John Janaro's Blog, page 283

Manners, Love, and Living Together

When Pope Francis spoke to a meeting of engaged couples, he repeated to them the same advice he had previously given to families: "there are three important words for family life: permesso, grazie, e scusi." I give them in Italian because they lose something in translation, but they correspond to the English "excuse me" (or "please" or "may I...?" -- all of these go with permesso), "thank you" (grazie), and "I'm sorry" (scusi).

In keeping with our "Italiano style" home, Eileen printed out these three words and put them up on the wall in the dining room.

The Pope really nailed it, I think.

Although we have had a few laughs thinking of a some other words that might be added in a home with kids living in it, words like basta! ("enough" or "stop it").

Italians respond to grazie with the beautiful idiomatic term prego which comes from the word for "prayer" (pregare). Prego (literally "I pray") is also used for phrases such as "may I help you?" and to indicate things like "please, have a seat."

It can also be an invitation to "enjoy" as one might say after serving food (and this is how it connects to the well known American brand of spaghetti sauce).

In any case, simple expressions of courtesy are basic if people are going to share life in a human way. I rather like what we say in English as a response to being thanked for something. We say, "you're welcome." There is something fundamentally affirming and open about this phrase. It says, "I'm happy to do this because you are 'welcome' in my life" at whatever level the relationship exists, even if it's just a moment in the checkout line.

We say "thank you" and "your welcome" as we gratefully give and receive one another's generosity.

The Big Snow

Annnddd... here is the big blizzard of February 12-13, 2014 as it was seen in progress on the morning of the 13th at Casa Janaro:

At this point it was still snowing in that quiet, slow, relentless manner of a real snowstorm. It just keeps falling minute by minute, hour by hour, all night and all day until things look like this:


This looks like quite a job of digging out lays ahead. Ouch!

Is There Such a Thing As "Attention Excess"?

When I read, I read. What fire?I have a pathological attention span. When I read, I read. Food? Meh. Sleep? When my head hits the book, maybe. House on fire? Hmm, I thought it was getting warm in here. Coffee? Okay, I'll get some coffee. Bathroom? KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! "Daddy, hurry up!" Daddy's reading in there again. That's basically the routine.

Of course, the same thing can happen when I start writing (which is kinda cool in a way, except that it exhausts me, because writing is exhausting even when -- especially when -- I'm on a roll).

The Internet is different. It's an adventure in exploration in which I may find myself in a mental place that I had no intention of visiting. One time John Paul forgot to put a block of cheddar cheese back in the refrigerator. He and his mother proceeded to have an "animated discussion" about whether or not it was spoiled. I decided to settle the whole thing by googling it.

Over the next hour and a half I learned some fascinating things about cheeses (soft cheese spoils faster), how refrigeration works, different kinds of bacteria, the digestive system, yogurt, fruit, molds, diverse climates, and the Arabian desert.

Was the cheddar cheese spoiled? I don't remember.

The Slave Who Found True Freedom

St. Josephine Bakhita, February 8I must shout out for this amazing woman whom we honor today. She was called "Bakhita" by the Arab slave traders. It means "lucky one." There was nothing that looked lucky about the horrible abuse and mutilation that she suffered as a slave in Sudan, but then she was brought to Italy, found Christ, and was baptized Giuseppina Fortunata ("lucky one" in Latin).

She became a religious sister and for 50 years worked at the convent and among the people simply but with profound charity. She not only forgave her oppressors, but said she would kiss their hands if she saw them, because they brought her to Jesus (ultimately, in God's plan).
St Josephine Bakhita, you have a lot to pray for. We need you. Pray for an end to violence, human trafficking, and child abuse. Pray for South Sudan, your homeland. Pray for us, that we might love our enemies out of the conviction that God loves us and orders everything to the good.
And just to let y'all know, you'll find her "Great Conversion Story" in Magnificat, September 2014, in the GCS series written by yours truly. (Don't miss these remarkable and inspiring stories that will be appearing every month in this wonderful magazine.) 

A Personal Relationship With Truth

I think Pope Benedict XVI expressed very well this point about teaching and education that I have been exploring in recent posts. Here are some words he preached two years ago. I would say further that his entire service as successor of St. Peter was a continual witness to what he said here:

The true educator does not bind people to himself, he is not possessive. He wants the child, or the disciple, to learn to know the truth and establish a personal relationship with it. The educator does his duty to the end, he does not withdraw his attentive and faithful presence; but his objective is that the learner hears the voice of the truth speak to his heart and follows it on a personal journey. 

~Benedict XVI, Homily for January 8, 2012

On Parenting and Encounter

It's particularly hard to be a parent in the secularist culture of the Western world today. But Eileen and I have been blessed to be surrounded by a group of friends who support one another in the task of giving their kids a complete education.

We see all the dangers and frustrations and dead ends in a society that has caused harm to some of us. It's only human for us to want to be "protective" of our children.

