Thirsty

Yesterday I entered into a deeper commitment with the members of the People of Praise. After spending the past few years discerning whether God was calling me to spend the rest of my life in it, I was invited by the community to do just that. Sarah, Laura, and Trish also did this at the same time I did. My parents came out for it! After being embraced and prayed over by many many people, we were each given an opportunity to reflect on our decision. Sarah has posted her sharing here , and Laura and Trish gave awesome glimpses of the events leading up to their decisions too. Here is what I shared with the hundreds of local branch members and visitors: I don't really know how to organize my thoughts about what this commitment means to me. When I moved here a few years ago, I only vaguely knew a handful of people here, but that was less important to me than what I already knew about all of you. I knew in my mind that there would be a bunch of saints here, doing something to lay...

This afternoon at our People of Praise branch meeting, Paul & Andrea Kane walked to the back of the room. There were a variety of furtive looks toward the back where she was. I tried not to be distracted from the meeting, but it was very apparent that we all indeed were distracted. It was then announced that she was suffering from a kidney stone attack, and we all turned and extended our hands and prayed for her. We then continued with the meeting. Toward the end, she returned to her seat and appeared to be back to herself. Amidst the final song, there was a lot of cheering at her return. Of course, my first reaction to seeing her was joy at her return, and joy that she was able to raise her arms and praise God while just previously she was laying prostrate on the ground in pain. But my second, and enduring reaction is my experience of the joy and relief that flooded throughout the room. I guess I'm an observer at heart, but I couldn't help but stand "outside...

These last weeks have not fit a mold. I attended People of Praise South Bend's summer camp for a week. It was my 2nd year of camp as an adult, and it was similar yet very different from last year. See my photos for a glimpse of the week. I won't provide an exhaustive rundown of the week, apart from my excitement that my team of unlikely winners WON tournament tuesday and I don't think I've ever won so much! I'll post the list of all the people that were on my team soon. Here is a little sharing that I read at our last branch meeting: I had a blast with the 15 5th graders. I had the same boys last year, so it was a great chance to see what a year had done to each of them. For the most part they had become stronger and more confident. Helping me out was Mike Wacker from the brotherhood, as well as Dominic Raciti, John Feeks, and Patrick Couch. There are plenty of stories about each of the boys stepping up and becoming even stronger this week, and about my ...

cloud as far as the eye can see what do they mean to me how can they always be oh so free look up at the sky will you take a moment and drink the scene flowing around you in something far more than ink i take my moment, i realign my thoughts with a simple glance upward, the face changes the brow unfurrows, the eyes widen the combat stance opens what are we here? am i even here? there is something great at work here as i gaze at everything not here the clouds they dance on swirling about, repainting themselves on a canvas of atmosphere arrayed all around us widen your perspective open your eyes love what we've been given and seek to know him more and more

This is a story from my friend K. If you know who I'm talking about, please don't use his name in the comments or I'll have to delete them. If you'd like to know who it is, feel free to email me and ask. http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090520/NEWS01/905200314 Major facts are just wrong: Both men eventually pulled into the Speedway gas station at Edison and South Bend Avenue, police said, and about 30 seconds later a third vehicle, a black Dodge, pulled in as well, blocking the victim from leaving. Intending to apologize, the victim exited his vehicle , police said. He was met by the driver of the SUV , who punched him several times in the mouth, knocking him unconscious. I had my seatbelt on the whole time, and I wasn't punched by the SUV driver. I was sucker punched by his buddy from the second car while I was paying attention to the driver of the suv who was walking around yelling. This all happened in the early hours of Sunday morn...

Friday at 5:55pm I left work and drove over to Sheila, Sarah, & Liz's house, where 8 of us gathered to load into a couple of cars and drive to Indianapolis. Along the way, I made numerous last-minute calls to arrange substitutes for the youth soccer program Saturday morning in South Bend. I also had a few phone calls with J-T and Ryan in Indy as they attempted to pickup required packets for each of us before 9pm. It turns out Kinkos will not let you print out a page containing 8 photocopied drivers licenses, two of which were from my Dad & his co-worker Darrell in Muncie, who gave us their own registrations to the sold out race. We were all going to run or watch the Indy Mini Marathon & 5k. We made it to the triangle , the People of Praise members living together on the north side of Indy near IUPUI. Liz, Sheila, & Allesha were dropped off with Trish at the women's household and Pete G, Pete T, Ricky, Kyle, & I walked across the street to an empty ho...

This weekend 2 friends of mine in the People of Praise got married. Marcus is originally from Togo, Africa, and Bekah is from around here. Marcus has been here for less than a year, after having lived in NYC for awhile. He is in my men's group, and I have enjoyed getting to know him since he's been here. For posterity, here is what I shared with him at his bachelor party. I always have to write stuff like this down, because I cannot think when I'm in front of people. Someday I'll be able to. But for now, I have this stuff written down which makes it easy to save too. It's kinda ironic because you'll only get to see this stuff until I get good enough at it that I don't need to write it. Marcus, if your family were here with us tonight, what would they say? Would they allow you to stay here, or would they try to bring you back home? Would they understand what sort of life you have chosen to live here? What stories would they tell us about you? I wa...

