faith – Frank is Emptiness

Anxiety

July 30th, 2026

It’s been at least four weeks now since my wife and I have put in applications to visit a young woman who is currently incarcerated. We also filed an application for the woman’s five-year-old son, who is in our care. The Department of Corrections (DOC) needs to do a background check on all potential visitors, apparently even kindergarten age children. The young woman has not seen her little boy since April, which makes it four months since they were together. The woman is understandably anxious about the situation. It is particularly upsetting for her since my wife, her son, and I plan on making a road trip to Texas three days from now in order to see our grandchildren down there. The young woman was really hoping to see her son before our departure. We were also hoping that would happen. The odds of us visiting her in prison before we head south are getting worse with each passing day.

Early this morning, the woman called us to tell us that the boy and I have been approved to schedule a visit. My wife has not yet been approved. After the mom called us, I immediately went to the ICSolutions website set up a meeting. We can’t schedule a visit directly with anyone at the prison. They outsourced that work to a third party, ICSolutions. It is impossible to make a visit any other way. I tried several times to schedule a visit sometime during the next couple days. I failed. My request was rejected because ICSolutions said that I was not approved. The website said that my approval from the DOC was still pending.

After that, I made several phone calls. I called the people at the prison for help. They told me to check with ICSolutions because in the DOC’s system I had been approved two days ago. I called ICSolutions twice, and they assured me that in their system I was not approved. They did say that my information would be updated tomorrow, and I should show as being approved after that. I will believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, I had four more phone calls from the incarcerated mother. In each call she became more and more agitated. Her anxiety was through the roof. During the fourth call, she tearfully exclaimed,

“I’ll never get to see him!”

I quietly told her, “You will get to see him. The people at ICSolutions said that I can go online tomorrow and I will be able to set up an appointment for a visit. If there are still open visitation slots available during the next three days, I will take one and we will come up to see you. We will drive two hours to the prison, and we can be with you for two hours.”

Now, we wait.

To be fair, the people at the prison and the folks at ICSolutions were polite and sympathetic. They really did try to help me. However, because the computers at the DOC and those at ICSolutions are not on speaking terms, they could do nothing for me. The people working within the system are all decent. The bureaucracy is nothing short of demonic.

Tomorrow morning, I will login to my account at ICSolutions and maybe, just maybe, I will be able to set up a visit.

I am not confident about that.

July 31st, 2026

Update: I finally got an appointment to visit the young woman. It is at 9:30 AM on August 2nd. She will get to see her little boy, at last.

Don Timmerman

July 26th, 2026

Don Timmerman died of cancer on July 19th. He spent almost all of his adult life advocating for peace and justice. I am tempted to say that he was “fighting” for those causes, but I’m not sure if that word is appropriate to describe a man who was an absolute pacifist. Based on his understanding of the Gospels, especially the Beatitudes, Don rejected all wars, and by extension all aspects of the military. He was an elder and leader at the Casa Maria Catholic Worker House in Milwaukee, WI. He posted a monthly newsletter, Casa Cry, in which he consistently railed against the U.S. military/industrial complex and the violence and suffering it produces. He used his jeremiads to stir the consciences of those people who bothered to peruse his essays, and he encouraged them to protest against the evils of war. Unfortunately, I suspect that most if not all his readers already agreed with most of his views. He was preaching to the choir.

I did not know Don well. I can’t remember how I met him. Nor can I remember the last time I spoke to him. Up until the time that my wife and I became guardians and fulltime caregivers for our little grandson, Asher, I was often involved in protests of one sort or another. I would see him at these demonstrations. It was his calling to bear witness. In that sense, Don was a prophet, like those in the Hebrew scriptures. If he saw injustice, he had to say something, or at least silently show his opposition to it. He had to be there.

It seems odd that I ever met him at all. Our paths in life were radically different. Don trained to be missionary priest in Tanzania. He was at one time a translator for Mother Teresa. He became deeply involved with the Catholic Worker movement. He repeatedly participated in antiwar protests and was often arrested for civil disobedience. He was passionate about living as a disciple of Christ.

