Today marks the 7th anniversary of my Confirmation and acceptance into the full communion of the Catholic Church. I've been planning to write something about it for a while, but found myself hitting the same wall that is always hit in such matters: the difficulty of writing about oneself.
People don't like to write about themselves as they actually are, for the same reason they don't like to hear their own voices on tape: which is one reason why most of the time, writing about oneself consists mostly of fairly elaborate methods of evading the topic, or else even more elaborate constructions of "brands" and fictionalized versions of the self. To avoid this, I finally decided to describe the process of life and of conversion more as it actually happened: that is, in small moments, in little broken-up narratives, and, as much as possible, using words I wrote during the times in question, intended not for public consumption, but for my own purposes, and mostly addressed to God. We'll see. What follows, then, may or may not add up to a consistent narrative, or a good story, or anything of the sort. I have tried to make it as true as possible, though no doubt I have failed at that, too.
Wake Up
My first memory, so far as I can reasonably tell, is of singing songs in church: the church I grew up in, that is, which for a long while bore the name of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church and which for most of the time I was in it consisted of less than a hundred persons. It is thanks to my membership in this church that I was baptized as an infant, and so began the life of grace.
I have many memories of God as a small child, though most are not very explicit; but they are all memories of presence and love, a presence and love I was never to entirely forget.
Luther
My first memory of the Catholic Church specifically is from a church-sponsored viewing of the 1953 film "Martin Luther," a black-and-white film viewed in a darkened church with much thunder & lightning on the soundtrack. I was very young when I saw this, definitely younger than five, but it made a great impression on me, not least for its portrayal (entirely negative, of course) of the Catholic Church. Not long after, I impressed my parents by remembering that the Catholic Church had sold the forgiveness of sins; but oddly enough, the impression I gained of the Catholic Church was entirely positive. That positive image of the Church remained in my mind as a fixed, immutable thing, increasing gradually with further exposure, through the history books I was later to devour, but never really altering. The Catholic Church was good, and sacred: this I knew with absolute certainty, though not with any real knowledge.
The End
I suffered early childhood trauma from the age of five onwards, and this spelled the end of my life in most obvious ways. From it, I learned fear and distrust of most things in the world, including everyone else, myself, and God. I learned to build barriers to keep out the world, to try to understand and control everything I could, and to escape or shut out the rest. I was very effective at this.
Cathedrals
When I was eleven years old, I went with my family to Strasbourg, and there I saw the great Cathedral there, one of the great masterpieces of Medieval Gothic architecture. I was entirely thunderstruck even by the sight of it, and remember staring in mute awe in front of one of the great arches, thronging with angels and saints and gargoyles, not wanting to leave. Indeed, if I had had my way, I would have spent every moment of my trip there, inside or out.
My life at this time consisted mostly of fear and trauma and distrust, of endless cycles of neurotic control and fearful escape; but here was light, and beauty, and goodness, strong enough to break through my barriers. I had no choice but to seek it.
Chesterton
I would probably be dead if it were not for G.K. Chesterton. I read him first in adolescence, an adolescence which was not at all happy, as might be expected. Here, though, was the same light, the same beauty, the same goodness that I had found in the Church and the Cathedrals. Chesterton taught me that the world, that life, that God, that even my own self was good, and wonderful, and a gift; and I was amazed, because I had for so many years believed the exact opposite. He taught me that being humble, and trusting, and grateful was the best thing of all; and I was amazed, because for so many years I had believed that I ought to be very strong, and proud, and in control of everything, and if I were not there was nothing but guilt, shame, and fearful things. He showed me a different world from the one I had thought that I lived in; and I believed in it.
I can remember a moment of dazed amazement, as I read him, suddenly looking about me, at the concrete, the grass, and above all at the great, blue sky above me; staring in amazement and wonder, and saying: yes, this is good after all. It is good that I am here.
I loved his poetry more than anything, and I learned to memorize it, so that I would have this light with me wherever I went, whenever I was afraid, threatened, traumatized; so that I could summon it to myself, and be comforted. This poem in particular I recited many times throughout my adolescence and beyond, in many dark moments:
(I quote from memory)
The gallows in my garden people say
Is new, and neat, and adequately tall.
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball.
But just as all the neighbors, on the wall,
Are drawing a long breath to shout, 'Hooray,'
The strangest whim has seized me, after all:
I think I will not hang myself today.
Tomorrow is the time I get my pay;
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall;
I see a little cloud all pink and grey;
Perhaps the rector's mother will not call;
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way;
I never read the works of Juvenal:
I think I will not hang myself today.
The world will have another washing day,
The decadents decay, the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall.
Rationalists are growing rational,
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small:
I think I will not hang myself today.
Envoi
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even today your royal head may fall:
I think I will not hang myself today.
The Spiral Never Stops
Middle school and highschool were not happy times for me. I suppose they are not for anyone, but for me, it was especially so. The more I struggled towards the light, the more I found my way barred by the terrible fear, the terrible distrust, and all the other thoughts that were engraved in my very flesh.
As a (very intellectually precocious) small child, I had become convinced that God and others could not be trusted, and so that my safety depended on being knowledgeable and in control, and so to maintain this I must be always struggling to understand, to figure out, to be in control of, whatever it was that I was afraid of, whatever it was that traumatized me, while giving no signs to anyone else of what was going on. So I learned to live a kind of cyclical life; at any time, there would be some problem I was trying to figure out, to solve, to control, not for the sake of abstract knowledge or personal satisfaction, but for the most present and vivid feeling of danger and threat and trauma and fear. So this ate up my days and nights, and never stopped; indeed, never could stop, because it was ultimately based merely on feelings of physical fear and trauma that could never be eradicated in such a way. As soon as I had "figured out" or "controlled" one topic, another topic would assert itself, another possible threat would come to mind, and the cycle would begin again. These topics ranged very widely from the very personal to the very philosophical and everywhere in between. By their very nature, too, they always got worse. This fearful rush to control and know all things produced its very opposite: a desire to escape from everything, to flee, to nullify thought and feeling, to destroy myself. These failures produced guilt, and shame, and further trauma and fear, and a more desperate need to be in control and to know. The cycle never ended, for there were an infinity of things to be afraid of, to know, and to control; but it always wound down.
I had found light, and truth, but I could not simply accept it as such, or follow it; or even if wanted to, fear and habit were stronger. Here, though, I found that the light and truth I found could help me, as well; I found the teachings of the Church, I found her Fathers and the Doctors. They gave me arguments, and ways of knowing, that I could use in the arguments and battles in my head; but they also told me to trust, to have faith, to pray. There was nothing harder for me than this; it was like agony. But being desperate, I tried it. I prayed again, in a different way; I prayed the Rosary, and to and with the Saints; I prayed, for the first time, to Mary. I prayed, if not with faith, at least with desperation and pain.
My first rosary, cheap and plastic, came in the mail to my parents with a charity request; I took it for my own. Another charity sent prayer cards for various saints; I stole them and kept them in a box in my closet. A third sent a crucifix, and I kept it in my wallet from that day forward. When the fear, the thoughts, the images, became overwhelming, I would finger it, and pray.
Thunder & Lightning
The Church was my refuge; but I was terrified to commit to it, because I did not trust it, or God, or myself, or anything. I had been deceived, tricked, and betrayed before, after all. Still, God made it easy for me; and in the end, I had little choice. Things were always getting worse, and I was desperate. I knew no Catholics, but I enrolled in the RCIA program at a local parish. Unfortunately, I did not yet have my license, and so could not attend the meetings; but they gave me CDs, and I would listen to them, barely, while doing homework. Anyway, when it came to knowledge, I already knew most things they would have taught me. Knowledge was never the issue, but trust.
I had learned to hate sunlight over the years, because it was uncaring and indifferent and never changed; I loved thunder, and storms, because they were sorrowful, and powerful, because they promised change, and seemed to say that Lord himself would come down and help me. In a storm, all things felt possible, even happiness; and for many years I would go to the backyard during a storm, cast myself onto a hammock, and recite poems and sing songs to the storm. These were, most likely, the happiest hours I had during those years.
On the night I had my first Confession, there was a sudden, terrible storm and downpour. Wind blew, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, and the drumbeat of the rain was overwhelmingly loud. The Church itself was entirely dark, with priests tucked away in little corners of the sanctuary. I was terrified, but also hopeful, because of the storm. When my turn came, I walked behind a little curve in the wall, and sat on a metal folding chair, where an Indian priest with glasses asked me to make my confession. I did, and he absolved me. When I rose, I was different. The rain beat harder than ever, very close by, fire and fury and strength were all about me; but they were signs of love. My sins were forgiven.
Driftwood & An Anointing
On April 23rd, 2011, I was about a week shy of my 18th birthday. I was terrified, anxious, frightened, of everything and everyone; I was terrified because I had trusted, and committed, and was about to be betrayed.
Still, in passing the time before the Vigil, I went to the Cahaba River with my brothers, and had a very good time. I was anxious and terrified, but then I was most of the time during those years; it did not entirely preclude enjoyment. I found a piece of driftwood, and decided that I would keep it, naming it (whimsically) 'Driftie.' I used it that day for a staff and carried it with me as we walked around the river. On the way back, walking in deeper water, I decided to see if it would float, and let it go in the current; it, naturally, sank immediately, and for a few moments I panicked. It had certainly floated away with the rapid current, and I would never see it again. For whatever reason, this distressed me a bit; it seemed, somehow, significant that I should have it. Then, remembering that I would, in a matter of hours, be Catholic, I decided to do the Catholic thing and pray to St. Anthony. The next moment, my hand touched it in the water, and I took it home with me to get dressed for the service.
