A Sound of Sheer Silence

There is a lot of talk about "owning your privilege."  Allow me to make an attempt at owning mine. One of the things about my life that I am increasingly aware is very unusual for a straight man of my age is that I have a handful of very close, very deep male friendships.  There are three or four (depending on the circumstances) people that I have known for a very long time (20+ years) and with whom I feel comfortable sharing personal things--struggles, fears, losses, disappointments.  And these people have shared similar things in their lives with me. This has been an enormous blessing in my life, one of the top two or three blessings that I have received.  But it has one notable downside, and has created a notable blindspot.  Because I know these guys so well, and so intimately, they form the baseline for what I think men as a whole are like.  Or, more accurately, they form a sample set from which I extrapolate my back-of-the-envelope estimates of wha...

Barring some unforeseen development, on Sunday Bishop Thomas Breidenthal of the Diocese of Southern Ohio of the Episcopal Church will officially pronounce that I (and about a dozen other folks) have changed denominations and officially joined the Episcopal Church.  As I sit here, 48 hours from this event taking place, I have some unorganized thoughts about where I am and where I might be going.  This is, perhaps, a "confession" in the classical sense of the term. If I had to pick a single reason for deciding to make this move, it would be that I wanted to live my faith with greater authenticity and personal integrity.  As time has gone on, it is has become increasingly clear to me that I simply don't believe some of the things that the Roman Catholic Church insists that I believe.  I recognize that many people can, happily and with great personal integrity and self-assurance, believe and live those ideas and principles, and while we can debate the impact of some of...

[Note:  Since it has been a while, the first post on forgiveness is here ] I will state up front that I have always struggled with the Sacrament of Confession (or Reconciliation, to give it the more modern label).  I have always found the experience both unpleasant and spiritually unsatisfying.  More specifically, I have never gotten a handle on what I am supposed to do with the Sacrament.  Either it turns into me reciting a laundry list of faults and failings, the recitation of which feeds into a tendency to view myself entirely through the lens of my failures and deficiencies.  Candidly, this state of mind sets me on the path to the dark home of my depression, a home from which the grant of absolution provides no escape.  Or, it turns into an unfocused counseling session, which the poor priest is not really expecting or prepared to engage in, leading to a frustrating and unproductive experience.  For this reason, it has been several years since I...

It was her idea to get certified for scuba diving.  Prior to her suggestion, I had never really thought about it, one way or the other.  I was not opposed to the idea, nor was I particularly excited about it.  She wanted to do it on the trip to Mexico, and I wanted to go on the trip.  So, I got certified. The first part of getting certified to dive is classroom stuff, followed by some dives in the pool.  Those were fine--the physics and biology of diving is interesting, and I didn't have too much trouble with the skills (one woman in our group panicked immediately upon going under water in the pool--claustrophobia). Getting into the ocean, on the other hand, was a different matter.  Twenty minutes into the first dive and I was hooked forever.  I just knew it.  It's a physical skill, but it is also relaxing.  There is an element of being alone, just you and the sound of your breathing, but it is an activity you do with other people--you an...

1. When this winter started, there were two things I thought we going to happen before it was over.  First, I was going to get out of the snow before it was over, to go scuba diving and to get some sun and to recharge from the grey and the shoveling and all of that.  Second, I was going to take concrete steps to leave the Catholic Church. Well, it is clear now that only one of those is going to happen.  And I am sitting in Key West, Florida, watching the sunrise. . . . ********************* 2. Bruce Springsteen's sixth album, Nebraska , is a dark work.  It is just Springsteen, his guitar, and a harmonica.  The themes are violence and hopelessness, with crime as the link between those two.  It's a haunting album. But the genius of the album, for me, is the last song, Reason to Believe .  After the despair and alienation of the previous nine songs, Reason to Believe changes the conversation.  It is not in any way upbeat--it involves a dead...

I decided to take a year--a Church year, from Pentecost to Pentecost--to figure out where I stood with Catholicism.  Or, to be more accurate, to figure out if this Episcopalian thing was going to be a thing.   Other events have provided additional impetus for the project.  I have been attending my local Episcopal Church almost exclusively. I have noticed, over the last couple of weeks, a very strange and interesting experience.  During the week, doubts begin to creep in about what I am doing.  It would be much, much easier just to be Catholic.  Everyone understands--they know that most Catholics don't really believe in the crazy stuff like Humanae Vitae  and kicking out elderly gay couples.  No one would hold it against me. All of that goes until about 10:15 a.m., when I walk into the Episcopal Church.  Up to that point, including on the ride over, I am tempted to make a turn and go back to the old, familiar Catholic Church.  I walk...

