Under the Fir Tree

God’s “hiddenness” isn't God’s absence. It’s the way a presence too near, too dense, must come to us under a veil. The Curtain, Not the Void Some previous thoughts press on a key point: heaven isn't “elsewhere” but “otherwise” – the hidden side of the real, pressing against us like a wall we’ve forgotten how to touch. If that’s right, then the question “Why does God remain hidden?” is already slightly bent. It’s less, “ Why does God stay away? ” and more, “ Why is God present in a way that doesn’t behave like obviousness? ” Think of that curtain image: you arrange your life as if the room ends at the fabric. Your ambitions, anxieties, even your theology lean against what you take for a wall. Only it isn’t the edge of things. It’s the seam. “Hiddenness” then isn't an extra policy God adopts after creating the world. It’s built into the way God relates to creatures at all: Near enough to sustain us, Other enough not to collapse into us, Loud enough to summon, Quiet enough no...

If I were speaking with seminarians and their formators for a Catholic Relief Services night, I wouldn’t start with numbers. I’d start with one child whose world ended before she turned ten—and with the quiet Catholic network that refused to let that be the end of her story. Many treat CRS as the Church’s “charity arm,” something bolted onto the real work of sacraments and preaching. The story you’re about to hear should unsettle that divide. # # # Before I begin, I want you to imagine something. Imagine you wake up tomorrow. The Church is still standing. But her people are gone. The parish buildings are there. The tabernacle is there. The vestments are pressed. The rubrics are intact. But the families never made it. Somewhere, decades earlier, when the world was on fire, the Church decided mercy was optional—extra credit, not mission. Those of you who teach formation know what that would mean. Vocations don’t rise up like mushrooms in a lonely field. They don’t spark in a clean labora...

“Where are the lay faithful formed?” John Paul II doesn’t ask that as a trivia question . He asks it because something is at stake: mission without formation becomes motion without direction. Formation isn’t an accessory to mission. It’s the engine. So let’s ask the more basic question first: What is “formation”? Not mere information. Formation is being shaped into a certain kind of person. And who is the teacher? The text answers with disarming simplicity: “God is the first and great teacher of his People.” So the deepest premise isn't managerial. It’s theological. Formation begins in God’s fatherhood.  Christian formation “finds its origin and its strength in God the Father who loves and educates his children.” That one line already implies a consequence: if God teaches as Father, he teaches persons—through relationships, time, correction, encouragement, example. Not merely through content dumps. A Small Socratic Exchange Friend : If God is the teacher, why do we need paris...

A previous post was right to diagnose a starved imagination: modernity trains the eye to treat the world as stuff , not sign —and so Christians begin to speak their own faith like tourists reciting a phrasebook. The distinction between image and idol is the hinge: an idol arrests the gaze (“this is all there is”), while an image releases it (“this is more than itself”). But there's a further fasting of imagination that even “Christian Platonism” can accidentally intensify if we're not careful: we can treat “above” as a polite synonym for “elsewhere,” and “spiritual” as a euphemism for “not really there.” Platonism can rescue us from flatland; it can also tempt us to escape the earth in the name of loving heaven. The Ascension refuses both temptations. It's Christianity’s rude insistence that a body has gone into heaven —not as a metaphor, not as a temporary costume, but as a glorified, physical reality. If that's true, then “heaven” can't be merely “non-physical,”...

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand. What is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” There’s a specific kind of loneliness Kafka expresses in that sentence. Not the kind where you’re literally alone. The kind where you’re surrounded—texts coming in, meetings on the calendar, people who love you—and yet you feel untranslated. Like you’re speaking a language no one else can hear. Have you ever been there? Where you’re not even sure what you feel, just that it’s loud? Where someone asks, “What’s wrong?” and you can only shrug because you honestly don’t know? Most of us were taught to perform clarity. To tidy up our emotions. To have the right answer. To keep it moving. And if we can’t explain what’s happening inside us, we assume something’s wrong with us. Like confusion is failure. But confusion might be honesty. Because your inner life isn't a spreadsheet. It’s more like weather. It shifts. It has layers. Sometimes there’s fog over someth...

They call it brotherhood, and they’re right—until they use the word like a warm towel to hide the wound. Brotherhood isn’t a mood. It’s a vow with calluses on it. It’s men who’ve stood under the same Hand, heard the same words fall like iron into the soul, and then walked out into kitchens and hospital corridors and damp sacristies where nobody applauds, where the lamp’s always smoking a little, where the bread’s already stale because the parish has been starving for years and didn’t know it. A priest doesn’t stop being a man because he’s become a sign. If anything, the sign burns hotter against the skin. He’s still got pride that wants to be admired, fear that wants to be left alone, fatigue that whispers, You’ve done enough, let the others carry it. And that’s exactly why a priest needs a brother—not a fan, not a rival, not an accountant of sins, but another man who’ll stand close enough to smell the smoke on his cassock and still say, quietly, I love you too much to let you lie to y...

You walk into a new church and your body is already doing math. Where do I park? Where do I sit? What do I do with my hands? Will anyone notice me—or worse, notice me and make it weird? So when people say what they want most is a “warm and friendly encounter,” it makes total sense. It’s not shallow. It’s human. Because beneath that sentence is usually an ache: I don’t want to feel alone here. What do we mean by “warm and friendly”? Sometimes it means simple hospitality. Clear signage. Someone who smiles. A human being who helps you find the bathroom without making you feel like an idiot. A hello that isn’t a sales pitch. But often it means something deeper: a sense that I’m safe, seen, and wanted. Not as a “visitor.” As a person. And here’s the confronting part: in a culture discipled by loneliness, anxiety, and suspicion, “warm and friendly” has become a spiritual need. People are not only looking for truth; they’re looking for a community where truth feels livable. For Catholics, the...

Most parish leaders I know don’t have a “work ethic problem.” They have a “carrying the whole parish on their back” problem. They show up early. They stay late. They cover the gap—again. They can run a meeting, find the missing key, calm the angry email, and still smile at the door like nothing’s burning. It looks like virtue. It can even feel like virtue. But sometimes it’s just a system that quietly requires a few people to do what the whole Body was meant to do together. The truth is, you weren’t called to do it all. You were called to build people. That sounds obvious. It also feels impossible—especially in parish life, where the needs are real, the calendar is full, and “just this once” quietly becomes a lifestyle. So let’s start with the right question: What if your exhaustion isn’t proof you’re failing… but proof the model is wrong? Burnout Is a Dashboard Light, Not a Moral Verdict Most parish leaders don’t burn out because they don’t love Jesus. They burn out because they try t...

What is meant by  “imagination? ” Most modern Americans mean “make-believe”—a private cinema for escape. But Christians, at their best, have meant something tougher: imagination as sight, the power to see meaning in the world without inventing it. Let’s define a few terms: Imagination : the power to picture what’s real but unseen. Platonism : the view that visible things point to invisible forms. Christian Platonism : creation is a sign of eternal realities in God. Modernity (as a habit) : treating the world as stuff, not sign. Now the first distinction that changes everything: image vs. idol. An idol is an image that stops your gaze—“this is all there is.” An image is an image that opens your gaze—“this means more than itself.” Christian Platonism lives and dies on that difference. It says: this world isn't a sealed box of atoms bouncing in the dark. It’s a sacramental cosmos —not in the narrow sense that everything is a sacrament, but in the broad sense that everything is a sign ...