I have kept the piece of driftwood ever since then; and it was only, actually, in the last year that I realized that the piece of driftwood resembled nothing, in size and shape and solidity, so much as the crossbar of a Cross, the kind that condemned criminals in ancient Rome were forced to carry to their Crucifixions.
In any event, my actual experience of the ceremony was terrifying enough. I was scared out of my mind, anxious, fearful, convinced I had made a horrible mistake by trusting again, committing myself again, and was about to be betrayed, by God or the Devil, beyond all recall. I knew no Catholics at this time, and even my sponsor (an acquaintance of my father) could not be present at the ceremony, and was replaced by a woman from the parish whom I never met, and whose name I never learned.
Still, the whole thing was over quickly. I made my declaration, was received into the Church, and was Confirmed. I took the name Thomas More.
Wounds & Memories
The substance of the Catholic Faith is in the Sacraments; or rather, in their repetition, over and over and over again, day after day, in space and time and crisis and ease and human flesh.
I was terrified, as a new Catholic, that the Sacraments would not "work," that they were lies and deceptions. I had, after all, bet an awful lot--including my soul and the whole universe--in order to gain access to them. At first, indeed, they did not seem to; or else they worked too effectively. I felt, at times, both.
I went to Confession weekly, I prayed every day, I went to Mass on Sundays and sometimes more often; and all this brought with it a terrible intimacy not only with God, but with my own self, my own thoughts and wounds. I had learned compartmentalization, I had learned deception and concealment, and now I was learning something else. It was not very pleasant.
Becoming a Catholic, in fact, made everything much, much worse by the standards I had held so far: that is, in terms of my ability to hold myself together, to maintain control, to know everything and not let anything show. I became, to my own mind, weak and trusting and ignorant and shameful and suffering what I had tried so hard to avoid suffering, thinking about what I had tried so hard not to think about, exposed to all that I wanted to be safe from. I realized, very belatedly, that I hated myself and was afraid of everything; I realized that I had had, in fact, a rather unhappy childhood and adolescence. These came as a great shock to me, so adept I had become at holding things together.
I realized, very gradually, that I was very sick and barely functioning as a human being, and that if I wanted to get better, I would have to learn to trust other people, God, and (ultimately) myself; and also that I would have to face and remember a great deal, and suffer a great deal as well.
Seaside in Winter
Trusting God was the hardest part, perhaps. The first time I visited Italy, I was not in very good shape; but I was at least, gradually, coming to recognize that fact, and also the solution. I knew I would have to escape the constant, cyclical struggles to know and control and understand everything, to escape everything, to feel guilt and shame and trauma and fear for not controlling and knowing everything. I knew the only way to do that was to learn to trust God; and so I prayed, and also took a few rather drastic measures.
I cried alone in a garden for several hours, and learned, for once and for all, that neither God nor other people nor even stones nor even myself were inside my head and subject to my control. I also went swimming, once, in the Mediterranean in January, staying in the freezing cold water for more than ten minutes, resting in the waves and letting them carry me, with my eyes closed, in pain and then entirely numb, as a means to trust God. The sea, after all, mysterious and vast and powerful as it is, has always seemed to me a fitting image of God, and in particular of the course of our lives, tossed hither and thither on the waves of divine providence and mercy. So it was for me, at least, for a few minutes.
Back in America, in college, I spent a lot of time wandering around in circles, alone and barefoot, and sitting under trees praying. I grew my hair long, as well as a poorly-kept beard. I also took to writing notes, or poems, to God, again alone, usually in the dead of night, and at great length; much of the remnant of this text will consist of excerpts from these notes. Over time, things changed.
Hope
(written in 2013)
It is difficult
to have Faith.
It is impossible
to do anything
or not to do anything
which is the whole problem.
How is it possible
to be happy?
Or even to notice
a pretty thing
without noticing also that, and that, and all those other things
which weave through my soul like spiders
eating and being eaten.
Survival of the fittest
does not apply to animals much
but for pathologies, it is quite apt.
I lack Faith
in myself
and You
and all those other things
that everyone takes for granted.
Yet
perhaps
this is only the beginning.
For Hope
is the beginning of Faith.
And you have given me Hope.
And so
I will journey on
in Hope
hoping that I am really hoping
and that one day
I will be able to believe
and perhaps, one day,
when the stars have fallen from the heavens
and the earth has grown dark
and you have come to crack the sky-scrapers
I will love as well.
It is worth a thought.
Song of Chains
Music is very important to me. I started singing songs out loud about the same time I started memorizing poetry, and for the same reason. It was not until college, though, that I wrote songs of my own, though only for my own impromptu a capella renditions. This song I came up with in an afternoon, mostly in the shower, and in the car on the way to and from a Catholic Student Association event.
It is (so far as it is in my power to describe) about repentance; which is one of the hardest and most necessary things about being a human being. We live, and we choose, and through habits and thoughts we make many things a part of ourselves, many things a basic part of how we experience the world, and relate to other people, and to ourselves, and God. We then choose based on those things, we treat them as though they were our very selves, and fight to defend them. We harden like statues, and sooner or later we realize how trapped we have become; for we have made things a part of ourselves which are false, evil, harmful, destructive, wrong. This was certainly the case with me, since my most basic experience of the world, myself, other people, and God had from early childhood, over so many years of practice, become defined by trauma, fear, and by all the methods of escape and control and self-delusion and self-harm I had developed because of them. These were, to me, my own self; they were hateful to me, full of suffering and horror and loneliness and pain, but also expected, believed in, trusted, familiar, comfortable: and I had to leave them all. That is what this song (which a brother developed chords for and sang at a few shows back in the day) is about. The whole song, in that sense, is in one line the last verse: "Who stole my chains away." They were my chains, and he stole them from me.
It's market day in the suburbs, and the streets are filled with shame;
I'm looking for my master's stall
To sell myself again,
To sell myself again.
But though I look through the neon signs,
And though I look for the chains,
I cannot find my master here.
So I walk the streets alone.
I wander, then I go back home.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind.
Though I look for my master everywhere,
We've reached the end of the line,
I've reached the end of the line.
A lonely road in the desert.
Where the Crossroads shriek and fall;
I'm looking for that muddy man
Who sold me a chain and a ball,
Who sold me a chain and a ball.
But though I fling all my gold away,
And though I tear at my soul,
I cannot rip it out this time:
So I walk the desert road
To the City of Silver and Stone.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind.
Though I try and I try my soul to sell
We've reached the end of the line,
I've reached the end of the line.
A dirty penitentiary
In a tiny crack in the road;
I tell the guards to lock my door,
But the light keeps coming in;
The light keeps coming in.
For though I tell them my crimes again,
And though I scream and I pray,
The guards tell me I've done my time
And fling me over the wall,
Where the angels all glisten and call.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind,
Though I fling my key in the old abyss
I've reached the end of the line,
We've reached the end of the line.
It's raining in my garden,
And the trees all bend and sway:
They're bowing to the one who comes,
Who stole my chains away,
Who stole my chains away.
For though I curse and betray him,
And though I dive in the Pit,
I cannot find my nails and mud:
So I wait in the garden alone;
I wait with the trees and the stones.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind.
Although I pierce his hands and his side
I've reached the end of the line,
We've reached the end of the line,
I've reached the end of my line.
Seventh Station
Suffering is hard to bear, indeed it is unbearable, especially when it is piled up day after day, hour after hour, moment after moment, year after year:
Seventh Station (written 2013 or 2014)
Sometimes
I cannot bear it.
The cross is heavy
the burden which should not have been taken up
the chains I have wound with my own hands
they are all very heavy
Yet mostly
I am cheerful
accepting
suffering
resigned
numbed
tormented
but erect
unbending
but then
sometimes
I cannot bear it.
Yes, my Lord, I confess and I declare
I cannot bear it.
For when your body, O Lord, sank to the earth
your muscles commanded to move
but unmoving
your mind commanded to think
but unthinking
your eyes commanded to see
but unseeing
your soul falling
your body broken
I know, my Lord,
that you could not bear it.
You, too, could not bear the cross.
And yet, my Lord, you were unbroken;
for in you there is that which cannot be broken.
And yet, my God, you were filled with joy;
for in you there is that which made the heavens.
And that is enough.
Brothers & Sisters
The saints have been very kind to me; they have always come into my life at the precise moment I needed them, and accompanied me and taught me very many things. Saint Thomas Aquinas taught me that reality existed. Saint Thomas More taught me that the Catholic Church was true, and worth dying for. Saint Faustina taught me to trust God. Saint Therese of Liseux taught me that God was trustworthy, and actually loved me, despite everything.
I recall a particular day when I held Story of a Soul, St. Therese's autobiography with her image on the cover, and wept lying on the floor, because I saw very plainly and clearly that she was and had been good and pure and happy, and I was wretched and wounded and miserable: and yet she was in some strange way with me and loved me.