We protect them and at the same time introduce them, in a pedagogical way, to the struggles of life in the larger society.

With the right pedagogy, I hope to help my children cultivate a generous personality, an authentic understanding and empathy, and a sense of responsibility based on the truth -- a solid moral character.

There is nothing wrong with these goals.

But there is a problem that might arise. I might be inclined to take as a "given" the very purpose of everything else in life, to assume it in such a way that I forget about it or it loses focus. I want an intellectual and moral formation for my kids. But as the Pope said, "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ." (And this is not Pope Francis speaking. This is Benedict XVI, and he says this over and over.)

I want to help my children to be open to the love of Jesus. I want them to encounter Jesus, to be drawn by his love, and to follow him in the paths of their vocations.

Our children belong to God, and as parents we have been given stewardship over the environment in which they awaken to life and hear his voice.

Of course we want our kids to be moral, but why? To respond in love to the God who gives himself to us in Jesus. This is what life is all about. Our primary task as parents is to prepare our children to encounter Jesus and follow him.

And I have failed so often (in 17+ years of parenting) to be the instrument of God's love to my children, but I pray and I beg Jesus to shine through even my weakness, to touch the hearts of my children and draw them to him, to enable them to know that he loves them personally and calls them to share in his eternal life with the Father in the Spirit.

Our children have been created for this and given to us for this. How do we truly succeed in our task as parents?

I can only humble myself before the Lord and ask for his grace for my own life, for my wife and our marriage, and for our family. The infinite mercy of the heart of Jesus is my hope. May all our children encounter him in his mercy, and place their trust in him.

Welcome To My Workshop

Who knows what this thing is?I have done a lot of writing in the past three years, and quite a bit of it has been here on this blog. Here I find the impetus to keep up with posts, to write something, even if it is just a few brief words.

Rarely is much of what comes out in these posts "polished," nor does it pretend to be. Rather, this is a place that stimulates my thinking. It is a place where I can hammer out ideas into words -- in fact, as I've said often, I tend to think things through by writing them out.

Blogging is an experimental literary form. If writing were painting, a blog would be a kind of sketchbook full of things ranging from scribblings to quick but colorful drawings. But it's different too, because everything is set forth for people to see (or read, in this case) if they wish. For your sake, I try to put a little paint and varnish on what is presented here. The result is something that, no matter how primitive it may be overall, is always in some respects a finished utterance.

I like to think that I'm welcoming people into my "writing workshop," where I can be a craftsman of words and offer something beneficial to others by bringing them into the work even while it is in progress.

And there has been lots of progress in these years, considering that without this place I would have done little writing beyond my direct publishing assignments. It has required energy, but has also generated it.

Thanks to the blog, I now have a "workshop" full of roughly drafted texts (close to 600 by jiminy -- and that's after subtracting posts that are just pope quotations or cute Josefina pictures). A lot of written material here focuses around a group of related themes. There is the genesis and the initial development of more than one future book in here, if I can find the further energy (and--let's face it--the courage) to organize and develop, to cut and clarify, to revise and synthesize.

In the Midst of the Storm

Today's gospel reading contains a familiar scene from the life of Jesus and his disciples. With a little metaphorical imagination, we can easily see that this is also a good description of our relationship with Jesus.

A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind,
and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”
They were filled with great awe and said to one another,
“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

Mark 4:35-41

It's not hard to see the point of this splendid account. This is my life. This is my way of reacting to crisis situations (and virtually every "situation" in life is, more or less, a crisis, or at least a challenge of some kind).

It's one thing to talk about Jesus (or write about him). I rather like it when the seas are calm, Jesus is with me, but I've basically got the boat under control. Jesus is "asleep," which -- I must admit -- seems convenient when I am captain of my ship. He's not going to suddenly pop up with his inscrutable demands about leaving everything and following him, or about how hard it's gonna be for me to get into the kingdom because I have lots of stuff and I kinda like having stuff.

Calm seas. Jesus "asleep." I'm at the helm on the open sea. I'll have to talk with him later, but right now it's break time. It's a little vacation from Christianity.

What am I thinking? What I really want is a break from being a human being. I'd be glad to sail in circles, going nowhere, as long as the passengers admired me and said things like, "What a fine captain you are!"

I'm the one who is asleep. I'm dreaming.

Then comes the storm.

And I go running to Jesus and I say, "Why are you letting this happen to me? Can't you do something?"

Jesus brings peace, and he also gently reveals the real problem. I would rather sail in circles in the sun because, really, I'm terrified of what's beyond the horizon. I'm afraid of the storms.

But he is gentle with my broken soul. He knows that the storms are sometimes so long and dark and fearsome, and that I often don't know where he is -- indeed, I am afraid that he has left the ship, I am afraid that he doesn't care....

Do I not yet have trust in him?

Come, Lord Jesus. Calm the storms of my fears. The winds and the seas of my soul belong to you, and I trust in you even when they rage and howl. I will not be discouraged.

