, but for now I'll stick to just the one image.
On the last day of the retreat, I was praying with Mary and I asked her why I have desires for good things which seem to be unfulfillable. Specifically, I wondered why I have a deep longing for family and intimacy with another person when my experiences often seem to direct me more toward single or ordained life. In response, Mary reminded me of when I was a little kid, sitting in the pew at church, and my dad would give each of us a dollar to put into the collection plate as it came around. A couple of things here: 1) it wasn't my money. 2) I had no way of earning my own money to put in - I was too young. 3) It would have been insulting to my dad if I'd put the money in my pocket and refused to donate it.
My dad gave us each that dollar so that we could participate, so that we had something to give. This is an image of how God works: everything we are and have is gift from God, even those things that we give back to God. Mary was reminding me that even those things which I think are mine, as if they were fundamental to my being & could somehow offer me some fulfillment are in fact just further evidence of God's grace active in my life. In other words, we come before God completely and totally naked, with nothing to offer, so God gives us great and beautiful things in order that we might have something to give back, so that we can participate.

I know that I have heard it said over and over again that God gives us gifts in order that we might give them away, but this was a new experience, a new realization of that truth for me. To realize that even my desires are gift and can be offered back to God to allow him to have even more of my heart was something that gave me new eyes to look at myself with. What do I hold on to, believing it to be my own? What do I keep closer to my heart than God? What do I say "without this, I would not be myself" about? If it is anything beyond Christ, then I am wrong, and sadly so, and even Christ is complete gift to us from himself and from the Father, through the Holy Spirit. Everything about our being, even that most fundamental ground of Belovedness is complete gift. The deeper implication of this is that even the great and beautiful things about ourselves are given to us so that we can participate in the great economy of God's love, so that we can imitate the Father and the Son in giving ourselves away until each and every part of ourselves if aligned to the Spirit, who is love. This is means living in true honesty, because seeing ourselves as naked as babes before God is the true state of our being, which is complete gift.
A last & final thought: the other day, I was sitting with a friend of mine who was lamenting that he has 2 more years of grad school, before he can "start his life." There is something deep within each of us that longs to do great things, and perhaps the most difficult thing to realize in our short lives is that the only great thing is to love, which doesn't start tomorrow or next week or next year, but now, right now. God gives us these great & bursting hearts so that we may pour ourselves out for each other and for him.

Let us live by love so we may die of love and glorify the God who is all love! - Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity

On Being Challenged, Follicly

I spent a good deal of time this summer travelling around, seeing people I hadn't seen in a while, some of them not for years. Over and over again, I got feedback on the state of my head hair (or lack thereof). "Whoa, what happened to your hair?" Well, I'll tell you: it went the way of all good things - away from me.
At one point, I was visiting my sister at her college & as we walked out of the building to go to dinner, a pickup truck rolled by & a teenager of some sort yelled out the window, "Hey you old baldy!" I can only assume that he was yelling at me, since my sister still possesses her full head of hair.

I wanted to put a picture here of a kid yelling out the window of a car, but instead I found this picture of a meat mug, full of gravy. Mmmmm, greasy gravy glopping down my gullet. 

This reminded me of a bible story which is no doubt already intimately familiar to most balding Christians: 2 Kings 2:23-24, which is as follows -

            From there Elisha went up to Bethel. While he was on the way, some small boys 

            came out of the city and jeered at him. “Go up, baldhead,” they shouted, “go up, 

            baldhead!” 24 The prophet turned and saw them, and he cursed them in the name 

            of the LORD. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the 

            children to pieces.

I related this story to my sister and we laughed and waited expectantly for the bears to come, but the pickup just drove around the decidedly and remarkably bear-less corner. Maybe the bears were waiting back at their house.

I did find some riculawesome art for this incident, but I think this one is my favorite. Just look at how cuddly those bears are! And how terribly, terribly eviscerated all of those children are.