Why do I? There is the useful reason: I enjoy knowing what my friends are up to, what's on their minds, and twitter lowers the technological barrier to that. The converse is true, and so I quickly hammer out a snapshot of my state of being, putting no thought into it. Then there is the vain reason: I am interested in eliciting some specific perception from my friends. I have even a broader scope: I can elicit a perception from the readers of my blog, and from my 400+ facebook contacts. In other words, I use it as a sort of platform, but when I try to stick to the "What are you doing?" question, it is a platform thats all about me. Then there is the lazy reason: This manifests itself rather as a form of loneliness. My thoughts swirl about me, and I recognize my need for friendship. I want to reach out and open myself to other people; in fact I need to. Everything I say on twitter is something that really belongs in my everyday conversation, and the frequency and ...

As glorious as Twitter may be, it is still dreadfully insufficient. Some thoughts I want to convey that are more than 140 characters, and I squelch them because they don't command the audience that Twitter can. We need a conversation-ready tool similar to Twitter but which can handle full posts. Maybe I will go against my no-linking in Twitter rule and add my blog post links to Twitter every time I post. All this really is, though, is me procrastinating tonight while I sit at the office on our first night of 60-hour work weeks hitting up some good ol' extreme programming. Believe it or not, I enjoy it. Just wish I could get other stuff done during that time too.

- knows what to do - sure of himself - knows his boundaries, limitations - what matters to him is effort - prays in deserted places because he is so entirely devoted to those around him - he is not above inconveniences/distractions - he is a brother before a healer - people come to him to feel better, not to be holy

So let's see. I'm here in the Allendale [ pdf ] neighborhood of Shreveport, Louisiana, spending the week with about 22 others. Jeremy & I are on the clock working for One:Ten 40 hours, but we've been able to enter into much of the life going on here. Last night was a date night for the married couples, and the rest of us men did some work together. We ate dinner with the women quick and then all split up to go and pray alone for a half hour prior to going out. The objective was to talk with our Father about what sort of word we ought to bring to men in the neighborhood. We gathered together briefly to share what we had each arrived at in prayer, and then we struck out in 3 groups of 2-3, planning to meet back up in 1 hour. We got to speak to children, young men, middle-aged men, and a man with 8 grandkids. Everyone that I encountered had already had exposure to my group of friends who lives here, and have lived here for the past 6 years, in the heart of this stun...

A couple weeks ago, David gave those of us at our office morning prayer a fresh idea on how to think about the Lord's Prayer. He asked us how much thought we've put into the "our" and "we" parts of it. When you pray the Lord's Prayer together with a group, try thinking of yourselves really as one body instead of individuals. When one of us trespasses, we all do. When one of us forgives, we all do. As a body, we accept responsibility for one another. What we do affects those around us. We suffer for the sake of one another, and we rejoice too with each other. Do you consider that as you are praying the Lord's Prayer? On a separate note, I have a very small prayer, from part of the Lord's Prayer, that I use with varying frequency day to day. It is often the case that even though I know the right thing to do with my time, I am lazy or undisciplined or exhibitive of any number of the vices. It can be overwhelming to consider the vast dist...

Yesterday as I was finishing a feature on the new Trinity Schools website, Jeremy and I were discussing the way it would work for users. We were clicking around, trying different things, and generally hypothesizing about the thought process of our intended users and what they would experience. Conversation lulled, and I sort of set the issue down and began looking at something else. Jeremy was jotting down notes on a notecard. Then he stood up to leave the room and asked me to come with him. "What for?" "Well, are you coming?" "ummm.... ok..." I followed him down to the first floor of Raclin to the Vine & Branches office where he requested a few minutes of time each from Anne, Elizabeth, and Gretchen. He then asked each of them to pull up my development version of the website, and walked through the script he had jotted down, asking them to do simple things on the website that would expose the effect of the website on unbiased users. ...

I caused a bit of a stir when I recently said: Sacrifice strengthens friendship. Facebook discourages sacrifice. Facebook weakens friendship. Let me explain myself, since it should not have been an exclusive statement. Simply put, my observation, personally, has been that Facebook gives me the illusion that I have invested in my friends, by learning about them, yet without actually spending any time with them. What is it that makes a friendship? Knowing a lot about a person? Certainly thats what you gain through spending time with them. But is that all you gain? What else is it that you find in friendship? Something unquantifiable, something elusive, something greater than the sum of it's parts. Facebook has mass-produced the conditions needed for mutual self-revelation. But it has succeeded so completely in allowing for self-revelation, that we miss the importance of it being mutual and what exactly mutual is, anyway. That's not the half of it, but my Saturday is bec...

