Shards of memory
Jagged like shattered glass
But they catch the light

Light when a loose braid
Or at a bar stool breathless laughter
Weaves body and soul together

Texas is too hot
And Ireland too grey
But eternity glances off
The winter water of Galway Bay

And comedy brings upward
All things bright and broken
and mundane
And Paris is most lovely in the rain

He told me crops take time
and do not fret

The question throbbed
out into the empty night
“was it so very needed
that I be torn in two?”

Deep dark always reigns
for that one forever-moment
when I could not hear the pounding
of His feet upon the gravel

But I knew His hands
when they guided mine
as I patted down the earth
and watered it with salt

His words were quiet as His strength
“If the time of mending was so dear
how much more the wholeness?”

“My hope will sprout
in patches I think
but the patches will grow”

It’s earlier now than it was before
the darkness of storm clouds
has swept the swift sky clean
and evening dawns in the west

Sometimes it looks like sitting awkwardly
On the steps outside a trailer park
Sometimes it looks like a Florentine courtyard
With an orchestra playing softly across

There’s a tightness and a tautness
Being always ready for the worst
And then there’s a rushing flood of life
When emptiness makes space for wealth

In theaters wrought with gold and jewel tones
In improbable joy of connection
I’d rather read you the one I know people like
But maybe that’s not what this is for

Yesterday’s fog lifts
From the warm toned mountains
Like incense
Rising in its silent worship
Behind the palm trees

2.

A spitfire circles a sunny field
Tonight the pilot will return to his pub
A hero
His hope restored by his home
His morale intact
To fight the dark
Whatever it takes

3.

Tiny twinkle lights
And pop covers of carols
That are laden with every memory of childhood
Movies that like a compass
Always point toward light
And wrapping yourself in a blanket
With a heavy mug of cider.

4.

Galway bay is made of solemn light
The kind that pierces
Opens up a whisper of eternity
I walk the concrete causeway
In the direction of desire
And Brian Dunphy sings
The stories of my kin.

5.

Comedians
Push against the gravitation
Make a different choice
Than the one made in Eden
And make an offering
Exactly who they are.

6.

The children I’ve nannied for
Swarm me with affection
Clamoring and clambering
And nestling against me
Warmth in the pit of my chest
Love in a condition of complete simplicity

7.

And I had almost forgotten what it felt like
To be embraced by my favorite way to pray
Barefoot in the oriental carpet
A forest of flickering petitions
The thick thrumming warmth
Of prayer and love and worship
In a body

And he sings with his whole body
His heart like a silent drumbeat
magnetizing
Pulling every inch of him
Body, soul, and strength
Into a single beam of life

And the sacrifice of his singular passion
Is offered all for you
Between the music and the lyrics
There is blood and water crying out

“Could you see yourself for a second
Through the eyes of one who would love you?
Could you be exactly where you are?”

you embroider my soul with stars
even though I’ll probably never see you again
over your shoulder I keep laughing
the welling up of a child’s delight
because this dancing is the cresting of a wave

the music pulls together
a handful of rudimentary colors in our souls
and we ride the wide, wild pull of it
fearless
a lion’s mane in the glow of late afternoon
the bell-tone desire of a childlike heart
a prayer more profound than many of mine

“This is so fun!”

2. PUSSYWILLOWS

carpet the cold stones in the dark
with the thronging down of pussywillows
and plant with me a garden of the votive flames
we sit on the front steps of your parents house
and we talk a little
like we always do
our slipknot steps through the old stone labyrinth
a different pattern but always together
we the acquainted with grief

I love that you can sleep in a curve on the carpet
while they sing psalms over you
I love that I can fall asleep
with my head on the steps of the Sanctuary
and I love that the wandering ways of grief
brought both of us to here

3. ARIMATHEA

a young father approaches the Tomb on his knees with his baby strapped to his chest. when he makes his prostration, he cradles close the head of his son.

the second cantor today is the one whose voice is like brutalist architecture and my breath catches in my throat when I realize how much I love him too.

