Movin' On Up

http://oneillindc.tumblr.com/

That's the new blog. Join me, won't you?

Moving the Blog.

I've decided to move the blog to another website. I found tumblr.com through a few friends' blogs and I like it much better. Not only do I think it looks better, it is a lot easier to post up pictures and videos. My New Year's resolution is to blog about more meaningless crap at least a few times a week.

I'm still trying to work out a few of the kinks over at the new blog, but I'll post up the link as soon as it's ready.

Taylor

Wisconsin

It seems as though I've learned quite a few things about life and myself over the past three or four months. Unsurprisingly, however, as so often happens in life, this leads to more questions than answers. There is one thing that I have learned with a good deal of certitude, however, and that is that Wisconsin is my home.

Ever since I can remember I have longed to get out of the land of my birth. The cold weather, the lack of culture and non-camouflaged recreation left me feeling quite bored. I thought that the big city was where I belonged. I've always glorified New York City and imagined myself living there amongst the bustle of streets filled with people shadowed by the giant buildings of steel and brick scraping the sky high above. Indeed, I do still feel a certain affinity with that city which escapes me, but I've been awakened to the true nature of the big city, the coast etc.

Though not NYC, Washington DC was almost as exciting to me before I moved here. Though the city does not allow proper sky-scrapers, it has all the other hallmarks of a large, historical, and cultured town. Taxi cabs fly by. People are out at all hours of the night. Sirens can be heard every 20 minutes from my open apartment windows. There is always something happening and there is never a dull moment. Let me preface what I am about to say with this: I enjoy living here for the time being, if only because it is an experience from which I will hopefully pull some wisdom and growth.

That being said, I have no desire to live here for the rest of my life. I have no desire to live in NYC for the rest of my life. People are cold. Things are too loud. Those sky scrapers become nothing but albatrosses. And there are so few trees.

It has taken only a few months to discover, but I now deeply appreciate the place I had once forsaken. It seems as though the older I get the more I long for a quiet life in a cabin somewhere in the woods of northern Wisconsin. A beard, a few books with which to teach, and a family will allow me to die a happy man surrounded by nothing but the sound of birds and trees growing. (When life gets as quiet as He intended you can hear such things). No place in this world is perfect, but that cabin will do just nicely until Death creeps in under the door to pay me my last and most distinguished visit.

Simplicity, quiet, and kindness are such rare things in the world. They may very well be rare in Wisconsin as well, but not quite as much so as in many other places, as I am coming to see.

Perhaps the growing theme in my reflections here is a distaste, no... a hatred for the world. We want to "live life" and somehow that becomes synonymous with joining the world in revelry and frivolity. Perhaps ironically, it seems that to truly live life one must forsake the world and "hunker down", so to speak, with the few last glimpses of beauty and truth that the canopy of the modern world lets through. The city and contemporary man are convoluted and tangled messes. They have no direction and simply stumble loudly into one another without meaning. It's infectious and I am not surprised to see how it rubs off onto your own soul. It's mass hysteria.

But noise and bright, flashing lights don't make for a life well lived or fully experienced. In fact, they make quite excellent superficial diversions and distractions. They quell instead of quench the desire to truly live. In the quietness we truly experience life. Reflection and meditation are essential to not only experiencing, but pulling wisdom from our days. In the quietness we have room to be what we were meant to be. In the quietness there is freedom to recognize and appreciate those fleeting glimpses of beauty and truth.

There are two good examples that illustrate my point which immediately come to mind. The first is an anecdote told to my class by the great Monsignor Sokolowski. He once spoke with an old priest friend of his (who is now dead) about a visit that this friend had made to Egypt many years ago. This priest trekked out into the deserts of Egypt which are filled with true darkness unstained by the light pollution of modern civilization (especially so many years ago, before tourism and modernity had really struck Egypt). He said that the stars in the night sky absolutely radiate in that darkness and that the spectacle is too beautiful and surreal to allow for any sort of atheism or agnosticism. The ancients were blessed and their mythologies are fueled by this mirror of the Divine in those breathtaking skies. They made the Transcendent apparent. Monsignor Sokolowski extended this experience by saying, "That's why everyone is so crazy in New York. They never see the stars." A brilliant man.

The second thing that comes to mind is another brilliant man, one of my great heroes, Henry David Thoreau. For those unfamiliar, Thoreau wrote one of the greatest nonfiction works of Western literature in Walden which is a collection of essays and journals from his time living on Walden Pond in a small cabin built by himself deep in the Massachusetts woods. He lived as simply as possible, building his own cabin, growing and killing his own food etc. His one modern luxury were books. Walden is a masterpiece (even though Thoreau was a Romantic and quite off in many regards). There are countless quotations in that text which sum up my thoughts about living life quietly, simply, and well. They say more than I ever could. Here are a few of those gems:

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Peace and Quiet be with you.