Thou that hast giv'n so much to me, Give one thing more, a grateful heart. See how thy beggar works on thee By art. He makes thy gifts occasion more, And sayes, If he in this be crost, All thou has giv'n him heretofore Is lost. But thou didst reckon, when at first Thy word our hearts and hands did crave, What it would come to at the worst To save. Perpetuall knockings at thy doore, Tears sullying thy transparent rooms, Gift upon gift, much would have more, And comes. This notwithstanding, thou wentst on, And didst allow us all our noise: Nay, thou has made a sigh and groan Thy joyes. Not that thou has not still above Much better tunes, than groans can make; But that these countrey-aires thy love Did take. Wherefore I crie, and crie again; And in no quiet canst thou be, Till I a thankfull heart obtain Of thee: Not thankfull, when it pleaseth me; As if thy blessings had spare dayes: But such a heart, whose pulse may be Thy praise. - George Herbert, (1633) was...

(from the Nov '08 issue of Magnificat ) This litany is a meditation on what some of the saints have spoken or written. As we listen to these saints, we pray for a deeper personal participation in their sanctity. This litany represents only a small sampling of the vast communion of saints (the selection is limited due to space constraints). Feel free to add your favorites to it. One option is to sing the litany and it's response. R: (Saint's name), pray for us. Holy Mary, Mother of God: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." R. Saint Gabriel the Archangel: "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you." R. Saint Joseph: [pause in reverent silence] R. Saint John the Baptist: "Jesus must increase; I must decrease." R. Saint Peter: "Lord, you know that I love you." R. Saint Paul: "We had accepted within ourselves the sentence of death, that we might trust not in ourselves but i...

I'm torn between using twitter frequently enough to timeline what I'm doing, and posting here on the blog to flesh out more details. Oh well. This weekend has been packed enough to warrant a blog post I think. Friday evening, Don & Jackie Shuler invited me over to Middlebury for dinner along w/ Todd and Sara. We had a wonderful dinner followed by my first chance to play Settlers of Cattan with them, except that I had to tear myself away halfway into it. It was very relaxing and enjoyable to spend a few hours with some longtime friends. Then I headed over to Elkhart where Allesha was hosting a bonfire at her parents' house, and even though I got there about 2.5 hrs late, there was still a full circle of about 15 people gathered around a massive fire. It lasted an hour longer and then I headed home w/ Dan to get some sleep before the big day. Saturday morning, Dan & I walked through our neighborhood to get to the Montessori School where the Fall Frolic was ...

Today my co-worker made a lifelong commitment to the Christian community that I belong to. There were hundreds of us present to witness it, and those who had already made the commitment were invited to stand and join in while eight people, Jeremy included, recited what exactly they were agreeing to. For more information about it, see the "covenant" section of People of Praise . The timeline follows along with typical religious communities - you go through a trial period for usually 4-7 years where you are exploring life in the community and deciding how much you like it. If eventually you decide you're fully on board, in light of a multitude of experiences of it, then you make a lifelong commitment to it. Of course you may choose later to change your mind, but you are saying that at this point, you intend for it to be lifelong. This is exciting. Someday I expect I'll be doing the same thing. God is renewing his creation more each day, and the People of Praise w...

Here's an extended tweet. Don called me on to more blogging, so I suppose I'll do it now while I have time. I'm alone at my parents' lake cabin, having just said goodbye to the last of the friends that came to hang out with me this weekend. There were up to 11 of us at one point, and most of us went to SJC around the same time. Some of us are married, some are dating, some are single. We did these sorts of gatherings more frequently a couple years ago and earlier, but life happened and I wasn't setting aside time to plan and do this. The weekend had already started Friday evening with a birthday party for Sheila at the Brewer's, fireworks at the POP community center, and meeting for drinks/snacks at a local restaurant afterwards. I probably caused it to adjourn a bit early since I wanted to get home to pack and be on the road by midnight, heading for Crooked Lake. I didn't make it there till about 1:30, and Theresa from Cincinnati was making the ni...

I'm reading a small book called The Uganda Blessing by Gus Zuehlke... We drove to Fort Portal, which is 250 miles west of Kampala, with Bishop Robert. On the way, we stopped at an upscale hotel and restaurant for lunch. After lunch, as we walked back to our SUV, we heard a man singing in the bar. The only words to the song wer, "I'm so lonely." He went on repeating that for five minutes. I was reminded of something Father John Dunne, CSC, once wrote about an African love song which has only three words; "I walk alone." Dunne speaks of the problem of loneliness which has become acute in our time. We have emerged as individuals, but have lost a sense of relatedness with others. We spend all our time and energy making sure that what we do is our own choice, our decision. This is too often accomplished at the cost of spending time and energy relating to others. In Uganda, one senses that peoples' sense of relatedness is still strong, but the lonelin...