Actual Adventures in Boston

Ok, first, I know I haven't updated this thing in weeks. My bad. Though in my defense, it's not like I've been intentionally neglecting the blog. Grad school gets busy.

However, in spite of that, I have been able to get a few adventures together. Let us travel back in time a bit:

Saturday, Oct 3, 2009. First ever Red Sox game at Fenway Park. In the words of a famous New Englander: "Freakin' sweet!"

So I went to the game with my roommate and his friends from Ohio, so they were all decked out in Indians apparel (they were the visiting team), and I, for fear of the nearing playoffs atmosphere, had to sneak in my Jim Edmonds Redbirds shirt underneath my jacket. But I will say that Fenway Park is really cool. We were up as high as you could go for the standing room only tickets, but you still had a real good view of the field and what was going on.

But as a baseball lover, it kind of just hit me when I was watching the game. This is the site of a lot of baseball history. Babe Ruth played here. Ted Williams. Carlton Fisk. Carl Yastrzemski. This is the field were some of the greats (who didn't wear the birds on bat) played. There was even a place within the park that you could stroll down and see some of the photos of the famous players and plays. Now, of course few of them occurred in the World Series until 2004, but still, history.

Plus, the Indians lost, and I called a grand slam from former Indian Victor Martinez, which depressed my roommate and his friends while 50,000 people around us cheered. It's the little things in life that you have to enjoy. A walk in the park. Seeing the stars in the clear night sky. Calling your roommate's favorite player who was traded to the other team hitting a grand slam to give the Sox the lead. The little things.

V-Mart Grand Slam


Parker's Reaction to said Grand Slam

Monday, Oct 12th, 2009. Irish music night at the Green Briar. OMG.

So since I'm sure you are wondering just what this was, let me explain. Every weekend, usually on a Friday night, the Theology folks organize a get together at a local pub so that we can meet and just have some fun together before going back to the backbreaking amount of work that we need to do each week. This weekend we did something different, and since we had off on Monday for Columbus Day (fat lot of good that did me, I don't have classes Mondays anyway), they decided that we should go to the Green Briar. It's an "authentic" Irish pub close by.

Anyways, they have an Irish music night on Mondays, and I'm not exactly sure how they organize it. All I know is that I walked into 20 or so people gathered around playing authentic Irish music. There were fiddles, and a bagpipe, a could of accordions, a couple of guitars, and the Irish drum thing, whatever it's called. But it was SOOOOOO good. I love Celtic music, it's good for the soul, and to hear all these people just randomly (?) getting together and knowing all the songs by heart and playing them was fantastic. So great. Definitely made my Monday night.

Friday, Oct 16th, 2009. Social night at Cambridge.

This past Friday we headed out to Cambridge, where Harvard's located. There was a great pub out there that we all hung out at, but that wasn't what made this one cool.

What made it cool was that the Jesuits were able to come out and drink and talk with us. I got to just talk with the dean of the whole school, Fr. Dick Clifford. I also have a class with him, but it was really cool to just be able to talk with him. Really interesting guy, like pretty much everyone I run into up here. I reiterate again, I love the people up here in Boston. The Theo folks are a great deal of fun and are really good peeps. Glad to have made friends with them.

Sunday, Oct 18, 2009. SNOW!!!

That's right. It freakin' snowed! Granted, it didn't stick, and it only lasted for the afternoon and night on Sunday, but still, it snowed!!! I got myself into a nice little wintery/holiday spirit while watching the Patriots score 59 points on the Titans. I was very happy for the snow, which is good, because if everyone who actually lives here is correct, I'll pretty much be seeing nothing but snow from October until about July, give or take a month.


So there you go. Some actual adventures in Boston. There are certainly more to tell, but some of them you'll just have to wait for until you see me again ;) Pax.

-C. Clow

"We keep running through the tracks we made
When the snow was on the ground.
Trying hard to make sure we never lose track
Of where we came from, so long ago
We have to leave, we don't want to go."
-SpiritRising (a.k.a. yours truly), "So Beautiful"

Questioning

There are a couple of things about being here in Boston that are challenging for me. One is the distance from all the people back home. The other is trying to reconcile what I'm learning with what I believe and what I trust. Bringing together the past and the present and still coming out sane.

I won't go into details, but be sure that my faith has certainly been challenged by what I have learned so far, and I'm sure it won't be the last time either. I constantly feel like there are a million different trains of thought running through my head about this Theology stuff: what should I believe, what shouldn't I believe, what should I do with this, and so on. I constantly find myself, when confronted with different arguments and "facts" and views and so forth, being like Pilate in John's gospel, asking "What is truth?"

Saying that one is a Catholic is tough. Truly living as a Catholic should is even tougher. But thinking about why one lives the way they do, certainly must be one of the most frustrating and difficult things in the long run. I have always believed that it is better to question, better to think openly about things. Only in rare cases should one hold back from questioning. But believe me, it isn't easy. I think that, despite all of the "deeper" meanings that we look for in Scriptures, in the gospel when Jesus says that we must have faith like a child, I really wonder if that's true.

Because a child doesn't question. Oh, they will certainly ask why, but they won't easily lose faith. They will go along with what an authority tells them and not question the decision. And yet, that's not what I'm supposed to be doing here. I am supposed to question and think about these matters of faith, and the more that I do that, the harder it seems to get. So I wonder, if maybe ignorance is bliss? Maybe simple faith is the way to go.

But something inside me cannot sit comfortably with that. There's that little voice, that in spite of what I read and learn and think, continues to reaffirm what I trust: there is a God, there is a point, and everything else will work itself out. When I grow weary of reading about different descriptions of new terms and ideas that we have zero way to prove or disprove, I come back to those three points. There is a God. There is a point. Everything else will work itself out.

I can't prove any of the three. Historically, there's not much of a basis for any of those. Yet for some reason, I continue to hold onto them. Whether God is this Triune God or just that little voice inside my heart, inside all of our hearts, I continue to believe.

I constantly say that I don't know what I want to do with this Theology stuff, but honestly, that's a lie. I know exactly what I want to do with it. I want to end this complexity. We come up with all these different distinctions and classifications and "understandings," when in reality we aren't going to understand God. Hell, I doubt "God" is really what God refers to God's self as anyways, much less any debates about titles for God, or whether masculine, feminine, or neutered nouns are appropriate for God. Our language is simply our attempt to express something deeper here. It's imperfect, just as I am imperfect, just as everyone and everything here, at some level, is imperfect. But I still have faith that there is something greater out there, and whether that's Allah, Brahmin, Jesus Christ, or simply just that little whisper, I do believe there's something.

At the end of the day, that's what I hang my heart on (thank you Luther). I don't know how my theological system is going to play itself out, what moral issues I will take up and my defenses for them. I don't know what Christological view I'm going to take, what I think about liberation theology, and whether the Catholic church has it all right, has it all wrong, or is a bit of both. I don't know if there's a Christ of Faith, or just the Jesus of history, or both, or neither. And I don't know why we still kill each other over what we believe comes to us from a God of love. I do not know much.

But I still hear that whisper.

And for now, I'm going to do my best to trust it.

"I am a troubled mind, I am a calloused heart
A failing engine from driving way too hard
I was trying way too hard
I pulled a thirty-eight out of my bleeding heart
I killed my selfishness for bringing me this far
This far away from you...

I never second guessed that little voice I heard
It's just a whisper"
-Needtobreathe, "Valley of Tomorrow"