Anyways, on to the moral meat (for the mug meat, refer back to the picture at the top of this post): Prematurely balding is an issue when it comes to our culture of youth and vanity. Way back when I was in the seminary and my balding was beginning to become evident, a friend of mine asked why I didn't start using Propecia or the like. "After all," he remarked, "your lack of hair could become a barrier between you and your future parishioners." Luckily, I eventually withdrew from formation, so I've never had to test his hypothesis, but as absurd as it was, there is some resonance to it, though perhaps the other way around.

The truth is that while I was embarrassed by being called bald by a complete stranger and any number of my friends and family, I was also thankful. This will sound ridiculous, of course, but here it is: after getting yelled at on the corner, it occurred to me that these small humiliations could be gathered up and offered to God. Once that thought was planted in my brain, I kept revisiting the memory to keep revisiting the shame & keep offering it up. Granted, this is really only a very small amount of shame, but it reminds me of my finitude, which is really the great project that God has before Him with each of us.

With most men, it's a waiting game, hoping to hold on to whatever hair they can until they reach a "dignified" age & can finally throw that old toupee away.

Huh. Evidently a brand new toupee is only around $90. Maybe I should stop writing and start ordering my dignity back.

The thing is that with God, there is no waiting game, not from His end, anyway. God is the eternal Now who sees our past, present, and future all at once. To God, our past blessings and future graces are all being given at once. Being in time allows us to revisit our past graces (like being made fun of in front of my sister) and anticipate in hope the future blessings God intends for us, while trying to allow the current evidences of God's presence & love to break our hearts of stone.

So what does all of that have to do with balding? Depending on the person, a whole lot. If I understand that it is God's purpose to form me into the image of His Son and I also understand that it is mainly my pride that gets in the way of participating in that salvation, I can embrace every little humiliation God graciously grants to me and live in the hope of the day when I will definitively live forth Christ's life, even if this is not fully accomplished until Heaven. A good friend of mine recently remarked that God's desire is bring us into union with Himself, and will therefore give us whatever sufferings and humiliations necessary to accomplish that. Whatever amount of suffering and humiliation we are not seeking on our own, God will graciously offer to us. So from that perspective, prematurely losing my hair is capable of being a humiliation which makes up for some of the suffering and self-death that I avoid in my pride and fear (and there is a whole lot that I avoid). In this sense, it is a great blessing, and one which is undoubtedly necessary for me and the breaking of my pride. In this sense, all of those little things that we hate about our own bodies may in fact be very very small avenues to the salvation that God longs for for each of us. 

That being said, I am no saint yet. I still like to imagine myself with considerably more hair than I have, or only from the forehead down.

Could our salvation in fact come through the physical? Are even our own bodies bound up in God's plan for our good, and not our woe? Undoubtedly.

On How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Well, after over a full year of silence, the day you've all been eagerly awaiting on the tenterhooks of rabid anticipation has finally arrived. Me, your favorite Inkler, has reemerged from utter anonymity to the relative anonymity of a blog read by about 3 people back when I was posting regularly. (yes, please do cue gratuitous picture of a cat. This is the Internet, right?)

On the other hand, that cat may be launching at a face, a very human face, with claws extended. Let that haunt your dreams.

Perhaps an explanation is in order: when I started this blog, I had very real intentions of updating it at least once a week, on issues of faith, art, and general human living, all the while trying to actually make it worth reading. That went on for a bit (maybe other than the "worth reading it" bit - the jury's still out on that) & the reason was very simple: I was working a rather mindless job in an office so low-level that the company had about 8 people working for it, only 1 of whom had his own office. Two others shared an office, and the rest of us were in a room with desks in various corners without any sort of dividers. I answered phones and did data entry. I did that for a year while I was finishing my MA in theology, and was then - fortuitously - able to get a job teaching Theology at a Catholic school.

Note: Not what I look like.

