Musings - It's all passing away (VIDEO)

An uncomfortable truth

Something strange occurred a few years ago. I was out to lunch with a work colleague, actually I was meeting someone for the first time, really more of a networking lunch. She wanted to lunch at the Hotel Monaco in Washington, D.C. It is posh, but not over the top. They knew her there, and when I arrived they had her table ready, the bartender greeted me, told me how much they loved the woman. I was early, not too much so, she was running late. The time gave me a chance to contemplate, sit in the warm summer sun for a minute, enjoy a sweet tea (one of my favorite southern staples). I was expecting lunch to revolve around the businesses in our area, to talk about networking, a chance to help grow my business, meet a new person. While contemplating in the summer sun in downtown Washington, D.C. I realized my life has taken me from here to there and
back again.

The woman arrived finally, only about 30 minutes late, older but not old. She had styled grey hair, sensibly pulled back into a pony tail, reminding me of the 70s. She wore an enormous sun hat, probably the result of her age, wisdom to know the sun burns, even when it feels so good. She chatted amicably about the Hotel Monaco, about her relationships with the managers, bartenders and staff. She mentioned she was glad we ate there as soon their menu was changing and the tuna salad she loved was coming off the menu for their summer fare.

We spoke very little of business, it turned out this networking was really more about the woman having a chance to chat with a stranger, she was not lonely, but she was alone, she relished talking about her love of DC, how the city has evolved and is still evolving. She liked the decline of crime but like so many folks who have lived in a place their whole lives, she waxed nostalgic for the days when things were just better, less traffic, more friendly locals, fewer tourists, the good ol'days. I indulged her nostalgia, hell in my forties I catch myself saying things like, "when I was a boy......." Inevitability we spoke of family, my education, where I came from, my roots. She loved that I grew up in the mountains in Colorado, that my mothers family were ranchers, dad's family were southerners. She loved that I grew up a catholic, that my mom is mostly Irish/Scottish. She was fascinated that I had recently learned my fathers family settled in Virginia in the 1630s. Then came the question I dreaded but knew was coming, was I a Christian.

Over the years I've become rather adapt at avoiding the topic. I simply choose to hide my lack of believe for others because it's simply not worth the judgement. I've dealt with discrimination my whole life. As a child I was very poor in a town of very wealthy, we were often mocked for our hand me down clothes, our little hotel (the first hotel hell), for just being fringe enough that I never fit into any group or click. Then in 80s, as a relatively dark skinned young man in college in rural Missouri during the first gulf war I was called Arab, had bottles and cans thrown at me from passing cars, was told to go home to the desert. In Rome I was hated for being an American, mocked for my country's politics. Told at one point in Tunisia that I would be murdered to honor Allah. As a man studying to be a priest people would immediately assume I was a child molester, that I was hiding in the clergy because I had to be gay (being gay was true, hiding was not). After I left the priesthood, was homeless and really alone I faced discrimination in finding work and learned immediately not to indicate having been a priest on my resume, rather to just list my work in the church as a volunteer. It was the mercy of people who met me that gave me work, a place to live, but ultimately I could tell no one I was a former priest.

In all of these things the one fact about me that caused the strongest reaction was my atheism. The first time I told someone I was an atheist they literally walked away from me in disgust. I stopped telling people. I hid my atheism. I buried it, from others and even from myself. You know really in my life, even with friends, I've always kind of been alone. As a child I would play for hours alone. In school I would escape from my peers into books. As a college kid I escaped into music, in graduate school I escaped into food and ultimately meaningless sex.

Now as a middle aged man I've escaped to at one time live on a farm, there alone with my husband and cats, but when the husbands not around I am truly alone (the cats might disagree). I think in many ways trying to understand myself in context of the world is part of why I prefer to be alone. If for some reason my relationship with my husband ends, I'll never remarry and no doubt will fall further into that aloneness. Part of this aloneness is because in many ways I remain an outcast, a loner, a misfit. An atheist.

My sister will hate That I write this, but several years ago she wrote me to tell me she loved me, that she didn't care I was gay but that she was struggling with me being an atheist. She wrote how she remembered our mother's faith, my mother, who is the only saint to have lived in my opinion, who would pray with us, say the rosary, take us to mass, often daily. It's sad to me that my ability to relate to nearly everyone in the world is nearly impossible at times because I don't subscribe to the fantasy of god, afterlife, salvation. People cannot accept that I'm okay with the end of life. I figure the world was fine before I lived and it will be fine after I'm gone. I do not miss my life before I was born and I shall not miss it after I die. On some level I don't interact with many people because I refuse to indulge their desire to pretend that at some point, after we're dead everything will be fine. We'll all be reconciled, right with each other, with some being called god, yet now, in this reality where we cry, laugh, love, err, succeed, celebrate and mourn, we cannot communicate because we don't think in the same manner as one another.

