Update to the "Items of Technological Concupiscence" list

My first paycheck should be coming in the mail today (I hope I hope I hope), and while the vast majority of it will undoubtedly evaporate into monthly bills and basic necessities, whatever's left can go into my exciting "Technological Concupiscence" savings account. These are a few of the conveniences I eventually hope to be able to afford thanks to a modestly professional career.

• The Buddy 125 Series Italia
  
  It's about time Genuine Scooters came out with a decent color of their popular scooter. Because, I mean, really--pink? orange? cream? Only the black "Buddy" was acceptably demure, though it gives the distinct impression of "trying too hard to be cool"--not to mention that I fear the effect of the southwestern sun on black plastic.
  
  Earlier this year, Genuine released the red Buddy, which is undeniably awesome, but it loses all of the "retro" appeal. So, the first item on my list (and my first priority, since I do in fact need a transportation update) is the beauty pictured above.
  
  
• The HTC Shift
  
  
  This super-small computer officially replaces my concupiscence for the Fujitsu p1610, which hasn't had an update in a long while, and, anyway, is too big. I don't know if HTC consorts with supernatural beings for their product designs, but ever since the original Compaq iPaq (their invention), they seem to be consistently years ahead of their competition. The "Shift" is their first Windows PC, and happily it will have an option for Windows XP instead of Windows Vista. But it can also dual-boot Windows Mobile. Which means that I can have the functionality of both a very large "Pocket PC" or a very small PC.
  
  If you'd like to see more, there's a long product demonstration done by an only slightly creepy Australian guy here.
  

Prayer and faith

I have difficulty praying. That's not the first time I've mentioned it here, but I'll say it again: it's a real struggle. When my cell phone beeps at me, reminding me to pray, every time it beeps it reminds me of how far prayer is from my mind (and my agenda) at each of those moments. I pray daily, but not regularly; and the most valuable and beautiful kind of prayer--prayer at moments I feel least like praying--are precisely the ones that are absent. Conspicuously so. I fear I have been without a spiritual director for too long--not that I was any kind of spiritual athlete when I had one in the seminary. But I've tried to do it myself and I am a failure; "we do not know how to pray as we ought." "Lord, teach us how to pray."

This city's excessively laid-back priests would give me a grand old pat on the back just for being concerned about it. But I think one should not necessarily look to one's confessor for encouragement toward holiness. Confessors are there to be reservoirs of God's forgiveness and the sacrament of his absolution; this is a gift given them via their Ordination, and not earned. In other words, any knucklehead can absolve. But to be a voice outside of myself, a serious agent of discipline to a spoiled youth, someone who sees "holiness" not as a churchy word descriptive only of natural virtues, but an irreducibly unique, salvific, visible, active love of God and in God--that is no ordinary confessor, and it is not a "spiritual director" in the perfunctory sense. It is a Spiritual. Director. I wonder if men like that exist anymore. I hope so.

The most common yet most hidden temptation is our lack of faith. It expresses itself less by declared incredulity than by our actual preferences. When we begin to pray, a thousand labors or cares thought to be urgent vie for priority; once again, it is the moment of truth for the heart: what is its real love? Sometimes we turn to the Lord as a last resort, but do we really believe he is? Sometimes we enlist the Lord as an ally, but our heart remains presumptuous. In each case, our lack of faith reveals that we do not yet share in the disposition of a humble heart: "Apart from me, you can do nothing." - CCC 2732

My friend Brother Thomas has a whole category of posts on his blog dedicated to "struggling with doubt." Yet he has consecrated his very life to Christ; he may well do so in a startling and permanent way, if the Lord leads him to make solemn profession in a couple of years. What I find odd in my own circumstance is that my own doubt has never taken quite the same shape as that of Brother Thomas's; if his has been intellectual, mine has been practical. My own mind is a kind of idealistic cathedral, but it's also largely an uncrowded tourist attraction; it is the Lateran at Rome. Maybe the things that have bothered him haven't bothered me in the same way--for example, reading a few too many articles from infidels.org. No big deal; there I can see the gloomy shadows of positive atheism for what they are: paper thin, scarcely a breath of wind.