I, on the other hand, graduated from West Point and I spent six years as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. I served in a helicopter unit in West Germany during the early 1980’s. My oldest son, Hans, enlisted in the Army in 2009. He went to war in Iraq. He came back damaged.

Don frequently demonstrated against ROTC at Marquette University in Milwaukee. I went there with him once. It was a lonely vigil. I think he was often all alone when he protested, but he felt that it was duty to be there. Don believed that it was wrong for a Catholic school to support ROTC. The administration at Marquette disagreed with him. I stood with him holding a sign to protest the training of military officers at Marquette. At one point, a young, fresh-faced ROTC cadet walked past us nervously. He glanced at me and hurried away. When I looked at the cadet, I saw me, an earlier version of myself. That shook me. I understood why this young man was wearing a uniform and doing what he was doing. I firmly believe that Don did not understand. He saw it all in terms of right and wrong, black and white. ROTC was wrong. Period.

The times when I was demonstrating with Don were educational for me. They also made me feel uneasy. It should be noted that my wife and I did absolutely everything we could to keep Hans out the wars. We used advice from the Quakers to show him as a conscientious objector in the system when he had to sign up for the Selective Service. The irony was that Hans enlisted anyway, and for all the same reasons that I had when I joined up fifty years ago. Hans and I were, and in a way still are, part of the system that Don so intensely opposed. We’re vets and he never was.

Back on May 1st of this year, I posted an essay on my blog, “It’s Still about Iran”. Read it if you want. Don did, and he sent a remarkably long response to what I wrote. I attempted in my article to describe what a disaster the current war against Iran is. I did not write the essay solely for pacifist readers. Actually, this article was also posted on a veteran’s website, The Havok Journal. I did not use moral arguments against the war. Don had always used moral persuasion, with limited success. I tried mostly to explain why the war was so stupid. Thomas Merton once said that a man would rather be considered clever than good. I tried to appeal to a person’s intellect more than to their conscience.

Don sent me a variation of his usual diatribe against war. He apparently assumed that I support war in general, and that I only opposed to this current fiasco. In his response, his last words to me were:

“You have chosen the state over Christ.”—Don Timmerman and Casa Maria C.W. community

That stung.

The fact that is that I agree with almost all that he said. One thing I learned from my time with Don was that people seldom listen to moral exhortations. Prophets are usually ignored, or worse. Maybe I have chosen the State over Christ. Or maybe I see more nuances than Don did. I don’t know about that. All I know is that my son and I have suffered from the effects of war. I think I hate war as much as Don did, and I may have more reason to do so.

I wrote back to Don, and I asked him not to judge me.

He replied, “Of course.”

Don was a good man. I admire his courage and his dedication. He lived his faith.

I just wish we had known each other better. I wish we had understood each other better.

A Sect of One

May 16th, 2026

“It can sometimes seem that each of us is a sect of one.” -from The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Note: I will be quoting the Appiah frequently in this essay. Assume the quotes are from him unless I specify otherwise.

Kwame Appiah is a philosopher who writes about how we as humans identify ourselves and how others identify us. His book is not long, but he touches on a large number of topics. He has written individual chapters on certain types of identity. One chapter is just about religious identity. That is a subject that might easily require an entire book of its own, but Appiah manages to make a variety of intriguing observations using relatively few words. This particular chapter interests me because I have noticed some of same things he has in the course of my life.

One of the main points that Appiah makes is that a religion is not primarily a system of beliefs, although we have been convinced that is so. He maintains that religion rests on a tripod of foundations: belief, practice, and community. Each aspect of religion interacts and supports the others. This is not a new idea. The Buddhists talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and to me that sounds like the same thing. Right belief (orthodoxy) has to be accompanied by right practice (orthopraxy). Right practice can mean all sorts of things: what we eat or wear, what ritual we follow, what moral codes we use to guide us. Right practice is what we do, as opposed to what we believe. The actions of the community are what unifies us. My Buddhist friends would call that “together action”. Oddly enough (perhaps this my Catholicism speaking), this triune set of pillars reminds me of how the Holy Trinity works.