Taylor

Thank You

It's really pretty late and I should be sleeping, but I just wanted to take some time to thank you who read this blog and who are good souls. These past few months have been really hard for me for reasons that I've talked to some of you about.

It's funny how people can still make you feel pretty crappy about life even when you know they aren't good for you. Life really is beautiful and it's too bad that we all get caught up in so much garbage. As bummed as I've been, and as lonely as I've gotten at times, it's been ok because you've reminded me that there are always people who have your back.

I don't know why the world is as messed up as it is. I don't know why relationships seem to only bring hurt to the people I know, but I do know we're doing the right things. There is a beauty in that and a weight is taken off the shoulders.

The older that I get the more I realize how sick the world is. The modern era is the most immature of all eras. Gone are the concepts of common decency and commitment.

Am I bitter? Sure. But, I think that's a normal response to these sorts of things. It's tough to have someone so radically reject your well-being as a person, especially someone who you've cared for and been cared for by.

In the end, you're left with only a quiet resolution that you're better off, even if it doesn't feel like it at the moment. Life, like God, is mysterious and there is a curious way for scars to turn into sources of real wisdom and growth. I've already learned so much about how to treat people and care for them unconditionally. Some of those things are learned in a beautiful way, some of them, unfortunately, are a bit more painful. How we learn them doesn't really matter as far as the effect it brings to our lives. It's important to take wisdom and not revenge from injury.

Hope is important. I'm far, far from perfect (believe me), however, I know that someday I'll give my life for someone. As God is my witness, by his grace I'll die in some way for someone someday. Everyone deserves that and it was for this I was made. I couldn't have done that in the situation I was in. We all want to be loved and appreciated. We all want someone to meet us where we are, take the veil off of our facade, and truly love whoever it is we really are underneath. That's a special thing and we shouldn't settle for anything else.

I wasn't always who I should have been. In fact, I was far from it at times. But I do know that I gave it my all and learned to love, in some senses, unconditionally. It is tempting to feel wronged and to wish we'd never put ourselves in such a vulnerable position. It is tempting to regret it. I don't. The world may make you feel it, but that doesn't change the character of our actions. We can't become that which we rebel against (even if the people in our lives do) and so we continue on as best as we know how.

Too often people sell themselves short in this world. Too often people are too afraid or simply incapable of loving or being loved in a meaningful way. We should especially keep these people in our prayers. This world, our very inheritance, has robbed us of the natural goods we desire as human beings. These are injustices, but we have nothing to do but shrug them off and try to keep loving as Christ loved. There are a million choice words I'd like to use, but what good would that do? I'm thankful that God has given this sinner a clear sight on some of these issues. It doesn't make things easier now... and maybe it won't ever make things better in this life, but it's the only real option.

We must continue to love the eternal in a fallen and unjust world. On the other side of being unwilling to love in the face of injustice lies the other extreme which is to buy into the perversion of the world. It is infinitely important that we not fall into this extreme either. As the prayer says, "Stand by me that I may not be dazzled by the glitter and glow of the enemy camp." A hatred for the world that we live in is crucially important. As T.S. Eliot once said, "There is no more repulsive spectacle than an old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him." The world has forsaken all of us and will ultimately leave us alone and dying. In some senses, it is our Judas, the one who betrays us with a kiss of "glitter and glow." May we keep our eyes steadfastly on things eternal.

People can trick you and trick themselves into thinking they are something that they aren't. There's really nothing elegant one can say about that. It is what it is. You try to learn to not repeat the mistakes you've made yourself or those done to you. Then you hope to be able to give that suffering a meaning and make a better life for yourself and someone else in the future. The falling, the sadness, that is all inevitable. And so, instead of being upset I'm just going to thank you all for your support. It's not always easy to talk about these sort of things and perhaps it seems a bit dramatic, but you learn a thing or two by losing something so important in your life when you're already so far removed from everything and everyone else who means anything to you. One of those things I've learned is that life is short. Another is that we don't take the time to tell the people in our lives how important they are to us and how much their care and kindness means to our well-being. I am well because of you. If that's sappy then so be it. It had to be said.

News and Classes

I haven't written or kept up with this blog in the past few months nearly as much as I wanted to. There has really been a lot that has gone on in my life since I've moved out here and that kept me from wanting to blog at all. I'm setting a new goal, however, to pick up where I left off and begin writing at least twice a week on here.

In looking at the calendar it appears that I have been out here for about 3 months. In some ways, it feels like it has been a long time. I've grown into school and my schedule. Things like the subway went from being a novelty to something I hate getting out of bed to do. In other ways, it doesn't seem so long ago that I came out here. No matter how settled I get here, it always feels like I'm at a home away from home. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again at Thanksgiving time. It'll probably be the first Thanksgiving that has meant much to me, to be honest.