There are many other stories, of many other saints; but most of all there is the Blessed Virgin Mary, my mother. I first made her acquaintance, in any conscious sense, in middle school or highschool. And I can remember when I first voluntarily turned to her and asked her help, in all my wretchedness; I lay face down on the gravel carport behind my house, and begged her to help me. She has indeed helped me, in everything, both before that day and since. In my most wretched and miserable and sinful moments, she has been very close to me, and I have seen her love. More than any person, more than any thing or sign or image, she has showed to me and taught me that God loves me, and made me believe it.
I do not think I will ever be able to see the moon or the evening star without thinking of her, because by these images I have been reminded of her, helped, and comforted by her, on many occasions.
Confession
Confession is my favorite part of being Catholic; it is exactly what I wanted and needed, and exactly what I received. But Confession is not easy, at least at first; it requires us to practice repentance, not just as a momentary or rare thing, but as a way of life. We must learn to desire God's will more than our own, to desire to be correct and even humiliated by God, before we can really appreciate the depths of love offered to us in the Confessional.
The overwhelming majority of Confessions I have had have been very simple, very straightforward, and not at all complicated. I went weekly for many years, which means that I mostly confessed the same sins over and over and over again, received a small penance, and left. But often, too, I asked for advice in the Confessional, and received it; and I learned from Saint Faustina to regard all such advice as the voice of God, and to obey it exactly, and have profited very much from it. Very rarely, though, I have been rebuked very strongly by priests in the Confessional.
My favorite story involves me, improbably, going to Confession in the middle of a Papal Mass for the Feast of Saint Peter and Paul (the chief Papal feast day) in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. After confessing my regular list of sins, the priest on duty, who happened to be Irish (there is constant Confession available in St. Peter's in many languages, staffed by priests from all over the world), told me off in the strongest of terms. I had confessed that I did not trust God, and indeed this had been a great struggle to me, as I said; but he was quite annoyed that I had confessed it, and asked me what I meant by it. After all, as he said, it was absolutely plain and evident from my confession that I did trust God very much, and it was an insult to God to pretend otherwise. I was clearly being scrupulous, a perfectionist, overly critical of myself and (most likely) others as well.
Of course, he was perfectly right; I was overly critical of myself, a legacy of the trauma and fear and guilt and shame from my childhood, and by this time (three years after my conversion) I clearly did trust God very much, however much such trust might cause me fear and trauma to consistently follow. In the end, getting told off by this Irish priest (in a thick accent), in the middle of the splendors of the Prince of the Apostles, certainly did me a lot of good.
God speaks to us through the Confessional, even if at times he's a little more irritable than others.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
I wrote this once on the spur of the moment, in 2014, but I found it then, as I find it now, a perfect summation of how I felt, for many years, about my life and all that happened to me in it.
My life
is a loose end,
left over from past miseries.
Rainbow in the Rain
I once saw a triple rainbow over the River Tiber, arranged symmetrically and perfectly above the prow of Tiber Island.
That day, I had wandered through Rome seeking after churches and relics. I visited the relics of Pope St. Martin I, then took the metro to see the relics of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, in the Basilica of San Chrysogono. To get there, I had to cross a bridge over the Tiber, by Tiber island; but before I could get anywhere close, I was surprised by a sudden, torrential downpour, of the sort very uncommon in Rome, but very common in Alabama where I grew up, which soaked me all the way through, in every one of my garments. I took refuge briefly under a tree, and met a Polish man named Peter, who worked for a television station; then I set out to walk across the bridge, as the rain lessened, while thinking about how it was impossible for me to ever be happy in this life, since either the world was too imperfect and broken and evil, or I was, or most likely both; and so the best I could hope for, since God was real and good, was to die quickly and be happy in the next life; since it was arrogant to think that God would perform any kind of sign for me, of the sort that would be required for me to live in this world without at the same time suffering horribly and constantly, as I had always done.
Then I looked up, and saw the most perfect image I have ever seen, entirely perfect and entirely gratuitous, since I was one of only a very few people who even saw it at all, and since it was in every way a direct and individual answer to exactly what I had been thinking at that moment.
After standing staring for a very long time, I walked across the bridge, found the Basilica of San Chrysogono, and stood in the back dripping while Mass was said; at Communion time, I came slowly forward, leaving a trail of water, and received the Lord. Then, after praying before the body of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, and before an image of Saint Joseph, I left the church, went across the street, and had some pizza.
I think of this day very often, still, and I cannot see a rainbow without thinking of it.
Rock Bottom & A Face
I am very familiar with philosophical arguments for the existence of God, as well as with a rather large proportion of the historical events and questions related to Christianity and the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, these are not the primary reason I believe in Catholicism and in God and in Christ; or rather, while they certainly contribute to that belief, they are not at all the reason why that faith long ago turned into something closely resembling certainty, something that I find it, in my moment-to-moment existence, entirely impossible to deny.
The real reason I'm sure about God is because I saw him, or heard him, or felt him, in absolute darkness. After many years of the gradual breaking down of the person I had been, of my pride and my certainties and my moment-to-moment self of trauma and distrust and fear, I reached, at last, rock bottom. I reached a state where I had no conceivable reason to live except God; and I found God was there, and so I had a reason to live. I woke in the morning, and did not want to awake, but because of God I did. I went to bed at night, and did not want to sleep, but because of God I did.
In this darkness, I came to know God as the absolutely certain ground of everything, beyond all my thought and understanding and control. I came to believe that he loved me, and that this love was more certain, a more solid ground for everything, than anything else, including my own will and understanding and control.
This does not sound very convincing, and I suppose it shouldn't. Still, it is the truth. It does not matter what I say or think or feel or know; God is, and he loves each one of us. There is nothing more absolutely certain, and more absolutely trustworthy, than this.
Here are some prayers I prayed often during this time, of (I suppose) my own composition:
Nescio, non possum, non intellego; sed in te credo.
I do not know, I cannot, I do not understand; but I trust in you.
Es, non sum.
You are, I am not.
Not long after this, when I awoke from this strange state, I realized that all my suffering had been worthwhile, after all; that I had found what I was looking for. Fear was replaced by desire for what I had tasted, but did not yet possess.
I've Been Out Walking
I long ago learned to take very long walks, especially in places where no one goes or is supposed to go, behind and under and around things. This is a lonely occupation, to be sure, but also a rich one, full of beauty. God is very close in such places, as he is close to all those who are alone, and in darkness.
40 Days in the Desert
I had learned trust, perhaps, but more than trust is humility. Humility is found in humiliation, in the absolute subjection of our wills to the will of God. This must certainly include those things of which we are afraid, by which we have been traumatized. So it was with me. I had desired and fought to escape the things I feared, but I must be brought back to them, and made to face them, and in this way learn humility, learn that I had nothing to fear because of God. If certainty and peace are in trust, then, too, confidence and courage and can be found only in humility. Ultimately, only the humble can love, because only the humble can really will the good of another as the other is in themselves, despite and in and through everything.
There was a particular time before which I went to Mass, and heard a sermon on accepting suffering from God; and during which every time I opened a Bible, my eyes fell on the passage And he was in the desert for forty days, being tempted by the Devil. It was a very unpleasant time, full of suffering, but not at all, in the end, fearful.
During it, I learned to pray a particular prayer (of my own composition), and prayed it over and over again:
Me porro humilia, Domine, et meam fidem auge.
Humble me further, O Lord, and increase my faith.
What I Was Before
(written 2016)
Iesu,
There are many things I might have been,
Many things I could have been--
I do not think I am any of them.
I am a wreckage,
Or rather, I am someone who has been something
Which was not himself, for most of his life,
And now he wakes
I could have been that quite easily, I think--
And to general applause.
It would have been a great success, I think;
A great good for many
But I am not.
When one has suffered certain things,
One is changed forever;
I do not say it as a curse, or a denial.
It is so.
Whatever I am, whatever I will be,
It is not what I would have been
What I might have been.
[...]
I will never be the good man I might have been.
I think he would have been a very fine fellow, but
I have no desire to be him anymore.
I do not want to be the man I might have been;
I wanted it for a long time, and for a long time I pretended, but
I do not want this anymore.
Iesu, beloved, here I am, the man whom you have created,
Your ruined temple, which is beautiful.
I who was from the beginning ruined, I who for years lived in hell.
I am not at all like the man I might have been, but
I am pleased with myself nonetheless.
I am pleased by what you have created, and redeemed.
Iesu, I know that you love me, and that you guide me,
I know that you have saved me, but
Lord, it is strange, what you have done with me,
What you do with the world:
Through our sin, through our wretchedness
You bring to being many bright gods.
Your wounds, my Jesus, they are the key:
It is in your wounds that I trust.
Your body, the perfect temple:
It needed these wounds, did it not?
Without them, it would not be complete.
They are their own conquest,
The end of all lack, and sin.
Your wounds, my Jesus, your precious wounds:
What a tragedy they are, what a tragedy the world is,
What a tragedy my life is.
But Lord, how beautiful nonetheless.
Lord, we do not see yet what you are weaving with our lives and our souls, but
One day we will see it, and rejoice.
That is all I need to know.