Appiah does not discount the importance of belief. Our beliefs guide our actions and influence who we consider to be members of our community. Almost every Sunday, I go to Mass with my wife and grandson. Everyone in the congregation stands during the liturgy to recite the Credo (Latin for “I believe”). The Nicene Credo is packed with theology, and we all proclaim that we believe everything in that profession of faith. Some of the articles of faith in the creed are honestly a bit of a reach. Was Mary really a virgin? Is Jesus “begotten” of the Father?

If somebody will ask me if I really believe everything in the creed, I would probably reply, “Yeah, sure, why not?” That is not a rousing endorsement, but it all I can muster up at this point. Appiah said that “an avowal of faith is a performance as much as it is a proposition”. In fact, he describes the reciting of the creed as “a pledge of allegiance”. It’s a sign on solidarity. The praying of the creed at Mass is “together action”. It has as much to do with orthopraxy and community as it does with orthodoxy.

Now, if a person does not believe everything that their religion proclaims, is that person not a member of that community? This goes back to identity; I know at least one person who does not believe in the god of the Torah but identifies as a Jew. He would be deeply offended if I told him he was not a Jew. His Jewish identity is grounded in his tradition, his family history, and his moral code. He doesn’t need the theology.

Likewise, I know Buddhists who are atheists. They have no need to believe in God (or gods). As John Lennon once sang, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” That’s an fascinating idea, but not a very catchy song lyric. The point is that Buddhists can engage in right practice without a theology. Especially in Zen, the belief system is minuscule. The goal (if there even is a goal) is to go back to the mind before thinking and just do it. And do it as a community (sangha).

Religious identity looks different from different vantage points. A person who views members of a religion from a distance often sees a monolithic group of people. As the observer gets closer to the group, they can see the differences among individuals. I found that out in a Bible study years ago. Most of the members of the group were Evangelicals. I came to the study with a stereotype in my head of what these people were like. I was correct in a few ways, but mostly I was mistaken. Each person in the group was unique, and each had a particular viewpoint on scripture. In effect, I discovered that “Evangelicals” is a nonsense term, just like “Catholics” really means very little.

I have always been interested in other faith traditions. So, I have spent time with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, practitioners of indigenous traditions, and a wide variety of Christians. It has often amazed me how I can have friendly discussions with people whose religions are quite different from mine, but I sometimes get into fierce arguments with coreligionists. It seems like the closer people are with regards to belief, the more eager they are to dispute even the tiniest variations of doctrine. It’s like family fights. The intensity of the quarrels increases as the parties share more in common. I suspect it is a conflict about identity. Who is the true believer and how do we decide who is in the group and who is banished?

I think of myself as a Catholic, who has managed to incorporate aspects of Judaism and Buddhism into his practice. (I blame “Nostra Aetate” for my adventures in religious studies). Well, that is my identity. I have no idea how others perceive me, and I really don’t care that much.

Hopefully, I won’t get ostracized at Mass.

Going Downhill

April 2nd, 2026

I’m old enough to have had friends and family members die from chronic debilitating diseases. A sudden death is traumatic. I know this because one of my younger brothers died in a car wreck at the age of twenty-eight. But a slow death, one in which there is a gradual disintegration of mind or body, is agonizing. It’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck. The progress of the disease seems to be inexorable, and human efforts to stop or even to slow it down are often futile.

My mom died from Alzheimer’s disease. I have close friend whose father is suffering from the same tragic ailment. My friend’s father used to be a brilliant mathematician. Now he’s not. Now the man has great difficulty with walking up stairs and performing a number of other everyday tasks. The father, oddly enough, can still improvise music on the piano, but his other mental faculties are slipping away. My friend tells me that sometimes his dad is okay, meaning that his father hasn’t gotten any worse. The disease plateaus for a while and then continues on its negative path. There is not a smooth downward trajectory. The disease attacks the brain in fits and starts, but the overall direction is always clear.

I had two friends from work, both of whom died from cancer. One of them suffered from a type of blood cancer. The other had a brain tumor. Both of them received treatments, chemical and/or radiological. Each of them rallied for a while. I remember in visits with each of the two men how their wives would light up at any good news. The wives encouraged their partners and told them that they were getting better and it would be okay. My two friends did get better, but that was only a brief interlude, and eventually they both succumbed.