Fr. Adrian doesn’t give a homily but he cries so much at the Passion Gospels that one of the servers has to fetch him a kleenex.

and Fr. Michael can always see the one who needs to be seen
calls me “little one” and kisses the top of my head
I could be wearing a straw hat
on the cover of a Mark Twain novel
and it would be something almost true

I’ve walked the impossible calculations
the orphanhood of desperation
to earn or beg the scraps of love I need
but here my bare feet swing carelessly
as I lie on my stomach in the choir loft

night falls
but I’ve spent years in the Tomb
years before and the years since it was transfigured
and you sit and talk with me a while
your burial shroud still wrapped half round you
as you pull knots out of my chest
and teach me how to dance

I left this movie and thought “this feels like it was made by a Catholic.” I want it to be known that I don’t say that lightly, and I certainly don’t say it just because a movie is good. But there was a line at the end of Act 2 that I thought was one of the most profound reflections on the problem of pain I had ever encountered and it felt like someone with a Catholic cosmology would be best equipped to make it. I told my sister that and, according to her brief internet research, it seems like maybe Stephen King did convert to Catholicism right around the time he wrote this short story. Whether or not that’s true, the fact remains, this is a beautiful story about the unique and unrepeatable dignity of every human life. Don’t let the creepy vibes at the beginning throw you off, this story is one of deep hope.

There are a few minutes at the beginning where you think this might be the standard Christian movie fare, but it switches gears very quickly. It is very intense - taking place primarily in the starvation cell - and some scenes are quite disturbing. But even the darkest scenes are a necessary part of this profoundly beautiful prayer. This is what a saint movie should be. In the vivid portrayal of a single human being, transformed and transforming by Christ’s love, we are offered a real encounter with the beauty of holiness.

This Catholic movie was made by someone who is definitely not a Catholic. But it was made with the input and consultation of some Catholics which were clearly received with deep respect and taken very seriously. Lots of Catholics have commented extensively on this and I don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel, just to add my voice to the clamor - this movie was beautiful. It was an honest exploration of what it looks like to live a life in the modern world in relationship with God and it put love and mercy at the center of everything.

In the midst of the drama of war, it’s the tiniest point of action that I want to talk about but it’s a pointer to what’s at the heart of the whole story and also a piercing examination of my own conscience. All it is is a boy trying to decide if he should lock a door. He and his father and friend are in the middle of being heroes - tkaing their tiny boat to Dunkirk to help rescue the British Expeditionary Forces. On their way they picked up a shipwrecked soldier (Cillian Murphy) who is traumatized and very visibly not in his right mind. They’ve convinced him to lie down in the cabin and watching this I can viscerally feel the boy’s desire to lock the door. It makes sense, they’ve got enough to deal with and it makes sense to want the unstable wild card safely stowed away. So he locks the door.

Being trapped again further traumatizes the already fragile soldier who then, in an attempt to get them to turn around and not go back to Dunkirk, accidentally fatally injures his friend.

The boy’s father (Mark Rylance) is braver. Given the danger that came with rescuing the first marooned solider, he had every reason to ignore the downed Spitfire and carry on towards Dunkirk but he didn’t. “Maybe he’s alive. Maybe.” And his courage is rewarded. He saves the life of the RAF pilot (Jack Lowden) who proves invaluable to them in their mission. This same pattern plays out all through the movie: fear is eminently understandable, it is, in fact the rational response. But when you let that fear be in charge, it sends out ripple effects of compounding destruction and tragedy. This reality of fear is what sheds light on the beauty of the heroic effort to takes to be brave. And that when people are brave the whole world gets a little better.

It was already on my mind to write about Dunkirk and then there was a political assassination on the same day last week. I consider myself politically homeless and I wasn’t a follower of Charlie Kirk in any way - mostly I just knew that he existed. But hearing my friend tell me, “he died” really shook me. It wasn’t just that he was my age or even just the terrifying reality of what rising political violence is apt to lead to. It was also that his existence was something I took for granted and then he was suddenly gone. It’s remarkable how much Americans are able to keep death relegated to usually being something distant and abstract. It’s a universal part of being human but we forget and when the reality of it hits us in the face, it can be a lot to take.

I’ve honestly tried to keep my engagement with all the hot takes as limited as I can. The dehumanization, the finger pointing and the vitriol make me really angry and there generally isn’t any constructive outlet I can give to that anger. Two of my most liberal follows reminded me why I followed them in the first place in spite of lots of disagreements by centering their response of humanization, respect, and grief. Lots of other people didn’t do that. There have been many responses riddled with dehumanization or with wholesale blame of the other side of the political aisle with zero personal accountability. Those responses are outright dangerous as we are seeing more and more and they make me very angry. They make me want to find the person and plead with them in probably an angry shout “Don’t you see what you are doing?” But whether or not that desire in me is justified, the reality remains that at least most, if not every single one, of the statements making my blood boil are rooted in fear. The person behind that screen is the boy trying to lock away the problem.