Vindication
As I learned to trust other people, and myself, as I learned to see myself as I am, I found that it was necessary to grieve for myself, and all that I had suffered. I learned to pray the Psalms; and after that, I learned to pray the Book of Job, and the Book of Lamentations. I knew Christ had suffered with me, but I did not realize how bitterly he suffered with me, and with all people, and with what inexpressible tenderness. This I found in the words of Job, in the prayers of Israel, and the Lamentations over Jerusalem. I had hated myself, but Christ had loved me, and willingly suffered with me and for me. For this reason, it was necessary that I love myself also, and grieve for myself; and it was necessary, in the end, that I should be vindicated as Christ was, in the Resurrection and in Eternity.
The Words of Job (written 2017)
Lord, Lord, Lord, I have not even begun
to describe my torments
I have not even begun
to feel them, and remember
It was worse, so much worse
than any word could ever convey
Day after day after day
hour after hour after hour
moment after moment after moment
Each breath, agony, each sight, each
thought, each
imagination
stretched out, out, out
body stretched on the rack, not
feeling, except
agony, and
Oh God, don't you remember how I felt
that day?
[...]
Days and days and days and days
thoughts and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts
Oh God
Oh my dear God
How could I ever accept
being healed?
Being forgiven?
Don't you see, I was tortured to death
not once, not twice, but
so many times
How could you ever expect me to live
after that?
How could you have the cheek to heal me, to save me,
to give me a good and happy life
after all this?
If you were going to rescue me, why not then?
If you were going to give me joy, why not then?
If you were going to keep me safe, why not—
[...]
I have been healed from so much, I have been forgiven
everything, I have been given
such peace, and
I have possessed God
But Lord, I have also suffered
I have also been tortured
to the point of insensibility
until my very nerves frayed and were broken
This is the truth; and it will always be so.
It is the truth, beloved, it is the truth
Maybe one day I will be happy, perhaps one day
I will be fulfilled in everything
But Jesus, I will also be the man
whose arms and legs and hands and eyes
were nailed and pierced again and again and again
as the blood dripped slowly down from his limbs,
down, down, down, into the hungry earth,
the skull's home
until he expired
Oh God, it never got better!
I prayed and prayed and prayed, but
it did not get better
I closed my eyes, I asked you to help me, but
then I opened them, and it was even worse
Yes, even worse!
I knew that you were betraying me, but
Oh God, I don't know why I kept trusting you, why
I kept living
[...]
I could never allow myself to be healed, to be restored completely, for
this would be to betray this wretched man, who expired in agony,
his limbs twitching, unnoticed and unmourned
by anyone
You betrayed me to the death, not once, but innumerable times!
And now I should trust you, and be your spouse?
You betrayed me! You gave me over
to everything I feared, and then you watched
as I was torn to bloody shreds, not all at once, but
piece after bloody piece, drop after drop, until
there was nothing left of me at all
Jesus, these words are from my heart, but
you know that I love you, that I trust you
If I did not trust you, if I did not love you,
I would not write them at all.
This is how it works, beloved.
This is how it is for you and I
Oh God, it is all so much worse
than anyone could ever know
so much worse
even than I know
I cannot be well, Lord, for
this would be to betray this man again,
to leave him alone again
What good will it do for that pathetic wretch, that tortured body,
if I am healed?
What good is it for him, as he perishes?
Will it soothe his pain? Will it console him, or help him to stand?
Will it take the abominations from his mind, the pains from his heart, the
dull and tortured motions from his body?
Is it any good to him at all
if I am healed?
Lord, Lord, Lord, don't you see
that it makes no difference?
I will always be there, then.
I will always be.
Always
The farther I go from it, the more I will remain
I can never leave these places, these people
Never
Never!
This man, he is friendless, and unloved
he has no one, if I leave him
How could I ever leave him?
Shall I let him go down into Hell?
If you won't take care of him, Lord, then
I will have to
Don't you see, I have no choice
Yes, let them all go on, let her go on, but
I must stay with him, as he perishes,
I must stay by his Cross until the end, until the last drop of blood is spilled from his veins
the very last drop
Lord, one cannot even know that one suffers
in such a state
one cannot even mourn for oneself
one cannot even feel!
Yes, one cannot even feel pain, one cannot even
suffer
You cannot weep, you cannot feel, you cannot
be
All you can do is to be stretched, on and on and on and on
forever
Oh God, it was
so much worse than I had feared
always so much worse
yet I survived it!
I don't know how
I was bled to death, but somehow
you wanted me to keep living regardless
Damn you
I did not even have the satisfaction of dying
Damn you, beloved
Oh Lord, thank you
Jesus, beloved, thank you
I don't know for what, but
simply for my existence, for my
being
in torment and out of it
I am grateful, I am grateful
for every nasty, ugly detail
of what I thought and felt and imagined and suffered
all the time
For every horror, every monstrosity, every
drop of blood
Oh God, I cannot
I cannot
How could I ever?
How could I ever even feel again?
How could I ever breathe, since breathing was torture?
How could I ever see, since seeing was torture?
Imagine, think, do, touch, smile, laugh, feel, be
It's a bit much to ask, don't you think?
When once one's whole existence has been torture
it is very unfair to ask that one exist again
I should have died
a long time ago
I should have been stillborn, perhaps, or
perhaps sometime on my fifth birthday
Before all this torture, all this sin, all this
nothing
Oh God, why was there nothing?
Nothing at all?
If you exist, then
why was there nothing?
If you love me, why?
Lord, I can so easily
mouth pious platitudes, I can so easily
concoct nice explanations, but
this is the whole point—
that in those moments, I
had determined, had decided
what it would mean for you to help me
or abandon me, what
what showed that you loved me
or abandoned me;
and then, oh, oh, you
you wrecked them all
You did not live up
to a single one of my standards
You brought me so much lower, that
I could not even explain anymore
I could not explain why you had abandoned me.
I'm not sure I can now either
Yes, I had to be broken down, but
Oh God, did it have to hurt so much?
I had to let go, but
did it have to be such torture that
for years after, I tried to control, so that
I would not have to remember, or return?
Yes, it helped me, you have
brought good out of it, but
that doesn't explain it at all
that doesn't justify
It did not have to happen this way, you
did not have to do this to me
You chose, you chose
Like Job, I cry out to you: why?
It was not at all right, that I should be tortured this much
It was not at all just, not at all good
It was so much worse than everything, and
I don't see how I can ever forgive you for that
Jesus, perhaps
I am arrogant after all
Perhaps I am a proud fool, but
I will not be silent
Vindicate this man, this pathetic wretch, who is tortured endlessly
vindicate him
Show to him that you love him, that
his enemies are not in the right, that
the demons who tormented him were not justified, that
you will punish them for what they did to him
Yes, vindicate him, and
overcome everything
overcome this torture, do not merely undo it
but conquer it entirely
Put his enemies to shame, the ones who tortured him,
who pierced his veins and watched, laughing,
as his blood flowed
Make them ashamed, and humble them, because
they loaded him with reproaches, because
they mocked him, and laughed at him, and spit into his wounds
It was not at all right, it was not all just
Declare this, and then vindicate him
Yes, yes, yes, yes, Lord
I await the resurrection with expectation
I will not be silent
until the Lord himself hears my cause
Until he himself shows his wounds as mine,
and mine as his
and all the saints of God adore them
Until every tear is wiped from my eye, and
every reproach from my heart
Until my broken body is raised up
and made to shine with eternal light
and I myself rule with him forever
Lord, beloved, I trust in you
I love you
Thank you
Amen.
Ecclesia
When I joined the Catholic Church, I entered a vast and worldwide community, one stretching across space and time. I found the saints as brothers and sisters, but gradually, too, I have learned to find living brothers and sisters as well, in the Church and in the world. I have learned, very slowly, how to love, and how to be loved; and I am still learning.
Human persons are a lot like God, but also very different; the love of God is an absolute certainty, whereas human love wanes and rises and flows. But the more love from and for persons rests on the love of God, the more certain it becomes, the more beautiful, the more perfect. I have learned to see this, too; and it is the whole point of the Church on earth and in heaven. God shows his love to us, normally, through human persons; and we show our love for God, normally, through human persons as well. This is not a flaw, but a glory of the divine plan.
Human persons are very small and foolish and ignorant and confused and different and sinful, but that is, really, the whole point; for Christ loves us, precisely as these things. We are very different, too, especially as male and female, and we find it very difficult to understand and live in communion with one another. The more we are immersed in the love of Christ, though, the more we will love all persons, and be willing to be loved by them, as just these things. The more we do so, the more we will become like God.
Here is a prayer I prayed for the first time in the presence of a particular person whom I wanted to love, and which I pray again now on occasion for just this purpose:
Da mihi quemdam participationem in caritate tua erga hunc hominem, participationem humilem, pacificam, et fidelem, per Christum Dominum Nostrum. Amen.
Give me a certain participation in your love for this person, a humble, peaceful, and faithful participation, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
If I Didn't Have Your Love to Make it Real
Here is a song that I think captures, better than most things, far, far better, almost certainly, than all the foregoing narratives, what I have been talking about and what I have lived. It is, naturally, one of my very favorite songs:
Life
Today marks the end of the seventh year I have been a Catholic; and these have certainly been full and eventful years. All that I have written above is a very small and eccentric sampling of these years and of my life in general. The final narrative will have to wait for Eternity, as it must for all our lives.