While I'd been sitting at the desk bleeding my eyes out and doing what certainly felt like something bordering on an invasion of privacy, it'd been fairly easy to keep this blog going. When the phone wasn't ringing & I had some down time between looking up & compiling personal (and yet nevertheless public, mind you) information about people all over the country, I'd write a bit & try to keep my brain from melting out of my head. 

Oh, no, please do go on about what you had for lunch, ma'am!

So yes, I wrote while on the clock, which isn't, strictly speaking, the right thing to do. But there it is. Once I started teaching, nearly all of my brainpower and energy was suddenly and un-apologetically sucked down the drain of the perils of high school.

Theeeeen I figured I'd start posting again this summer, once I had time to actually think like a human being again. I even wrote a list of topics to address when I finally got my fingers back on the keyboard. Instead, I went on a 9,000+ mile road trip!

Starting in the City of Dreams (Cleveland, obviously), I drove to Columbus to Pittsburgh to Cape Cod for a week and a half to Philadelphia to Gettysburg (totally awesome) to Andersonville (Confederate POW camp in GA where a relative of mine died) to Milledgeville (home of one of my favorite authors, Flannery O'Connor) to New Orleans to Austin to Alamosa, CO to Ouray, CO for a month to Lincoln to Minneapolis and on back to the City of Awesome. (side note: I just spent about 20 minutes trying to draw a map of my trip on Google Maps for a visual for you. Let's just say that I got bored and started throwing stuff at people).

The graphic would have gone here. Ehn... maybe if I was getting paid for this.

Okay, now I'm just boring myself. The point is, I am returning with a long list things to blog about, so I should have plenty of material for a while. Second year teaching is easier than first year, right? ... right?

Peace out.

On Who I Is

Last weekend I went to see the rebooted Spider-Man movie. SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the movie there's a great line from a completely ancillary character (a high school teacher), who says, "I had a professor in college who told us that there were basically 10 plots in all of fiction. I disagree. There is only one: 'Who am I?'"

Okay, fine, so the spoiler is that I'm a nerd who went to see the rebooted Spider-Man movie.

Why is identity the fundamental question of fiction? Because art imitates nature and the fundamental question in all of our lives is who I am.
Let me tell you a story. It's a quick one, and, as usual, it's about me. Last Saturday I was visiting with a priest friend of mine, wasting time and playing guitar. He is an excellent singer, so the two of us were messing around with some harmonies on old folk songs (nerdtacular enough yet?)

That's me, on the right. Behind the fence and running into the house to get my ear plugs.

At one point, Fr. made the drastic mistake of thinking we actually sounded good and pulled out a recorder. When we listened to the playback, it was clear that we did not sound good. Or, to be more precise, that I did not sound good. Now let's back up a moment.
I, in an attempt to "improve myself," have been taking singing lessons once a week for roughly the last five months. Over that time, my teacher has repeatedly told me that I've shown marked improvement (I can only assume that where I started was disastrous indeed). On top of this, I've been belting out lyrics to turned-up radios and in showers since I was old enough to realize that music is awesome (i.e., since the fetal stage). I taught myself to play guitar in high school so that I could play at open mics, and I've played in a couple of bands over the years, doing backing vocals here and there. Realizing that through all of this I've probably sounded like a cross between Bullwinkle and a rock compressed retroactive embarrassment for nearly a decade of public humiliation into about 30 seconds of listening to myself.
Now, this isn't one of those "oh I hate myself so much and you should feel bad for me and please tell me about how much you've loved my singing over the years" moments. This is an honest assessment of my singing abilities (no, I will not put up a recording of myself to prove it).
After that, I had another series of revelations: I'd thought I was at least a decent singer, which turned out to be false. What else had I been thinking about myself without any basis in reality? For on thing, I've always liked to think of myself as a writer. Poetry, short stories, essays, etc. They all roll off the tip of the pen (or the underside of the keyboard) like a greased turkey down a steep hill.

I say! Err, well, I suppose I write.

