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A Place Prepared
A place prepared. A place prepared for me.
If I'm honest, it doesn't sound appealing.
Someone has prepared a room for me? I already prepared my own room. I like my room. My phone is prepared just how I like it. I eat food prepared how I like it. I listen to the music I like. I've spent months collecting all the right bands and albums.
I wear all the clothes I want to wear. I drove 5 miles in my car to a mall. I walked around the mall looking for a shoe store. I passed swaths of gaping store openings. I found a shoe store and stared under a wall of 50 options. I tried on three different shoes. I spent $50 on my shoes. The guy asked if I wanted to donate to charity. I said no.
They're grey because I think grey goes better with most of my wardrobe.
My house is prepared the way I want. I like the walls cluttered, the book shelves full, and the counters clean. My friends are who I want. I talk to them when I want. They read updates from me, sometimes when they don't want. My computer. My job. My aspirations. My three year plan and ten year dreams.
I'm still working on my kids. They're a work in progress. I want to see them grow and reach. I want to be with them through love and ache and graduation and grandchildren. I don't want my oldest son to be left-handed. He's determined to prove me wrong. I don't want my sons to ever work for a large corporation. I want one of my sons to be an artist. I want them to learn how to run and to use running as an outlet for their emotions. I want them to grow to have big heavy hands that work with wood under a square jaw. I want them to grow to drink beer and have compassionate, listening eyes. I want them to frustrate me with their well-read opinions and I want to argue about Steinbeck over dinner and laugh heartily.
Someone prepared a room for me?
If I'm honest, I don't think anyone could prepare a room as well as I could.
Heaven? Heaven is a room prepared?
Where is my control? Who knows what safety blankets to include in this eternal dorm? Who knows what moderate self-medicating vices to adorm MY room with?
A room prepared for me? Who knows what walls to build to keep secret fears out? Who knows what painful memories should be left off the wall? Who knows what memories are the most true I've ever had, and to freeze them in frame prominently, or near the door, or under a window? Who knows which faces I want eternally enshrined and which eternally vanquished?
Who has walked with me enough to know? Who has suffered with me?
Who has suffered me?
If I'm honest, my first reaction is disgust.
Jesus has prepared a room for me? What sort of room could fulfill me for eternity? Who does He think He is?
And after this pile of thought came a blushing awareness: the extent that Jesus' prepared room excites me is directly related to my honest closeness and trust in Him.
My satisfaction in those words betrays my level of trust and closeness.
If those words feel more condemning than liberating, am I just a foolish pilgrim who's fallen in love with the hotel?
Am I just a foolish man with my own room prepared? Do these words not make sense to me because the world soaks my ears and eyes with comfort and the intoxication and allure of false-freedoms anchored to vices? So much so that I can't see or hear what He really means? I can't see the world for what it is? I can't see that the room I have prepared here is smoke and mirrors?
If I were to only believe in Him, and know Him, and leave my own prepared and safe room behind, He would show me something more real.
"I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may also be. And you know where I am going."
But I'm afraid, if I'm honest, a big part of me would rather have $50 shoes.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
"Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may also be. And you know where I am going.
Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?"
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would know my Father also, henceforth you know and have seen him."
John 14:1-7
Why You Get Less Done in More Time - Pope's Window Syndrome
Youth ministers seem to be particularly prone to what I will call “Pope’s Window Syndrome”. I stood in St. Peter’s Square a few years ago while a friend told me the Pope’s office window is the last light to turn off at the Vatican, communicating to everyone just how hard the Pope is working for our Church. PWS hits youth ministers hard, as they wake up early (or maybe not so early) and put in grueling 50-60 hour work weeks, leaving lights on in their office or the youth center long after everyone else has left the building.
And while putting in 60 hours a week may make you feel like you are working hard, not getting paid enough, and completely unappreciated, there is a lot of evidence that suggests the more hours you work, the less productive you could become. (See this, that, and here.) Not to mention the huge negative impact on your family life if you are married and your sanity if you are single.
Enter Sheryl Sandberg and Parkinson’s Law
Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook and the first woman board member of Facebook’s board of directors. Before Facebook, she was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. Before Google, she worked as chief of staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 2012 Sheryl made the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. My girl Sheryl ain’t messing around.