When I became Catholic, I was less than a week shy of my 18th birthday. Today, I am about a week shy of my 25th birthday. This is still, I am told, fairly young; and could conceivably leave very many years to come. Or, of course, I could die tomorrow, or sooner. Either way, I am content.
I am not quite sure, or rather I have not even the faintest idea, of what my remaining years, or days, or even hours will hold. God knows, and the only thing I have learned in my life is that it is right and good and reasonable to trust in him, and to love him. I hope, and I pray, that I will continue to do so.
Please, dear reader, pray for me, and I will pray for you as well.
Godspeed.
People don't like to write about themselves as they actually are, for the same reason they don't like to hear their own voices on tape: which is one reason why most of the time, writing about oneself consists mostly of fairly elaborate methods of evading the topic, or else even more elaborate constructions of "brands" and fictionalized versions of the self. To avoid this, I finally decided to describe the process of life and of conversion more as it actually happened: that is, in small moments, in little broken-up narratives, and, as much as possible, using words I wrote during the times in question, intended not for public consumption, but for my own purposes, and mostly addressed to God. We'll see. What follows, then, may or may not add up to a consistent narrative, or a good story, or anything of the sort. I have tried to make it as true as possible, though no doubt I have failed at that, too.
Wake Up
My first memory, so far as I can reasonably tell, is of singing songs in church: the church I grew up in, that is, which for a long while bore the name of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church and which for most of the time I was in it consisted of less than a hundred persons. It is thanks to my membership in this church that I was baptized as an infant, and so began the life of grace.
I have many memories of God as a small child, though most are not very explicit; but they are all memories of presence and love, a presence and love I was never to entirely forget.
Luther
The End
I suffered early childhood trauma from the age of five onwards, and this spelled the end of my life in most obvious ways. From it, I learned fear and distrust of most things in the world, including everyone else, myself, and God. I learned to build barriers to keep out the world, to try to understand and control everything I could, and to escape or shut out the rest. I was very effective at this.
Cathedrals
When I was eleven years old, I went with my family to Strasbourg, and there I saw the great Cathedral there, one of the great masterpieces of Medieval Gothic architecture. I was entirely thunderstruck even by the sight of it, and remember staring in mute awe in front of one of the great arches, thronging with angels and saints and gargoyles, not wanting to leave. Indeed, if I had had my way, I would have spent every moment of my trip there, inside or out.
My life at this time consisted mostly of fear and trauma and distrust, of endless cycles of neurotic control and fearful escape; but here was light, and beauty, and goodness, strong enough to break through my barriers. I had no choice but to seek it.
Chesterton
I would probably be dead if it were not for G.K. Chesterton. I read him first in adolescence, an adolescence which was not at all happy, as might be expected. Here, though, was the same light, the same beauty, the same goodness that I had found in the Church and the Cathedrals. Chesterton taught me that the world, that life, that God, that even my own self was good, and wonderful, and a gift; and I was amazed, because I had for so many years believed the exact opposite. He taught me that being humble, and trusting, and grateful was the best thing of all; and I was amazed, because for so many years I had believed that I ought to be very strong, and proud, and in control of everything, and if I were not there was nothing but guilt, shame, and fearful things. He showed me a different world from the one I had thought that I lived in; and I believed in it.
I can remember a moment of dazed amazement, as I read him, suddenly looking about me, at the concrete, the grass, and above all at the great, blue sky above me; staring in amazement and wonder, and saying: yes, this is good after all. It is good that I am here.
I loved his poetry more than anything, and I learned to memorize it, so that I would have this light with me wherever I went, whenever I was afraid, threatened, traumatized; so that I could summon it to myself, and be comforted. This poem in particular I recited many times throughout my adolescence and beyond, in many dark moments:
(I quote from memory)
The gallows in my garden people say
Is new, and neat, and adequately tall.
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball.
But just as all the neighbors, on the wall,
Are drawing a long breath to shout, 'Hooray,'
The strangest whim has seized me, after all:
I think I will not hang myself today.
Tomorrow is the time I get my pay;
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall;
I see a little cloud all pink and grey;
Perhaps the rector's mother will not call;
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way;
I never read the works of Juvenal:
I think I will not hang myself today.
The world will have another washing day,
The decadents decay, the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall.
Rationalists are growing rational,
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small:
I think I will not hang myself today.
Envoi
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even today your royal head may fall:
I think I will not hang myself today.
The Spiral Never Stops
Middle school and highschool were not happy times for me. I suppose they are not for anyone, but for me, it was especially so. The more I struggled towards the light, the more I found my way barred by the terrible fear, the terrible distrust, and all the other thoughts that were engraved in my very flesh.
As a (very intellectually precocious) small child, I had become convinced that God and others could not be trusted, and so that my safety depended on being knowledgeable and in control, and so to maintain this I must be always struggling to understand, to figure out, to be in control of, whatever it was that I was afraid of, whatever it was that traumatized me, while giving no signs to anyone else of what was going on. So I learned to live a kind of cyclical life; at any time, there would be some problem I was trying to figure out, to solve, to control, not for the sake of abstract knowledge or personal satisfaction, but for the most present and vivid feeling of danger and threat and trauma and fear. So this ate up my days and nights, and never stopped; indeed, never could stop, because it was ultimately based merely on feelings of physical fear and trauma that could never be eradicated in such a way. As soon as I had "figured out" or "controlled" one topic, another topic would assert itself, another possible threat would come to mind, and the cycle would begin again. These topics ranged very widely from the very personal to the very philosophical and everywhere in between. By their very nature, too, they always got worse. This fearful rush to control and know all things produced its very opposite: a desire to escape from everything, to flee, to nullify thought and feeling, to destroy myself. These failures produced guilt, and shame, and further trauma and fear, and a more desperate need to be in control and to know. The cycle never ended, for there were an infinity of things to be afraid of, to know, and to control; but it always wound down.
I had found light, and truth, but I could not simply accept it as such, or follow it; or even if wanted to, fear and habit were stronger. Here, though, I found that the light and truth I found could help me, as well; I found the teachings of the Church, I found her Fathers and the Doctors. They gave me arguments, and ways of knowing, that I could use in the arguments and battles in my head; but they also told me to trust, to have faith, to pray. There was nothing harder for me than this; it was like agony. But being desperate, I tried it. I prayed again, in a different way; I prayed the Rosary, and to and with the Saints; I prayed, for the first time, to Mary. I prayed, if not with faith, at least with desperation and pain.
My first rosary, cheap and plastic, came in the mail to my parents with a charity request; I took it for my own. Another charity sent prayer cards for various saints; I stole them and kept them in a box in my closet. A third sent a crucifix, and I kept it in my wallet from that day forward. When the fear, the thoughts, the images, became overwhelming, I would finger it, and pray.
Thunder & Lightning
The Church was my refuge; but I was terrified to commit to it, because I did not trust it, or God, or myself, or anything. I had been deceived, tricked, and betrayed before, after all. Still, God made it easy for me; and in the end, I had little choice. Things were always getting worse, and I was desperate. I knew no Catholics, but I enrolled in the RCIA program at a local parish. Unfortunately, I did not yet have my license, and so could not attend the meetings; but they gave me CDs, and I would listen to them, barely, while doing homework. Anyway, when it came to knowledge, I already knew most things they would have taught me. Knowledge was never the issue, but trust.
I had learned to hate sunlight over the years, because it was uncaring and indifferent and never changed; I loved thunder, and storms, because they were sorrowful, and powerful, because they promised change, and seemed to say that Lord himself would come down and help me. In a storm, all things felt possible, even happiness; and for many years I would go to the backyard during a storm, cast myself onto a hammock, and recite poems and sing songs to the storm. These were, most likely, the happiest hours I had during those years.
On the night I had my first Confession, there was a sudden, terrible storm and downpour. Wind blew, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, and the drumbeat of the rain was overwhelmingly loud. The Church itself was entirely dark, with priests tucked away in little corners of the sanctuary. I was terrified, but also hopeful, because of the storm. When my turn came, I walked behind a little curve in the wall, and sat on a metal folding chair, where an Indian priest with glasses asked me to make my confession. I did, and he absolved me. When I rose, I was different. The rain beat harder than ever, very close by, fire and fury and strength were all about me; but they were signs of love. My sins were forgiven.
Driftwood & An Anointing
On April 23rd, 2011, I was about a week shy of my 18th birthday. I was terrified, anxious, frightened, of everything and everyone; I was terrified because I had trusted, and committed, and was about to be betrayed.
Still, in passing the time before the Vigil, I went to the Cahaba River with my brothers, and had a very good time. I was anxious and terrified, but then I was most of the time during those years; it did not entirely preclude enjoyment. I found a piece of driftwood, and decided that I would keep it, naming it (whimsically) 'Driftie.' I used it that day for a staff and carried it with me as we walked around the river. On the way back, walking in deeper water, I decided to see if it would float, and let it go in the current; it, naturally, sank immediately, and for a few moments I panicked. It had certainly floated away with the rapid current, and I would never see it again. For whatever reason, this distressed me a bit; it seemed, somehow, significant that I should have it. Then, remembering that I would, in a matter of hours, be Catholic, I decided to do the Catholic thing and pray to St. Anthony. The next moment, my hand touched it in the water, and I took it home with me to get dressed for the service.