I get the irony of course that I am a judgmental prick too, refusing to interact with those in faith because their faith doesn't suit my atheism. Yet some of that behavior is learned. I've tried to be open to dialogue but I keep finding at some point one or other of us wants to prove we're right. That leads to a breakdown in conversation. And ultimately me moving away to be alone. I don't find solace with other atheists, I have no need nor the desire to prove theists wrong or convert them. I find many atheists mean spirited, as judgmental as Christians, Muslims, Jews etc. they are as closed minded as theists, and so I go back to my farm, sing my songs, drink my cider and remain alone.

The uncomfortable truth for many who meet me is I am atheist, brought to atheism by studying my own faith, reading and studying religious texts in original languages, realizing that the myths of childhood faith taught to me as Catholicism are as valid and invalid as every other myth story ever told in the history of mankind. There is no god in the volcano. It's only magma superheated by the earth's core for billions of years erupting from the pressure of the core of earth. This uncomfortable truth, my atheism ends many relationships, in fact more than any other truth in my life.

When I told my bishop, Charles Chaput, I was leaving the priesthood because I didn't believe in Jesus, he told me I was mentally ill and needed therapy. That was my last interaction with a member of the clergy in my life. I'm not mentally ill because I'm an atheist. In fact when I told my lunch date at the Hotel Monaco I was a atheist, she stopped eating, laid down her fork and said, "excuse me? What do you mean?" I repeated that I didn't believe in the supernatural god, faith, Jesus, etc.. She cleared her throat, "didn't your mother raise you a Christian?" I affirmed this as true. She said, "what happened?" I told her only that I studied the faith, became a priest and realized I didn't believe any of it. She sat in stunned silence for a moment, smiled politely and said, "well I have to run, nice to meet you,.......waiter, check please."

The uncomfortable truth is at the beginning and end of it all, we're all alone.

Into the Lion’s Den

As I grew further and further away from my seminary studies, having successfully finished my master's degree in divine theology, and after having served some time working as a priest, my doubts about faith and god shifted further and further to the back of my mind. Those doubts, which had on many occasions kept me awake were like distant memories, and if I turned my focus from them they didn't exist at all.

At my parish, which I joined in the spring of 1998, a year after my ordination to the priesthood, I worked with our pastor Father Ed on a key ministry, care of the sick and dying. The parish was located in the southeastern part of city, near a major highway, and we had easy access to all the area hospitals. Our ministry, while focused in only one parish on Sundays, was city wide when it came to visiting the sick in hospital. We would drive from hospital to hospital, hospice to hospice to visit the families of our parish, their loved ones, and sometimes strangers.

I am a glutton for punishment. Well maybe not punishment, I'm not a sadist or masochist, I guess I should better describe myself as someone who loves the darkness, the sorrow of life. I listen to music written primarily in minor keys. In hero stories I am most attracted to the darkest of heroes (Batman for example). I have always preferred late night musings to those in full daylight, and I dwell in sorrow more frequently than joy. I was the perfect theologian to preach happily about the death of Christ. And increasingly, as I stood at the pulpit, at the altar, I focused my ministry almost entirely on the theological significance of the cross to Christians.

I knew I was personally unable to reconcile my own sinfulness to ministry as a priest. I wanted to be the most holy priest, a saint. I built in my house a chapel where I left the Holy Eucharist exposed in adoration so that I could prostrate myself before my God, the person of Jesus, beheld in the mystery of bread become flesh. I would stop at the chapel and kneel for hours in contemplation, trying to weave my own desire to end the suffering I experienced in my personal sin into the experience that was described by the Gospels of Jesus while he knelt in the garden the night before his crucifixion. My own desire to end this inability to reconcile my weaknesses to my priesthood translated strongly to my preaching.

I journaled while I was a priest, letters I wrote to a young man that I had wanted to help on his journey, I was hoping he would want to become a priest. Again I wanted to find that way to holiness, I wanted God to show himself to me, and I thought perhaps my doubts were the greatest test of my faith. In my journal to him I wrote, "I complain like a spoiled child sometimes in my own weaknesses and sufferings. Compared to my sweet savior, who carried his cross without complaint, with grace and dignity I cannot go a day without feeling sorry for myself in my very minor sorrows and sufferings......yet we must join our savior in carrying the cross to know salvation and the fullness of joy, life and peace."