The night of Charlie Kirk’s murder I walked around at sunset near my house, trying to reckon with my own fear. I’m not in control of this broken world and I cannot keep it safe for me or - much more terrifying - for any of the people I love. So my job must be something else. And whatever it looks like day to day, my job is to be brave. Brave enough to keep saying yes to things I am called to - even when they’re scary.

The final scene of Dunkirk is a montage tied together by two characters in a train compartment, reading Churchill’s address about the evacuation. There’s a powerful turn where one of them (played by Harry Styles) - driven by fear and by fearful self-interest - has been expecting hatred from their countrymen at this defeat. Listening to his words, the man knocking on their window appears to be ready to be at them up. Then Churchill’s words, read by the other character, shift us back into reality not clouded by fear. The man was actually just happy to see them alive and was offering them celebratory beers. “There was a victory inside this defeat”

I’ve spent plenty of time in my life not just paralyzed by fear, but seeing a distorted version of reality because of it. Throughout the course of my adult life, I’ve been very slowly coming out of that fog. Being brave is scary. Being good and loving and doing the things I’m called to is scary and involves real risks. Fear will always be present and in its proper place it’s just information. But as long as I live, I don’t ever want to let fear be in charge again.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. And even if this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

• Opera at Shawshank

When Andy plays opera music on the loudspeaker at Shawshank prison. It’s a stunning scene and you don’t really need context to watch it. But the tiny moment comes when the warden shows up and orders Andy to turn off the music. It isn’t just that Andy turns it up instead, it’s how uncomfortable he looks as he is deciding to refuse. Defiance doesn’t come naturally to him but this is important.

The fruit of Andy’s courage is eloquently expressed in the scene and in voiceover from Morgan Freeman:

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. …and for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.”

• Frodo climbing a few feet.
  (This clip technically has spoilers. Also, it’s just the first forty seconds that I’m talking about.)

  

(SPOILERS) Frodo, worn out in every possible way by the power of the Ring, lifts up his head and manages to climb maybe 10 feet higher. The door is still far above them and when he does make it there, he is going to fail in his ultimate goal to destroy the Ring. Ten feet closer is not an external success, but I love that the music makes it clear how much it matters that he’s still fighting even now, with the very last of his strength.

• Captain America gets up again

  (All kinds of spoilers - this is near the end of Endgame which is the culmination of twenty-two movies.)

  

If I’m being honest, there was a part of me a little annoyed at Cap in this moment. It felt borderline wasteful to get up again to face certain death. But even being annoyed didn’t stop tears from welling up at the visceral feeling of watching him get to his feet after such a beat down. Stories have a way of making you feel seen, sometimes in the strangest ways. This wildly dramatized reflection of what it feels like to keep trying, day after day, in the midst of suffering or grief or whatever it is that feels too heavy to carry reminded me to have courage. He stands up again, alone, against the enormous forces of evil and if nothing else, this still frame alone would bear testament to the value of his courage. He’s standing up to what can only look like certain death because he is willing to lay down his life to save others. And if he had died there, before help arrived, it would have been a beautiful scene. But I’m grateful, if only for the sake of the hope that I needed restored, that this is the moment when help arrives. That in this moment it turns out that he is not alone. And that all the loss of Infinity War has been undone.

“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”

“When autumn came, he knew that part at least of his heart would think more kindly of journeying, as it always did at that season.”

Since that time, I’ve often taken advantage of the academic calendar to make September my starting point. My three months in Italy and my two years of nomading both began in September, and just now, on the September 1st that happened two days ago, I’ve begun a new chapter in a new home.

While I was in my room in Florence with my sister, I was trying to work up the courage to book the flights and lodging for a solo trip to Ireland. As desperately as I wanted to go to Ireland, the threshold of anxiety was proving higher than I expected. Between the default anxiety of spending lots of money all at once, the fear of failing a COVID test and getting stranded somewhere and the fact that I really liked living in this room with my sister, it was starting to feel like too much.

I remembered something I had recently reread in The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo sees the stone trolls and is grateful for “the reminder of Bilbo’s first successful adventure.” For some reason the use of “successful” to modify “adventure” felt unexpected. It reminded me that adventures aren’t glamorous or easy and that usually the epic mood music is added afterwards. The anxiety and the practical hurdles I was facing were to be expected in the business of adventuring and didn’t mean I was heading in the wrong direction.

