Been There, Done That

One of the things that has surprised me thus far—though it shouldn’t have—was the amount of people I’ve met here at La Setenta Dos that have already been to the United States. It’s difficult to say how many, but based on my very limited, very anecdotal evidence, it seems like a good number.

The implications of this are quite terrible, for a number of reasons.

The first, and most apparent, is that no one should ever had to go through what they go through once, let alone multiple times. Risking their lives, living in fear, enduring physical and emotional pain, feeling unwelcome, begging for food—the list is not a good one. The journey for Central and South Americans to reach the United States is not a tale of adventure, complete with romance and triumph, narrowly escaping danger with comical flippancy; this is not Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean. Their journey is dangerous, tiresome, deflating, and unsettling, producing very few winners  and even fewer without scrapes and scars.

But that’s just part of the journey. As is evident by the amount of repeat travelers, arriving in the United States does not guarantee continued living in the United States. Those who do not have documentation live every day in fear of a traffic ticket or accidental brush with law enforcement because it could be the day that they’re sent back to the very place they fled. In a moment—any moment—they could be “found out” and deported, torn from their new life and forced to go back.

Go back to what, though?

I spoke with some men who had been in the United States for five, ten, even twenty years. One guy came as a teenager, graduated from high school in California, lived and worked for five years after high school before being deported. Where is this 23 year-old, having lived in the United States for eight years, going to go? How is he expected to make a livelihood in a country where he now knows very few people has nothing to his name to start with?

The fact of the matter, no matter the legal or ethical code one adheres to when it comes to immigration, is that many of those who have fled their country and arrived in the United States have no other home than the United States. They have no “home” to be deported to: their family, friends, possessions, job, and really, experience, all exist in the United States. In speaking with some of the migrants here, that was what gave me the greatest punch to the gut. Not only are they fleeing the violence and oppression that instigated their original departure, but many of them are also fleeing in a desperate attempt to return to the ones they love who had not be deported.

With that on their minds, the fact that they have to risk violence, go hungry, and face abuse along the way—terrible things for anyone to endure even once, let along two or three times—becomes an almost commonplace experience, a perpetual uphill journey. Been there, done that. Whatever it takes to get home.

 5 Comments

 Posted on June 7, 2016 by

 Justice, Ministry, Trips

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The Longest Day

Our first day in Mexico was the longest day of my life. 

Beginning our travels at 10pm on Monday evening (having been awake for thirteen hours already), we took a plane to a bus to another plane to a three-hour car ride, arriving at our destination a mere fifteen hours after departed. At this point, it was only 1:30pm, a long way away from finishing.

The biggest adjustment, even greater than the language, was the weather. As some of you know, Washington, D.C. has been unseasonably cold, remaining in the 50s and 60s during the month of May as it experienced 19 straight days of rain. When we arrived in Tenosique, Mexico, a tropical area in the south of the country, the temperature was 102 with a dew point of 66. I was completely shell-shocked throughout the first day. No air conditioning, no ice or cold water, no relief in either night or day. (Now in our third day, I have not stopped sweating at any point.)

But wait, we haven’t even done anything yet; our day, in a sense, was just beinning! First there was a tour of the place, were acquainted with our rooms (more in a second), a quick nap, then concluded with multiple hours of aimlessly walking around the grounds attempting to have conversations in Spanish with the volunteers and migrants. Let’s just say I was not in the mood nor did I have the energy for this to be enjoyable.

So what about the room? Well, let’s just it’s not exactly what we were expecting. Not a room in the friary, our room is a communal barracks-style room shared with other volunteers. It’s kind of austere… 

     

  

 

It was at this point that we thought we had made a mistake. What have we gotten ourselves info? There was no mention of our language classes and it appeared that we would be volunteering all summer as workers (or at least until we died of heat stroke.)

Christian and I prayed together that night before bed in our sweltering room, exhausted, dejected, and a bit worried. We were going to reserve judgment until the morning, deciding that a good night’s sleep would make things better.

We were half right. The heat kept me up all night, prolonging the longest day, but the next two days have been much better. We met with the director and made a schedule, organized prayer times (previously not regularly done but added at our request), and began our classes. 

We’ve had some interesting and exciting experiences already since then, and it looks like it’s going to be a great, albeit hot, Summer  for the both of us… But that first day was something I will never forget nor do I want to repeat!

Before leaving, I filmed this final video for the summer. My internet is not great here so you may have to go to the YouTube channel to find it, but this link might work:

 8 Comments

 Posted on June 2, 2016 by

 Justice, Ministry, News, Post-Novitiate, Trips, Video

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Is the Mass Boring?