On those days when we, Father Ed and I would travel to the hospitals, I would wrap into a silk lined satchel my pix, filled with the sacred Eucharist. I would tighten my collar, its gleaming white top shining above the rich woolen black cassock that I wore. I knew the white collar represented a glimmer of hope in the cloud of darkness that we so often find ourselves in. I would strap around my waist my silk sash. I buttoned the 33 buttons of the hand woven cassock each time, thinking of the 33 years of Christ's life on earth. I would tuck my prayer book under my arm, and always ensure in my pocket traveled with me my rosary, shiny black beads placed upon the silver chain, ready to acknowledge with my flock the mysteries of the life of Christ and his mother.

Most of the people I would visit at the hospital on a regular basis were there for a serious condition. Rarely did we get called to minister to minor ills (tonsils out, minor surgeries, etc.). We spent most of our time visiting the terminally ill, or visiting people who fought most often cancer. Several times I visited with a woman named Pat O'Hare who was dying of brain cancer. When I first started to visit with her, she was awake, alert, full of life and a powerful example of a woman determined to beat the disease that eating away her life. I struggled with seeing those people suffering so slowly, and what to me seemed in such a lonely place. Hospitals, with all their technology are so cold, and the beeping monitors and neutral colors are depressing. The more I visited Pat, the further she slide into the toxic depression her disease flung upon her, and increasingly she became less and less the vibrant joyful woman I met the first time, and more and more she became the woman afraid to die, not willing to let go of life. The last few times I visited her lying in her hospital bed she was no longer conscious and finally my visits were one sided. I would hold her hand, tell her that I was there, anoint her head with oil, pray over her. I would beg God that in that moment, looking at the shrunken cheeks of Pat that God would give me her cancer so that she might live. I hoped, I prayed that my life would be miraculous and I could lay in her place on the bed and she would jump up and be free.

When I would return to my parish life after holding the hand of a dying woman, I was always at odds with the life I returned to. Most people don't experience this type of suffering very often and frequently when we do we forget, move on, return to life as it was, Focusing on our own needs, shopping, eating out, movies, sports. Life becomes so mundane, and as a young priest I so wanted my parishioners to spend their days contemplating the life they profess on Sunday, and more than in profession, live the life they proclaim. I felt so powerless being the only person in the parish, along with the other priest, Father Ed, to spend time with the dying. Sure we had a group of Eucharistic ministers who would take the sacrament of communion to shut-ins, and occasionally to the hospital bound, but they didn't spend their time praying over the dying, the sick. They weren't trained for such ministry. Their job was to bring the sacrament of communion, offer an "Our Father" and go to the next person. Yet in this parish of nearly 10,000 people, even those who were carrying the sacraments to the home bound and sick numbered only 10 or so. The rest of the parishioners would leave their profession of faith on Sunday and head home to catch a "game" or breakfast with the family. I knew as soon as I said the words, "the Mass is ended, go in peace", the parishioners would run out the door and leave the world of prayers and sacraments behind.

Increasingly over those months in the summer of 1998 I would focus my homilies on the connection that the Church makes between sin and suffering. I would emphasize that our own sins, while forgiven through Christ, still had an effect on pushing us further and further away from God. Our sins, no matter how minor, caused suffering in the world. Our sins were the cause, the reason for death, cancer, we were like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, each time we choose to move away from Christ, from God by not being holy, we cast ourselves, our loved ones, into the abyss and there we were going to continue to find death, suffering, pain, loss and sorrow. My preaching would remind the parishioners that Christ's time on the cross was meant as a sacrifice, but even in that sacrifice, we were still called to sin no more. We were waiting here, for the second coming of Christ, and until that day arrived we had the mission to join Jesus as the most holy of holy's, to be saints in our time. Yet increasingly, as I spent time with the faith filled people, I realized that holiness was not the primary goal of most worshipers. I discovered pettiness, bickering, mean spiritedness. There were lots of people who were good, kind people, but as I contemplated increasingly the life I was called too, that path I walked down, I realized that my emphasis on faith wasn't being returned by the very people I was ministering to. I realized that my preaching about needing to be holy, to be "Christlike" fell on deaf ears. My time spent so many days with the dying filled me with sorrow, but I had originally hoped as a young seminarian that my ministry as a priest would set the world on fire and people would flock in droves to support one another, to care for each other.

I know that many people did just that, cared for each other. Yet those wonderful volunteers were ever increasingly the minority. Of the 10's of thousands of parishioners, it was the same 100 or so people who did good work. Faith for the majority was an obligation to come and pray on Sunday in Church, then the rest of the week was left to be their own. My parishioners would return to their large homes in rich white suburbia, and the lonely dying woman with brain cancer would rest in her hospital bed alone until finally her body could take no more and ceased living. Those few volunteers were heroes in my parish, but even they would have their moments. Many of them did their holy work for recognition, to be acknowledged in the parish as leaders. Many would do their holy work simply because they felt obligated, but not one of them worked to expand this mission beyond their own work. In my proclamations of the Gospels, in my preaching, I would pound my fist on the pulpit calling these believers to take action, spread their belief, proclaim to the world without fear that they loved God, Christ. No one ever did. They would shuffle uncomfortably in their pews hoping I would wrap up my homily quickly.