Robin Williams died today, apparently of a suicide.  People have reacted to express their love for Williams, and rightfully so, as he was one of the most maniacally funny comedians I've ever seen.  He had a long history of struggling with addiction, and there are reports he was suffering from pouts of depression. Among the comments when one sees when someone famous commits suicide, you usually find some version of "I cannot imagine how someone would get to the point where they would do something like that." I can. I've never seriously considered committing suicide.  I've never been in that place.  But I've seen that place from where I was standing. I cannot speak to addiction, but I can speak to depression.  One of the most insidious aspects of depression is that your mind blocks out what it feels like to be in the grip of depression once it is over.  It's a defense mechanism, I am sure, but it makes every episode feel like the worst experience you...

About a week ago, Kanye West gave an interview to GQ  magazine , where he weighed in on a number of topics.  As is often the case with 'Ye, he said a number of insane and ludicrous things.  I was particularly struck this quote, in which he discusses the content of a 45 minute toast he made to himself at his wedding to Kim Kardashian recently: And what I talked about in it was the idea of celebrity, and celebrities being treated like blacks were in the '60s, having no rights, and the fact that people can slander your name. I said that in the toast. And I had to say this in a position where I, from the art world, am marrying Kim. And how we're going to fight to raise the respect level for celebrities so that my daughter can live a more normal life. She didn't choose to be a celebrity. But she is. So I'm going to fight to make sure she has a better life. The notion that "celebrities" are some sort of persecuted minority in society, and that he is planni...

No one will ever mistake me for a ladies' man, or some sort of Cassanova.  My track record with women has been, on the whole, not very successful.  I am 36 years old, and I am still single.  I would like to think that, in general, I am OK with this reality, but the truth is that I sometimes struggle coming to terms with this.  Despite the fact that I have wonderful friends and an amazing family, there are definitely times that I feel lonely.  There are also times when I look at being single as a failure, a black mark, a sign that I am somehow flawed and broken and defective.  That is not a pleasant feeling. Before he ended the lives of six people on Friday, Elliott Rodger took to Youtube and posted a video manifesto.  I won't link to it, because I am uncomfortable with supporting in any way what he did.  But I read a transcript of what he said in the video.  He basically claims that he is going to shoot a bunch of people, especially women...

My youngest sister graduated from college last weekend.  She's really an amazing person.  She has a job doing international development work, with a focus on Africa.  She is incredibly smart and passionate, and is a dynamic and self-assured person.  She's really special.  I'm very proud of her. This weekend saw a new hashtag campaign, #yesallwomen.  I missed the beginning of this movement, but I gather it was prompted by the shooting in Santa Barbara, California  on Saturday.  Apparently, the shooter left a manifesto that blamed his deeds on the fact that women have rejected him, and the loathsome and brain-dead Men's Right's Advocate (MRA) community took to Twitter to blame women generally for this shooting.  #yesallwomen was a series of stories from women about the kinds of experiences that women deal with on a daily basis from men.  The thread running through many of these stories is men who believe that women have a one-way obligat...

I stumbled upon a old post by Rachel Held Evans entitled "13 Things that Make Me a Lousy Evangelical."   It is a nice mix of theological and cultural issues where she departs from standard conservative Christian talking points.  Along the same lines, here are my 13 things that make me a bad Catholic, at least for certain values of "Catholic." 1.  I find saying the Rosary to be extremely tedious, so I almost never do it. 2.  I've read all of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body lectures.  I think there are mostly incomprehensible, and the parts that are understandable are cartoonishly misogynistic. 3.  I think priests and bishops who wear the old-fashioned clerical garb, like Cardinal Burke in this picture, look ridiculous.  Plus, and I want to say this delicately, I think Liberace would find an outfit like this to be somewhat over the top. 4.  I think Medjugorje is basically a scam.  I have serious doubts about Fatima and maybe...

As promised , here is the video I have submitted for the NALT project.

I can't remember for sure when I first became aware of the idea of homosexuality.  It may have been in Junior high, in the form of the incredibly archaic "Family Life" textbook we were given in 8th Grade at San Jose Catholic school.  It didn't say much, but it certainly said that it homosexuality was not OK.  And, for whatever reason, I just accepted that on face value.  Which is a little strange, really--I pushed back on a number of other ideas in that pseudo-sex ed textbook, such as abortion and birth control.  But, not this one.  I think, on some level, it was because homosexuality didn't make sense to me.  I couldn't relate.  Because I couldn't relate, it was easy and costless for me to accept the Church's natural law arguments about homosexuality.  Homosexuals are "intrinsically disordered" because our bodies are designed for procreation?  Sure, why not.  It's not like it would ever affect me in any way. There were gay people...