Stumbled upon this in the prep steps of the Ignatian spiritual exercises. Profound and convicting, it is probably the most important quote I’ve read in awhile. This one’s worth posting where you’ll read it often:
A most important quote.
Book Review AND Giveaway: “101 Secrets For Your Twenties” by Paul Angone
Not yet 20 in the summer of 2004, I wallowed in self-pity on the walk from my car to my house after work. Inside, I dropped my purse at the door, audibly sighed, and asked my “roommate” a question:
“Is this what adulthood is really about?”
Up at 6. To work by 8 to sit at a gray desk in front of a gray computer doing a lot of what means nothing to me. Out at 5. Home for dinner and back to back episodes of any show entertaining enough to deter me from dwelling on the truth: I will do this again tomorrow, and I will hate it just as much.
“Yep,” my mom replied, half-kidding. “Pretty much.”
Mad at the world (or at high school, at least) for releasing me into adulthood with no good prep (or so I thought), I cried a little. This is probably because of what I didn’t yet know:
Only I could change the life-sucking cycle in which I felt so stuck.
This is precisely what blogger and author Paul Angone proves in his new book 101 Secrets For Your Twenties, which I a) wish he’d written 10 years ago (but I forgive you!) and b) thoroughly enjoyed. 101 Secrets is easy to read, and fast and funny. It is also sometimes convicting. The secrets he shares challenge young adults to jump life’s hurdles instead of pouting about them and to accept that growing pains are part of young adulthood (if we are willing to grow up). Here are a handful of my favorites:
#4: Your twenties are about having the courage to write a frightful first draft.
“We have to be willing to allow ourselves to write some terrible first drafts. You can’t have a good story without a good struggle.”
#10: You grow INTO growing up.
You might be an adult if “your body begins to ache from vigorous lack of movement,” “Facebook goes from being a hobby, to an obsession, to a chore you dread,” or “You don’t spend the week organizing your plans for Saturday night. No, organizing is your plans for Saturday night.”
#24: Love is blind. Enlist some seeing eye dogs.
“You’re being warned there’s a serious accident ahead, so why in the name of a 7-Car-Pile-Up are you still driving directly toward it? Enlisting trusted guides to help direct your relationship can save your life.”
#56: Watch out. “Official Adults” might stereotype you for being twentysomething.
“If you feel like you’re being stereotyped because of your age, your best ally is quiet confidence – a humble consistency that shows up and gets the job done. You don’t argue with them about your skill set, you just show them every single day how awesome your skills are.”
#76: No one knows what they’re doing.
“Are you freaked out that you have no idea what you’re doing? Perfect! So is everyone else.”
Now that I’ve given away some of Paul’s secrets, I’ll give away a couple copies of his book. Wanna win one? In a comment on this post, share a secret of your own – something you’ve learned so far in your 20s (or something you learned in your 20s if you’re already out). Include an email address or Twitter username I could use to tell ya if you won. Entries will count only through 11:59 p.m. EDT Aug. 4. All entries will literally be put into a hat, out of which I will draw two random winners on Aug. 5.
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Visit Paul’s site, AllGroanUp.com. Click here to learn more about the book, and here to read 21 Secrets for Your 20s, a blog post by Paul that went viral and inspired the book.
Thoughts on Lumen Fidei: “Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted.”
Friday, the Vatican published Lumen Fidei, a papal encyclical initiated by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and brought to fruition by Pope Francis.A papal encyclical is a letter written by a pope that regards Church teaching, is authoritative but not infallible, and is appropriately followed by #BOOM when referenced on Twitter, ’cause popes are brilliant and what they write routinely blows my mind.
Lumen Fidei – the light of faith – is written to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful. This is code for “everyone who is truly Catholic.” But in reading Lumen Fidei in full this morning, I have come to this conclusion:
Every Christian, Catholic or not, ought to read it.
Lumen Fidei clarifies faith for us while we live in a culture that muddies it. Pope Francis defines faith and dissects it, connects it to our senses and to hope and truth and love, and puts the rumor to rest that Catholics believe we are saved by works (Spoiler alert: we don’t!).
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:
- “…faith, hope and charity are the driving force of the Christian life as it advances toward full communion with God.”
- “Faith is linked to hearing. … Faith is our response to a word which engages us personally, to a ‘Thou’ who calls us by name.”
- “…faith, as remembrance of the future, memoria futuri, is thus closely bound up with hope.”
- “Before an idol, there is no risk that we will be called to abandon our security, for idols ‘have mouths, but they cannot speak’ (Ps. 115:5).”
- “Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes; it is a participation in his way of seeing.”
