Frivolous Risks

Last night I went out to two bars (or a bar and a pub?) with my friend Michelle, her boyfriend Scott, and two other people from her college. I never really went out much during college, but was glad to find the lounge/bar environment is more my type of setting than a crazy club would be. I had fun and was happy to hear a lot of late 90s music (as if by telepathic request) played by the DJ/music dude. It's good to take a risk every once in a while and do something you wouldn't normally do.

Right now I'm talking to my brother in the Dominican Republic online. My parents want me to move back in with them because my job isn't going to make me enough money to both support me and pay any bills. It sounds terrible but I rather take on frivolous debt than go back to living with them and have to re-closet myself, more so in a country that isn't as accepting or understanding. I love my parents but I can't go back to being 16 and scared to death again.

They were against me moving away to college and I ended up going away anyway and having four of the best years I've ever had.

This motivates me even more.

How To Build A Spiderweb

I've been busily working on my graduate school applications and am glad to say I'm almost there. I'm trying to get them all done before Halloween so that I can forward the recommendation forms to my professors.

Right now I feel pretty heartbroken that my religious vocation to the brotherhood thing didn't work out. I'm also heartbroken in the "regular way" because in the middle of all that, I'm trying to get over a literal person I spent four years pining over. That naturally ended up sabotaging my religious discernment because there was no way I could begin any official application while still dealing with this.

On the other hand, while working on my graduate school applications I felt a deep sense of joy while writing my personal statement because if there's one thing I've been most sure of, it's that I've wanted to enter this profession (clinical social work, counseling) since at least 8th or 9th grade. I think it's truly a gift from God to be able to see so clearly what feel called to do with our life. I want to help kids in high school because most of my hardest (and by consequence, formative) years were there along with the beginning of college.

I was telling my friend that the hardest thing about graduating college is that when we live in such an insulated environment like a residential college, our support system is as sturdy as a spider in the middle of a spiderweb. We're so interconnected (or threaded...lol) to other people on so many different levels (I can think of my cafeteria ladies, professors, RAs, friends, and campus ministry people) that when we trip we just end up bouncing up because the web is so sturdy.

When we leave, we're no longer in the center of the spiderweb but either at the periphery (hanging by whatever few "threads" or connections are left to the people we knew) or completely fallen off from it.

I think that's the main thing I'm working on now. When I went to visit a brother friend of mine at my high school the other day he told me I needed to focus on rebuilding my social network. In other words, not to go out there looking for a relationship, but rather, go out there and look to be relational. As much as I would like things to fit my timetable (must meet career goal by 25, meet someone by 30, etc.) or make up for the lost time of high school and college, we can't make things fall into place on our own time.

Don't Fit In

I'm back from my discernment retreat (I was on a discernment retreat for men interested in priesthood and brotherhood this weekend).  It was mostly a good experience and I was grateful for the hospitality of the novices and the sense of fraternity among both the candidates (us) and the novices.  

I had kind of been avoiding meeting with the vocation director most of the weekend, but bumped into him (which I don't think was a coincidence since I had just come down from my room after a frustrating attempt to focus and pray, and just feeling deep desolation) and we had a talk.  We both decided it was best to not discern at this time.  I don't know if he was only putting my application on hold for now, but I think my intention by that point was to completely terminate it. 

Recently, I started going to this religious group for glbt Christians and while many of the people there are generally nice, I feel I don't fit in with gay people in general: the obsession with youth and beauty, people who were a little too upfront about their past sexual experiences, and the general campiness/flamboyance in public places was a little too much for me, more so in a religious setting where I was expecting less of it.

It's kind of a lonely place to be, because I feel I can't completely fit in within the Church nor within a gay environment.  

I don't have the energy to write more so I'll just leave it there.

Laughter Came From Every Brick

Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila, Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun. This is a beautiful poem attributed to her, though when I double checked it appears to be a poem based on something she wrote since I can't find an original Spanish version (I'm going to look for it because if it's not hers it'd be a great disillusion!). Nonetheless, I love it:

Just these two words He spoke

changed my life,

"Enjoy Me."

What a burden I thought I was to carry -

a crucifix, as did He.

Love once said to me, "I know a song,

would you like to hear it?"

And laughter came from every brick in the street

and from every pore

in the sky.

After a night of prayer, He

changed my life when

He sang,

"Enjoy Me."

Ay Marinero! Some Songs about the Ocean.

