The Mystery Man

My home office, from where I am typing this post, is at the far end of the cinder block building in this photo. Every two or three weeks for the past year, a man would ride up the driveway on a bicycle and knock on my office door. Although he seemed to be in his early 30s, he had a simple, childlike personality. His purpose was to ask about the modular home on our property, which has been sitting vacant because we can’t afford to drill a new well. This fellow – let’s call him “Wayne” – is deaf, though he wears an audio device in his ear that amplifies sound. His speech is that of a person who has been deaf from birth and who has had a lot of speech therapy. He talks very loud and his pronunciation is sometimes garbled, but under the circumstances he is remarkably intelligible.

For a while each visit was the same. He knocks on the door, I open it. He greets me with a smile and a strong Orland handshake and apologizes for the intrusion. He asks about the mobile home, I explain that it still isn’t ready to rent. He tells me that it would be perfect for his wife and three young children who want to live in the country. He gives me his number and makes me promise to call him when the place is ready.

Because he once noticed the crucifix on the wall of my office, he would ask me periodically if I was a “pastor”, forgetting what I told him on the last visit. Perhaps he didn’t hear me: I have to speak loudly and he has to read my lips to understand what I am saying. Anyway, ever since then he has asked me to pray for him.

One afternoon last spring he stopped by at the usual time … but he was not his usual chipper self. He told me he had just lost his job as a maintenance man for the local school district. He didn’t ask about the house this time, but he did ask for my prayers.

A few weeks later he stopped by again, and this time he looked pretty miserable. He told me that his wife had left him and issued a restraining order against him. He said that he’d been drinking too much since he lost his job, but he protested that he had never been violent. He had been crying. He missed his family. He was soon to be homeless. He asked for my prayers.

Several visits later, he stopped by in a good mood. He wanted to tell me that he was going back to church and had quit drinking completely. Although he still didn’t have a job and his wife still didn’t want him back, he was turning his life around. He was allowed to see his children every other weekend. He was grateful to God for everything. Things were looking up. He asked again for my prayers.

Now, I am no longer home on weekday afternoons due to having new outside employment. I started work three weeks ago for a local business here in Glenn County. While I was at work today, around the noon hour, I very suddenly began feeling a sharp pain in my lower intestine. The pain was increasing fast and felt like I was passing a stone. Almost doubled over in pain, I told my boss I needed to go home. So I drove home, climbed into bed, and tried to get comfortable. Soon I was fast asleep.

At around 4:30pm I was awakened by the doorbell. As I woke up, I realized that my pain was completely gone. I answered the door. It was Wayne. He had his big smile on again, and he stuck out his hand for that big Orland handshake. “I just stopped by to tell you that I’VE GOT A JOB!!” he said excitedly, practically shouting. He told me he was hired in the maintenance department of another school district. He went on about the goodness of God in answering his prayers, he told me that he’s been staying sober, going to church, and has been approved to receive financial assistance for a better hearing device.

His wife still doesn’t want to reconcile, so he asked me to pray for her, and thanked me again for my prayers. I opened the front door a little wider and pointed to the Crucifix on the wall in my living room. I told Wayne that He was the One to thank. Wayne could hardly contain his emotion at that point.

No, I’m never home on weekday afternoons … unless the Savior wants me there.

A New Strategy for the Traditionalist Movement

“Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. I wish the university students would work as hard at converting these people as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them.” – St. Francis Xavier

I don’t mean to imply that the traditionalist movement does not have a zeal for souls. I am a traditionalist precisely because traditional Catholicism is the only place in the Church I have found, thus far, where eternal salvation does not take a back seat to social and political concerns. Even the conservative Catholics – as exemplary as many of them are – often seem to focus more on social issues than the salvation of souls. Pro-life work is vital and important, but it isn’t the Gospel. If babies are to be saved only for this fallen world, well, such a “victory” is hollow indeed.