That summer in 1998, I would rest for hours by the bedside of dying people. Yet I would grow angry, hurt, that on my Sunday worship services, 50% of the congregation would leave the Mass immediately after receiving communion. Here where we worshiped together, beheld what was taught to be the greatest mystery, we received and ate the flesh and drank the blood of God, yet people, more than 50%, fled the church as soon as they could. Most complained to me that my homilies were too long (10 minutes), or that traffic getting out of the parking lot was too difficult, or that the sports team that playing was too important to miss. I would preach ever increasingly that their faith was broken, that it was fake. I took to finishing my masses in the back of the Church to confront people who desired to leave early. They wrote letters to the bishop, told the pastor that I wasn't kind. The more complaints I received the more justified I felt. Yet the more time I spent with the dying the more lonely I became, clinging to a faith that I didn't truly embrace. I had hoped that as a priest the faith of the faithful would fill in the gaps of my own disbelief. Instead like dynamite it blew my disbelief apart. I discovered that people found faith only when they or someone they loved rested quietly on the bed in a hospital. Otherwise, faith was a routine event that was endured. And even in those moments of crisis, after the crisis fades, the suffering is healed, the faithful return to faithless lives.

I know I'm painting with broad strokes, and there are a few believers in Christ, in the Catholic Church, who truly embraced the life of Christ. They want to reconcile themselves to the God they've been taught to know. Yet my broad strokes are built upon a lifetime experience. As a theologian I knew that true Christian faith, the one that so many profess to hold, means a sacrifice. The Gospels and writings of the New Testament are clear about the faith. Great saints were notable because on some level they exhibited the dedication to the God that all faithful are supposed to exhibit. Instead most people who are "Christian" move from routine to routine, ignoring each other until they're forced to do otherwise. As a priest I wanted to wake up in the faithful a life of prayer, passion for God that set them on fire. I wanted the parishioners to eat of the body of Christ with me, drink his blood with me and then be so beholden of their faith that they would have to rest in the Church for hours. Yet I found this was not the case, instead the parishioners would take of the Eucharist and most would practically run out of the Church, glad it was over. I knew that from my study of the Gospels, the teaching of the Church, that the call of Christ was an all or nothing call. The lukewarm faith that I encountered was the faith that most people professed. Saints are remarkable because they are so few and far between.

If Christians really studied and knew their gospels, sacred texts both of the Old and New Testaments, if the Catholics truly studied their doctrines, they would be surprised at how infrequently they were in good standing with their own faith. As a young priest, struggling with disbelief, I became invested fully with wanting to be a saint. I threw myself, prostrate, before the altar. I breathed upon the bread and wine during Mass with such reverence that many people would weep. Yet, I would look up from my sacramental offering, and see a distracted majority. I ever proclaimed to my parishioners that it was their own lack of holiness that contributed to suffering in the world. Their sinfulness, their disinterest, their lack of genuine passion for their god was a direct cause of evil in the world. Yet upon this preaching, most people would shift uncomfortably. People would approach me after mass and ask that my homilies focus more how nice god is and less on the need to not sin. My preaching they said made them uncomfortable. I nodded then, smug, and said good, my preaching, like the Gospel, was intended to make you uncomfortable. My preaching was a challenge for them to be the Christ in life themselves. To take literally the words of their god and live them. Yet most people did not.

It was these moments, seeing people interact with each other, with me, that helped to drive that disbelief I had in my heart further home. I realized as a priest that faith was play acting for most people. Platitude's that people could spout off, yet in their "non" faith time, they could return to being petty, bickering, judgmental, hurtful. Their faith didn't matter if saw a beggar, someone of color, a gay person. They didn't need to be like Christ all the time, just when it was convenient. I had hoped as a priest creating sacraments, acting as the person of Christ to the faithful, that I would be inspired to grow myself in faith. Instead what I discovered was a faithless world of Christians going through the motions. Those small motions were the ones that made me realize how far I was from faith myself. It was seeing the gospels in action, living faith with a parish of faithful, I realized it was a myth. A story told to make us feel better about ourselves. It was a story told to give us hope when we are lonely, dying, afraid. They are stories told to control us, make us respond to those in power so as to keep them in power. No amount of gospel reading, homilizing, or sacramental life changed these things. No amount of holding dying women's hands made me see God. It was in the heart of the lion's den I had hoped to find faith, but there was no faith to be found there, instead it was in the heart of the lion's den that I was eaten alive.