A successful adventure doesn’t necessarily mean destroying a ring or finding a horde of dragon treasure. I spent a week alone in Ireland and I spent a lot of that week anxious and lonely and not doing as many of the cool Ireland things as I would have imagined. And it was so beautiful. I spent a lot of my time just sort of wandering around, listening to the same Irish music I had been listening to all my life, experiencing it in the place from which it came and it was earth-shatteringly beautiful, and an experience I remember often. My tiny little acts of courage put me in touch with my cultural roots as well as some really deep movements in my heart and, step by slow little step, each wandering chapter of my adventures has been making me more and more myself. ‘

• Parks and Rec: working with friends towards a specific, victory-able goal.

• Friends: close physical proximity with friends. New York City. A vibrant third space. Going on dates a lot.

• Psych: confidence. doing everything with your best friend.

• Ted Lasso: England. helping people become their best selves/loving them well/having a ripple effect of goodness around you. Team belonging.

• Full House: safe city life. a family that extends beyond the nuclear family.

• New Girl: having a squad that always does stuff together and shares life intimately.

• Gilmore Girls: the coziness of an in-person community in a walkable small town.

• The West Wing: working with my friends towards a goal. having an impeccable command of the English language. the coolness of extreme competence.

• Armchair Expert: Being more like Dax: more honest and open, having complete integrity, bringing out the best in everyone you interact with

• The Newsroom: working with people you care about toward a noble goal

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Assisi is a well-preserved medieval hilltop town (built up on an ancient town) in the mountains of Umbria, of course it’s striking. But I’d like to think there’s something more. I think the holiness of Francis and Clare still echoes in these ancient stones and curved cobblestone streets and if you live there, or even visit there, you come in contact with the ripple effects of their holiness.

I know some people who are holy. I don’t know if they’ll ever be canonized (although it honestly wouldn’t surprise me) but the formal title is only a little, external marker of the living, breathing reality. People who love well are themselves transfigured but they also send ripple effects of their transfiguration out to the people with whom they come in contact. I’ve grown the most when I have people around me who love me and who inspire me by their excellence.

This reality is reflected on a human level in lots of stories. We are social creatures and the goodness of one person really does have a lot of power to influence the people around them for good. I love this thread in Forrest Gump and it’s basically the whole premise of Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is a show on Apple TV and it comes with a whole heck of a lot of language, including very sexual conversation (although nothing visually graphic is shown on screen) and a non-Catholic sexual ethic on display, so if you’re sensitive to that kind of material this might not be the show for you. But if you can stomach the roughness of the world, you will be treated to the beauty of goodness spreading from one man out to the little world around him. Ted Lasso the character is a football coach from Kansas whose approach to coaching is centered around his determination to coach his players primarily as people and only secondarily as players of their game. The story starts when he is hired to be a football coach in London.

What follows is the story of goodness as it plays out in the real world. It is hard-fought and human, not naive or impenetrable and is put to the test in a world of cynicism. I am deeply moved by this story. I experience it as a profound call to grow in holiness as well as a genuinely delightful story, it reminds me that the day to day difficulties of loving people well are worth it and that even people who look very difficult to love can turn out to be extraordinarily beautiful.

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Jacob was left there alone. Then a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. ²⁶ When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that Jacob’s socket was dislocated as he wrestled with him. ²⁷ The man then said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” ²⁸ “What is your name?” the man asked. He answered, “Jacob.” ²⁹ Then the man said, “You shall no longer be named Jacob, but Israel, because you have contended with divine and human beings and have prevailed.” ³⁰ Jacob then asked him, “Please tell me your name.” He answered, “Why do you ask for my name?” With that, he blessed him. ³¹ Jacob named the place Peniel, “because I have seen God face to face,” he said, “yet my life has been spared.”

³² At sunrise, as he left Penuel, Jacob limped along because of his hip. ³³ That is why, to this day, the Israelites do not eat the sciatic muscle that is on the hip socket, because he had struck Jacob’s hip socket at the sciatic muscle.

I love this passage. It’s weird and confusing and it feels a lot like how it feels to be completely honest about grief or anger with God in prayer. And one of the most beautiful things about this passage is that the fruit of Jacob’s fighting match with God is a limp but also a blessing and a new name. The name of the chosen people means “wrestles with God.” The long slow process of our transfiguration is often messy as well as difficult but once again, God all things for good for those who love Him.

