John said he worried he would come back to the apartment one night to find I'd hung myself. My window overlooked the front porch and I'd taken my screen out so I could sit there. The day before I had played back a song I'd recorded. It was electric guitars to the tune of Pachelbel's Canon in D, I didn't know if I was playing it in the key of D and John didn't know what Pachelbel was, just that the things I was saying didn't make any sense.
Two years previously, John went away to seminary. He says now he didn't know what he was doing there. Once, in a drunken haze, a group of freshmen broke into the kitchen and stole the beer that was intended for the faculty's consumption. It didn't sound like a very holy place, or at least not devoid of problems.
We would drink beer and watch Harry Potter on cable. Not that anyone particularly enjoyed watching Harry Potter, it was just always on. John would tell stories of beating people up at his job as a corrections officer, or rather, tell stories of having to "correct" his "guests". Me and Aaron would smoke cigars on the front porch and Joe would get drunk out of his mind and puke on the rent deposit insured carpet.
John was the first one I told. "If I'm gonna work, for money" I would say. (I would always qualify why I was going to continue studying engineering, and I could never discount the idea that I was in the wrong line of study.) "But if that doesn't work out...". John followed my leading statement and was the first one I told. "I've given thought to seminary". But I was still too timid and nothing came of what I thought was a most courageous effort to talk to someone.
I had of course, been talking to God about what I should be doing. Begging, pleading, bargaining, cursing. Mark asked me what I would do if the whole engineering thing didn't work out. At the time he didn't know me and his assumption caught me off guard. I gave him some crap about moving to California and playing music, he was unaffected. Mark is a good guy, I think he was moved to ask me that question, that day. My relatives were all together celebrating my grandparents 50th anniversary. After the renewal of vows we went out to Mahoney state park and had a big dinner at this lodge overlooking the Platte river. We were camping and I couldn't sleep. I went outside, sat in a lawnchair, said a rosary and cried for about an hour. Maybe I had no right to be so depressed. Certainly that self pity was vanity. Nevertheless I was at a crossroad without precedent to guide me. "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test'". I asked God for a sign. Exhausted I collapsed in sleep.
My fate was already sealed. Transcript transferred, lease signed, promises made, I joined two friends who also graduated from Iowa Western with electrical engineering tech degrees to continue my education at Iowa State.
Iowa State seemed okay and my descent was gradual but visible. I dropped physics the first go round, and failed calc 3 when I missed my final. Undaunted, aka, blockheaded, I continued the second semester. I slowly stopped attending class, because I was working more hours delivering pizzas to pay the rent.
I forgot to mention my sister, she lived with me through all of this, but I rarely have memories of her over the previous year I think because I didn't really talk to her much until recently.
I kept going to Mass. I think maybe I would've have given up earlier if I hadn't been going. I thought I was doing the right "logical" thing. Even if I wasn't happy, I wanted to keep going to school. It seemed so romantic, being on campus, absorbing knowledge. And besides once I'd gotten the degree just to prove I could, I could go on to study theology without regrets. That's one thing that sticks out in my mind now. I've never been able to discount this desire to serve God in this way. I was miserable, I was ready to give up everything.
One afternoon, I must have looked at my clock wrong because I was on campus an hour before class started. I didn't want to sit in the dreadful English building and wait for an hour, so I walked across campus and decided to visit the library. On a whim I browsed through the catalog on one of the many computers in the lobby. The only author that came to mind was an early Church Father Augustine. I don't know why he was in my mind, and it's occurred to me since that I may have heard him discussed on the radio when I was in Omaha. I typed in Augustine to find that the library had only several of his works. I chose the first title that struck me as interesting. I took a postcard and jotted down catalog number of the book with one of those little golf pencils that they have laying around for just such occasions. I ventured into the library's guts in search of a book. I went to a floor and room I hadn't been yet, and to a shelf I'd never seen, to look for a book I'd never read. When I got there it seemed like the book was waiting for me. Thousands of books, shelved seven feet high and thirty feet long were stacked flush, spine to spine, but one book was protruding half off of the shelf. St.Augustine Confessions. I chuckled with illusions of grandeur. "God must really want me to read this book". That was November 17, 2003, 2:32PM. I know because I still have the return slip for the book, and I still have the book. (which I was subsequently charged for in my gross delinquency).