I have kept the piece of driftwood ever since then; and it was only, actually, in the last year that I realized that the piece of driftwood resembled nothing, in size and shape and solidity, so much as the crossbar of a Cross, the kind that condemned criminals in ancient Rome were forced to carry to their Crucifixions.
In any event, my actual experience of the ceremony was terrifying enough. I was scared out of my mind, anxious, fearful, convinced I had made a horrible mistake by trusting again, committing myself again, and was about to be betrayed, by God or the Devil, beyond all recall. I knew no Catholics at this time, and even my sponsor (an acquaintance of my father) could not be present at the ceremony, and was replaced by a woman from the parish whom I never met, and whose name I never learned.
Still, the whole thing was over quickly. I made my declaration, was received into the Church, and was Confirmed. I took the name Thomas More.
Wounds & Memories
The substance of the Catholic Faith is in the Sacraments; or rather, in their repetition, over and over and over again, day after day, in space and time and crisis and ease and human flesh.
I was terrified, as a new Catholic, that the Sacraments would not "work," that they were lies and deceptions. I had, after all, bet an awful lot--including my soul and the whole universe--in order to gain access to them. At first, indeed, they did not seem to; or else they worked too effectively. I felt, at times, both.
I went to Confession weekly, I prayed every day, I went to Mass on Sundays and sometimes more often; and all this brought with it a terrible intimacy not only with God, but with my own self, my own thoughts and wounds. I had learned compartmentalization, I had learned deception and concealment, and now I was learning something else. It was not very pleasant.
Becoming a Catholic, in fact, made everything much, much worse by the standards I had held so far: that is, in terms of my ability to hold myself together, to maintain control, to know everything and not let anything show. I became, to my own mind, weak and trusting and ignorant and shameful and suffering what I had tried so hard to avoid suffering, thinking about what I had tried so hard not to think about, exposed to all that I wanted to be safe from. I realized, very belatedly, that I hated myself and was afraid of everything; I realized that I had had, in fact, a rather unhappy childhood and adolescence. These came as a great shock to me, so adept I had become at holding things together.
I realized, very gradually, that I was very sick and barely functioning as a human being, and that if I wanted to get better, I would have to learn to trust other people, God, and (ultimately) myself; and also that I would have to face and remember a great deal, and suffer a great deal as well.
Seaside in Winter
Trusting God was the hardest part, perhaps. The first time I visited Italy, I was not in very good shape; but I was at least, gradually, coming to recognize that fact, and also the solution. I knew I would have to escape the constant, cyclical struggles to know and control and understand everything, to escape everything, to feel guilt and shame and trauma and fear for not controlling and knowing everything. I knew the only way to do that was to learn to trust God; and so I prayed, and also took a few rather drastic measures.
I cried alone in a garden for several hours, and learned, for once and for all, that neither God nor other people nor even stones nor even myself were inside my head and subject to my control. I also went swimming, once, in the Mediterranean in January, staying in the freezing cold water for more than ten minutes, resting in the waves and letting them carry me, with my eyes closed, in pain and then entirely numb, as a means to trust God. The sea, after all, mysterious and vast and powerful as it is, has always seemed to me a fitting image of God, and in particular of the course of our lives, tossed hither and thither on the waves of divine providence and mercy. So it was for me, at least, for a few minutes.
Back in America, in college, I spent a lot of time wandering around in circles, alone and barefoot, and sitting under trees praying. I grew my hair long, as well as a poorly-kept beard. I also took to writing notes, or poems, to God, again alone, usually in the dead of night, and at great length; much of the remnant of this text will consist of excerpts from these notes. Over time, things changed.
Hope
(written in 2013)
It is difficult
to have Faith.
It is impossible
to do anything
or not to do anything
which is the whole problem.
How is it possible
to be happy?
Or even to notice
a pretty thing
without noticing also that, and that, and all those other things
which weave through my soul like spiders
eating and being eaten.
Survival of the fittest
does not apply to animals much
but for pathologies, it is quite apt.
I lack Faith
in myself
and You
and all those other things
that everyone takes for granted.
Yet
perhaps
this is only the beginning.
For Hope
is the beginning of Faith.
And you have given me Hope.
And so
I will journey on
in Hope
hoping that I am really hoping
and that one day
I will be able to believe
and perhaps, one day,
when the stars have fallen from the heavens
and the earth has grown dark
and you have come to crack the sky-scrapers
I will love as well.
It is worth a thought.
Song of Chains
Music is very important to me. I started singing songs out loud about the same time I started memorizing poetry, and for the same reason. It was not until college, though, that I wrote songs of my own, though only for my own impromptu a capella renditions. This song I came up with in an afternoon, mostly in the shower, and in the car on the way to and from a Catholic Student Association event.
It is (so far as it is in my power to describe) about repentance; which is one of the hardest and most necessary things about being a human being. We live, and we choose, and through habits and thoughts we make many things a part of ourselves, many things a basic part of how we experience the world, and relate to other people, and to ourselves, and God. We then choose based on those things, we treat them as though they were our very selves, and fight to defend them. We harden like statues, and sooner or later we realize how trapped we have become; for we have made things a part of ourselves which are false, evil, harmful, destructive, wrong. This was certainly the case with me, since my most basic experience of the world, myself, other people, and God had from early childhood, over so many years of practice, become defined by trauma, fear, and by all the methods of escape and control and self-delusion and self-harm I had developed because of them. These were, to me, my own self; they were hateful to me, full of suffering and horror and loneliness and pain, but also expected, believed in, trusted, familiar, comfortable: and I had to leave them all. That is what this song (which a brother developed chords for and sang at a few shows back in the day) is about. The whole song, in that sense, is in one line the last verse: "Who stole my chains away." They were my chains, and he stole them from me.
It's market day in the suburbs, and the streets are filled with shame;
I'm looking for my master's stall
To sell myself again,
To sell myself again.
But though I look through the neon signs,
And though I look for the chains,
I cannot find my master here.
So I walk the streets alone.
I wander, then I go back home.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind.
Though I look for my master everywhere,
We've reached the end of the line,
I've reached the end of the line.
A lonely road in the desert.
Where the Crossroads shriek and fall;
I'm looking for that muddy man
Who sold me a chain and a ball,
Who sold me a chain and a ball.
But though I fling all my gold away,
And though I tear at my soul,
I cannot rip it out this time:
So I walk the desert road
To the City of Silver and Stone.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind.
Though I try and I try my soul to sell
We've reached the end of the line,
I've reached the end of the line.
A dirty penitentiary
In a tiny crack in the road;
I tell the guards to lock my door,
But the light keeps coming in;
The light keeps coming in.
For though I tell them my crimes again,
And though I scream and I pray,
The guards tell me I've done my time
And fling me over the wall,
Where the angels all glisten and call.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind,
Though I fling my key in the old abyss
I've reached the end of the line,
We've reached the end of the line.
It's raining in my garden,
And the trees all bend and sway:
They're bowing to the one who comes,
Who stole my chains away,
Who stole my chains away.
For though I curse and betray him,
And though I dive in the Pit,
I cannot find my nails and mud:
So I wait in the garden alone;
I wait with the trees and the stones.
For there are no walls to hold me,
And there are no chains to bind.
Although I pierce his hands and his side
I've reached the end of the line,
We've reached the end of the line,
I've reached the end of my line.
Seventh Station
Suffering is hard to bear, indeed it is unbearable, especially when it is piled up day after day, hour after hour, moment after moment, year after year:
Seventh Station (written 2013 or 2014)
Sometimes
I cannot bear it.
The cross is heavy
the burden which should not have been taken up
the chains I have wound with my own hands
they are all very heavy
Yet mostly
I am cheerful
accepting
suffering
resigned
numbed
tormented
but erect
unbending
but then
sometimes
I cannot bear it.
Yes, my Lord, I confess and I declare
I cannot bear it.
For when your body, O Lord, sank to the earth
your muscles commanded to move
but unmoving
your mind commanded to think
but unthinking
your eyes commanded to see
but unseeing
your soul falling
your body broken
I know, my Lord,
that you could not bear it.
You, too, could not bear the cross.
And yet, my Lord, you were unbroken;
for in you there is that which cannot be broken.
And yet, my God, you were filled with joy;
for in you there is that which made the heavens.
And that is enough.
Brothers & Sisters
The saints have been very kind to me; they have always come into my life at the precise moment I needed them, and accompanied me and taught me very many things. Saint Thomas Aquinas taught me that reality existed. Saint Thomas More taught me that the Catholic Church was true, and worth dying for. Saint Faustina taught me to trust God. Saint Therese of Liseux taught me that God was trustworthy, and actually loved me, despite everything.
I recall a particular day when I held Story of a Soul, St. Therese's autobiography with her image on the cover, and wept lying on the floor, because I saw very plainly and clearly that she was and had been good and pure and happy, and I was wretched and wounded and miserable: and yet she was in some strange way with me and loved me.
There are many other stories, of many other saints; but most of all there is the Blessed Virgin Mary, my mother. I first made her acquaintance, in any conscious sense, in middle school or highschool. And I can remember when I first voluntarily turned to her and asked her help, in all my wretchedness; I lay face down on the gravel carport behind my house, and begged her to help me. She has indeed helped me, in everything, both before that day and since. In my most wretched and miserable and sinful moments, she has been very close to me, and I have seen her love. More than any person, more than any thing or sign or image, she has showed to me and taught me that God loves me, and made me believe it.
