thoughts on things

1. I recently finished The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. It was a great read, but a tough one. The stories can be fairly bleak and very few of them are what I would consider "happy."

I had never really read much of her work before but I had heard that her Catholicism was a big factor in them. I can't say that I saw that immediately, but her faith did seem to creep up on me.

Stories like "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (also a great Sufjan song) still have me confused, but, overall, the whole collection was beautiful. As Thomas Merton writes (on the back cover), she really shows "man's fall and dishonor." These stories are about the human condition - a broken one - but there is a background of hope.

2. I think I said earlier that I got a record player for Christmas. The other day, a few of us stopped by CD Warehouse to see what they had in vinyl. Among a few other things, I picked up Meet The Beatles, the group's second album (in the US, at least). I know most of the songs, so that wasn't a surprise, but the experience of hearing this album the same way that, say, my parents heard it when it first came out was a unique one. I love the hiss, the pops and clicks - and the fact that this record, which I think is original, still plays this music. An almost 50-year-old CD would not play like this and a "digital album" just doesn't have the beautiful physicality of the record.

3. On a much more serious note: Today I got to practice praying the liturgy of the Eucharist for the first time in my Priesthood Prep class. We wore the vestments, used real bread and wine and did it all in the seminary's practice chapel. When I was actually doing this, it struck me how much the priest does in the Mass. As a deacon, I done a lot in the Liturgy of the Word: proclaiming the Gospel, preaching, praying the intercessions; but when you get to the Eucharistic prayer and all that surrounds it, it is all the priest. The toughest part was remembering to do the gestures that accompany the appropriate words. I continually felt like I was forgetting something.

The experience was powerful. Actually saying the words and doing the actions made me realize how close ordination is and how far I've come since starting here in 2005.