Thus far, the traditionalist movement has been focused primarily on one goal: restoring the orthodox Faith, liturgy, and discipline among the millions of Mass-attending Catholics who have lost it. That was a good and necessary project, but the growth of the movement has plateaued. By now, most orthodox Catholics in the United States who attend the Novus Ordo know all about the “Extraordinary Form” and have no interest in it. (The great heterodox majority want nothing to do with us, of course.) Many have gone to a Latin Mass once or twice, but felt it just wasn’t to their taste and so back to the Novus Ordo they returned. They aren’t hostile, and some are even allies and well-wishers, but they have their comfort zone and they’re going to stick with it. I don’t expect that to change. After the Second Vatican Council, approximately 70% of Catholics stopped attending Mass altogether. Those who remain 40 years later are intellectually or emotionally attached to the Novus Ordo Missae, its culture, its language, its assumptions, and its unspoken prejudices.

So, I believe the time is ripe for the traditionalist movement to shift its focus. Rather than “converting” our our fellow Catholics, it is time to bring Christ to the outside world – to the universities, prisons, shopping malls, hospitals, parks, and streets of America. This generation of pagans does not have the same kind of prejudice against Tradition that our fellow Catholics often possess. Due to the brokenness of their families and communities, their pain and alienation is great and consumes all of their energies. Their opposition to Catholicism can be extremely fierce, but their curiosity and thirst for truth is sometimes even greater. All people have in their minds an image of the Catholic Church – usually distorted – because that is the One Thing against which the whole modern world rebels. But unlike previous generations which mistakenly thought they had tried Christianity and found it lacking, many of today’s pagans are aware of their own ignorance and are willing, at least, to give the Catholic Faith a hearing.

Furthermore, we have actually reached a point where the “counter-culture” of yesterday has become The Culture of today. Therefore, to be a believing Catholic is to be truly counter-cultural, and in our rebellious world anything perceived as “counter-cultural” will have a ready audience.

What can be done? I have always admired the work of a tiny Eastern Orthodox religious group which used to establish bookshops and coffee houses in big cities, often near universities. They were sometimes staffed by a monk or a nun in habit, with sacred music playing quietly in the background. Combined with the smell of incense and a proliferation of holy images, the casual visitor felt he had entered another world. Students would drop in, read a book off the shelf, and ask questions. There were conversations and prayers and conversions (though not much in the way of profit). I believe a Catholic version of this would be similarly effective.

In any case, there needs to be a traditionalist presence on university campuses. Something like “Newman Centers” could be established, but with a proper focus on religion and truth rather than frivolous social activities. Lectures, seminars, and study groups could be organized. The list of potential topics is endless: papal encyclicals, the lives of the saints, the writings of the fathers, canon law, liturgy, philosophy, etc. etc..

Prison ministry is essential. It is a command of Our Lord. There is unimaginable suffering behind prison walls, and that suffering can and should be harnessed for the good of souls. Sometimes a man has to hit the bottom before he repents, and in America’s prisons men are hitting the bottom every day.

There is much more, but I am out of time. We need a new generation of real Jesuits and Dominicans and Franciscans, the orders which once evangelized the world, full of heroic and ascetical men who stood in the town square and preached to anyone who would listen. Where is our St. Francis Xavier? Our St. Dominic? Our St. Anthony of Padua? Our Blessed Junipero Serra? I’ll tell you where they are: they are in the traditionalist movement of the Catholic Church! May the good Lord set them loose on the world, and soon.

Personal notes on bodily health

I’m now 43 years old, or as my brother likes to say, in the “extreme 30s”. Over the last five or six years I’ve experienced a couple of serious health scares along with a growing list of minor irritations that, taken together, have aroused my attention. Though I’ve never paid much attention to my own health, not long ago I began doing some research and concluded that I needed to make some serious dietary changes.

The first blow was almost eliminating coffee. I had been a coffee lover from the age of 12, but coffee was causing stomach pains and acid reflux problems to the point of near-debilitation. I couldn’t figure out why I just couldn’t keep my lunches down. I noticed, too, that certain other foods had the same effect – chocolate, beer, white wine, margaritas, even our own home-grown nectarines! So I no longer enjoy my coffee every morning, beer on hot summer afternoons, or nectarines (beyond just one a day) at harvest time. I sometimes use a coffee substitute, but I am settling on tea, and sometimes just half-a-cup of coffee, to start my day. I can still drink red wine, but even some of those are troublesome. I have discovered a local organic brand that is very pleasing (LaRocca – give it a try) and will probably stick with that.