I do not think I will ever be able to see the moon or the evening star without thinking of her, because by these images I have been reminded of her, helped, and comforted by her, on many occasions.
Confession
Confession is my favorite part of being Catholic; it is exactly what I wanted and needed, and exactly what I received. But Confession is not easy, at least at first; it requires us to practice repentance, not just as a momentary or rare thing, but as a way of life. We must learn to desire God's will more than our own, to desire to be correct and even humiliated by God, before we can really appreciate the depths of love offered to us in the Confessional.
The overwhelming majority of Confessions I have had have been very simple, very straightforward, and not at all complicated. I went weekly for many years, which means that I mostly confessed the same sins over and over and over again, received a small penance, and left. But often, too, I asked for advice in the Confessional, and received it; and I learned from Saint Faustina to regard all such advice as the voice of God, and to obey it exactly, and have profited very much from it. Very rarely, though, I have been rebuked very strongly by priests in the Confessional.
My favorite story involves me, improbably, going to Confession in the middle of a Papal Mass for the Feast of Saint Peter and Paul (the chief Papal feast day) in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. After confessing my regular list of sins, the priest on duty, who happened to be Irish (there is constant Confession available in St. Peter's in many languages, staffed by priests from all over the world), told me off in the strongest of terms. I had confessed that I did not trust God, and indeed this had been a great struggle to me, as I said; but he was quite annoyed that I had confessed it, and asked me what I meant by it. After all, as he said, it was absolutely plain and evident from my confession that I did trust God very much, and it was an insult to God to pretend otherwise. I was clearly being scrupulous, a perfectionist, overly critical of myself and (most likely) others as well.
Of course, he was perfectly right; I was overly critical of myself, a legacy of the trauma and fear and guilt and shame from my childhood, and by this time (three years after my conversion) I clearly did trust God very much, however much such trust might cause me fear and trauma to consistently follow. In the end, getting told off by this Irish priest (in a thick accent), in the middle of the splendors of the Prince of the Apostles, certainly did me a lot of good.
God speaks to us through the Confessional, even if at times he's a little more irritable than others.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
I wrote this once on the spur of the moment, in 2014, but I found it then, as I find it now, a perfect summation of how I felt, for many years, about my life and all that happened to me in it.
My life
is a loose end,
left over from past miseries.
Rainbow in the Rain
I once saw a triple rainbow over the River Tiber, arranged symmetrically and perfectly above the prow of Tiber Island.
That day, I had wandered through Rome seeking after churches and relics. I visited the relics of Pope St. Martin I, then took the metro to see the relics of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, in the Basilica of San Chrysogono. To get there, I had to cross a bridge over the Tiber, by Tiber island; but before I could get anywhere close, I was surprised by a sudden, torrential downpour, of the sort very uncommon in Rome, but very common in Alabama where I grew up, which soaked me all the way through, in every one of my garments. I took refuge briefly under a tree, and met a Polish man named Peter, who worked for a television station; then I set out to walk across the bridge, as the rain lessened, while thinking about how it was impossible for me to ever be happy in this life, since either the world was too imperfect and broken and evil, or I was, or most likely both; and so the best I could hope for, since God was real and good, was to die quickly and be happy in the next life; since it was arrogant to think that God would perform any kind of sign for me, of the sort that would be required for me to live in this world without at the same time suffering horribly and constantly, as I had always done.
Then I looked up, and saw the most perfect image I have ever seen, entirely perfect and entirely gratuitous, since I was one of only a very few people who even saw it at all, and since it was in every way a direct and individual answer to exactly what I had been thinking at that moment.
After standing staring for a very long time, I walked across the bridge, found the Basilica of San Chrysogono, and stood in the back dripping while Mass was said; at Communion time, I came slowly forward, leaving a trail of water, and received the Lord. Then, after praying before the body of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, and before an image of Saint Joseph, I left the church, went across the street, and had some pizza.
I think of this day very often, still, and I cannot see a rainbow without thinking of it.
Rock Bottom & A Face
I am very familiar with philosophical arguments for the existence of God, as well as with a rather large proportion of the historical events and questions related to Christianity and the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, these are not the primary reason I believe in Catholicism and in God and in Christ; or rather, while they certainly contribute to that belief, they are not at all the reason why that faith long ago turned into something closely resembling certainty, something that I find it, in my moment-to-moment existence, entirely impossible to deny.
The real reason I'm sure about God is because I saw him, or heard him, or felt him, in absolute darkness. After many years of the gradual breaking down of the person I had been, of my pride and my certainties and my moment-to-moment self of trauma and distrust and fear, I reached, at last, rock bottom. I reached a state where I had no conceivable reason to live except God; and I found God was there, and so I had a reason to live. I woke in the morning, and did not want to awake, but because of God I did. I went to bed at night, and did not want to sleep, but because of God I did.
In this darkness, I came to know God as the absolutely certain ground of everything, beyond all my thought and understanding and control. I came to believe that he loved me, and that this love was more certain, a more solid ground for everything, than anything else, including my own will and understanding and control.
This does not sound very convincing, and I suppose it shouldn't. Still, it is the truth. It does not matter what I say or think or feel or know; God is, and he loves each one of us. There is nothing more absolutely certain, and more absolutely trustworthy, than this.
Here are some prayers I prayed often during this time, of (I suppose) my own composition:
Nescio, non possum, non intellego; sed in te credo.
I do not know, I cannot, I do not understand; but I trust in you.
Es, non sum.
You are, I am not.
Not long after this, when I awoke from this strange state, I realized that all my suffering had been worthwhile, after all; that I had found what I was looking for. Fear was replaced by desire for what I had tasted, but did not yet possess.
I've Been Out Walking
I long ago learned to take very long walks, especially in places where no one goes or is supposed to go, behind and under and around things. This is a lonely occupation, to be sure, but also a rich one, full of beauty. God is very close in such places, as he is close to all those who are alone, and in darkness.
40 Days in the Desert
I had learned trust, perhaps, but more than trust is humility. Humility is found in humiliation, in the absolute subjection of our wills to the will of God. This must certainly include those things of which we are afraid, by which we have been traumatized. So it was with me. I had desired and fought to escape the things I feared, but I must be brought back to them, and made to face them, and in this way learn humility, learn that I had nothing to fear because of God. If certainty and peace are in trust, then, too, confidence and courage and can be found only in humility. Ultimately, only the humble can love, because only the humble can really will the good of another as the other is in themselves, despite and in and through everything.
There was a particular time before which I went to Mass, and heard a sermon on accepting suffering from God; and during which every time I opened a Bible, my eyes fell on the passage And he was in the desert for forty days, being tempted by the Devil. It was a very unpleasant time, full of suffering, but not at all, in the end, fearful.
During it, I learned to pray a particular prayer (of my own composition), and prayed it over and over again:
Me porro humilia, Domine, et meam fidem auge.
Humble me further, O Lord, and increase my faith.
What I Was Before
(written 2016)
Iesu,
There are many things I might have been,
Many things I could have been--
I do not think I am any of them.
I am a wreckage,
Or rather, I am someone who has been something
Which was not himself, for most of his life,
And now he wakes
I could have been that quite easily, I think--
And to general applause.
It would have been a great success, I think;
A great good for many
But I am not.
When one has suffered certain things,
One is changed forever;
I do not say it as a curse, or a denial.
It is so.
Whatever I am, whatever I will be,
It is not what I would have been
What I might have been.
[...]
I will never be the good man I might have been.
I think he would have been a very fine fellow, but
I have no desire to be him anymore.
I do not want to be the man I might have been;
I wanted it for a long time, and for a long time I pretended, but
I do not want this anymore.
Iesu, beloved, here I am, the man whom you have created,
Your ruined temple, which is beautiful.
I who was from the beginning ruined, I who for years lived in hell.
I am not at all like the man I might have been, but
I am pleased with myself nonetheless.
I am pleased by what you have created, and redeemed.
Iesu, I know that you love me, and that you guide me,
I know that you have saved me, but
Lord, it is strange, what you have done with me,
What you do with the world:
Through our sin, through our wretchedness
You bring to being many bright gods.
Your wounds, my Jesus, they are the key:
It is in your wounds that I trust.
Your body, the perfect temple:
It needed these wounds, did it not?
Without them, it would not be complete.
They are their own conquest,
The end of all lack, and sin.
Your wounds, my Jesus, your precious wounds:
What a tragedy they are, what a tragedy the world is,
What a tragedy my life is.
But Lord, how beautiful nonetheless.
Lord, we do not see yet what you are weaving with our lives and our souls, but
One day we will see it, and rejoice.
That is all I need to know.
Vindication
As I learned to trust other people, and myself, as I learned to see myself as I am, I found that it was necessary to grieve for myself, and all that I had suffered. I learned to pray the Psalms; and after that, I learned to pray the Book of Job, and the Book of Lamentations. I knew Christ had suffered with me, but I did not realize how bitterly he suffered with me, and with all people, and with what inexpressible tenderness. This I found in the words of Job, in the prayers of Israel, and the Lamentations over Jerusalem. I had hated myself, but Christ had loved me, and willingly suffered with me and for me. For this reason, it was necessary that I love myself also, and grieve for myself; and it was necessary, in the end, that I should be vindicated as Christ was, in the Resurrection and in Eternity.
