A Sound of Sheer Silence

Everyone has their thing.  Mine, more or less consistently since I was 12 years old, has been tabletop rpgs.  For those not familiar, the best known (and first) tabletop rpg is  Dungeons and Dragons , but there are thousands of similar games out there.  The basic concept is that all of the people playing save one take on the role of a protagonist character, usually one that the player has created.  The remaining person (known variously as the "gamemaster," "dungeon master," "storyteller," and a host of other titles) defines and plays out the rest of the world--the environment, the other people in the world, the antagonists, etc.  Imagine a play or a movie where the main characters, instead of being given a script, were allowed to improv everything their characters do, and the script writer responds in real time in reaction to the actions of the main characters, and you have some idea of what a tabletop rpg is or can be. As I said, tabletop rpgs got their h...

For extended portions of my adult life, I was celibate.  For a period of about three or four years, while I was exploring becoming a Roman Catholic priest, this was part of an intentional program--I was "voluntarily celibate," or "volcel" to use the term that has become popular in the Discourse.  But, for the rest of that period, I would have rather not been.  So, most of my adult life has been spent as an "incel." Now, as it turns out, this is no longer true.  And, truthfully, it is great .  I would not go back to the way things were 18 months ago for any amount of money.  But that is only tangentially related to actual sexual activity.  Sex is fun and nice and makes me feel like I am desirable and powerful and that is wonderful.  But far, far better is lying in bed, fully clothed, with someone I love in my arms, talking and laughing.  If my choices were sex every night with a different woman and no sex but cuddling every night with the woma...

On Sunday, I had a visit with a man that I got to know during my time with the Dominicans.  He was enormously supportive of me during that time; in fact, he was the most supportive member of the Dominicans, all told.  I will always be very grateful to him for his kindness and support in my early 20s.  He was a couple of years ahead of me in formation, but he entered the Order older (after a complex and convoluted process), so he is a good 15 or so years older than I am.  He is, at his heart, a good man who cares deeply for the people around him.  He is also someone who takes great joy in being a priest, and he truly puts his whole self into that role. And yet, every time I see him, I come away very sad, and this time was no exception.  While he loves being a priest, he has not found the support among his fellow Dominicans that he hoped for, a fact that he admitted to me on Sunday.  This is to some degree a function of the fact that (as he also acknowle...

So, I thought that was now going to turn to discussions of God, but I think there is something else that is worth getting out of the way from the beginning, and that is what it means to "believe" in God or some faith tradition, and how one goes about doing that.  In other words, what it means to have faith.  Because I think there is a fundamental divide here in the way this is presented, a divide that is not between people who believe and people that don't, but between one of sort of believers (and, somewhat ironically, the most vocal critics of those same folks from the non-believer side) and another. On one presentation, faith is something that is fundamentally alien to all other aspects of the human experience.  It is not something that we reason toward, and it is not based on our normal encounters with people or objects.  Instead, it comes from "outside" of us and imposes some sort of new reality on our otherwise mundane experiences.  Basically, we are going...

This weekend, there was a dust up on so-called Weird Anglican Twitter, or WAT.  The question was whether clergy (in this case, in the Episcopal Church) should be required to "really believe in" the Creeds.  As a matter of doctrine, this is not a disputed issue--the answer is an unambiguous "yes."  But one will find those in the Episcopal Church, including clergy, who think that this should not be the case, and that the Creeds are either optional or even an affirmative impediment. I had, and have, Thoughts about this question.  And, indeed, I had a whole post drafted weighing in on the topic.  But then, last night, I saw a Tweet from Mother Joyce, who is a wonderful presence on WAT and Twitter generally.  I would really encourage you to read the whole thread , but the sum of the idea is captured in the first line. something that I think is interesting is, in general when we have these awful fights, how scared everybody clearly is that the thing they feel is ...

Statistics tell us that we in the United States are approaching the point at which a majority of people do not consider themselves "religious."   Western Europe reached that point a while ago.  But behind those statistics is the question of what the survey recipients might mean by "religious" or "religion."  The popular understanding of this word, an understanding that I think is shared by both the folks who consider themselves religious as well as those who don't, is that religion has to do with an identification with a particular institution or tradition that is organized around transcendent questions and/or the engagement with a set of practices that have something to do with those transcendent practices.  So, one is religious if one identifies oneself with The Episcopal Church, or the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, or Reform Judaism, or Baha'i, or engages in practices that are associated with one of those entities, or (more likely) bot...

1. I lost. It was close, and it was a good race, but I lost.  And, looking at the totality of the circumstances (the details of which are boring, especially since they were completely out of my control), I believe I did as well as I could have done. In the two months or so since the primary, many people have asked me how I am doing.  They are expecting, I think, for me to be traumatized on some level, and so they offer condolences or a pep talk or words of encouragement.  Truthfully, if you had asked me to predict beforehand how I would feel if I had lost, I would have told you that I would be in need of that kind of pick-me-up. But, I don't.  I didn't feel that way in the immediate moment after I realized I lost, and I don't feel that way now.  I think some folks believe I am putting on a good face, but I can promise you that is not the case.  I'm fine.   No, that's not right--I'm great.  I stood in front of people and asked them to put thei...

It's been a long time coming, but the time has come to shut down this blog for good.  Even a casual look at the posts shows that the output here has slowed to a crawl, so the trajectory has been easy to see.  But I think it makes sense to officially and formally close things down. The primary reason for closing things down now is that I am at a point in my life where it is no longer appropriate for me to post my personal musings on whatever strikes my fancy to a public forum.  More specifically, I am running for Judge here in Ohio-- for proof, see here .  As part of that process, I am likely to take down, or at the very least de-list, this blog in the next week or so.  Taking it down is less about being afraid of providing public "dirt" to be used against me and more about trying to maintain public confidence in an impartial decision-maker if I were to be elected ultimately in the Fall.  I want to do this right and fulfill my obligations as best as I can to...