I’ve heard it said a number of times that if it were a denomination of its own, “Lapsed Catholics” would account for either the second or third largest Christian body in the United States. Roughly one out of every ten people in the country were raised Catholic but no longer identify or practice the faith.

This is a staggering statistic that calls for action. But what?

The large statistic does not say very much, tough. All it says is that there is a growing number of people in this category. The real question is why. Over the past two decades, there has been extensive research into this question, and smarter people than I have written books on all the many reasons and what we can do to fix it. I do not pretend to offer any new information or to be an expert on the issue. Rather, I think what is most helpful for me is not knowing all of the individual reasons that someone leaves, but the nature by which someone “leaves.” Was it an abrupt, conscious decision, or did someone gradually fade away over many years until they no longer considered themselves Catholic?

In the former category are those who leave because of trauma, scandal, theological disagreement, or some other event that either destroyed their faith in one fell swoop or was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. They can point to a specific thing in the Church that is keeping them away, and unless that thing is changed, they will not return. For the average Catholic, there is little we can do to remedy this situation because the thing is often well outside of our control. We can’t change the theology, we can’t undo the past, and we can’t take away the pain that they feel, whether imagined or actual. In many ways, the best we can do is to simply live our faith with patience and hospitality for those struggling.

This is quite different from those in the latter category, a group that I believe (although I have no data to prove it) is much larger. These people have no major “issue” with the Church, no traumatic experience or major moral disagreement with its theology. No, those in this group are simply bored and disconnected. They do not feel a part of a community, are either unaware of the activity of the Church or have limited options for getting involved, and frankly, find the liturgical celebration, the main experience of Church for most people, to be dreadfully boring and un-affective. Add a touch of misinformation or poor catechesis, offer them numerous ways to be a good person in the world without going to Church, drop the Catholic guilt that drove them in their younger years, and you’ve got yourself a person that says, “What’s the point in going to that building once a week?” There’s no strong feeling towards the Church, no stumbling block preventing them from coming… there’s just no feeling at all.

That was the backdrop for a conversation I had a few week back with Rob, the mysterious voice that routinely asks me questions from behind the camera. With so many people leaving, and so many people simply disaffected by their experience, we’re forced to evaluate what we do: is there something wrong with the Mass that leaves so many unfulfilled? And if so, what can we do to make it better?

 10 Comments

 Posted on May 31, 2016 by

 Ministry, Prayer

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The Pursuit of Perfection

One year ago today I posted my first Breaking In The Habit YouTube video. Looking back, it was dreadful: the camera work was shaky, the edits were rough, the music was clichéd, none of the images were properly positioned or color corrected, and my narration was so… so forced *cringes thinking about it*. It was far from perfect. And yet, at the time, I was so proud of it. I had made a video!

Over the course of the summer I experimented with other types of videos—reflections, questions, conversations—realizing almost immediately that what I was doing with the videos was not just some fun project to show off to friends, it was a blossoming ministry touching an underdeveloped medium. To my great surprise, the “little videos” I was making were being watched well beyond the readership of the blog and were producing comments from far and wide.

Maybe there’s something here… I thought.

Overtaken by this new “hobby” of mine, I began to learn everything I possibly could about film-making. Even though I stuck to the mantra “content is king”—the idea that no matter how good the production value is, people are not going to watch a video for long if the content is boring, poorly scripted, or disconnected from reality—I wanted my videos to look like the films and shows I watched. As I learned more, taking a film class at Catholic University this year, I realized that I was actually more interested in the directing and producing of the video than I was in the performing.

Does this mean that I’ll be giving up my part on camera now? No, not exactly. I still really enjoy doing segments like “Ask Brother Casey” and “Catholicism in Focus,” and plan to continue these things in the fall when I return to the US. But what I’ve realized slowly over this year is that there is more to Breaking In The Habit than simply me on camera, and there are more ways to tell a story than simply using my voice.

The video I present today is just that. The first in the Breaking In The Habit Productions segment, “Franciscan Volunteer Ministry” is a short glimpse into the lives of Franciscan Volunteers, men and women who devote a year or two of their lives in humble service as a part of a prayerful community. At no point in this video will you see my face, and nowhere in these five minutes will you hear my voice; the story that it tells is told by the three volunteers themselves because it is their story.

And yet, there is a sense that it is mine as well. As the person organizing the video, I was amazed at how many different ways the raw footage could have gone. Move this clip here, that clip there, slow this down, edit this out, leave this in… Faithful, of course, to the story they wanted to tell, I was able to make something that told mine as well.

