Day-Maker #1

5pm Mass yesterday: I was an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion when a man in Colonial garb came up to receive Communion. Only in the 'burg.

Day-Makers

Day-Makers are little bits of joy that brighten my day and which I want to share in hopes to brighten other people's.

Things That I Can Figure Out

There was this one time when I was in 12th grade. And it was awesome.

I want to start this story back in high school. I was a part of the International Baccalaureate Programme, known as IB for short (which is a good thing, because I only just learned how to spell baccalaureate). I described it, at the time when I discussed high school on a regular basis, as "AP on steroids." It meant taking advanced classes and ridiculous exams, and, since the programme had some cohesion, it also meant specific classes and outside assignments designed to help us integrate what we were learning in all of our classes into one grand and glorious bed of knowledge and critical thought.

One strategy to accomplish this end took the form of "Theory of Knowledge," a watered-down epistemology (apparently, as long as you can say that word, you aren't drunk. But that is an old story for another day) class, meant to answer the questions : Who are you? and How do you know what you know? We started off the class with a list of Ways of Knowing. The 4 Ways of Knowing are Reason, Perception/Senses, Emotion, and Language. Each week, we had to turn in an Out of Class (OC) writing assignment, discussing something in life that related to one of these ideas.

For one of my first OCs, I wrote a few pages about how these Ways of Knowing leave something out. I have knowledge of God, I argued, that I knew as firmly and unequivocally as I knew anything from Reason, Perception, Emotion, or Language. Yet my knowledge of God did not come directly from any of these forms of knowledge. Where did it come from? I proposed that there was a missing Way of Knowing, one that consisted of our capacity to know God.

A couple weeks ago, Father Dude started a series of seminars about the Catholic faith, meant to approach it from an intellectual angle. He started with a lecture on "The Rational Basis for Catholicism." In this lecture, Father explained that modern thinking placed faith and reason in a false dichotomy, relegating faith to the realm of emotion. This dichotomy resulted in a large way from the writings of Kant, although some other Enlightenment thinkers helped.

To place the world back in proper perspective, Father Dude read to us from Aquinas, whom I have never studied. Faith, he contended, is a rational capacity that allows us to know God. We have knowledge (in part) through rationality. Rationality can be subdivided into two categories: reason and faith. Reason gives us knowledge of the created order. Faith gives us knowledge of the Creator. It is the capacity through which we understand revelation.

When I heard these ideas, I got so excited. I had said the same thing! This new, wild idea that Father was proposing to us made perfect sense -- made such perfect sense that I had known it, confusedly and indistinctly, as a 17 year-old, engaged in her academics and alive in her faith. It demonstrated one of the many and most convincing reasons that I am Catholic: It makes sense. It is consistent with what I know of the world and how I know the world.

Father Dude's lecture on faith and reason left me with the impression that he'd left something out, however. Remembering my IB days, I thought that some part of knowledge had been left out. After all, can't we have knowledge that is not purely rational?

Week Two rolled around. "Forms of Knowledge in the Catholic Faith." How else do we know things? In addition to Rationality (Faith and Reason) we know through Beauty and Love. Win once again, Catholic Church.

The Peacemaker

I believe I promised a post about the Peacemaker. This was the ship that Ariella found at the beach a weekend or so ago. Because I found a sign explaining that their shop was closed for "Shabbot" and another sign that mentioned the "Twelve Tribes," I assumed that they were some sort of Jewish group or offshoot of Judaism. However, Marianne found more information about both the Twelve Tribes and the Peacemaker.

The Twelve Tribes also call themselves "The Commonwealth of Israel," but they are not Israeli. As far as I can tell, they are a network of commune-esque societies spread in twelve locations (4 regions of the US and 8 other countries). I don't classify them as Christian because, from what I have read of theirs, they do not consider themselves Christian. However, they do have a spirituality that appears to center around the Messiah (Jesus), whose name they translate Yahshua. They express belief in the Christian Bible.

Yet they claim their life is "not 'religious' ... but it is deeply spiritual — that is, we strive to maintain a heart-to-heart fellowship with one another, and with our Creator, at all times." Which says some fascinating things about Western notions of religion. (Does one have to go to church to be religious? Does going to church make one religious? What is this assumed distinction between the religious and the spiritual?)

Knowing all this information, one well might inquire : What do the Twelve Tribes have to do with a ship?

A ship provides a mobile witness up and down the coasts. By setting sail, the Twelve Tribes hope to show the world a "microcosm" of their community and give example of what life can be. I'm curious to know how effective their mission is. On one hand, I am not about to join up. I have some hippie-ish tendencies and often consider seeking a Catholic commune. And I did want to stow away on the ship and spend a few weeks sailing. And besides being too Catholic to quit, I didn't really see their life, so much as read about it in a pamphlet.

On the other hand, I learned about them, and was so interested that now you have too.

God at the Beach

This past Saturday, CCM took its annual beach trip. Normally, we head down to Virginia Beach for a day of the sand and the sun and the OCEAN and the boardwalk. Instead, this year, for a variety of reasons, we stayed closer at Yorktown Beach. That mean brackish river water, instead of the glorious swell of the ocean, but other than that, the trip remained the same in essentials. Oh, and the bus ride was cut in half. Oh, and I didn't burn myself this year.

Highlights included making friends with a little boy collecting snails. As I watched him prowl the rocky shoreline and as he came up and began to talk to Marianne (the campus minister) and me, I began to keep a sharp eye out for Mom or Dad -- my teacher instincts coming through. Eventually, we met Dad and Grandma, as well as the little sister. We spent some time with them as the dad and Ariella (CCM president) chased sand crabs through the shallows.

Another highlight was the boat, Peacemaker, a beautiful old-fashioned ship with three masts and a hardwood interior, that was offering free tours. I followed Ariella onto it. I will post about it later, because it deserves more than a paragraph in the beach trip story.

And here is the God connection. When I was out Saturday night, I saw on the news that a dangerous rip tide had plagued Virginia Beach and that swimmers had been banned from the water. I think someone was watching out for us.

Ghosts

Saturday night, I went out with Julia, and I met a few ghosts. She and I share an experience of "coming back" to the College. We shared four years, various adventures and misadventures, and a graduation... and then parted ways for a year, before reuniting here again. And as a result, we meet ghosts.

She and I shared dinner and drinks and "do you remember?"s that grew into longer stories because her boyfriend was there. So every offhand comment became an explanation and led to other memories, including ones I haven't thought of in many, many months, possibly years. These memories are made more vivid by the setting. I walked past my ex-boyfriend's freshmen dorm and remembered all the Friday evenings we spent playing poker, watching Firefly, and traveling to Wawa. Julia brought up one of his hallmates who had a crush on Wendy. The conversation turned to the lines drawn in our group of friends when he and I broke up. Then to other exes among our group of friends. We laughed at the ways we've changed, at the ways our friends have grown. We cringed at the crazy things we did. And I met the ghosts of College Past.

They manifested as a peculiar reaction to a particular setting and group of people. On Monday, Julia and I were together again, eating nachos and playing trivia at the "Deli" next door to me, but no ghosts showed up. Instead, we were in an enjoyable present.