Category: Life

Eduard Khil, R.I.P.

Eduard Khil, aka “Mr. Trololo”, has died at 77. His most unintentionally famous song became an internet meme a few years ago. To date the Youtube video has received well over 12 million views.  A winner of the People’s Artist of Russia award, he was a well respected singer in his homeland. He only learned of his worldwide fame through his grandson. By all reports, he was both pleased and amused by it.

Incidentally, the real name of his famous song, roughly translated from the Russian is, “I Am So Happy That I’m Finally Coming Home”. How very appropriate. Thank you Mr. Khil for making so many people smile. That’s not a bad epitaph for anyone.

 

The Grand Gesture

‘Round about this time of year, you see them. Some guy proposes to his girlfriend on the Jumbotron at a ball game, hires a billboard, or a skywriter, or projects “Will you marry me?” on the moon with lasers. This individual asks us all to join him in his grand gesture, supposedly to show what lengths he will go to in order to make his intended happy.

If she is won over by this lavish display, the resulting wedding will no doubt contain more flourishes and flounces than the most decadent Las Vegas stage show. Fast forward a few years, and this same couple is filing for divorce. What happened? How could their life together have failed so soon when it had such a spectacular beginning? Well, I’m not a marriage counselor; I don’t even play one on TV, but I do have a failed marriage in my past so let me give you my two pennies. Continue reading “The Grand Gesture”

You’re a What?

That’s usually the response when I tell people I’m a Benedictine oblate. I then patiently explain that oblates are laypeople who strive to live according to the Rule of St. Benedict and who have a spiritual affiliation with a particular monastery. More often than not, this falls well short of a satisfactory answer. Depending on the level of interest I perceive in my interlocutor, I may elaborate by explaining who St. Benedict is, and why someone should want to follow his rule. This discussion inevitably leads to the question, “Why? What do you get out of it?” This is a harder question to answer, because the answer, like my spiritual health, differs from day to day.

Like many people in recent years, I was drawn to monastic spirituality as a way to live an intentionally contemplative life in an increasingly noisy and frenetic world. Where I live, I am lucky to have many monasteries nearby, but I was particularly drawn to St. Procopius Abbey because of shared roots between the Abbey and myself. And, because it is a Benedictine trait to practice hospitality, the kind monks of the Abbey welcomed me like they have many others over their long history.

They allow me to share in their liturgy, and to a degree, their conventual life. But there is a distinct difference between them and me. My Oblate Director is fond of reminding us oblates that, “oblates are not little monks.” To be sure, there are those who wish to live like monks, and so are drawn to the monastery, but the vocation of professed religious is only for those who really have that calling. Those who seek the monastery in order to run away from life, not only fail in their quest, but also badly miss the point. This is as true today as when St. Benedict was alive.

The monastery is a school of obedience for those with a true calling to religious life. But as God is no respecter of persons, St. Benedict’s rule allows people from all walks of life to be pupils in this school to the degree appropriate for their manner of life. Just like the monk in the cloister, I am trying to find my way to heaven, which is the path to the knowledge of God, and His Son, Jesus Christ. As a Benedictine oblate, I am invited to walk that path alongside the monks; they inside the cloister, and me and my fellow oblates on the outside.

My Hero

This picture sits on my desk. It is a picture of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn taken in the Gulag sometime in the early 1950’s. I don’t intend to do an unauthorized biography in this post, instead I want to share why he is my hero.

Apart from the fact that he is a Nobel Prize winner for Literature, and apart from the fact that he, more than any other dissident, helped pave the way for the dissolution of the old Soviet empire, and apart from the fact that he is a great writer, I think most of all, it is because he was a genuinely good man.

Good men are, I believe, still to be found. The thing is–and it’s part of what makes them good–that they don’t feel the need to blow their own horn. They go about quietly changing the world, only occasionally doing so loudly, and only when called for.

Continue reading “My Hero”

The Naugahyde Soul

An old grey t-shirt hangs loosely over faded blue sweat pants–I say “blue” only to indicate their present hue. They may have, once upon a time, been green. Completing this stunning ensemble is a pair of dirty white socks and untied high-top gym shoes. The wearer is lounging in all his sartorial richness in an extravagant manner on the family room sofa, engaged in his favorite pastime, watching sports on TV.

Since no pastime is ever half so much fun as when it is shared with another like-minded creature, our subject has company: a scruffy, dozing cat and a similarly attired human friend.

Continue reading “The Naugahyde Soul”

Reinventing the Wheel

Once upon a time, I worked with a guy who told me, “If you want something done right away, give the job to a lazy man.” It made me chuckle, but I instantly saw the wisdom in it.

A lazy man (or woman) doesn’t want to take a lot of extra time to evaluate all the permutations of how to accomplish a particular task. He (or she) will find the easiest, straightest path to get the job done so they can go back to being lazy. Of course, my friend said this with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek, but there’s a nugget of truth in it that I want to share with you today.

When confronted with a problem, very often the best approach is to assume that you’re not the first person to have encountered it. Contrary to what we tell ourselves all the time, the things we run up against in life are not unique. 99 times out of 100, somebody else figured it out already. All we need to do, is find out what they did in the similar situation. Realizing that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, means you’re half-way home!

This is also true in the spiritual life. Throughout our pilgrimage on earth, we get lost, hurt, turned around, become confused, and worse. But instead of casting about among the thousand different solutions the world presents to us, it is important to remember that there are others that have gone before us. The saints, the fathers and mothers of the Church, walked along this path and made it safely home. They are not gods. They are men and women just like us. Just like us they had their own faults and failures, but refused to give in or stop trying. They faced what we face every day and worse.

When problems come–and they will–the saints are our role models. They are our elder brothers and sisters and we can emulate them in our own lives. They in turn will sympathize with us, intercede for us, and cheer us on.

Over, Under or Through

Apropos of a previous post, I want to relate little anecdote about persistence.

Persistence is a vital trait to have in this life, but especially so in writing. It is a rare day when you sit down to write and the words flow like rushing water. More often than not, you labor over your sentences, trying to organize the tumble of thoughts in your head into a coherent piece that someone will read and understand. The ability–or bloody-mindedness–to keep at it when the words won’t come, is imperative in order to write. I’ll take it one step further: the ability to start is just as important.

I never met so many aspiring writers as when I started writing my first novel. Now that it’s out on the market, I seem to meet more and more of them. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Aspiring Writer: “So you wrote a novel huh?”

Me: “Yes.”

AW: “What made you write it?”

Me: “Oh, lots of reasons…”(This is followed by a recitation of what led me to write the book.)

AW: (wistfully) “You know, I always wanted to write a book…” (This is followed by a recitation of the things they’d like to write about.)

Me: “Then I think you should write your book!”

The point is, that the only thing keeping you from writing is your desire to start and your ability to see it through. Every new, worthwhile endeavor in life requires stepping out in faith, and then following through, no matter how hard or futile the thing seems to be.

I have a friend who rides horses. Show-jumping over fences in fact. She told me that the first thing you learn when you begin going over fences, is that you must go, “Over, under, or through. Never around. Never refuse.” Fitting a horse under a fence would be difficult, but still, it’s a clever, somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of saying that you must not give up. The outcome might leave you with bruises, but you’ll learn from that if you keep trying.