Give me the grace to trust in you always.

January Cold and White

What can we say about the first month of 2014? Cold, cold, cold. Icy, clear, colorful, bright shining windy days. The powdery white snow of January remains on the ground. It will melt soon enough, and we will cease to think of these days that we endured with grim humor -- these days that have surprised us with their beauty.

May we never lose the wonder that springs up from these scenes, that lets us see that we are still children, and that everything is really fresh and new.

Adventures in New Media

My spot in the Twitterverse. Brave new worlds.Well, we have celebrated the fact that the blog is now three years old.

This is also (more or less) the third anniversary of my overall big splash into the world of New Media.

Actually, "tiny ripple" is more like it. But it was big for me. I had spent my whole life in teaching and print media. I did a lot of hard work that people don't have to do anymore (that whole subject deserves a post of its own).

Media have changed very much in my time.

I learned how to sign my name at the age of four (that would be 1967, uh huh). Sometime over the course of the past few years, I have forgotten how to sign my name. Now that everything is digital, it seems like the only time I have to sign my name is on a birthday card (and, depending on who it's for, sometimes I have to remind myself that my first name isn't "Daddy").

My editing career started with working on the high school newspaper. By the way, dear millennial friends, have you ever wondered why "cut" and "paste" are called cut and paste? Scissors and glue, man. I've cut. I've pasted. And I'm proud of it. I've seen a "Press" actually press ink onto paper. It was beautiful. I'm not saying I want to go back to doing it that way. But considering how rinky-dink it all was, we did amazing things.

Anyway, we thought that "word processing" was the revolution. And it did bring fundamental changes to writing and publishing. But interactive media have really changed the scene. As it has turned out, I've been following the changes more attentively than might have been the case under other circumstances.

Getting sick changed my way of working. Was it the Lyme disease that triggered another long ride on the neurobiological roller coaster inside my brain? I don't know, but it was some ride.

Through all the ups and downs I read history voraciously (and a good amount of literature too) . I pretty much took a break from the theology/philosophy routine, but otherwise I read and read and read. And I managed to write a (non-academic) book of my own and get it published. I also piddled around on the Internet, but not much.

Three years ago, I had just begun to emerge from another bad episode of my "rheumatism"* thanks in part to some new medications.

[*Footnote: Lately I've taken to using the old fashioned term rheumatism to just cover the whole wammy of my illness and all its various symptoms (including "the brain fever," i.e. all the various kinds of "mental rheumatism" that flare up). "Rheumatism" is a (deliberately) vague term that sometimes (but not always) indicates "inflammation." Certainly, my chronic condition involves things that are literally or at least metaphorically inflammatory (even the mental symptoms "flare up," or maybe I should say "flare down" but in any case they get swollen and they hurt). More importantly, however, rheumatism signifies an overall physically-based affliction that goes up and down, that comes and goes, more or less. But you never get rid of it entirely. Still, you do what you have to do to control it, and if every so often you have to disappear for a bit, people understand: "it's his rheumatism." I'm just trying to simplify discourse. I'm not hiding anything: the more technical clinical and diagnostic presentation of my medical conditions and their shorthand initials are in my book and often enough on this blog. But trying to identify what exactly is going on in every flare-up is like trying to nail jello to a wall. My doctors know enough to help me for now, and there is some serious business, but we're managing it. Meanwhile, I'll make my references general and folksy. People don't want to hear about it all the time, and I don't want to write about it all the time. Is that okay?]

It was a very hard period of my life. At times it was awful, really. God was working deeply during those years, but I don't yet understand much of what he was doing (probably I don't even need to know... not now, anyway).

Early 2011: the days of the wild
hermit and his crazy long beard!But in 2011, I started to feel better with some consistency. Meanwhile, people had been reading my book and it was really helping them. Not only friends and acquaintances but also people I had never met were contacting me to express their gratitude.

I began to get the sense that God was calling me to do something to promote the book more. My vanity was not the defining motivation for this (which is not to say that I don't have plenty of vanity, haha... but there was something else that was more important). I felt that this light belonged on a lamp stand, and that I had to take some responsibility for that.

But how? I was feeling better, but I was hardly in any shape for a book tour. So I looked at the Internet, at blogging and "social media," in the hope that I might find some ways of networking and promoting the book. And it certainly has proven useful in that regard.

But I also discovered something that, after many years of publishing and writing, was a completely new experience: a way of interacting with my readers and getting to know them, and a medium that brings together writing and conversation in a way that is filled with new possibilities, even if it is also filled with danger.

In fact, I had found the possibility to interact with all sorts of people, all over the world, using the written word and other forms of creative expression. I found also the possibility to continue, or resume, conversations already begun.

Thus began my Adventures in New Media, which have taken me in directions I never could have imagined. I've made mistakes and I've wasted time, but I'm learning and I'm praying that God's grace will sustain me and lead me in his ways.