Somewhere between Heaven and Hell

 

 

I must say today is bright. The sun, for the first time this spring in New York City is showing her bright, smiling face on us. My week, was hectic, busy, and overwhelming.

Today, Holy Saturday, marks that time between the grandeur of rituals of the Catholic Church surrounding the Passion of Christ, his death. Today, in the Catholic Church, they commemorate his burial, his rest in the tomb. This was always one of my favorite days as a priest. There was almost nothing to do from a ministerial point of view; preparing for the Easter Vigil, reviewing my sermon for Easter Mass - which was traditionally meant to be short, you know the "Easter/Christmas Christians" weren't used to my lengthy sermons!

Today the Christians, still fresh from the brutal murder of their savior yesterday, take time to catch their breath. Hope is crushed; it is waiting, pushing against the dry dirt laying against it, hiding it from the sun if only by a thin veil of minerals and stone. As I have journeyed in life, I think in many ways I've been stuck in Holy Saturday. Not much movement going on, my previous life, as a seminarian, as a priest, as God's lover, ended on my Good Friday, in October of 1998. I laid that life in the tomb, stumbled out of the suffering I had endured, and rested, in my nearly 15 plus years of a Holy Saturday. I have been fresh from the brutal psychological trauma I put myself through for all those years. Of course I wanted to just sit here, on this quiet, sunny Saturday of life. Nothing much to do, a little preparation to live life, to just get by.
Holy Saturday is a time in the Christian world to prepare oneself for the resurrection of a savior. In my world, I have no savior, no one is coming to save me. I love the song by Jay Brannan, "Goddamned" and it so eloquently reminds of me of the life I had entered into as a believer who no longer believed. When I was undergoing my de-conversion, I didn't have Jay's song to sing or sweetly remind me of the broken path that I was walking down. But now, in my journey, as I sit on Holy Saturday clutching my Liturgy of the Divine Hours, his lyrical poetry reminds me of the time between heaven and hell, when so many people, Christians, are waiting for a savior. "But something tells me, No one's coming to save you." These words I remember them that first Holy Saturday, only two days after my life of faith ended, I thought about the man named Jesus and realized he wasn't coming back, if ever he was real.

 

God, it sounds so hopeless doesn't it? So dark, so sad? But in all this time that I've been sitting outside the tomb of my faith, maybe wondering if it would ever resurrect, I've not encountered darkness. I've not encountered suffering. I've been sitting here waiting all this time, wondering what to do with my life. What pieces of that world I knew before should I pick up, how should I move forward? I look out my window, the spire of the new World Trade Center casting its shadow across my neighborhood, the memory of smoldering ashes is fading, we've moved on, picked up, rebuilt. We've not forgotten, but we didn't sit there in the ashes. It is my time. I am not dead. My life is only just begun. It's time to roll the stone back from across the entrance of the tomb to open it and let my life back out.

 

Today from the Liturgy of the Hours, the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday the following passage from an "ancient homily" struck me as moving. "Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep." In reading the words I'm reminded of two things, the Norse God Odin and his odinsleep - Odin, the great god of magic, who upon being mortally wounded would sleep until healed, the great heavens would be quite. Secondly I am reminded of myself. Who is my king? Who is my ruler? As I am on my emotional and mental knees before the tomb of a life I lost, left behind 25 years ago, my arms are hanging at my side and there they allow my finger tips to brush something. Here in the great silence, resting, I feel beneath my fingers my crown. At this time in my life, as I rest between heaven and hell, I lift the crown and place it upon my head. For I am my own king. Time to wake up.

 

My belief in the divine was never a reality, it was only a construct that I was trained to believe as a young man, and somewhere in the dark hours of remembering the Christian hero Christ, I realized it wasn't my faith. I tried for so long to embrace that life, that faith, but it wasn't meant to be. I was ashamed of allowing my life to be lead in that way. I was ashamed that I stood before faithful believers and prayed with them, all the while I was dead inside. I was resting in my tomb, the prison of faith. The barbed wires surrounding my hope, my own vision held me back. For so long I tried to deny that I wasn't a faith filled lover of god, and then even in breaking free, seeing that my faith was dead, I simply sat down outside the tomb and waited.

 

I'm not waiting anymore. I am no longer resting between heaven and hell. I'm walking away. There is no heaven, there is no hell. There is only the warm sun shining its smiling warmth upon my face. There is no great savior, no hero; I am my own hero, I have to be saved from no one but myself. Today on Holy Saturday I am putting the crown on. I am king. I am alive. I am resurrected.

 

Somebody that I Used to Know

I have the worst habits. Occasionally I like to smoke a tobacco pipe; I drink too much; I don't get enough sleep; I eat too many sweets; I like to press on bruises to feel the pain.