Reality check: I've written nothing in the past year except this blog and my MA thesis, and have never been published beyond college reviews. Therefore I am not a writer.
I also like to think of myself as a runner. I've run two marathons and a half marathon and numerous 5k's. As a matter of fact, I just ran a 5k last Sunday.

There I am! About 30 people back on the left, and not actually in this picture or this race.

Reality: While I did run this last Sunday, prior to that I hadn't run since my last 5k, in December. And before that it had been over a year since I'd been out on the road for anything even resembling a jog (still finished in 27 minutes, though. Nowhere near anything that could be considered 'good,' but still not my worst). Therefore I am not a runner.
I also love reading books. When I was a kid, I'd tear through several a week, no problem. I read the 7th Harry Potter (okay, fine, I wasn't a kid when that came out) in 18 hours straight. I've also been known to devour books on philosophy and theology, as well as the classics.

I would never even dream of owning a Kindle. They just don't smell the same.

Reality: while I've always got a book or two on hand, I've also got shelves and shelves of books that I haven't read yet. Seems I've fallen more into collecting books than actually reading them. And I can hardly go a day without someone going slack-jawed with a "You've never read Brideshead Revisited?!" or a "Seriously? You only got 100 pages into Infinite Jest?" (more like Infinite-ly Boring). What can I say? I was a Lit. major back in the fore-years. Therefore, despite past conquests, I am not a reader.
The list can go on (and on and on). I'm not a songwriter, I'm not an artist, I'm not a poet, I'm not a leader, I'm not a good cook, I'm not very well groomed, I don't have a nice wardrobe, and I still haven't figured out where I can buy mustache wax so I can do those little curly-ques on the ends.

Awwwwww, yeah.

But don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying "Oh my life is so terrible and I'm such an awful failure!" It's such an odd reaction in our society that when we try to talk about faults and finitude, people will inevitably think to themselves "In order to be a good friend, I must contradict him when he admits to not being perfect," then say something to the effect of "Oh, Inkler, I've read your poetry, and it's quite good!" That's not my point. And if any of you think to say, "But Inkler, I've seen you, and you're not really so terribly groomed after all..." I shall strike you from my friend list. NOT MY POINT.

What then is my point? My point is that my identity can't come from anything I do myself. Even if I were really good at these things, I still would not be the best. The simple truth is that the pool is far too big for me to be the best at anything (particularly if we include not only all 7 billion people alive today, but also all the people who have lived). Now, I know, I know, statistically someone has to be the best there is at some activity. Someone out there can lift more weight than anyone else. Someone is better than anyone else at identifying types of brachiopods. Someone really was the quickest draw in the West. But is that enough for an identity? Would you walk up to someone at a party and say "Hi! I'm the guy/gal who read the Webster's Dictionary cover to cover in 4 minutes, 3 seconds"? Sure, you might, but that's only a conversation starter, it doesn't encapsulate you.

You may also, conceivably, introduce yourself as a fan of polka, though this may be a second- or third-meeting type of conversation rather than a right-off-the-bat statement.

And my goodness, this post is already rather long. Get your head in the game, Inkler! (And now I'm talking to myself...)

The point is this: if I am not defined by my actions, even as admittedly mediocre as I am at them, then who am I? This is the fundamental question of fiction because it is the fundamental question of our hearts. This question masks a deeper one though, one which is much more frightening: am I worthy of love? Why be the best guitarist? Why be the funniest comedian? Why be the greatest writer? In order to be loved. It's just like the animal kingdom - I must be the best (at least within a certain radius of distance) in order to attract attention. But if I can't even define myself with any sort of accuracy, can I be loved? Who am I? Is that person who I am worthy of love?

I will give you the easy answer, but by starting it this way, I am telling that it will be a struggle. The easy answer is yes - I am the beloved. I am made for love. Before I moved or breathed God knew me and loved me. Before I could do anything productive for my parents, before I could speak, before I could even understand or recognize them, my parents loved me. I know that I am lucky in this, but I'm sure I don't know how lucky.