Although my reflux problems were solved by eliminating certain foods, my stomach pains were not conquered until I began to limit my consumption of bread. Bread? Yes, bread. I have always been prone to overeating when it comes to bread. It was a common-sense self-diagnosis, but it took me a while. By the time I figured this out, it was beginning to feel like I was on the fast track to being nourished by feeding tube! Spiritually, I am no stranger to gluttony, so all of this is undoubtedly a mercy.

Cutting out the coffee almost eliminated my frequent heart palpitations, but not entirely. It wasn’t until I drastically reduced my sugar intake that the palpitations went away. This presentation helped convince me to quit soda pop for good, and to eliminate most high-sugar foods at least Monday through Friday. No more sodas and juices with my lunch, no more sweet snacks and desserts, and fewer processed foods loaded with high fructose corn syrup. The happy result? In addition to eliminating those irritating palpitations, the change has also increased my energy levels (and improved my mood) throughout the day.

As a result of the swine flu scare, I began to research the benefits of Vitamin D3 supplements in resisting the flu. Most everyone in the industrialized world is Vitamin D deficient due to a lack of prime-time sun exposure, and this deficiency peaks during flu season when most people try to stay indoors. Vitamin D deficiency is undoubtedly related to the winter blues and depression, or “seasonal affective disorder”. As it turns out, Vitamin D is critical not only for the health of your immune system, but also for resistance to cancer and many other diseases. Please take a few minutes to watch this video:

So, here’s what I’ve concluded thus far, in a nutshell. Many people do not have the food reactions that I have, so I don’t think eliminating coffee and such is a universal prescription.  However, I would recommend the following for most adults:

1. Keep your sugar intake at a minimum. Be aware that sugar in the form of fructose – usually high fructose corn syrup – permeates many processed foods not regarded as “sweet”. So check all labels. And quit sodas and juices with HFCS altogether.

2. Take a Vitamin D3 supplement appropriate for your age and weight. Anyone over 100 lbs should take at least 1000 IUs daily. Most adults should take between 1000 IUs and 5000 IUs daily. I take 2000 IUs daily, as do my two oldest children. The 10 y/o takes 1000 IUs, and the 6 y/o takes only a chewable multivitamin with 400 IUs.

3. Take an Omega 3 supplement. Most people are deficient in Omega 3 as well. The benefits are well documented, and it helps your body process the Vitamin D.

4. If you aren’t eating a carefully balanced diet, consider taking a good multivitamin daily.

Both the Omega 3 and multivitamin supplements will also contain Vitamin D, probably around 800-1000 IUs combined.  If you’re taking less than 10,000 IUs in your daily Vitamin D supplement, just consider it a bonus. Your body should naturally produce between 10,000 and 20,000 IUs of Vitamin D3 with just 30 minutes of full sunlight exposure, during the non-winter months. If you aren’t doing at least that much – and most people aren’t – your supplement isn’t likely to match what would otherwise be supplied by nature.

Plain Catholic in the Mountains

I’d like to bring your attention to a fine blog by the name of Plain Catholic in the Mountains:

“My husband and I live a Plain and Prayerful life on a wee farm in the mountains. We attend Mass, read, garden, raise bees for honey, raise chickens, do carpentry, write, volunteer and most importantly Praise Our Lord Jesus for His Mercy, Love and Care for us through the Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio Divina and Scripture study. We hope to raise more farm animals such as heritage breeds if God wills it.”

Chasing Small Towns

When I was about 9 years old, I used to study a topographical map of California hanging on the wall of my grandfather’s den – one of those plastic maps with bumps and valleys. On that map I noticed a little town named “Mulberry” between Chico and Durham, supposedly located on a route we traveled frequently. I asked my mother and grandmother, on separate occasions, to take me there. We looked for it, but there were no signs of a town or anything else with the “Mulberry” name in that locale. For some reason this puzzled me greatly. My mother encouraged me to write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper asking if any readers knew about the place.

What followed was astounding. The newspaper published my short letter, not realizing at the time that I was just 9 years old. Scores of long-time area residents responded with memories, anecdotes and photographs of the forgotten old Mulberry railroad station and the community that grew up around it. The newspaper devoted several full pages to these letters and pictures over the next few weeks. After this amazing outpouring of historical memory, my mother wrote a letter to the newspaper thanking them, and all those who contributed to the series, revealing that the original letter writer was her young son. Shortly thereafter the newspaper published a sentimental editorial lauding the power of childhood curiosity and supportive parents.