I had another brother who died from complications of alcoholism. Officially, he died of a heart attack, but it was more than that. He didn’t take care of himself, and I don’t think he wanted to live. His mental and physical decline were in many ways similar to that of somebody with Alzheimer’s. My brother would have a severe medical crisis, then he would recover, but he never quite recovered to the previous level of health. He always dropped down a step. I, along with many other people, hoped that he would turn things around one day. Other folks with addictions have been able to do that. My brother didn’t.

I sometimes speak of watching somebody else slowly die. I don’t think anybody actually just “watches” somebody whom they love die. To me, it is impossible to simply observe the destruction of someone else in a disinterested way. It’s not like going to see a Greek tragedy in a theater or binge watching a slasher movie on Netflix. The person who cares about the individual who is desperately ill is not just a spectator. That person is also a participant in the drama.

I am currently a participant in the struggle of a young person who seems to have the same disease as my brother. I love the person and I cannot separate myself from their suffering. I hope for their recovery, but I often feel completely helpless. I know I cannot save the individual.

So, what is left? There is hope. It is perhaps a forlorn and irrational hope, but it’s all I have. I cling to that hope despite all evidence that it is pointless.

That’s what I do.

Thy Will Be Done

April 1st, 2026

“When people say, ‘We will pray for you’ we are not asking God to do what you want, but what God wants for us.” A comment from Don Timmerman of the Casa Maria Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, WI

I know Don Timmerman somewhat. I haven’t seen him in years, but we have interacted at times. His words about prayer made me think. When I pray for someone, I generally keep the petition rather vague. I will ask God to give the person what they need. I usually don’t really know what the individual needs. I know what they want but wants and needs are very different things. I assume that God knows what the person needs most, and that God wants to give them whatever that is. So, basically, I’m asking God to do for the person what He/She already plans on doing. It seems like a good way to get prayers answered.

Implied in Don’s statement is something that I find interesting. If we are going to pray or chant or meditate for the benefit of another person, then we have to at least try to understand what God, or whatever is in charge, wants for that individual. That requires a clear mind and discernment. Quite often what we imagine to be a blessing for someone is not, and vice versa.

There is a story about the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. If somebody came into his office excited about getting a raise or a promotion at work, Jung would frown and tell his client, “Well, we will get through all this somehow.” If, on the other hand, the patient came in and told Jung that he had just been fired, then Jung would smile, and say, “Let’s open a bottle of wine! Now, we can make some progress!”

Zen Buddhism says that there is no good and no bad. I’m not sure I agree with that idea completely, but there is some truth in it. The fact is that what we perceive as good or bad is sometimes situational. I believe that there are things that are inherently evil, but I have found in life events whose nature seems ambivalent. I keep asking, what is God’s will? Another person might try to understand the flow of the Tao. How do I align my desires to the great design?

Somebody I love is in jail and they will almost undoubtedly go to prison. This will cause the person suffering, and it will also negatively affect all those who care about her. However, is this incarceration necessary for the ultimate benefit of everyone involved? It might be. I don’t know. I can’t know.

All I can do is pray for the person and try to give them some support during this time of trial. I have to strive to understand “what God wants for us”.

The Fall

February 28th, 2026

The story of the Fall in the Bible is read during the season of Lent in the Catholic Church. It has always irritated me. Before I start ranting, allow me to post an abbreviated version of the narrative.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:15-17

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” – Genesis 3:1-7

The story attempts to explain the effects of sin and the why there is evil in the world. To my mind, it explains very little, and it produces more questions than answers to the fundamental problems of life.

I am looking at the text as somebody who is responsible for raising a small child, namely our five-year-old grandson, Asher. As caregivers, my wife and I have to teach and protect our grandson. In the story God doesn’t really do much of that. Since, prior to eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve do not know good or evil. They essentially have the moral consciousness of toddlers. They know that “Daddy” told them not to eat the fruit of the tree because they will die if they do. However, at that point nobody in the world has ever died, so what does it mean to them when God talks about death? They apparently have adult bodies, but they are literally babes in the woods (or garden).