And Sheryl leaves work everyday at 5:30 p.m.
How? My guess is that Sheryl is intentionally using something called “Parkinson’s Law” to her advantage. Parkinson’s Law originated as a simple and cheeky opening observation by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in an essay in The Economist published in 1955:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
This one sentence kicked me in the pants and changed the way I do, well, everything. Now when I hear people moan about how late they stayed at the office, or how many hours they worked last week, I wonder if they are busy or if maybe they could do these two things better...READ MORE
[This is an excerpt of an article written for Projectym.com. You can read the rest of the article here.]
How to Read 75 Books a Year and Remember What You Read
Read More and Have Better Ideas
How different would 2015 be if by next January you had read 75 books? What if you read 75 books and also could remember what you read and talk coherently about 75 books? Enter Brandon Vogt.
Brandon is a monster. Not only is he a professional at getting stuff done (like launching websites, reading and writing books, and working as Father Barron's Media Ninja on Fire) but he's created a beast of an online course to show people how to read more and remember what they read. Brandon reads more than 75 books a year. And he will show you how to do it too.
I'm a huge advocate for reading wide and well. Its probably one of the biggest payoffs when you think about cost/benefit. Think about: you spend about $10 to read a few hundred pages synthesizing down the years and years of work, research, thinking, and expertise of a particular author. Plus your opinions are usually boring if you haven't seasoned them by engaging authors and ideas by way of books.
Brandon is offering well done video courses choke full of practical advice with no-fluff. Its filled with principles you can apply right now to start reading more books immediately. If you were to set a goal and increase your reading to at least one book per month, you'd be ahead of the average 18-29 year old Americans who actually do read. You'd also be reading 12x as many books as a quarter of all American adults.
I was fortunate to get a sneak peek at all the content and extras last week and after reviewing it I highly recommend it.
Some of the topics Brandon covers:
- How to build a library and why you should (with great resources for finding cheap books)
- Easy ways to creatively find more time to read (with some great tech tips)
- How to engage the author effectively
- How to remember what you read so you can use what you read (more great tech tips)
- How to X-ray a book and find out in 3 minutes if its worth reading (from the legendary Mortimer Adler book)
(This book should be required reading for every living person who ever plans on reading a book and thinking clearly about it.)
Currently this beastly course is free (only until Feb. 18). So be sure to take advantage of it while it lasts. And go read more books.
Check it out at readmorebooksnow.com
Don't be like this guy...
[embed]http://youtu.be/Ertz9lpV7sU[/embed]
First Communion Parent Workshop
I gave a workshop today for parents of children receiving First Communion. It was part of a two hour workshop where the kids were taken out for catechesis on the Eucharist and the parents stayed for a brief session put on by me. We ended the workshop with a few minutes of adoration in the Church. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/189988038" params="color=1b595f&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
I focused a great deal on initial evangelization and invitation to a personal relationship with Jesus and less on the actual content of the Eucharist and Confession (which I did cover for the last 25 minutes of the workshop after the prayer when the recording stops) because often sacramental preparation is an opportunity to reach out to people who may not have ever been invited to a relationship with Jesus or experienced a profound conversion experience that gives meaning to everything we do as Catholics.
This was my attempt at a proclamation of the kerygma centered on communion with Jesus in the Eucharist.
"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in Him." John 6:56
This talk was influenced a great deal by the book Forming Intentional Disciples and statistics from the book (which I totally botched at the beginning of the talk) as well as focusing on an explicit invitation to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
To say this talk was heavily influenced by Michael Gormley's talk (here) would be a huge understatement. I borrowed a great deal from him and owe him a big, pandering, groveling thanks.
If you are interested in more on the Jewish and Old Testament roots of the Eucharist (like the Temple, Passover, and Bread of the Presence) I highly reccomend this book by Dr. Brant Pitre: Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist.
This talk was published on The Frank Show, the podcast of St. Francis of Assisi in Grapevine, TX. You can checkout the podcast on Soundcloud, iTunes, or the podcast app.