Tuesday

Hey folks – my brain has been taken up by a couple of writing projects over the past week, hence the lack of deep blogging. So to get back up to speed, we’ll digest:

Writing: As noted, doing a bit of work around here. I had a Living Faith set due – and by the way, I’m in Living Faith today. Go here for that. 

Working on an article for another publication.

Writer son has more posts up – about his writing progress, and a new feature on his blog – movie news notes. 

Reading: Rereading Souls and Bodies   in a close way. I keep starting Wilfrid Sheed’s Office Politics and then forgetting that I’m reading it, mostly because I’m reading it via archive.org and don’t have a hard copy hanging about calling to me.

As well as the books I noted here. 

I’ve read a few interesting articles this week, which I’ll share on Friday, probably. Well, here’s one – from New York magazine – about the islands of New York City:

We know this about our largest islands — the skyscraper came of age in Manhattan because of geological restrictions. But we can easily forget that the city is, in fact, a vast collection of islands. Every borough but the Bronx floats off from the Atlantic seaboard. No one can agree on the precise number of islands in New York waters — 30-odd, depending on how you count — but they are part of what makes the city so extraordinary, located at the mouth of one of the world’s largest natural harbors. The islands are our silent neighbors. It is easy to live here and never notice them. Until one day, driving down the FDR, you might look out at the pile of rocks off the southern coast of Roosevelt Island and wonder, What is that place?

Even the smallest of these islands holds in its tiny footprint morality tales, histories that can help us see ourselves more clearly: the planned community of Roosevelt, the tourist trap of Liberty, the slow-burning human-rights violation of Rikers. As with Pralls, we have more than once considered the islands repositories for waste or trash. More recently, that story has begun to change, and not just because we’ve become more attuned to our harbor ecology. As the last large industrial sites of the greater islands of New York are built over with condos and shops, and public housing is slowly sold away to private developers, these almost-water dots that are the city’s lesser islands have become newly contested spaces, fought for by conservationists, historians, activists, and developers.

Watching: Son and I are doing a rewatch of the last season of Breaking Bad in prep for 
El Camino.  It only prompts more curiosity about what the new film will be about. The whole series is about the impact of sin – wrongdoing, if you will – on the human soul and community. How one man’s monstrous pride can corrupt and destroy countless lives. It’s about the many, many moments that such a person has to turn in another direction, to make another choice, but refuses. The logical place to go, thematically, is to explore those continuing resonances and how, in such a reality, any redemption at all can be found, how the tearing can be mended and what cost.

Listening:  Thank goodness I don’t have to listen to the Heritage Mass setting being played every day for a while. Son played his first parish Mass, and did great. We’ll see if it leads to more! Even if I have to listen to that setting again! Everything comes with a price… Now it’s back to getting this conquered. 

And more and more guitar – we don’t pay for lessons, but he just depends on Youtube to teach him. Like this one! 

Also – a podcast!

Here – from Greg and Jennifer Willits, and Mac and Katharine  Barron  in their podcast What We’re Dealing With. ..

….the conversation prompted by this article continues.

I’m so glad to hear these conversations happening. To think. Inspired in part by a novel published decades ago and now out of print, about the Church in a time long past.

The conversation on the podcast revolved around themes of authenticity and persona and about the risk of telling the truth about life and work in Catholic institutions.

Well worth listening to, pondering and taking action on.

My really deep point is in a slightly different direction, though. I’m trying to excavate at an even deeper, perhaps more painful level.

What I want to figure out is how the whole contemporary gestalt in which individuals develop religious sales pitches based on aspects of their personal qualities and histories impacts our understanding of what faith is. 

It’s not just about Instagram Spiritual Influencers. It’s about the Preachers n’ Sneakers, it’s about the congregation sitting in judgment of the minister or priest’s sense of humor and friendliness and warmth. It’s about me fixated on how everything presented to me affects my feelings about myself and my self-worth, and judging it true or false based on that. It’s about loyalty and adherence to a cause or idea that’s rooted, not in the content of that idea, but on the attraction of the presenter.

I also am interested in engaged that tussle we all feel between digital life and IRL. In so many ways, it’s easier to engage online than it is in person. Does your digital presence enhance authentic human interaction or enable avoidance? Are we tight friends with people we’ve never actually met, but don’t know our neighbors’ names? Are we all about the online evangelization, but never invite anyone we actually know to our actual parish? Is our parish obsessed with getting the social media game on point – but does anyone from the parish, paid or volunteer, reach out in a systematic way to each and every human being who lives in the parish boundaries? (Remember – the canonical definitions of “parish” and “pastor” encompass every soul within the boundaries, not just the Catholics.) Are we fascinated with the stories and families of people who present themselves to us online – but know little to nothing about those families who sit near “our pew” every Sunday?

The online religion world can certainly help. Any person who learns a little bit, who feels encouraged, and who then reaches out in real life because of it – helpful. But as The Hack shows us – no matter what the form, any media can be a valuable tool to enrich our actual lives – or a means to avoid them.