To phrase it modern terms, it is like God telling Adam ,

“Hey, Adam, go ahead and eat any fruit you like, but not from that tree in the center of the garden. Yeah, you know the beautiful tree with the really cool looking fruit. Leave that one alone! If you eat, you are going to die. Let Eve know too. Okay, I have go away for a while. I’ll be back in the cool of the evening. Be good! You hear me?”

That would be like me telling Asher not to play with the power saw in the garage while I go shopping. It’s a recipe for disaster. In the human world, God would be charged with gross negligence. Now, God’s instructions are exceedingly strange seeing as he already knows what will happen. He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and a bunch of other omni things. This clearly a set up. God, for some reason, wants to get the kids out of the garden. We can blame the serpent or Eve or Adam, but God is still in charge.

Does any of this even matter? I guess it does if the Church insists on reading this story every year. The Church tells its followers that all humans tend to sin because of the disobedience of our first parents. How is fair to punish the children for the sins of the fathers? Why would God want to have endless generations of flawed people? Where is his quality control? The official answer to my questions is that it is all because of our gift of free will, which we continually abuse. Depending on who you read, be it St. Augustine or John Calvin, the basic Christian message seems to be that we all suck.

During the Easter Vigil Mass, the holiest liturgy on the calendar, the priest recalls the Fall and speaks of it as the “felix culpa”, the happy mistake. I find that remarkable and encouraging. The message is that God would not have fully entered the world without Adam and Eve disobeying the Lord. History did not start until the Fall.

Why did God allow the Fall to occur? Genesis doesn’t say. If the act of creation did not end after six days, if it continues even now, then maybe God wanted cocreators working with him. Maybe he wanted some apprentices that He could train. Maybe God is still working on the ultimate work of art, and he wants us to participate in it, even if we are like kindergarteners fumbling with our finger paints. Maybe it’s not such a terrible thing to struggle and suffer if we are helping to build the universe. Maybe it’s actually all okay.

A Midrash

January 29th, 2026

I have a friend from our old synagogue named Jakob. He is an elderly gentleman. He is hard of hearing, but his thoughts run deep, and he is a very perceptive person. Jakob has taken a shine to my five-year-old grandson, Asher. He has in the past baked cookies for the boy. They were good. I had some of them. Recently, Jakob bought Asher a book. This is interesting because Asher doesn’t read yet, although he is quite competent at writing his name. My wife, Karin, read the book to Asher. It is a very short tale, and quite funny. Asher laughed a lot while Karin read to him, although he also found a couple parts to be rather sad.

The little book qualifies as a midrash about Noah’s ark, at least it does to me.

According to My Jewish Learning, a midrash is defined as:

“Midrash (מדרשׁ) is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah. (In the Bible, the root d-r-sh [דרשׁ] is used to mean inquiring into any matter, including occasionally to seek out God’s word.) Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new stories, making connections between new Jewish realities and the unchanging biblical text.”

The book is titled Meet at the Ark at Eight! by a German author, Ulrich Hub. The story is packed with absurdity and sprinkled with running gags and sly humor. There are very few characters in the tale. There are three rather clueless penguins whose antics somehow remind me of the Marx Brothers. There is an overweight, overworked, and overbearing white dove. Finally, there is Noah, who only makes a cameo appearance at the end of the story. As I mentioned, the book is hilarious, but it also delves into some serious questions.

There are people, especially among my Christian brethren, who are convinced that every story in the Bible holds a clear and concise moral lesson. This is of course nonsense. In the Torah the narratives are terse using a minimum of words. There is no extraneous verbiage. In fact, the person reading or listening to one of the stories will often have more questions than answers when it is over. The stories in the Hebrew scriptures tend to be a lot like life: confusing and ambiguous. They cry out for interpretation and additional details. Hence, the existence of the midrash, and of a little book about penguins on the ark.