Soon I couldn't afford cable. I got another job, quit delivering pizza. Wrecked my car driving to work, now I couldn't go anywhere. Short on cash I sold the TV and the PS2. (I'll never live that down, but I don't care, I don't have anyone to pay my bills for me, what was I gonna do). The final feeble attempt at salvaging my academic career, weekends spent in the library were of no avail. I thought I would just squeeze by, take some summer classes and get on track, but when I checked my grades the week after classes were over, my already wounded and listing career sank beneath the incessant waves.
When you find out you failed, you feel gutshot. It's despair. You failed. Every other bad day, bad quiz, bad test, bad grade, left you the hope of the next day, quiz, test, grade. But failing out? It has a finality to it that articulates devastation deftly.
In despair I only turned to music. Listening, playing, writing, recording. After I'd failed out, the humiliation was pretty much complete. I had to go talk to my advisor, to whom I'd promised I was gonna do better, to discuss how I would get back into school. The process is basically re-admission, plus the task of explaining to a board comprised of a couple deans and some dignitaries what had changed in my life that was going to allow me to be successful. With that in my mind I tried to evaluate where I was in life. Then since I didn't have anything else to do, and was only digging a deeper whole of misery for myself through music, I read Augustine's Confessions.
Confessions is Augustine's autobiography which details his life and conversion with the constant prayer and reflection upon the fact that God moves in our lives, making Himself present to us so that we may become servants to Him. It wafts, as incense to God proclaiming His glory and mercy above all. It was written "to excite men's minds and affections toward Him" and supplies the reader with a powerful example of one man's struggle to faith, relevant even 1600 years after it was written. This work has sleighed me, and rightfully so for what kept me from pursuing my faith those previous three years was the root of all sin, pride. I cared what other people thought about me. The spirit of confession which is embodied in the work calls one to a holy humility and points the thirsty soul constantly to Scripture.
Oh, the folly of pride, the clear correlation between my sinful life and my rebuking of my spiritual life. I've become mortified by my own tepidity, my own irresponsibility, and because it, I know so little about my own faith.
That spirit of humility with which I've been blessed has transformed me. I can no longer sit idly by and expect God to knock on me. I have a responsibility to seek, and knock, for in this so much has already been opened to me. That is what I've been dealing with the past twenty-three days, that is what has made me re-evaluate everything in my life, that was what gave me the courage to talk to my parents again after six months, that is what has given me insight into my emotional problems, that is what has given me a new excitement for life and love of God, that is what has wetted my appetite for knowledge of God and His Church, that is what has driven me back to the Church and her Sacrement's, that is what prompted me to start Eucharistic adoration, that is what has brought me back to prayer and a trust in God and His providence that I never had before. The Holy Spirit has swamped me with these graces. Oh to pray again! Oh to be quite in the presence of our Lord in the Eucharist! What more to receive him! and in a state of grace delivered in confession!
Talking to my parents again was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I was given the courage to open up and was surprised and overjoyed at their loving response. I discovered my parents. It wasn't they who had abandoned me, but me who had shut them out almost completely from my life, starting seven years ago.
I've initiated a serious discussion I should have had three years ago with the Archdiocese vocations director to seek guidance on what I perceive to be my calling into seminary.
I think God really did want me to read that book.
There are allot of other thought's tangent to this, basically everything I think about now, so that's what this blog will be, cogitation and praise of God.
Peace
"'Though art great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised.''Thy power is great and of Thy wisdom there is no number.' To praise thee is but the wish of man who is but a part of Thy creation..."
Opening line from Confessions