That is the easy answer, and it is true. Before we are anything, we are loved. Without questioning the truth of this as the basis of all human being and loving, I must say that this is a struggle to believe. This is a struggle to accept. It is so tempting to try to define ourselves, to hold up our accomplishments and actions as badges of our worth. It is so tempting to believe that love must be earned, by behavior, by avoiding sin, by making sacrifices in order to receive that love. That's where the terrifying image of God as judge who keeps a tarry card of our sins and good deeds comes from. It is terrifying because we cannot outsmart God. We cannot weigh the scales in our favor.

This is so tempting, and I can guarantee that 100% of the despair in our world springs from this question of who I am, and whether that person is worthy of love. Knowing that it is only love that defines us does not relieve us of the terrible question, the terrible doubt. It is one thing to "know" something intellectually, it is an entirely different thing to live that knowledge, to be that knowledge. It is a different thing, and it is a constant struggle to allow God's love to define us. But that is what life is: one long, long lesson - one long, long love letter - in allowing ourselves to be loved first, and living out our response to that.

Ah, the good old days.

On Prayer

First, let me be the first to say that I am one of the least qualified to comment on prayer. I'm still a baby in the spiritual life, and make no claims to any sort of prayer "experiences," nor to having any particular insights. Neither do I pretend to have any sort of sanctity - I am only a weak and fallen man, but one who lives in the hope of love. Secondly, what I have to say about prayer will likely be nothing new, and it may be that it won't even apply to you. There are as many ways of praying as there are people because prayer is communion with God, and - to steal a phrase from Bl. JPII - each of us is made to commune with God in a "radically unrepeatable" way.
In fact, if it's not clear already, I'll just come out and say it: I'm a little leery of giving pointers on prayer because prayer is such a fundamentally important activity, and because I am no expert. Further, no one has ever asked me for pointers, which may be enough of an indicator to most of you that you may without guilt stop reading now.

On the other hand, if you're from Cleveland, you may be familiar with this delightful little piece of graffiti. Also, heed the imperative.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, I'd like to offer just a few straightforward bullet points regarding prayer. I have found these points helpful, but even more so, I continue to find them helpful, because as I said, I'm still feeling my way along in the dark.

1) Consistency

There is no relationship that has ever been built, thrived, or even survived which does not require consistency, which is really commitment. In the case of prayer, from God's side the relationship already exists: we are the beloved daughters and sons of the Father, brothers and sisters of the Son, through the power of the Spirit, effective in our lives. From our side, though, the relationship needs to be nurtured. It's not that we need to "build" a relationship - we're already loved. But we do need to learn that love. We need to learn that we are loved. We need to learn that God's heart is one that beats with love for us. And not just for us, but for you in particular. But learning this is like lovers learning each other: it takes commitment and consistency. I've listed this one first because it's probably the most important - our spiritual director at the seminary would often say that half the battle is just showing up - and being the most important, it's also the easiest one to violate. So show up. Set a daily schedule for prayer, whether 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or an hour. I'm not saying that you only pray during the allotted time. Think of a couple who is dating: throughout the day or week they'll probably talk to each other in a less than formal way, but if they are serious about their relationship, they'll also need to set aside real time to be with each other. Think of prayer in much the same way: yes, we should be "praying unceasingly" and "preaching the gospel at all times," even occasionally using words to do so, but we'll also need to give God real, committed, dedicated time, consistently.
(I'm not speaking from a high horse here, I've missed the last three days of my prayer schedule, and consistency is often the thing I struggle with most, because there's always something else which seems more important. I've even got a mantra that I repeat to myself all the time - "Prayer comes first," but as my spiritual director pointed out to me not too long ago, even a brief look at my actions shows that this simply is not the case in practice. Why am I telling you this? Because I am a weak-willed and fallen man who is constantly disproving his belief in his own perfection. Some days the realization that I'm not perfect hurts like a knife to the heart of my pride, but it's actually good news. It means I need Christ.)