Anybody who has read the story of Noah and actually pondered it, ends up with a kind of queasy feeling about God. The Lord does not come out looking good. Bad optics. Sure, He places the rainbow in the sky at the end of the show, but that is after He has totally trashed his creation. There is an unsettling question of justice in the Bible narrative. God decides that all of humankind, except for Noah and his kin, are irredeemably evil and worthy of destruction. Okay, God is omniscient, so He probably knows the moral standing of his creatures. But why kill almost all of the animals? What did they do wrong? Can a penguin sin? This topic comes up in the book. There are a number of odd theological questions that get broached in this modern midrash. Almost all of them make the reader smile.

I have time before Asher wakes up for school this morning. I am going to read the book again. It’s good. Asher recommends it.

Prayer

December 31st, 2025

“No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
And if you try some time, you find
You get what you need” – from the Rolling Stones

I have a thin, yellowed strip of paper that I keep on top of my bedroom dresser. On it is written,

“July 2, 2019 Ernesto Martinez + Lawyer”

I was given this scrap of paper back in the fall of 2019. I was in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, just across the border from El Paso. I was visiting two missionaries there with a Catholic group. We were in Juarez to learn more about the migrants and the situation on the border. Things were bad then, and I am sure that they are worse now. Father Peter and Sister Betty had been living in a tiny house in the Anapra neighborhood serving the local population. These two missionaries were elderly, and they experienced the same level of poverty and insecurity that their friends did. I had then, and I still have, great admiration for both of them. They were not just preaching the Gospel. They were living the Gospel.

Violence in Ciudad Juarez was endemic. The locals lived with it day in and day out. Betty and Peter had a wall in their backyard covered with names of persons who had been murdered by gangs. There were hundreds of names. It was the custom of these two missionaries to offer the names of the dead to visitors in hopes that the folks who came to their humble home would pray for the deceased. I picked out Ernesto Martinez.

I pray for him, maybe not every day, but often. It’s strange. I know almost nothing about the man other than his name, occupation, and date of death. I guess that’s enough. God knows all the rest of his story. Why do I pray for him? Honestly, I don’t know. I do it partly because of the love and respect I feel toward Father Peter and Sister Betty. I do it because maybe nobody else remembers Ernesto. I do it because it feels right.

Do my prayers actually help Ernesto Martinez? I have no idea. This is an act of faith. I believe that all prayers have an effect, but how that works is beyond me. It is my experience that I often don’t get what I pray for. I usually keep my prayers simple and vague. I ask God to give somebody what they need and then let the omniscient deity decide what that is. If the intention behind my petition is pure and based on love, then something will come of it. I just don’t know what that could be.

I am convinced that the main effect of prayer is to transform the heart of the pray-er. That has also been my experience. If I pray for the wellbeing of another sentient being, then it changes me. If I pray for Ernesto Martinez, it may not do him much good. He is a martyr and is probably already at peace. He may not need my prayer. However, I might need to send it for the sake of my own soul.

Ernesto, pray for me.

Incarnation

December 24th, 2025

Karin, Asher, and I attended the Christmas Vigil Mass at St. Rita’s yesterday evening. Asher went with some reluctance. We had to threaten him with a loss of possible Christmas gifts to get him to go. Karin, being a German, has been telling Asher that “Christkind” (the Christ child) won’t bring him presents unless he is a good boy, which means he needs to be at church to celebrate Christkind’s birthday. Asher was fine once we got there. Upon our return home, he was happy to learn that Christkind kept his part of the bargain.

I was uneasy during Mass. A lot of people were in the church. I am certain that the increased attendance was because of families coming together to worship. Our own family is fractured, so only the three of us were at Mass. The Christmas service is designed to stimulate love and joy. For some of us, the music, decorations, and ritual of the celebration only highlight an intense feeling a grief.

The deacon offered the prayers of petition to the congregation. One prayer hit home. The deacon told the parishioners,

“For those who have difficulty with Christmas, may they see how much God really loves them.”

He was talking to me there. I always struggle with Christmas. Karin knows this and she doesn’t expect a lot from me. Christmas comes with a lot of baggage. My version of the ghost of Christmas past likes to conjure up painful memories. The ghost of Christmas present doesn’t offer much to inspire me, and the ghost of Christmas future shows me a blank screen. I don’t enjoy Christmas as much as I endure it.