- “Paul rejects the attitude of those who would consider themselves justified before God on the basis of their own works. Such people, even when they obey the commandments and do good works, are centered on themselves; they fail to realize that goodness comes from God. those who live this way, who want to be the source of their own righteousness, find that the latter is soon depleted and that they are unable even to keep the law. They become closed in on themselves and isolated from the Lord and from others; their lives becomes futile and their works barren, like a tree far from water. … As Saint Paul puts it, ‘By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God’ (Eph. 2:8).”
- “Unless you believe, you will not understand.”
- “Today more than ever, we need to be reminded of this bond between faith and truth, given the crisis of truth in our age. In contemporary culture, … truth is what works and what makes life easier and more comfortable. … In the end, what we are left with is relativism, in which the question of universal truth – and ultimately this means the question of God – is no longer relevant.”
- “Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail leading away from self-centeredness and towards another person. …”
- “Love and truth are inseparable. Without love, truth becomes cold, impersonal and oppressive for people’s day-to-day lives.”
- “Joined to hearing, seeing then becomes a form of following Christ, and faith appears as a process of gazing, in which our eyes grow accustomed to peering into the depths.”
- “Faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful coexistence with others.”
- “Those who have opened their hearts to God’s love, heard his voice and received his light, cannot keep this gift to themselves. Since faith is hearing and seeing, it is also handed on as word and light.”
- We “cannot truthfully recite the words of the creed without being changed.”
- “Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted, but something which enhances our lives. it makes us aware of a magnificent calling, the vocation of love.”
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Click here to read Lumen Fidei in full.
A fond farewell, and six blogs you have to see.
It is with sadness and gratitude (and admittedly more drama than necessary) that I bid a fond farewell to a piece of the past with which it is hard to part:
Google Reader.
For years, the site aggregated all the posts from my favorite blogs into a single feed. When Google announced awhile ago that Reader would retire July 1 (which is tomorrow), part of me panicked. The other part of me breathed a sigh of relief because I subscribe to 713 blogs and ain’t nobody got time for that.
In importing my subscriptions from Google Reader to Feedly (which is literally the easiest thing I ever have done on the Internet) (What up, one click?), I scrolled through posts in my collection and hoped the demise of the reader most of my friends use doesn’t mean good blogs now will go unread.
For you who use feeds like Feedly to read blogs and for you who don’t, here are six you have to see if you haven’t seen them yet:
EntreCatholic: My friend and fellow blogger Ryan Eggenberger runs and writes EntreCatholic.com, which features how-to’s and tips for people who plan to embark on the New Evangelization, plus commentary on Catholicism and life. Ryan interviewed me about sex and stuff once, which was super fun and is on video here.
Hell Burns: Sr. Helena Burns is a Daughter of St. Paul who has a flair for fusing Theology of the Body (TOB) with everything. On her site, Hell Burns, Sr. Helena reviews movies and rightly promotes her own (nuns can be filmmakers, too). She educates readers in TOB and media literacy, and her penchant for hockey is as infectious as her sense of humor.
Edmund Mitchell: Friend and fellow blogger Edmund Mitchell is one of my favorite Catholics. He is a youth minister, husband, and dad who has passions for the Catechism of the Catholic Church and for using it in the New Evangelization. He blogs at EdmundMitchell.com, where he interviewed me once (about sex and stuff, naturally).
All Groan Up: As I near the end of my 20s (I will be 28 on November 7. Mark your calendars.), it is with knowing laughter that I read what Paul Angone writes. Paul’s blog All Groan Up is designed to help 20-somethings navigate that awkward moment when you discover you don’t know how you feel about adulthood (among the many other awkward moments of our twenties). His book 101 Secrets For Your Twenties releases tomorrow (expect my review at the end of the month).
Evangelical to Catholic: Anthony Elias is a friend, fellow blogger, and newlywed, who – as the name of his site implies – converted from evangelicalism to Catholicism a couple years ago. On his blog, he writes about Protestantism and Catholicism from a unique perspective, knowing from experience both what it is like to be averted to Catholicism and to be totally Catholic.
AKA Jane Random: Paula Claunch, AKA Jane Random, is probably one of the funniest bloggers I have encountered. If you need proof, read about the time she “stepped on a rock.” (Trust me.) At AKAJaneRandom.com, Paula writes of life as a parent and wife, with humor and insight, worth a subscription on whatever feed you’ve found to replace your Google Reader.
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What are your favorite blogs?
How relationships end.
I slipped into the church and slid into the pew. Another funeral.
My friend’s family followed the casket, cloaked now by a white pall with a cross on top. While we cried, our pastor spoke. Relationships, as we know them and like them to be, end in only two ways: “By choice,” he said, “or in death.”
This means relationships end, but it also means they don’t. It means to cross paths and connect is to create an association so fragile it can end because we say so, or one so durable it can’t conclude without a flatline.
Another mystery.
We are powerful and powerless.