That's a strange one, maybe. Thinking about it, I suppose it's the attraction to a sensation, a little part of me that is a masochist, nothing extreme, I don't go out of my way to bruise myself, it's just that when I do, I have this habit of pressing the bruise until the pain goes away. I like to know I'm alive I suppose, and pressing the hurt, feeling the pain reminds me I'm alive. Maybe it's because I don't want to forget the mistake that lead to the bruise in the first place. The great line from Batman Begins, "Why do we fall Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up."

I don't think that this suffering, the lingering finger pressing on a bruise is just physical in my life. I am overly contemplative about my spiritual/mental, emotional, inner life as well. I dwell on things, I press those little moments of loss and suffering in my brain over and over again, maybe because I don't want to forget the pain, maybe because I want to learn to be stronger, to pick myself up.

And so I find myself dwelling in the last days of the liturgical season of Lent, turning over and over in my mind the spiritual life that I once lead. I'm pressing those hurts, which for a long time were forgotten. I'm examining in my mind the deeply profound change my life took in Lent almost 25 years ago. I can see those moments like they were yesterday, and I am pressing the bruise.

I think my husband probably believes I've lost my mind, or that I'm going through some sort of existential crisis - the Bible is out, literally having to be dusted off. My little red book, the Liturgy of the Hours, Lenten & Easter Season, lies open in the living room, its worn pages faded, its binding broken from usage, the ribbon page markers frayed and a little stained from the oils of my fingers. I've not lost my mind, but I am looking back, feeling the old scars, the bruises, the sensation of remembering to be alive. I am picking myself up, for the first time in my life as a priest so I can learn to better live my life as a Humanist Atheist.

In the last week of Lent I had the most amazing and delightful opportunity to celebrate Tenebrae in the monastic fashion. A monk's life is build around a few simple elements, a life of work and prayer. The prayer is the drum beat rhythm of their day, marking points during the day when they pray, it's called the Liturgy of the Hours, the Divine Office. This celebration of prayer takes a marvelous form in the Tenebrae, celebrated in the last three days of Holy Week, beginning really with the setting of the sun on Wednesday of Holy Week, marking the traditional Jewish method of acknowledging the end of a day and the beginning of the next with sunset. In the church, illuminated only by 15 candles, recitation of psalms and the Gregorian tradition of chanting from the book of Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet. The focus of the Tenebrae is the nighttime and very early morning celebration of the Hours. The darkness covers the prayers like a velvet blanket, soothing the light away, creating that mysterious place between the reality we know is around us and uniting it to the imagination of our minds.

My first monastic experience of this was at the Trappist Monastery St. Benedict's in Snowmass, Colorado. We were on a spiritual retreat when I was a senior in High School during Lent. The first prayer, held at 3:00 a.m. was one covered in the cobwebs of sleep, but listening to the deep rhythmic chanting of the monks in their prayers was intoxicating. It was a on some level that first morning a spiritual awakening in me, and made me realize I truly wanted to know and experience the faith that these men chanted of so marvelously in the dark.

At my seminary college, a much more secular experience was held as the monastic life had to share liturgical space with the seminarian life. We weren't monks, but we could see and interact with them everyday, and during Lent, most especially the last few days of Holy Week after the sunset on Wednesday evening, we were mentally and spiritually preparing ourselves to enter into the divine, to journey with the Christ that marked the climax of the Judea-Christian prophecy that the Son of God would suffer, die and be resurrected to save mankind from its own slavery to sin. A type of Passover that is more grand than the Exodus event of the Jews, for this time it would be God alone in the person of his son Jesus, who would make the Exodus so that his followers, God's children could enter the gates of heaven, now free from the burden of sin.

Now today I'm thinking, as I sit in my little kitchen enjoying a cup of herbal tea before work, who was I? This life, so emerged in the prayerful life of seminarian, following the theological and monastic traditions of St. Benedict and his monks, is gone. Vestiges of my prayerful self are but fading bruises on my psyche - and during this last week of Lent I'm pressing those bruises. I fell in love with the song that Goyte recently released, Somebody, which has been overplayed to the point of nausea, but all the same the words stuck to me. I am drawn to his poetry because I hear the words and I'm not remembering a lost love, a lost boyfriend or girlfriend, I'm remembering my own passion for the Christ, for his faithful. Taken in the Christian context, the words are illuminated in a fresh manner that create a new and bitter-sweet revelation. Thinking about being in love with God, with Christ, the words, "Told myself that you were right for me, but felt so lonely in your company, but that was love and it's an ache I still remember", nearly knock me back into my seat.