By the looks at what I’ve learned in one year, I’m sure I’ll look back on this video in six months and cringe at all the many mistakes and poor decisions I made. In all honesty, I hope I do. There’s obviously no use in beating ourselves up for not being as mature in the past as we are now, but there’s also no use in remaining content with who we were and what we accomplished yesterday. In another year, I hope that this project makes me cringe as much as I do watching that first video I posted because it means that I’ve learned something worth knowing, it means that I’ve grown in some important way.

I never expect to reach perfection. In filmmaking, and in life, perfection is a goal that has no real end—there is always something more, something better, something incomplete. But what makes producing videos like these fun, what makes this life as a Christian so fulfilling, is pursuing it anyway. There is always a new challenge, always a new lesson, always a new way we need to grow and move towards God. May we never stop our pursuit to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” until we live perfectly in God’s love.

 3 Comments

 Posted on May 23, 2016 by

 Video

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Homes Away From Home

The final two stops of our trip were places that already had a place in my heart: Greenville, the place where my vocation was born in college, and Triangle, the place where I lived and ministered last summer. After our trip to Macon, I advised them both that it was going to take a lot to woo us after such a great experience…

But c’mon. Was there ever a doubt!?

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The brothers and I getting a tour of the school.

We arrived in Greenville late Wednesday night and so began our tour the following morning with mass as the Poor Clare Monastery in Traveler’s Rest, SC, about 30 minutes north of Greenville. An often overlooked aspect of our charism, I think it’s a great gift that we have multiple Orders within the Franciscan tradition and it’s a great thing to support one another. From there, it was back to St. Anthony of Padua Catholic church and school for a tour of what is hands down the most beautiful elementary school every built. Seriously though. Floor to ceiling windows, original art, signature carpet to match it’s tagline “weaving a brighter future,” amazing gymnasium with cushioned supports under the floor and multimedia hookups, a roof garden, private playground for kindergarten, and a chapel fitted with stain glass windows and a replica of Bernini’s Window from St. Peter’s Basilica. Oh, and the best part? This mostly African-American school graduates students from high school at a rate of 98% whereas the rest of the city has graduated African-Americans at a rate between 35-50% over the past decade. That’s ministry right there.

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Dennis and Abraham walking through the famous rose garden at Furman University

After the tour, we got a quick lunch at the house and it was up to Furman University, my alma mater, for a walk around campus where we unexpectedly ran into a few Catholic Campus Ministry students who were happy to tell us about the organization. The following day we had the privilege of seeing the site of the new Vietnamese mission being run by one of our friars, the only Vietnamese-speaking priest in the whole diocese. It was a drop in the bucket of what goes on in Greenville, but what a visit!

With nothing left to see until Triangle, and Triangle being seven hours away from Greenville without stops or traffic, we decided to take our time, take a scenic route through Asheville, NC, and spend the night in Raleigh once more. It was a nice break in the fast-paced movement of our trip, and also nice not to be “on” for a day, being shown around and meeting lots of new people.

St.-Francis-of-Assisi

St. Francis Church in Triangle is definitely one of our nicest places of worship in the province!

Come Saturday, though, we packed everything up for the last time and made our way up 95 to Triangle, VA. At this point, I have to admit, we were all incredibly tired and were in no mood for another tour, big dinner, or programming of any sort. All we wanted a low-key, easy-going time. This is difficult to come by at St. Francis. We got there just in time for mass, and despite being a Saturday vigil mass, it was full and lively. Standing outside of the church before and after mass, I was amazed at how many people came up and introduced themselves to Abraham and Dennis and welcomed them to the parish with such kind words. But really, I shouldn’t have been. The people of this parish are hands down the nicest people I have ever met (and I say that knowing that people from Greenville, Raleigh, Durham, and Silver Spring read this blog!) For all the things that they do at this parish—and they do a lot—their best quality is by far their hospitality. After a home-cooked meal with the friars that night, we came back the next morning to greet people at three masses and attend one, and it was the same story: people came up to all three of us, gave introduced themselves, gave us hugs, and made us feel right at home.

And really, what a perfect way to end the trip. All told, we traveled more than 1500 miles, stayed in five different houses, went to eight different ministry sites, and spent time with twenty different friars—a test for any introvert, I assure you—and yet there was a sense we were “home” all along. In every friary we went, whenever we asked for something to drink or to use something in the house, the response was always the same: “Of course. It’s your home too.” The same was even true for the ministry sites with the people we served: there was a familiarity of style and purpose, a common vision that we all knew and lived, and people treated us like they had known us for years. How could we travel so far, meet people so new and different, and yet feel right at home? I guess all I can say is that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in the friars and with the people we share our lives. It’s great to know that, no matter where I go and whoever I meet throughout this life, there will always be a home away from home waiting for me with the friars and people of God!

 Posted on May 15, 2016 by

 Fraternity, Ministry, Trips

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