And also with you-r spirit.

I have to be honest and say that it was really hard not to judge all them fooz who haven't been to Mass since the new translation happened (and by "fooz" I mean "fools" in the Proverbs sense). Reflexive responses of old gave way to fumbling and awkwardness which made for my amusement, but distracted me from the coming of Christ. Here's hoping that the shock pushes them out of lukewarmness.  But preferably towards the hot side of reawakening their faith.  And not the cold side like Christopher Hitchens, but hey, he was fascinatingly cold.

New Dad Confession 2

Let's say this is my baby:


When we went to the doctor for our two month checkup and we were told that our baby is in the 90+ percentile for height and 20-ish percentile for head size, this is what I imagine how people must see our baby:

(Don't call me "Tiny")

Here's hoping that the height percentile will persist and that it's matched with hand-eye coordination.  College athletic scholarship here we come!

New Dad Confession

Go with me for a sec.

Let's say this is me:
(For the record, I don't intend on being a Tiger Dad.)

And let's say this is my baby daughter:
(My daughter is way cuter, but so far not as chill.)

When the majority of people say that my daughter looks like me, I have a hard time taking that as a good thing. 

Simply put, I'm a guy and my daughter's a girl.  If a girl looks like a guy, it's not supposed to be a good thing right?

As a result, what I end up processing in my head is that my daughter looks like me if I were a chick.  Something like this:



Yiggity yikes.

Blood Relationship

In today's Gospel Reading, aside from the fact that genealogies are notorious for feeling like the boringest books in the Bible, one thing that always stands out to me when reading Jesus' genealogy besides the sprinkling of women of faith throughout, is that after all that work of listing the direct bloodlines, we end up with:

Joseph, the husband of Mary.
Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.

Do I have to trade in my Christian card if I admit to feeling a bit of a let down?  Knowing that Mary conceived Jesus with no "input" from Joseph, it feels like this genealogy sort of breaks at the end.  All this effort to tie the blood relationships together for 42 generations and then Jesus has no Joseph blood in Him.  It's almost as if it would be more logical if it was, "Jacob, the father of Mary, the wife of Joseph.  Of her was born Jesus..."  So there must be something else.

Clearly, the original makes St. Joseph way more of a key player than my way.    Joseph's line is obviously very important being a descendant of Abraham and David, but the fact that we call Jesus the son of Joseph (and the son of David) seems to indicate some sort of sanctity of marriage and parenthood that's stronger than blood relation.  Hm...

Maturity

It's gotta be an eight grade boy's worst nightmare to be massaged by a big black man named Gaylord.  

But I have to say though, the massage was fantastic!

You can do better.

While playing with my daughter today, I realized that I don't know the words in Chinese for, "I'm proud of you," to say to her because I've never heard them.

Advent: Waiting Means No Control

The Advent season has finally arrived (I know, I know, I'm two Sundays late for the party already)!  This means we are in the liturgical season that reminds us that we should be living our lives waiting for the coming of our King.  We not only reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation (ie. Why the heck would God make Himself human and not only that, why He didn't just beam Himself down ready to go, but went the traditional route of being pushed out of a woman's va-jay-jay. I mean, it's mind boggling when I see how farty, poopie, and altogether dependent my own baby is - that's not God right?  God is supposed to be all muscles and Santa Clause...), but also the hard-to-imagine mystery of the second coming of Jesus.

These things are awesome and all, but my weak mind can only handle a few minutes at a time of contemplating these things before my head feels like its about to explode from the sheer brilliance and My-ways-are-not-your-ways-ness of it all.  To slow down the head-spinning, I try to bring it down to a personal level and ask myself, "What am I waiting to hear from God about?"

To prepare for this season in my life, I stepped back from most of my on the ground responsibilities in youth ministry in order to make space for my new daughter and being a new parent.  It was a wise decision, if I do say so myself, but it was really hard to relinquish a mode of ministry that I did straight for five years.  One of the hardest things was not being able to guide certain parts of the ministry like I was used to and feeling anxious about seeing certain parts slide back towards ways that I had tried to make better as if it was invalidating the work that I had done.  Obviously, that's not true at all and was a lesson in "it doesn't have to be done my way."  It was both liberating and terrifying when I realized one day that while it felt like that previous mode of ministry was just on pause waiting for me to return, the reality was that I would never be able to return to exactly the way it looked. Rebirth.

So it seems that in this Advent season, I am waiting in joyful hope for how God is calling my ministry to evolve.