 

My life was spent being told and trained that loving god, loving the Christ, was right, it was the only path, the only journey one really needed to make in life. I believed this message, I know my family believed this message, know that every single person I ever encountered in my small town believed this message. In believing, I threw myself at the love of God. I wanted to be a spiritual master. I wanted to be the Bruce Lee of faith. Yet there, in prayer, sitting in the dark, listening to the deep resonating tones of monks singing Lamentation of Jeremiah I was lonely. The more alone I felt in God, the more I pursued. Even when in a moment of clarity, alone, when I realized I didn't believe in God I held on, "that was love" and couldn't let go, not yet.

My pain in no longer being a priest, of losing my faith is something that saddens me. When I left the priesthood, all those monks, priests, seminarians, friends, melted away like winter snows. Much like Goyte's bellowing in his song, "But you didn't have to cut me off, make out like it never happened and that we were nothing." In leaving the ministry in October of 1998, I lost those lovers, those friends, that final vestige of belief in the hope for divinity. Yet my heart hurt, hurts, because those lovers, those friends, have never walked by my side again. That makes me lonely, that make me sad. It hurts my heart.

So yes, these last days of lent I can relate to the Divine Office, the Liturgy of the Hours, the Tenebrae. The wailing of the prophet Jeremiah that he makes for his God, after Jerusalem is lost, speaks to me. The horrific realization that the prophet writes of, the loss of Jerusalem the suffering of the people of Israel, is some thing to which I am able to relate on some level. Though for me, standing outside of the city walls of faith, my tears are not for the loss of God's love. My tears are not for the suffering inflicted upon his people because of their own folly and sin. My tears are made because I no longer have a place with God's people.

Bitterly she weeps at night,

tears upon her cheeks,

With not one to console her

all of her dear ones;

Her friends have all betrayed her

and become her enemies. Lam 1:2

So yes, I like to press on those bruises. I am very much aware of the man that I used to be. I am aware of the person that I used to know, that bright, faithful, hopeful servant of The Lord, eagerly devouring the Divine Office, seeking to enter a mystery. It was my pursuit of the faith that was my falling down though. It has taken me a long time to get back up. I, in a sense, curled into a fetal position for almost 15 years and only just now have brushed myself off. But I have the worst habits; occasionally I like to smoke a tobacco pipe; I drink too much; I don't get enough sleep; I eat too many sweets; I like to press on bruises to feel the pain. I'm pressing my faith bruise right now.

I look back and know that faith, the faithful, God was just somebody that I used to know. "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up."

 

A Lenten Meditation

I was given the opportunity to travel Jerusalem in the spring/early summer of 1997 as one of my first assignments as a priest. I was full of trepidation about the journey as I hadn't ever taken a group of believers on a pilgrimage, not to mention taking a group of believers to the most holy of holy cities for two of the great mono-theistic faiths, Judaism and Christianity. Not only this, but it was a great Muslim holy site as well, with the footprints of Muhammad allegedly set in stone there as he was scooped up into heaven by Allah on the dome of the rock.

I was expecting in this very ancient and holy land to discover perhaps the drive of faith. At this time I had buried deeply my disbelief in the supernatural, but as a spiritual guide and leader to a group of 20 some odd pilgrims, I wanted to ensure that their passion in their faith was not interrupted and that the faith they hoped to renew, the mysteries they hoped to discover were genuine and powerful. Even I, in my absolute personal certainty of disbelief held hope that perhaps here, in the cradle of the birthplace of Jesus, the home of God's chosen people, the place where the prophet ascended into heaven, I would discover that worrisome and elusive gift of faith.

The journey to Jerusalem was harrowing, trying to guide a group of 20 some-odd Americans, most of whom hadn't traveled before to the Middle East was difficult. A connecting flight from Denver to Jerusalem in Munich required lots of running, screaming, and worry that we had left behind (shout out to Kirk Cameron here) one of the pilgrims. Fortunately though we all made it, and the flight from Europe to the Middle East was made with only a few nervous buzzes and a very heavy heart of young priest.

Arriving in Israel was absolutely the most exciting part of the journey. The difficulties that Israel continued to face with its very uneasy peace at the time with the Palestinians. Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv was a military state. Armed soldiers, war dogs, tanks, machine guns, surrounded the airport, and the absolute ease that the Israelis pasted through this transportation hub is amazing, but for a group of Americans, who were very used to an easy and lax security program were immediately given a wide eyed experience in the realities of a divided land that was genuinely facing everyday threats of war. Only a few weeks after we departed a horrible terrorist attack occurred in July killing several people in Jerusalem. I had traveled internationally prior, having lived in Rome for a few years prior, and during my time in Rome I traveled to North Africa, Tunisia, and I was used to a state that was filled with active duty soldiers and instruments of war. However, upon setting foot in the land of milk and honey I quickly realized the honey was dried and the milk soured.