But it isn't gloomy shadows that haunt me; it is worldly delights. The turning away from the Creator to the creature, the primordial sin, dogs me and feels so heavy around my arms and legs. To be drowning in things while I gasp for the air of the cathedral, even while I sometimes see it becoming more and more shadow-like itself--what an ignoble destiny! I am afraid that, unless I be helped in a radical way, I will constantly be in danger of going to the 8th circle with the hypocrites; a deep circle, precisely because they held something so good before they spoiled it.

I am concerned, yes, but not sad. God is strong, and he asks for so little--only that I am persistent in my love for him and that I turn back to him wholly when I realize I have done wrong. Please, Lord, burn my heart, rip my chains, kill my lust, even if it kills me. Only have mercy on me in my weakness.

Little "everyone is a mystery" disclaimer: I understand that the distinction I draw between Brother Thomas's battles and my own is simplistic and crude; I hope caricatures can be forgiven, if I have written anything fruitful here. In any case, nobody who lives long enough is a stranger to any kind of temptation.

Theology studies conundrum

OK, so the most important short term goal is done - finding a job. From that, the other landmarks should fall into place - living on my own, paying my own bills and establishing credit, and settling into a manageable lifestyle.

But unfortunately, I can't quite settle until I move another mountain: applying to masters programs in theology. Ugh, this is such a chore; if only I could have finished the M.Div program at Mundelein Seminary, this would be so much easier. As it is, I am at a total loss as to where to begin. I didn't have enough time during my last trip to the Midwest to visit the schools that were recommended to me - Marquette, Chicago Divinity, or Notre Dame. Now I'm kind of stuck. Let me count the ways.

• I have a job as a high school teacher, and I assured my interviewers that I had no intention of splitting at my first opportunity. I would feel like a dog if I didn't given them at least two consecutive years. This means that I am limited to Summer programs for 2008, and this means also that my deadlines have jumped up a season. It immediately disqualifies me from Notre Dame's MTS program, which they recommend for students seeking doctoral studies, which I most certainly am.
• I have to take the GRE exam. I would rather share a glass of septic waste with the unholy mutant spawn of Richard McBrian and a giraffe.
  
• Money's going to be tiiiiiiiiight. I'm actually not incredibly worried about this one; a Suze Orman book convinced me that I can afford to go into debt if I'm smart about it. But sadly, part of being smart about it is applying for grants.
  
• My academic record is schizophrenic. One year computer science at the UofA, one year English lit at St. John's Seminary College, two years philosophy in Belgium, and two years of an incomplete 4-year M.Div program at Mundelein. I have more credits than you can shake a textbook at, but they're all so scattered that I'm scared no masters program will take me. I'm a total mutt.
• I have no idea which programs to pursue. Of course, beggars can't be choosers, but I know what I want from a master's education and I'm not going to settle if I don't need to. The professors need to be brilliant enough not to make me miss Mundelein or Louvain, and the program must lead to opportunities for employment and doctoral work. Not having to take too many classes with stupid liberals would be a plus (intelligent and engaging liberals I can work with).
  

It has been almost 18 months since my last day in a classroom. What could be more depressing than the thought that one is getting a little dumber every day? I have to get myself back on track.

Fibromyalgia

Before I start work as a teacher I pay the bills by working as a temp. My first position was a cushy data entry job at a ritzy health spa. My current position is an office clerk for a popular journal for fibromyalgia patients.

What is fibromyaglia? The simplest definition is that it is soul-crushing, full-body agony of indeterminate origin. Societal ostracization is practically a symptom of the disease. Ostensibly my job is to take orders for subscriptions and renewals. But half the time my calls are hour-long variations on the theme of: "OH GOD IT HURTS PLEASE HELP ME NOBODY ELSE WILL AAAHHH".

This is something I never encountered as a seminarian, although I imagine it is a small taste of what my CPE would have been like. Gives me an inkling of why some seminarians have near break-down experiences on their CPE assignments. On the one hand this makes me thankful I probably won't ever have to do CPE; on the other it reminds me that the human population is truly being crucified and cannot be ignored by the Body of Christ, any one of us.