I find it strange America celebrates Columbus Day but the Dominican Republic doesn't seem to observe it as much (though Santo Domingo, the capital and being cool enough to be the oldest surviving city of the New World, does have a park dedicated to him). I was talking to my mother about this and the obvious reasons were that Columbus and the Spaniards weren't exactly Mother Teresa and the missionaries of charity (oh wait I used this comparison before). Yet still, despite the genocide of the aboriginal natives and horrible mistreatment of the enslaved Africans, there is a complicated love/hate relationship between the former Spanish colonies of the New World and the sometimes termed "mother country" remains, even if just because we're literally blood family (whether in recent or distant ancestry), speak Spanish, and are overwhelmingly Catholic.

Our African heritage is pretty strong, notably found in our music and dance (and sometimes in offshoots of syncretized religion). The aboriginal heritage (at least in my ignorance), to be honest, has a negligible presence other than some folklore and names of crops and places because of how early in the conquering period they were killed off (though there is debate about there being some part[s] of the country having significant traceable Taino ancestry).

With other parts of Latin America, it's more or less the opposite, i.e. there is more visible aboriginal ancestry than African. I read an article (it's in Spanish but you may get a rough translation if you plug it into Google translate) about Latin American countries and their pro/anti-Spain attitudes and it seemed parts of Central America and countries with more indigenous ancestry ranked as the least pro-"Españolistas" while countries like Colombia and the D.R. (with significant African ancestry mixed in) ranked as the most pro-"Españolistas", which may be due to the fact that the indigenous cultures that survived in other countries were able to maintain their pre-hispanic/pre-Columbian culture better.

Anyways, I could go on about the history of the European settlement of the New World and all the different mixing and warfare of cultures that came into contact but that is easily look-upable on Google (translation: I'm too lazy to construct a well formed and heavy source supported essay about the politics, social, and religious life of this time even though colonial Latin America is my second favorite historical topic).

Instead, I shall post some songs about the ocean because I like the metaphor of exploration, adventure, and going into the unknown (well not in Columbus' case since he wasn't first! but you know what I mean).

Escrito con Sal y Brea (Written with Salt and Tar)
Coloniales y Ultramarinos (Colonials and Mariners) (two songs in 1 video, by Vainica Doble)

La Ballena Azul (The Blue Whale) (also by Vainica Doble)

Enya - Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)

Dishwalla - Coral Sky

Liz Phair - Dead Shark (from her indie girlysound days)

Madonna - La Isla Bonita (I don't really listen to Madonna, but my friend Zach is obsessed so this is for you Zach lmao)

Third Eye Blind - Water Landing (can't upload the one I got off Amazon since I'll get sued!)

Modest Mouse - The Ocean Breathes Salty

Dc Talk - Dive

*Picture of Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria from http://www.bergoiata.org/.

All The Tress of the Field Will Clap Their Hands

<sup>Isaiah 55 10-13

10</sup> As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

¹² You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.

¹³ Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the LORD's renown,
for an everlasting sign,
which will not be destroyed.

SOLD

Last Wednesday at 11 am my father closed the deal on the house. My father can finally have peace after months of worrying about selling the house in time before the bank took it due to our several unpaid months of mortgage--reason being the free rent we gave the tenants in hopes they would be able to financially afford to move out as quickly as possible).

My dad may be more or less rich right now, but I'm still poor--so don't plan to kidnap/torture me! Plus I doubt my dad would pay a ransom..rofl. The house did sell for a good price, but we lost at least half the money in what we owed the bank. He plans to use the money to retire in the DR with my family (already there) and open up a small dentist clinic where he can work part time to keep some of the cash flowing in.

As for myself, I have a job interview lined up on Tuesday for a substance abuse center in soho. I'm praying that I get it, though I still pray I can one day grow enough to become [in the Ignatian manner] "indifferent" and throw myself at whatever God's will is; regardless of its seeming favoribility or lack thereof.

I have to write a post on the dilemma of prayer (i.e. what's the point of praying as a way to ask for stuff if God already knows what we want and why are some things never going to be granted, like an amputee's leg) but right now I'm just filled with gratitude that prayer request I sent to St. Anthony's shrine worked.

October is one of my favorite months: many of my favorite saint feast days (Thérèse and Teresa especially), my little brother's birthday (which I've missed every year for the last 4 years :(), and the mystical atmosphere of fall to round it out.