Thus began my lifelong fascination with small towns and their hidden stories. Like so many small towns – especially here in the West – Mulberry thrived for a short time and then faded away. Why? I began to pour over maps and found other places like this. Granny was often available to help me chase after these places.

On one of these maps I located Pulga, a little town on the Feather River, and Granny took me there. The road to Pulga was a narrow, winding, unpaved mountain road that eventually descended into the canyon and stopped at cluster of run down buildings and shacks. There was a “store” that also served as a post office and everything else, but it was closed. I suspect it was also someone’s home. A few dwellings could be seen in the surrounding hills, but they looked scary to me. If it weren’t for the clotheslines, you wouldn’t think they were inhabited. Not a single person was in sight. I wondered who lived here now … and who lived here 80 years ago? What did they do? How did they live? What was it about a railway station on the river that attracted settlers in the first place? Are the folks here now related to the original families? Why did this place feel so … strange? Like we were being watched?

Granny and I walked down to the river and had a picnic lunch. She had brought some coffee with her, but it was cold. She drank it anyway. Looking back I realize how kind she was to me, cheerfully indulging me as I worked myself up over inventing a new soft drink that would make us all rich – cold, sweetened, carbonated coffee! After this excursion, we both agreed that we had an uneasy feeling in that place …

Once, I asked Granny to take me to a town called Dingville. “Downtown” Dingville consisted of one small store and an unappealing coffee shop. We stopped in for lunch – the only customers, probably the only customers they had all week. I’ll never forget the waiter, an unshaven man in a dirty white t-shirt who so shamelessly flirted with Granny (she was widowed by then) that she was visibly shaken. But we laughed about it all the way home.

Not too far from here is the little town of Nelson, with a population of less than 100. It has one store and the residents look none too friendly. What is strange about this tiny little place is that it has a huge, beautiful park! How did that happen? Come to find out, Nelson was once a thriving settlement of 2,500 souls. On the north side of town was the vice district: saloons, brothels, gambling dens. As the story goes, the town was almost completely destroyed by fire. It is believed that Nelson’s battalion of “church ladies” deliberately set fire to the saloons. The fire unexpectedly spread to the rest of the town and destroyed the place. Nelson never recovered.

Places matter. A priest once celebrated Mass for us in our living room. Before leaving he told us: “The angels never leave a place where holy Mass has been said”. What happens in a place tends to stay with it, somehow, entering the ground and the walls and the air. When a priest blesses a home or building, if he is thorough, he will even sprinkle holy water in the closets and hidden nooks and crannies.

Small towns are interesting because people are interesting, and in a small town the people matter. I don’t romanticize them. Most small towns are not Mayberry. Some of these towns are crawling with ghosts, some are haunted by an evil past, some are plagued with old grudges and feuds, and some are refuges for scoundrels of all kinds. Others are healthy and happy places, God-fearing places, wholesome and friendly places, and it’s fun to try and find these little gems. But most are a mixture of things, and that mix is unique in every town.

Take Graysville, Tennessee, home to a settlement of Melungeons, an Appalachian people thought to be of mixed European, Indian and African ancestry. Their story is utterly fascinating, and whatever you might say about them, there is no place like Graysville anywhere else on this earth. I could read about such places for days on end.

To this very day, I continue to chase small towns. Yesterday I took the kids on a little excursion to the ridge community of Cohasset, one of many remote California mountain settlements that could easily be mistaken for a hamlet in Appalachia. Like the “hollers” back east, there is only one road in and out of the place. The history of the ridge is volatile and tragic and triumphant – its best and worst days seemingly in the past. Today Cohasset has a somewhat negative reputation in the valley, mainly due to an unsavory element that makes the news from time to time, but also because it is visibly quite poor. Recently, I asked a fellow who lives in Cohasset about his neighbors. Who lives up there? He said the ridge is a haven for the “far left” and the “far right” and not much in between. Perhaps so, but it’s a beautiful ridge with an established community that is proud of its heritage.