We were traveling that day to Jerusalem on bus with a Palestinian driver and guide. The guide, whose name now nearly 15 years later has been lost, was a friendly sort, and many Christian tour groups will hire Palestinian guides because many of them are Christian. Our guide was, though he was no lover of the Catholic Church, making it clear that his faith was Greek Orthodox in origin. The bus ride was uneventful for us, each tourist snapping pictures of the landscape, the desert, the camels, the small cinder block homes that filled much of the roadways. As the modern city of Tel Aviv fell behind us the landscape of the Israeli country side gave way to agricultural sights and sounds. People moving in a dry climate that was vibrant, green, but clearly made so by man's ingenuity. The land was striking though, and we were all in awe of the sights and sounds of a very modern country that wrapped itself in the mantle of an ancient middle eastern place.

Upon arriving in Jerusalem, we were taken to the West gate (near the Jaffa Gate) in the Christian quarter. We stayed at a monastery of nuns literally living in the ancient wall of Jerusalem. The ancient building and quaint nuns made the entire experience romantic in many ways. My window looked down upon the inside of the city, and there I was able to gaze upon a bustling and thriving place, that without knowing it was a center of faith and prayer would still have been inspiring and beautiful. I suppose that it still is. We spent much of the pilgrimage touring around Jerusalem, Israel, the Holy Land. We went to Bethlehem, much different than before it was walled off; we went the Jordan where we re-baptized those who wished to wash themselves in the river. We walked the stations of the cross through the ancient city, following the steps of Jesus before he was taken to be crucified. We went to the church of holy sepulchre, and experienced perhaps the most divisive and sad experiences.

While at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a group of Eastern Orthodox priests were processing through the church to prayer. While on their way, passing our small group of pilgrims, they encountered a group of Roman Catholic friars, as they passed by each other one of the Orthodox spit at the friars, and they began to curse at each other as they walked past. This occurrence, not uncommon, and not as aggravated as some instances in which literal fist fights would break out, was so deeply and profoundly disturbing to me. Here in Christianity's most holy site, the place that the Christian's god rose from the dead to set man free from suffering and sin. Here these allegedly holy men, friars and monks, spat at each other and cursed the ground of their brothers. This within meters of the tomb. This moment, this display of humanity's weaknesses, hatred, pettiness, made me realize that my journey as an atheist could not be taken as a priest. The smell of the incense there, the sounds of rosaries being prayed, voices lifted up in exalted prayer were sounds and sights of humanity trying to find a way to better itself, but this way wasn't authentic. The prayers here, in this world ravaged place, the most holy place for Christians, weren't made driven by a divine faith, they were made by the loneliness of humanity trying to find a way to give meaning to life. I've learned since then that life is itself meaning. There isn't a grander value to life beyond what it is. I respect life, believe it is "sacred", but not because an external force has created it to be so, but simply because the randomness of creation is so marvelous that this is what makes it sacred. There is order in chaos because order is chaos.

During Lent I always remember Jerusalem. One of the moments I loved the most was visiting the olive trees that stood on the hills outside of the walled city. Some of these trees are ancient, thousands of years old. They have soaked up the blood of the pilgrim, the soldier, the rain, the sun, the moonlight. They have stood steadfastly by whilst the folly of man passes around them. In my mind's eye I imagined the world racing around these branches in fast motion, time lapsed as the centuries flew by. We were wandering around one set of olive trees on a day of meditation during the pilgrimage. I was reading from my bible the story of Jesus' last day on earth. I was struck during that reading of the story of Judas. His friend, his betrayer. I looked around and wondered if in these stories this tale held any truth. If in the world all these tales were true, that is God deems to become a man to save man from himself if it would be for naught. Would man again betray the very thing that would bring him peace? Would man act like those monks and friars at the Holy Sepulchre? Would man again spit and betray? I don't know, but so moved was I that I vowed not to lie, to be deceitful, to be loving. Strangely in that holy place I wasn't moved by the greatness of god, I was moved by the littleness of man. It wasn't a faith moment, it was a human moment. A realization that in the world we only have each other. It's a small planet that we share, and our greatness is not weighed by some eternal life later, but our greatness is weighed by the peace and love we bring now, in each living, breathing moment.

While in prayer (yes an atheist can pray - I suppose I should call it meditation) - I wrote a poem in my reflection about the olive tree, reflecting on man's betrayal of the divine and my own desire to in some way, live forever. Fortunately I am made of stars and into the stars I shall return.

The rough bark of your skin

Bites into my shoulder.

I touch your side and realize

You have seen thousands of years of life

perhaps even blood flowed

into your roots.

Did a crusader rest upon you

As I do now?

Did the words of a prophet

blow against your leaves?

You have a view, remembering

that garden, where

the one named Jesus fell,

betrayed.

You can remember

me too.