Ordination

"Beloved, I hope you are prospering in every respect and are in good health, just as your soul is prospering."
-3 John 2

Online, I just witnessed my father-in-law be ordained deacon in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. There were 43 other men that also put in more than five years of formation to reach this point. It was encouraging to see these men and all of their families and supporters in one place for the 4-hour ceremony. That, by the way, is why I was home watching online and not at the Cathedral with my wife because Claire, Sarah, and Emily do a commendable job at one-hour masses, but quadrupling that seemed unreasonable.

So on this happy occasion, just as these souls are prospering, I hope yours is too, as well as your relationships, finances, health and all other matters important to you because I am confident that your priorities are in the right place and if it's important to you, it's because you responded when God put it in your heart.

I suppose I have always struggled with friendships on some level because I tended to see things from only my perspective and mistakenly thought that everyone saw things the way I did. For example, I remember how mature I was at a certain age and used to assume all of my students of that age were equally responsible. Some were. Some weren't. Likewise, everyone older than myself must be equally responsible. Many are. A few aren't.

This awareness has helped, of course, but has also shed light on how much more I don't know about people. Looking back at my school days, I never did anything to create enemies, thinking that I was friends with all the people I got along with, whereas we were probably just acquantances that shared similar interests. I never recall doing something to be friends with someone else. I became friends with someone else because they were doing something I liked.

It wasn't selfish in the sense that it took something away from someone else. My sense of justice was out of proportion to my sense of mercy. Aside from standing up for myself, I started standing up for my friends or my sisters' friends because I could. I could have also turned the other cheek or some other alternative. My actions are explainable, even understandable, but not excusable.

So now with this lack of experience and an awareness that I am not as adept socially as others, I am beginning to feel a need to nurture friendships and not just avoid creating enemies (like doing good works and not just avoid sin). So let's say I want to be friends with someone at work. I ventured into the teacher's lounge one day and a conversation surrounding the Bachelorette. I like the people, but had nothing to add to the conversation. The guys, don't eat in the teacher's lounge, they take their food to another teacher's room and talk sports. Now I used to enjoy playing sports, but I don't follow them now and the conversation is rarely about the 1990 Pittsburgh Pirates, so again I have nothing to offer.

I like talking about faith. I invited everyone in my building to morning prayer with me. No one accepted. However, one guy did invite me to a weekly Men's faith-sharing group, which was and is great, but it's once a week and covers topics that aren't going to come up when you pass in the halls or sit down for lunch.

So I'm not into what they're into and they're not into what I'm into. I have connected with a couple of teachers that can follow my line of thinking when we are talking about education, which is great while it lasts, but I feel a little uncomfortable hanging out with them socially when they invite me to go Segwaying with them or something. We're all married, half of them have kids, half don't, but they all do a lot more outings without kids and Nancy and I like to do most of our outings with the kids. We might go to Idlewild or the zoo with some of them this summer, two places fun for kids and animal lovers without kids. This is as close to a middle ground as I have found in quite some time.

If you have been able to follow this line of thinking that started with an ordination and ended with Idlewild and the zoo as a social compromise, I suspect you are among a very select few. I already feel better having written this, as if someone's listening, even though I know no one has yet because I haven't hit the publish button. Perhaps, articulating it for my own good helps me know that God is listening and helping my soul prosper just as he has blessed my marriage, health, and even finances in the sense that we are happy with what we have.