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I love hearing about this kind of honest prayer - the reflections of it that people write about in fiction like:

• The West Wing Season 2, Final “Two Cathedrals” when President Bartlett is praying after the funeral.

• This is Us Season 5, Episode 2 “Forty: Part Two” when Jack is praying in the hospital chapel.

And especially the true stories of their personal prayer. One of my favorites is the story Matt Dahlia tells about the night he met God.

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“He who mysteriously spoke to Moses and Elijah on Mount Sinai and said “I Am Who Am” today manifests Himself to His disciples on Mount Tabor and reveals through His person that human nature is re-established in its original splendor.”

- From Eastern Catholic Vespers for the Transfiguration

Beloved:
We did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received honor and glory from God the Father
when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory,
"This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven
while we were with him on the holy mountain.
Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable.
You will do well to be attentive to it,
as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

(2 Peter 1:16-19)

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that that statement covers the whole purpose of life, I think it is a good reminder of how to engage with life more fully. It’s also a nice summary of an odd and very beautiful story in which a man who has been wasting away inside his daydreams goes on some crazy, real life adventures, and starts to grow into the kind of person he’s always wanted to be. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should probably go do that now.

Walter Mitty’s transfiguration has a strong thread of comedy in the contrast between who used to be and who he is after his adventures. That’s actually a good example of the original definition of comedy (and the reason why Dante’s trilogy about Hell, Purgatory & Heaven is called The Divine Comedy). A comedy is a story about people getting better than they deserve, a story with an upward trajectory.

The story of my ongoing transfiguration is certainly a comedy. And the moments of comedic and undignified discomfort - mistakes, embarrassments, all the sometimes very silly realities of being a human being - help me to live in the reality of who I am as a person, I.e. help me grow in humility. And humility - accepting the reality of who I am - is the beginning of all virtue and of transfiguration. Transfiguration is not a change into someone else, it’s changing into more and more of who I am so that has to be built on the reality of who I actually am, with all my flaws and failings. And even though my story also has components that might seem more at home in tragedy than comedy, even those are caught up into the upward trajectory.

I think that’s why sometimes comedies reflect some of the most profound things to me about my spiritual life. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an extremely well made movie about an apparently silly premise and I think there is a lot to reflect on, but I’m just going to talk about one little thread. **SPOILERS AHEAD**

I want to talk about this pivotal scene. In it, Kristen Wiig singing “Space Oddity” to him is a daydream and his jumping onto the helicopter is real. Prior to this moment, his daydreams have been distracting him from his real life. This daydream pushes him to engage with his real life more fully. True, the choice to jump onto a helicopter flown by a completely wasted pilot who’s about to fly into a crazy storm might not have been the most prudent of choices. But it was the choice that really started his adventure that changed his life.

There’s a lot I love about this scene but one of my favorite things is the sort of redemption of his weakness. His daydreams have been a problem for him and a crucial step of his growth is leaving those behind. But first, his daydream manages to be the actual impetus to help him push through the discomfort of the first step.

Jesus, who conquered death by death and created me out of love, really can redeem everything. I just have to say yes.

As probably most of you know by now, I’m taking a new step. After two wonderful years of nomadic writing, I will be living in one place for a whole year. In case you haven’t figured it out from these posts or from the conversations we’ve had in real life, I really loved nomading. As a person and as a writer, I grew so much and it has become clear to me that in order to keep growing on that same trajectory, the next thing I need is to have at least slightly more stability in my daily life. I’m really looking forward to the coming year: to new adventures, to having the same kitchen week to week, and to lots of writing that will hopefully get better all the time.

To match this shift in my life and my writing, I am shifting gears here as well. You may have noticed my travel tips gradually petering out and while I think there’s still material to be explored in this realm, I also think it’s time for me to talk about stories.

Stories are one of my all-time favorite topics. If you’ve been around here for a while (or for five minutes) you probably already know that I basically grew up with a book in my hand, that I wrote my undergrad thesis about the power of stories, and that books, movies, tv shows, even youtube videos, regularly impact my prayer and help me to grow closer to God.

Over the next few days, I want to prepare my heart to celebrate this feast day. Part of that will be to spend some time with stories that reflect something about the transfiguration. Not necessarily stories that tell the same story as the Biblical event of the Transfiguration but stories that might help me understand more concretely and personally how the Transfiguration plays out in my own life. I’d love it if you would join me!