About my classes... I have 4, like a normal undergraduate semester, but we spend a little less time in class than in undergrad. As far as difficulty, I can say that things are definitely taken up a level from undergrad. The reading, concepts,and discussions are often times much more academic than anything I have experienced before. In some senses, this is a breathe of fresh air. It is challenging, but in a good way. I can say that I don't feel as if the material goes over my head by any means and that I have probably learned more in this semester than I learned in 4 years of undergrad. I was really worried before I started getting grades back on midterms and papers, but it turns out I did pretty well on everything. That went a long way to make me comfortable with my current lot in life. I suppose I could say a bit about each of my individual classes, but first a word about studying theology at the grad level in general...

Theology is basically broken into 4 broad schools that are quite different. Historical theology is just what it sounds to be. The historical theologian studies how theology has progressed since the Ascension and looks into the major and minor schools and movements. It is history, plain and simple, and is perhaps of the most value for apologetics (which is so sorely needed), particularly in addressing Protestantism. This is the type of theology that Adam Horn is going into. Moral theology is the second major type. This type is quite self explanatory again. Moral theologians study the nature of morality and how to interpret and speak about specific acts, their consequences, and their relation to both man and God. Biblical exegesis is the third major school of theology. These are the theologians who study and interpet Scripture. They must be fluent in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And finally, in my opinion the most important school of theology (wink), we have the Systematics. Systematic theology is an attempt to create a unified picture of existence and the Catholic faith through study of the nature of God. When you think of theology and take out specific questions of morality or exegesis you are usually left with things under the jurisdiction of the systematics (though by the nature of being systematic in theology, this school must include morality and Scripture as fundamental to the whole scope of theology).

My classes:

History and Method of Theology



This is Fr. John Galvin who teaches my History and Method class which is basically a broad overview of the history of Catholic and Protestant theology. We focus mostly on the different forms and approaches to Theology from the early Patristic period of the Church up until the current time. I have learned a lot from this class, but it is also extremely boring. Fr. Galvin, God bless him, is one of the driest men I have ever met. He lectures the entire class period. I must say, however, that he is an amazingly kind man. He spent a decent amount of time on the phone with me this summer answering questions and helping me register as my advisor was out of state. He remembered me and introduced himself on the first day of class and often comes up to chat about small pleasantries after class. He is a good priest and a very intelligent man.

Introduction to the Christian Moral Life

I'm always rolling my eyes about this class because it is straight up moral theology and I'm in Systematics. I suppose there could be a friendly rivalry between the two. That being said, I have learned an unbelievable amount from this class. We have focussed on St. Thomas (CUA appears to be a very Thomistic school) and the nature of man and God in this class. That has lead us to a thorough look into each of the cardinal and theological virtues as well as concepts like freedom, happiness, and conscience. St. Thomas is the most influential theologian in Church history and though he is the theologian that is most widely accepted as the greatest authority of Catholic theology, he is not the only one. There are people who look to Bonaventure or Don Scotus for their entire slant in theology. I now see that I am a hardcore Thomist and will be narrowing further and further in solely Thomist theology as I progress through school.

Dr. Mattison III teaches this class. He's a fairly young professor out of Notre Dame who gets really excited about being a moral theologian. He is quite orthodox and begins each class with a prayer (which still, because of my public school undergraduate education, seems so strange). He also sounds exactly like Conan O'Brien when he talks. If you closed your eyes during class you'd picture Conan going on about fundamental option theory, freedom for excellence, and Veritatis Splendor. I had an oral midterm with Dr. Mattison. I had to meet at his office and he grilled me on several topics we covered throughout the semester. I was initially nervous, but I ended up doing quite well. One of the biggest differences between graduate school and undergraduate is that the professors know exactly who you are and they take the time to be very available to you. They go out of their way to be friendly and personable, which seems especially true with the Masters students (as opposed to the seminarians). They are training future colleagues and you really are respected as a student and novice scholar which is intimidating and refreshing at the same time.

Theological Latin

I couldn't find a picture of my professor for Latin, Fr. David Thayer, but he looks a lot like the actor Brian Cox, only a lot more intimidating. This guy is old school in every sense. He yells if you aren't translating correctly. He'll make belittling comments to the students. He'll put you on the spot and then send you to the board in front of the whole class where he will continue to make you so nervous you consider dropping out of school and getting a job driving a truck. He stands outside O'Boyle Hall smoking a cigarette both before and after class. I have many middle-aged or older seminarians, brothers, and laymen in my class and he scares them just as much as those of us in our mid 20s. It's hilarious to watch other people at the board squirm because it just looks and feels too much like elementary school when Sr. Paula would all but get the ruler out of on me. It was really awkward the first few weeks of school when I would have to walk past him smoking to get to class. I was afraid to not say hello, but I was more afraid to look at him much less say anything. He'll say, "Good morning, Mr. O'Neill." And I say, "Morning Fr. Thayer. How are you?" "Fine," in the crabbiest voice imaginable. Haha.