2) Humility

Speaking of prayer as a relationship gives an unfortunate impression that it is just like any other relationship, which involve actual dialogue. In our common experience, when the other person in a relationship is silent or outright ignores us, it usually means that something went sour. When a woman gives me the cold shoulder or introduces me to the friend zone (I know, shocking, but it happens to even me), I usually take this as a sign that she is not interested in spending any more time with me. Prayer is not like this. Prayer for me has been a long history of silence, a lot of wondering if I am sitting in an empty room all alone. When I am at my most prideful, I think "This is a waste of my time! If I wanted to be ignored, I'd go hang out a singles bar" (I'm not alone in this - St. Teresa of Avila complained that while she was always so busy with God's work, it was a great disappointment that God would seem to withdraw at precisely those times that she had set aside to pray). Other times, I imagine that Jesus is in a coma and I am sitting with him because I love him (I'm not alone in this either - St. Therese of Lisieux wrote that Jesus was so often asleep in the boat when she prayed, reminding us of the gospel passage where the disciples cried out in the midst of the storm, "Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?!").
Regardless of how my heart behaves during prayer, it takes humility to keep me sitting in that chair - it takes accepting that my time is not the most valuable thing in the world, that I am smaller than God, and that the work of God is not always "productive" in any sense that I can comprehend. It's remarkably difficult to break the American "time = money" mindset, especially for a person who finds value in production. 
While I'm sitting here typing away about how humble I am, that's not my point. My point is that we must be humble. Prayer requires humility because prayer is continually presenting ourselves, our hearts, our lives, and our attention to God, and if we are sincere, prayer will break our hearts of stone and form us continually into the image of Christ even in the silence and apparent abandonment.


3) Use your humanity

When we see something like this, why does our very human heart swell? (well, at least mine does, though I admit that it's dependent on taste, experience, and etc. But bear with me) There is something about the physical presence of the building, the lighting, the arches, the soaring ceiling, the muted colors that speaks to us. Why? Because we are not angels. That is, we are not detached from materiality, nor should we desire to become so. Prayer is the response of our whole being to the gift of our whole being from God. As such, it should involve our whole humanity. This is one of the geniuses of Catholic spirituality (though certainly not limited to Catholics) - in liturgy, we don't pray simply by sitting and turning our mind to a long mental recitation, but by standing, processing, kneeling, bowing, prostrating, striking our chests, making the sign of the cross, listening, receiving, looking, and on and on. Why? To draw on our physicality, and to offer our bodies up in prayer, to pray with and through our bodies, because our bodies are ourselves.
Thomas Merton writes, 

The salvation of man does not mean that he must divest himself of all that is human: that he must discard his reason, his love of beauty, his desire for friendship, his need for human affection, his reliance on protection, order, and justice in society, his need to work and eat and sleep. A Christianity that despises these fundamental needs of man is not truly worthy of the name. (Life and Holiness) 

With that in mind, here is the directive: find what you are attracted to, and use it in prayer. I sit in my holy hour with an icon of Christ. As I've written before, this teaches me humility because I do not understand it, but I trust the Church. Because I love reading, I also utilize the writings of the saints or other sure spiritual guides in prayer. My mind is a part of my person that God has gifted me with, and I want to offer it back to Him in praise. Maybe for you it's taking a walk, or appreciating Nature, or sitting in the silence of a church, or painting or writing. 
Regardless of what you choose, remember that it is not about you, it is about offering glory to God. I admit that I occasionally did homework assignments in the chapel under the excuse that I was "praying." No doubt, this is one of the things I will come to answer for in the last days, and it's only because I trust in the mercy of God that I can be flippant about this (I expect I'll answer for my flippancy too). Prayer is not about finding an hour or however long just so we can do something that we like to do. It's about sitting with Christ, who is Lord of our lives. But because He is Lord of our whole life, it is not appropriate to shut out all feelings, thoughts, emotions, memories, and desires. Prayer does not mean becoming a robot. It means offering all of ourselves to Christ, and that includes our thoughts, feelings, and desires, which He will purify and direct to their true goal, Himself.


