I will be ordained a deacon in twelve days..
But…you know….who is counting.

The question comes: “So, are you nervous?”
The response: I have no idea what I am.

How do I explain that every day my stomach
wants to jump out of my mouth?

My prayer life is rocky, I cannot focus,
and I am completely restless.

How do I explain that my line of conscious thought
is whipping around like a downed power cable or a firehose; Read the rest of this entry →

My last blog post I wrote about the false self and the power of the Enneagram in helping unveil our false self motivations. At an August retreat in New Mexico with Father Richard Rohr he talked about how peace and justice work can become a heroic disguise for the false self. Father Rohr said that even when we are doing something ‘good’ or ‘Christian’ we often find ourselves caught up in false self energy and miss the transformation and freedom which the Gospel offers us. Um, hello, what a wake-up call for me! How often do I find myself during the day doing work at my peace and justice job with the energy of my false self? For that matter, how often do all of us find ourselves doing things with our false self energy? Read the rest of this entry →

A few afternoons a week I spend time with children, youth and young adults who live and/or work the busiest downtown train station and transportation hub in Buenos Aires. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through the Retiro station every day. Because of this, many youth and young adults living in situations of poverty come to Retiro to seek out opportunities to make money to live. When I first arrive to Retiro for the afternoon and greet my friends, the first question is almost always the same, “Did you bring mate?” As we sit together on the train station floor or in the park across the street, drinking mate is an important part of our community time together with our friends. We all look forward to it. Read the rest of this entry →

In his book Tattoos on the Heart, Jesuit priest Greg Boyle writes about his work with gang members in Los Angeles. Tattoos is a beautiful book, full of stories both tragic and redemptive about his and other’s efforts to serve a population truly on the margins of American life. I am reading the book this semester with a group of Freshmen to whom I have been assigned as academic advisor. Yesterday, we discussed compassion, which Boyle believes, is at the heart of the Christian life. We have to be able to imagine ourselves in the lives of others, he says, especially those we have formerly dismissed and written off, the way many Angelinos dismiss and write off the members and gangs who terrorize parts of their city. Read the rest of this entry →

My heart is broken. I can’t believe this is happening. It is not what I had expected, planned, or been working towards. And now I’m left with a decision to make, which path to take. I go through the questions of discernment desperately seeking another answer, a way out. It is almost as if Iggy himself were whispering in my ear:

What is going on inside of you? What is your deepest desire for this situation? Really, what does your heart long for?
What is logical to do here? Is your heart aware of what you head is saying?
What would you advise a friend in this situation? What are the signs of the times telling you? Read the rest of this entry →