Now, I must say, Fr. Thayer is really a very nice and funny guy. He jokes around in class quite a bit and after having him for a semester now I can tell that he isn't as mean as he appears (and I'm pretty sure he likes me. He's nicer to me than some of the others). He uses this all as a tool, I think, and is quite gentle underneath. That being said, he'll switch from joking mode to yelling about the ablative case in a matter of seconds. He's sarcastic and will let you just stand there looking like an idiot even when he knows you have no clue whether such and such verb is in the past perfect or pluperfect tense. Eventually you just start guessing and that only makes him more mad.

This class is tough. Latin isn't easy, especially for English speakers. The vocabulary is often similar, but English stresses word order. If you take any sentence in English and jumble the words up it makes no sense. Latin doesn't care about any of that. You can write the same sentences in 20 different ways and orders and it all means the same thing. Instead of using order to give meaning, Latin makes you know about 40 endings for every noun, verb, adjective etc. They all have to be in agreement and nouns are given different endings depending on how you use it. If the "sword" is the subject of the sentence it is in the nominative case and is "gladius" If it is the direct object it's in the accusative case and is "gladium." If you are talking about a sword as a matter of means it could be in the ablative case and be "gladio."

You get the point. The tough thing is that there are a handful of cases and several "declensions" where noun endings change and blah blah blah. It's difficult. The nice thing is that it is Pass/Fail and I passed my midterm and translations. I think I should be alright even though the class moves really fast. We have to be able to translate any of the New Testament and St. Aquina's Summa Theologica by the end of one semester, which is pretty intense.

Theological Functions in Philosophy

This is my best class. Monsignor Robert J. Sokolowski is one of the big boys here at CUA (the Philosophy department is even better than Theology). He's quite respected and well-known in the philosophical community and has written several widely used works on Hermeneutics, among other things.

He has more than a touch of Renner to him. Monsignor Sokolowski is perhaps one of the finest men I have ever had the pleasure of coming into contact with. He is the model Christian and academic. He is exceedingly smart, perhaps a genius, and yet is very humble and personable. He's charismatic and genuinely hilarious in a very understated way. It's hard to describe, but I imagine he exudes some of the same magic one would feel if they met C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. If I explained to you the funny things that he says or the way he says them it would be lost, but suffice it to say that he is captivating. He's the only person I've ever met who opens one up to the Truth in such an effective way as Mr. Renner. And they both love to draw stick figure pictures to explain complex theological and philosophical concepts. Monsignor calls them his "phantasms." Haha. I wish a few of you could sit in on just one of his classes.

This class is more or less his work on the importance of what he calls the Christian Distinction and how Catholic theology and philosophy (and the errors in those fields outside the Church) can be completely understood in relation to the Christian Distinction. I'm sure I'll speak with some of you about it over a pint of plain when I get home, but the Christian Distinction is the radical transcendence of God from the universe. From that one point it is amazing how much of the universe can be understood.

I'm eternally grateful that all of my professors are very orthodox. For the first time in my life, I don't have to unlearn what I'm taught in class. Every one of them is a pretty amazing human being and teacher all around. This is the way Catholic education (and education in general) is supposed to be. It takes on such a vastly different form than everything else we are used to.

So anyway, as I said I'm going to keep this updated pretty regularly from now on. I've had a lot of interesting experiences out here. I hope to write some more about some of them and I intend to make sure I am writing about the ones to come. I'll be home in a week for Thanksgiving so don't be a stranger.

Dominus Vobiscum,

Taylor

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Some Pictures

So I'm working on finishing my first paper of grad school. Hopefully I'll be done with it by tonight. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm intending on getting pictures of my apartment up soon as well as writing about my classes and the Sufjan show coming up on Sunday. Those things will have to wait for another night, however.

For now, here are some pictures of my apartment door (riveting really) and the Basilica. They don't really do it justice. I'd like to get up some pictures of my campus too, because it is old and pretty, but that'll have to wait as well. Someone's sister stole my camera for about 4 months and might as well have thrown it against a wall. It's being difficult.

Don't forget to look at the last picture in the album. I'm not sure why, but the centerpiece of the Basilica is a huge mosaic of Jesus... and he sure looks mad.

The slideshow is small so you can just click on it and it should link you to the original, full-size pictures if you want. (You click play, Mom. Then you can click through the pictures).