4) Find a friend

Another genius of the Catholic faith, and there are many, is the adamant belief that we are not alone. While of course there is no substitute for Christ or the power of God the Father active through the presence of the Spirit in our hearts, the communion of saints is made up our brothers and sisters who have allowed Christ to live His life in the world through their own actions, thoughts, and loves. The saints are those who have lived, like Paul, "no longer I, but Christ." This is mystical and mysterious, but it is above all human - to believe that holiness is only for a select few or that it somehow requires us to repress our humanity is to disbelieve the Incarnation. The Word became flesh so that we might become one with Him, and the saints are people who have allowed their lives to meld with His, to become words, speaking the Word.
With that in mind, the saints are very real role models for our lives of faith. This does not meant that we must become another Therese or another Augustine or another Julie Billiart or any of the others. We must become other Christs, not secondary versions of our brothers and sisters. Even so, the saints are our friends and guides, still present with us by virtue of the fact that they are united to Christ, who is with us "to the end of the age." 
So the directive is this: introduce yourself to the saints. There are certainly enough of them that you will find a very dear friend among them. Three of my favorites are St. Therese of Lisieux (as if you didn't know that already), Bl. Charles de Foucauld, and St. Thomsa More. A Carmelite nun, an ex-Trappist hermit and missionary, and a British layman martyr, all living very different lives, all giving themsleves completely to Christ, and living God's life in the world. But the point is not to read up on the people that I've found helpful, the point is to find the saints who resonate with your own experiences, and to let them bring you to the love of their hearts, who is Christ.


Late Addition: My pastor is famous for giving long, loooong homilies. So long that he'll preach for 20-25 minutes, then sit down, pray the rest of the Mass, and before the closing prayer he'll get up and say "Another point I forgot during the homily is..." and go on for another 5 or so minutes. Luckily for us, it's all fantastic stuff. I don't know if this is fantastic, but here's a point I'd meant to make in this post and forgot.
I'm constantly asking people to pray for me, and promising my prayers for them in return. It's gotten to the point that one of my seminarian friends accused me not long ago of wishing for "magic" - basically, of trying to control God by getting as many people as possible to pray for me. I'd like to make two quick points with regard to this:


1) Prayer is never about controlling God. Even at those times when we are asking for something (intercession), what we are really asking is not for God to change His mind, but that He may change our hearts. Look at Christ's prayer in the Garden: "May this cup pass from me, but not my will but yours be done." This is the perfect form of intercessory prayer: My God, here is what I want, here is what I recognize as being good for me, but I am submissive before what you have in store for me because I trust that you love me and will only my good. This is sharing our heart with God, naming our desires (which is very important), and recognizing our own finitude. It is not enough to simply suppress all desires and attractions: God wants to use those as tools to draw us into communion, especially when that communion means subsuming those desires for God's glory.
2) When I ask for prayers, I have two motives. One is sneaky: any opportunity I can invite someone to pray for any reason is an opportunity I will take. Yes, praying for me may be a superficial and quickly disposed prayer, but it is prayer. It is far more important to me that people pray than that I receive something - asking people to pray for me is really just an easy way of asking people to pray. The second is more theological: if prayer is union with God, then it must also be union with each other. That is, if you are united to Christ in your prayer and I am united to Christ in my prayer, then we are necessarily united with each other. So asking  someone to pray for me is asking them to share my life. Asking someone to pray is asking them to share intimacy with Christ and to be drawn into their life as well. This is why prayer is effective, because its goal is union with Christ, who is the linchpin, who draws all into one in Him. Because, as my good friend Flannery wrote (following Teillhard de Chardin), everything that rises must converge. So asking for prayer is not just asking for a few words, or asking for some magic. It is asking for a sharing of life, for the intimacy of the shared union with Christ. It is asking for Heaven, here and now.