The priest preached about the Incarnation, which is what the holiday is all about. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” The whole notion of God taking human form is astounding. There is a laser like focus on the birth of Jesus, which is completely understandable, but also a bit unfortunate. The priest did say that one reason for God becoming human was to allow humans to be more like God. We have the opportunity to share in that divinity.

Why do we love the image of the Christ child? What is so attractive about the crèche? Why do we want to hold the baby Jesus in our arms, and have God hold us as well?

Asher is asleep in bed right now. I held him until he dozed off. He cuddles up to me for security and warmth. When I hold him, I hear his breath and feel his heartbeat. Asher brings me closer to God. When I have Asher in my arms, I am embracing the Christ child as well.

William Wordsworth wrote,

“Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.”

We love small children because they are still so close to God. Even a five-year-old like Asher trails clouds of glory. He still exudes love and joy, not all the time, but enough. His birth is part of the Incarnation of Jesus.

Another English poet, William Blake, contemplated that essence of divinity within each person. He was once questioned about it by a scholar named Crabb Robinson.

Crabb Robinson reported: “On my asking in what light he (William Blake) viewed the great question concerning the divinity of Jesus Christ, he said, ‘He is the only God;’ but then he added, ‘And so am I and so are you.’”

Blake may have taken that a bit too far, but he was essentially right. We all have a piece of God within us. In the East, they would refer to that as Buddha nature. St. Francis of Assisi embraced the leper because he recognized God within that suffering individual. Dorothy Day saw Christ when she served the poor and the homeless. There is that divine spark in every person. In my case, I’ve buried it pretty deep, but it still flickers. It’s still there.

Any child born at any time anywhere shares in the Incarnation of Christ. True, Jesus was born two thousand years ago in a backwater of the Roman Empire. But he’s still being born now, each and every moment.

I look at Asher and I know that. Then I rejoice.

Empty Seats

December 12th, 2025

I took Asher to Mass last Sunday morning. My wife was not feeling well, so she stayed home. Asher usually balks at going to church, but twice a month Miss Jenny offers “Liturgy of the Word for Children” during the service. Her program is a Bible lesson for the little kids about the scripture readings that are being proclaimed during the Mass. She apparently makes the session fun, because our grandson is eager to be with her and the other children. I like it because for a few minutes I can focus on the Mass as opposed to watching whatever mischief Asher is making.

When the priest called for the children to come forth and meet up with Miss Jenny, I noticed once again how few kids were in the church. The weather that morning was bad, so some families probably stayed home to avoid the snow-covered roads. But still, there were only a handful of children at the Mass. Of those in attendance only six kids went to Jenny’s program. Six kids. That’s pathetic, and it’s a bit scary.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of the people going to the one and only Sunday service at our parish is old. I am a mere stripling compared to some of the other parishioners. There are very few families at Mass even on nice days. I make a habit of counting the number of children when we go to church. Generally, there are maybe a dozen. That’s it.

The scary part is that this small group of children represents the future of our church. The upshot is that there really isn’t a future there. In ten years, most of the people in the pews will be dead. There is not a new generation coming up to replace them. There will be a lot of empty seats. Even now, our parish is in the process of combining operations with three other parishes. That is partly due to a lack of priests, but also due to a vanishing flock. It’s just a matter of time before the whole congregation folds up and the doors of the church are permanently locked.

Our parish is not unique. Most churches lack young people in their ranks. I am not entirely sure why that is. It is clear to me that the Catholic Church in our country does not meet the spiritual needs of the new generations. My wife and I did everything we could to raise our three children to be Catholics. Maybe in some sense they are, but none of them go to Mass. Our kids are good people, but they can find nothing of value in the sanctuary. It makes me sad, truly sad.

I take comfort in the fact that the Church has survived and often thrived during the last two thousand years. The history of the Church is one of cycles: vitality, decay, and then renewal. I just finished reading a science fiction novel about a time in the future when the Church is moribund but suddenly discovers a new way of fulfilling its mission. There are growth and strength in the Church elsewhere in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia come to mind. For instance, our pastor is from India. In America and Europe, the faith is faltering. That does not mean it’s dying. Or if it is dying, that just means there will be a rebirth, something new and unexpected.

There will be a resurrection. There always is.