The Musical Priest

So a quick tale about my day: Wednesdays have become a packed day for me. I work out in the morning, shower, and then go to class from 11:00-1:00. I eat a piece of pizza at 1:15, go to the library for a little while, then I head over to Fordham Prep where I'm teaching the tin whistle as an after-school program. So, in keeping with my policy of wearing clerical attire when teaching, I wear the whole outfit to class, too. And to the pizza shop. And to the library. Gist of the whole story: I'm looking very priestly on Wednesdays. So at 2:20 this afternoon, I packed up my computer and, before I left the library, I made a pit stop to use the restroom. You'll be glad to know that nothing out of the ordinary happened. Until, that is, I tore the zipper mechanism off of my pants (I'll blame shoddy construction over my strength...although I did work out this morning). And, to make matters worse, the zipper teeth didn't connect so now I'm walking about with my fly complete...

Although this will be posted a bit before midnight, I am writing this as my birthday post. As many of you know, I was born on October 19th, 1979. It also happens to be the Feast of the North American Martyrs celebrating the 17th century Jesuits and Companions martyred by the Iroquois. Since it's my birthday, my parents think that the Feast of the North American Martyrs applies to them, too. I often wonder what my parents thought 28 years ago when they held me for the first time. What hopes did they have? What dreams? Fears? Probably the same hopes/dreams/fears that my brother is feeling over his daughter Emma. Probably the same hopes/dreams/fears that I felt when I held Emma. But the joy of parenthood - or being an uncle, in my case - is to respond to the vocation to play a formative role in the life of a new creation. I don't yet know how I'm going to celebrate. I'll work out in the morning and then translate some German. Then off to the library to work on some resear...

It is with great pleasure that I direct your attention to Love at First Bite - a film by Drew Marquard, SJ. The film is being featured on OurStage.com and you can register to vote for his film. Check it out!

Can you believe that it is 4:00 am and the temperature outside is 79-degrees Fahrenheit? It's October 10th, after all, and I'm really quite ready for autumn temperatures to roll in. I'm not particularly fond of the heat and, since I'm up at 4:00 am, it goes without saying that this weather is preventing me from sleeping. Since returning, I've written several posts *about* me but I've not had much that draws on much of the internal grist that I find helpful to write about. Since I'm awake, lucid, and hopeful that writing will make me sleepy I figure that I can write a bit about my internal life a bit. It may come as a surprise for some that I found last year rather difficult. No, not spiritually or socially but, interestingly, academically. And no, it's not because I found the courses too rigorous or demanding. Instead, I was bored for almost the entire year. The philosophy courses I took were terribly dry and uninteresting and were not challenging. The s...

My mom just sent me three more pictures of Emma:

As you can probably tell, I don't have the most *natural* baby-holding ability. I think it's because I'm used to holding books, or whisks, or accordions! So here's Emma - my baby niece. My mom brought her to the Youngstown Feis yesterday and snapped this pictures. Hopefully my mom will send some pictures of her in her non-bundled outfit (she is cute underneath all of those layers!) but since the arena we were in yesterday was chilly, it was better to keep her warm.

Well, as you can see by my inability to post in a regular manner, I've been pretty busy these last few weeks. Between the start of school, a number of social activities, a lot of writing, nearly severing my thumb, and falling off of a ball as I tried to pray...well, I've been busy. This weekend I'm heading off to Youngstown and Pittsburgh for their two feiseanna. My mom is going to bring my niece Emma on Sunday, so if I remember to bring my camera I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures. It's been funny: there's really been nothing for me to comment on, nor has there been any internal motivation to write anything. Nothing particularly funny, or sad, or irritating has struck me. Which means only to say that I've been very busy, and extremely peaceful, so I've not needed to extrovert on these pages in order to process any angst. It's like the year-round "Theater of the Absurd" that is so often my life has gone on a hiatus! Tragic, so tragic. T...