The Words of Job (written 2017)
Lord, Lord, Lord, I have not even begun
to describe my torments
I have not even begun
to feel them, and remember
It was worse, so much worse
than any word could ever convey
Day after day after day
hour after hour after hour
moment after moment after moment
Each breath, agony, each sight, each
thought, each
imagination
stretched out, out, out
body stretched on the rack, not
feeling, except
agony, and
Oh God, don't you remember how I felt
that day?
[...]
Days and days and days and days
thoughts and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts
Oh God
Oh my dear God
How could I ever accept
being healed?
Being forgiven?
Don't you see, I was tortured to death
not once, not twice, but
so many times
How could you ever expect me to live
after that?
How could you have the cheek to heal me, to save me,
to give me a good and happy life
after all this?
If you were going to rescue me, why not then?
If you were going to give me joy, why not then?
If you were going to keep me safe, why not—
[...]
I have been healed from so much, I have been forgiven
everything, I have been given
such peace, and
I have possessed God
But Lord, I have also suffered
I have also been tortured
to the point of insensibility
until my very nerves frayed and were broken
This is the truth; and it will always be so.
It is the truth, beloved, it is the truth
Maybe one day I will be happy, perhaps one day
I will be fulfilled in everything
But Jesus, I will also be the man
whose arms and legs and hands and eyes
were nailed and pierced again and again and again
as the blood dripped slowly down from his limbs,
down, down, down, into the hungry earth,
the skull's home
until he expired
Oh God, it never got better!
I prayed and prayed and prayed, but
it did not get better
I closed my eyes, I asked you to help me, but
then I opened them, and it was even worse
Yes, even worse!
I knew that you were betraying me, but
Oh God, I don't know why I kept trusting you, why
I kept living
[...]
I could never allow myself to be healed, to be restored completely, for
this would be to betray this wretched man, who expired in agony,
his limbs twitching, unnoticed and unmourned
by anyone
You betrayed me to the death, not once, but innumerable times!
And now I should trust you, and be your spouse?
You betrayed me! You gave me over
to everything I feared, and then you watched
as I was torn to bloody shreds, not all at once, but
piece after bloody piece, drop after drop, until
there was nothing left of me at all
Jesus, these words are from my heart, but
you know that I love you, that I trust you
If I did not trust you, if I did not love you,
I would not write them at all.
This is how it works, beloved.
This is how it is for you and I
Oh God, it is all so much worse
than anyone could ever know
so much worse
even than I know
I cannot be well, Lord, for
this would be to betray this man again,
to leave him alone again
What good will it do for that pathetic wretch, that tortured body,
if I am healed?
What good is it for him, as he perishes?
Will it soothe his pain? Will it console him, or help him to stand?
Will it take the abominations from his mind, the pains from his heart, the
dull and tortured motions from his body?
Is it any good to him at all
if I am healed?
Lord, Lord, Lord, don't you see
that it makes no difference?
I will always be there, then.
I will always be.
Always
The farther I go from it, the more I will remain
I can never leave these places, these people
Never
Never!
This man, he is friendless, and unloved
he has no one, if I leave him
How could I ever leave him?
Shall I let him go down into Hell?
If you won't take care of him, Lord, then
I will have to
Don't you see, I have no choice
Yes, let them all go on, let her go on, but
I must stay with him, as he perishes,
I must stay by his Cross until the end, until the last drop of blood is spilled from his veins
the very last drop
Lord, one cannot even know that one suffers
in such a state
one cannot even mourn for oneself
one cannot even feel!
Yes, one cannot even feel pain, one cannot even
suffer
You cannot weep, you cannot feel, you cannot
be
All you can do is to be stretched, on and on and on and on
forever
Oh God, it was
so much worse than I had feared
always so much worse
yet I survived it!
I don't know how
I was bled to death, but somehow
you wanted me to keep living regardless
Damn you
I did not even have the satisfaction of dying
Damn you, beloved
Oh Lord, thank you
Jesus, beloved, thank you
I don't know for what, but
simply for my existence, for my
being
in torment and out of it
I am grateful, I am grateful
for every nasty, ugly detail
of what I thought and felt and imagined and suffered
all the time
For every horror, every monstrosity, every
drop of blood
Oh God, I cannot
I cannot
How could I ever?
How could I ever even feel again?
How could I ever breathe, since breathing was torture?
How could I ever see, since seeing was torture?
Imagine, think, do, touch, smile, laugh, feel, be
It's a bit much to ask, don't you think?
When once one's whole existence has been torture
it is very unfair to ask that one exist again
I should have died
a long time ago
I should have been stillborn, perhaps, or
perhaps sometime on my fifth birthday
Before all this torture, all this sin, all this
nothing
Oh God, why was there nothing?
Nothing at all?
If you exist, then
why was there nothing?
If you love me, why?
Lord, I can so easily
mouth pious platitudes, I can so easily
concoct nice explanations, but
this is the whole point—
that in those moments, I
had determined, had decided
what it would mean for you to help me
or abandon me, what
what showed that you loved me
or abandoned me;
and then, oh, oh, you
you wrecked them all
You did not live up
to a single one of my standards
You brought me so much lower, that
I could not even explain anymore
I could not explain why you had abandoned me.
I'm not sure I can now either
Yes, I had to be broken down, but
Oh God, did it have to hurt so much?
I had to let go, but
did it have to be such torture that
for years after, I tried to control, so that
I would not have to remember, or return?
Yes, it helped me, you have
brought good out of it, but
that doesn't explain it at all
that doesn't justify
It did not have to happen this way, you
did not have to do this to me
You chose, you chose
Like Job, I cry out to you: why?
It was not at all right, that I should be tortured this much
It was not at all just, not at all good
It was so much worse than everything, and
I don't see how I can ever forgive you for that
Jesus, perhaps
I am arrogant after all
Perhaps I am a proud fool, but
I will not be silent
Vindicate this man, this pathetic wretch, who is tortured endlessly
vindicate him
Show to him that you love him, that
his enemies are not in the right, that
the demons who tormented him were not justified, that
you will punish them for what they did to him
Yes, vindicate him, and
overcome everything
overcome this torture, do not merely undo it
but conquer it entirely
Put his enemies to shame, the ones who tortured him,
who pierced his veins and watched, laughing,
as his blood flowed
Make them ashamed, and humble them, because
they loaded him with reproaches, because
they mocked him, and laughed at him, and spit into his wounds
It was not at all right, it was not all just
Declare this, and then vindicate him
Yes, yes, yes, yes, Lord
I await the resurrection with expectation
I will not be silent
until the Lord himself hears my cause
Until he himself shows his wounds as mine,
and mine as his
and all the saints of God adore them
Until every tear is wiped from my eye, and
every reproach from my heart
Until my broken body is raised up
and made to shine with eternal light
and I myself rule with him forever
Lord, beloved, I trust in you
I love you
Thank you
Amen.
When I joined the Catholic Church, I entered a vast and worldwide community, one stretching across space and time. I found the saints as brothers and sisters, but gradually, too, I have learned to find living brothers and sisters as well, in the Church and in the world. I have learned, very slowly, how to love, and how to be loved; and I am still learning.
Human persons are a lot like God, but also very different; the love of God is an absolute certainty, whereas human love wanes and rises and flows. But the more love from and for persons rests on the love of God, the more certain it becomes, the more beautiful, the more perfect. I have learned to see this, too; and it is the whole point of the Church on earth and in heaven. God shows his love to us, normally, through human persons; and we show our love for God, normally, through human persons as well. This is not a flaw, but a glory of the divine plan.
Human persons are very small and foolish and ignorant and confused and different and sinful, but that is, really, the whole point; for Christ loves us, precisely as these things. We are very different, too, especially as male and female, and we find it very difficult to understand and live in communion with one another. The more we are immersed in the love of Christ, though, the more we will love all persons, and be willing to be loved by them, as just these things. The more we do so, the more we will become like God.
Here is a prayer I prayed for the first time in the presence of a particular person whom I wanted to love, and which I pray again now on occasion for just this purpose:
Da mihi quemdam participationem in caritate tua erga hunc hominem, participationem humilem, pacificam, et fidelem, per Christum Dominum Nostrum. Amen.
Give me a certain participation in your love for this person, a humble, peaceful, and faithful participation, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
If I Didn't Have Your Love to Make it Real
Here is a song that I think captures, better than most things, far, far better, almost certainly, than all the foregoing narratives, what I have been talking about and what I have lived. It is, naturally, one of my very favorite songs:
Life
Today marks the end of the seventh year I have been a Catholic; and these have certainly been full and eventful years. All that I have written above is a very small and eccentric sampling of these years and of my life in general. The final narrative will have to wait for Eternity, as it must for all our lives.
When I became Catholic, I was less than a week shy of my 18th birthday. Today, I am about a week shy of my 25th birthday. This is still, I am told, fairly young; and could conceivably leave very many years to come. Or, of course, I could die tomorrow, or sooner. Either way, I am content.
I am not quite sure, or rather I have not even the faintest idea, of what my remaining years, or days, or even hours will hold. God knows, and the only thing I have learned in my life is that it is right and good and reasonable to trust in him, and to love him. I hope, and I pray, that I will continue to do so.
Please, dear reader, pray for me, and I will pray for you as well.
Godspeed.
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