The worst part about my job is how little I can do. I can't even listen to people for very long because I have projects to do in order that our publication can get out to other people with "the fibro". So the long phonecalls wind up being a battle of wills - "HELP ME" - "Would you like a complimentary information packet? - "HEAR MY STORY" - "Perhaps a diagnosis kit?" - "UNDERSTAND MY SUFFERING" - "I do apologize but I need to return to work."

*sigh* Pray for fibro patients and for me.

On a separate sheet, please address the following:

1. Explain what attracted you to the ministry of teaching.
2. Explain why you wish to teach in a Catholic school.
3. What do you think are the challenges for today's students?

For the last six years I have been a seminarian, and I imagined that I could follow my passion: learning and teaching about the Catholic faith. However my years in formation taught me that I did not want to sacrifice the depth of a dedicated teaching profession, for the breadth of ministries demanded of a parish priest. The Catholic Tradition is my first love. It is a bottomless well of wisdom; it is the key to a happiness which transcends all illusions, all weakness, and all failures. My love for teaching is not only the thrill of engaging a classroom. It is simply my confidence in the Holy Spirit's activity in the life of the Church, and I wish to share this Gift.

I hope to teach in a Catholic school to collaborate with others and help a generation become faith-filled, exceptional contributors to society. I know that Catholic schools are no shelters from the 'real world' but among the best preparations for it. Thus I would not teach religion as an obscure system of rules binding only on those who bear the name. Rather I would teach a truth which pierces the depths of each soul and manifests as a life different from the cynical, secular world; a life bound fast (re-ligata) to God.

Challenges facing high school students are legion, but I think that a single strand runs through them: the desire for autonomy. Perhaps teenagers do seek independence through non-conformity, but they also seek autonomy in a literal sense, that is, to "name oneself". This is the first time in people's lives when they begin to own their beliefs, and question beliefs that they are not ready to own. Because it is the first time, the sensation creates excitement and a demand for autonomy that maybe surpasses our own.

To desire that one's identity and beliefs be chosen rather than passively accepted, I believe, is a good thing. There is an implied desire for authenticity and integrity, i.e., that one's life ought not be guided by a jumble of unproven authorities, but rather by deep personal understanding. Even the rebel who declares, "you can't tell me what to believe!" implicitly demands that his or her beliefs have an inner unity and coherence. The guarding of one's ideas against unproven authorities is the hint of a desire for the unity of universal Truth, a deep desire fulfilled only in Jesus Christ. Understood this way, even the rebel can be a prophet.

What this means for me as a teacher is that my curricula have a hybrid foundation: on the one hand, Jesus Christ, God living and walking among us; and on the other, the questions of the students, and my conviction that all of these are bound up in truth and all Truth is bound up in Christ. My philosophy and theology background has enabled me to explain the lines of continuity drawing the most impassioned teenage values together with the wisdom of the ancient Fathers, the saints, philosophers, and the doctrine of faith. Concretely this means demonstrating the lines of connection between popular culture and ancient truth, such as when I discussed atheism in the context of James Frey's bestseller, "A Million Little Pieces," when I used the summer sci-fi movie "I, Robot" to talk about the Gospel of John and the hypostatic union.

There is nothing I enjoy more than eliciting the “aha” moment from students engaged in learning about our faith tradition, and I hope that, working in a Catholic school, I can be accorded many such opportunities.

Resume Time!

Here's the most important one: the teaching resume. Here, the education is emphasized, but the "Other Experience and Skills" is meant to be very sweet icing on the cake--especially the speech and debate thing, since such things are great boons to high schools that have none. The margins are .79", which for some odd reason is the default on my Open Office, but it worked out splendidly.


Here's the wage labor resume. All those parish internships came in handy for marketable work experience. "I am the incarnation of customer service! Ask and you will receive." Sad thing is that I don't have contacts for any of the non-church jobs, as those businesses have either closed or changed management.

Shifting opinions...

Traditional Catholic		81%
New Catholic		60%
Radical Catholic		50%
Neo-Conservative Catholic		36%
Evangelical Catholic		29%
Liberal Catholic		5%
Lukewarm Catholic		2%

Yep. A year ago, when I took this test, I was placed firmly in the "New Catholic" category. Being crammed in a liberal parish for a year changed that real fast.