News from Marbury’s Hilltop

Some of you will remember the blog of the lovely TheresaMF, a Christendom College student, which she titled “Destination: Order”. She entered the Dominican Monastery of St. Jude in 2006, and there became Sister Mary Jordan of the Holy Family. Last week, on August 24, she made her First Profession of Vows. Please keep this dear sister – and the Monastery of St. Jude – in your prayers and, if possible, in your plan of giving.

Sister Mary Jordan, upon entering religious life with the Dominicans, must have gone through a ceremony similar to that filmed in this rare documentary:

No Limits

“When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima… Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries.”

- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Blue Jeans and Rebellion

Consider, if you will, the social history of blue jeans. I would quote from those articles, but the computer I’m using won’t let me do that for some reason. You’ll have to read them for yourself.

I remember the 1970s, when blue jeans were considered the ultimate rebellion against any kind of social hierarchy. It was cool to wear blue jeans, but especially cool if one was rich, smart, female, good looking or popular. When exceptional people wore blue jeans, it signified that their exceptionalism was so obvious it didn’t need any external support. The blue jeans statement was “I’m so cool I don’t need to prove anything by wearing better clothes”. Suddenly everyone was in blue jeans – entertainers, politicians, school teachers, and CEOs. 

Nowadays, of course, most people who wear blue jeans aren’t making any kind of statement. They just dress according to prevailing social expectations. It is much the same with other trends. The tattoos you see on female ankles today started among strippers. The earrings you see on men started among homosexuals cruising the bars. The baggy pants on boys started among prison inmates.  So, whereas culture used to flow from the top down, modern culture flows from the bottom up. Trends that had their origins in the sewer end up becoming mainstream. It is therefore worth exploring what it is about blue jeans that made them such a symbol of rebellion in the first place.

My grandfather was a solider, a cop, a farmer, a hunter, and a fisherman - a man’s man, if there ever was one - and I never once saw him wearing a pair of jeans. I don’t own a pair of jeans myself. My boys wear blue jeans sometimes because they are rugged enough for rough play, good for wearing around the ranch, and (importantly) affordable. Jeans were justifiably popular among gold miners because of their famous durability. They do have their place. But I wonder if grown men shouldn’t rebel against the rebellion, so to speak, and return to wearing clothes which are better suited to the dignity of their work, their leisure, and their station in life.

Broken Harvest

Mennonites and Catholics at a Country Faire

Every year, the historic Patrick Ranch in Durham hosts an old-fashioned Country Faire and Threshing Bee for two days. For the past three years our kids have played their bluegrass and folk music at this event with some of their fellow students in the area. This year it was just “Freedom Hill” - our children and those of another Catholic family – playing on the flat bed of an old farm truck. 

There are several close-knit Mennonite communities in this area, and every year we see some of them at Patrick Ranch. They are typically farmers, and the Country Faire has lots of things of interest to farmers – especially farmers who prefer the old ways. The Mennonites are easily recognizable by their distinctive dress, large families, and respectful behavior. Our girls take notice because the Mennonite ladies also dress in a feminine and modest way. 

As it happens, I was standing in the hot dog line behind one of these families – a young man, maybe thirty to thirty-five years old, with his wife and two very small children. He complimented me on the performance (as if I had anything to do with it!), and we struck up a very friendly conversation. I told him how much we appreciated seeing them at these events, and how they set a good example of family life for my own children. I spoke with his wife for a few minutes as well, and she told me about the music training all the Mennonite children receive. (They do not play instruments but are taught to sing and read music at an early age.)  We then got our lunch and went our own way.

About 30 minutes later, after we had eaten, this same gentleman walked up and wanted to introduce his grandparents. The grandfather looked every bit the part of a Mennonite patriarch with 33 grandchildren. He had many kind things to say about the Freedom Hill children, whose performance he had also heard, and asked me to contact him and let him know when the next performance would be. After talking a little while longer and finding even more common ground, he invited us to play music at their family home in exchange for a meal, promising me that his wife (who was standing beside him) is an excellent cook!

I accepted.  

And so, two traditional Catholic families and one large Mennonite family will soon be getting to know each other. I have always respected and admired these people – from a distance, of course – and am quite humbled by this warm and spontaneous invitation. It should be a very interesting encounter. I pray that we, at least, will be as much a credit to our Catholic Faith as they are to their own.