Fishing

My dad and brothers will be proud: I went fishing. Caught our limit: Six Kokanee Salmon. Cleaned them. Ate 'em for dinner. A good old fish fry. Yum.

Thanks to Doug for taking me out and earning me some respect in the family.

I ate all the fish before I remembered to take a picture, so all you get is the bones.

Steubenville

We don't know. We can't know. Even though our innate curiosity impels us to want to know, we lack the capacity to really know.

But we get inklings. Hints. Foretastes. Previews. Samples of the sacred.

Our group of 15 youth and two adults from Sandpoint last weekend tried to put words to the experience of encountering the living God. We had witnessed a procession of Eucharistic Adoration with Fr. Mike Schmitz carrying the King of the Universe among 1200 teens. The lights were off; two spotlights followed the sparkling monstrance around the crowd. Ben Walther and the musicians prayed reflective music. Some wept. Some laughed. Others shouted. Or closed their eyes in newfound peace. Each unrepeatable soul was captivated. We tasted, if for a fleeting moment, Heaven.

But in reality, we didn't know. We couldn't know.

What happened in the Spokane Convention Center on Saturday night went beyond our limited capacity because God was truly present, present physically in the Eucharist, present spiritually in the people, present in each joyful tear, every uninhibited laugh, in hundreds of seeking young minds, among us, around us, pursuing us. And when we talk about the Lord's true presence, the power of healing love overwhelms and peace reigns. Not peace as the world gives, but peace as Jesus gives.

Even more amazing, the next morning we received that peace within our very bodies and selves in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. The most ordinary of elements -- bread and wine -- transformed into the sacred, the risen Lord. Angels acclaimed. Saints rejoiced. We extended our scarred hands. A tasteless wafer on our tongue. The simplest form of God humbled. The Body of Christ. Strength for the journey. Hope to sustain. The mystery of our faith.

A foretaste. A hint. But we didn't know what we received. Not fully. We couldn't know. Though it's rare to admit, we don't need to know, and we shouldn't know. To know the fullness of God is to erase the mystery, and without that, we have nowhere to go when it comes to love. Love means some element of the unknown to be explored and pondered.

God called us to enter the mystery at Steubenville Northwest this weekend. Though each teen had a varied experience and reaction, every person knew they had encountered something profound. How could we not be impacted? We saw a massive gathering of dancing, singing, cheering youth embracing their Catholic faith and loving the Lord. We heard Catholic speakers that had us clutching our sides laughing and then looking within ourselves seeking the meaning for being human. We slept little and prayed a lot.

On Sunday morning, our emcee Ennie Hickman used a parable to conclude our time together. A football team huddles to draw up a play, assign roles, and ultimately to prepare for what is to come -- the next play. It would be ridiculous for a team to huddle, break, and instead of lining up to run the play, jog to the sideline waiting for the next huddle. The huddle isn't the point. It's only meant to prepare us for what is to come. This conference serves a similar function. We can't go to the sideline waiting for the next Steubenville, the next huddle. We must live vibrantly, fully, faithfully in our world. We have to run the play! We have to make a decision to love the Lord every day through our faith communities and our Church.

When we do that we keep the foretastes coming. We keep our eyes on Heaven with our feet planted on earth. We may not ever know all God is doing. We can't. But we don't need to know to love. To trust. To be faithful.

So we exit the huddle, ready for the world, renewed in our faith, prepared for the play. God goes beside us. 1-2-3, BREAK!

P.S. Who are the two yahoos in the teal shirts that snuck into our picture? I didn't even notice them! And for a bonus, here is Ben Walther singing one of the anthems from the weekend.

Families

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live."

Blessed Pope John Paul II

In the Ponderosa-Pine-lined outskirts of Cascade, Idaho, something like 70 families camped, played, ate, prayed, and shared in Family Camp this weekend. The gathering highlighted the ordinary -- kids riding bikes and soaking each other with squirt guns to relieve the afternoon sun, morning Mass complete with crying toddlers and rambunctious youngsters, parents applying sunscreen and bug repellant repeatedly, teens allowing their guard be lowered long enough to play Mafia and Ninja games, roasting marshmallows over the shared campfire to sandwich between graham cracker halves and Hershey's, curling into sleeping bags at the end of full and tiring days spent in community. And in the ordinary, something beautiful emerged.

Strong, faithful families form the backbone and building block of our Church. When families like these,  in their diversity of experience and philosophy, gather in a Catholic setting it is our church at its best. There is a strong chance the young people that respond to the current need for vocations to the religious life and to lasting marriages will come from families that attend camps like this. Seeing priests, sisters, seminarians, and committed Catholic parents from various backgrounds instills in young minds the possibility of these vocational callings for their own lives. I had the privilege of spending time with families talking over sausage and French toast, laughing around a simmering fire in the evening, hearing about the challenges and beauty of raising rugrats in our worldly society.

On Friday night, most people at the camp brought their folding chairs to the campfire pit for a family rosary. Each decade was led by different age group -- men, women, teens, pre-teens, and children. The environment could have been less distracting, the children could have paid better attention, the adults did not all engage entirely, but the simple communion of shared prayer was nonetheless transformative. Our vocations director later gave blessings for youth contemplating the religious life and to those that felt called to marriage. These are the seeds of revitalization in our Church.

Families: We need a renewal of your steadfast role in our world more than ever. Thank you to all who strive to bring the Lord and the Church into daily prominence alongside your children and spouses. You are heroes, often unappreciated but unquestioningly vital. Continue the good work and know you are loved.

Adrenaline

I wouldn't say I'm much of a daredevil, but the last two evenings my adrenaline pumped more than is typical. On Thursday, I took off in a four-seater airplane from the narrow runway of the Sandpoint Airport with pilot Nick of Tamarack Aerospace Group based here. He flies often, and had no qualms about offering me a tour of the landscape. I had never been in an aircraft other than commercial ones, so the sensation was intense. I didn't anticipate that he would give me control of the plane and let me fly the aircraft for the majority of the ride. Ten minutes after getting into the air, I was steering us down Lake Pend Oreille to Clark Fork and the Idaho-Montana state line, circling around the lush mountains and down Highway 95 to Sagle and Lake Cocololla, and high above the streets of Sandpoint. I didn't snap any photos because I was nervous enough steering the ship. Plus, out the side window, the passenger can see a good deal but the iPhone camera cannot. You will have to content yourself with a photo of the vessel that carried me on the voyage.

Just as the cockpit eased toward being uncomfortably warm and my stomach started to churn, Nick reassumed control, and we touched down after about 45 minutes of being airborne. I was reminded as we touched the sky how God used mountains to express moments of clarity in our salvation story: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus all ratified covenants with God from the height of a mountain (Eden, Ararat, Moriah, Sinai, Zion, and Calvary). In Bible Basics for Catholics, John Bergsma talks about some of the reasons for this. He says we see things more clearly from a mountaintop or a great height. That perspective allows us the vantage to know what is happening, interpret it, and make wise decisions. In some ways, this summer is a plane ride for me -- ample time to reflect, work in parish ministry, a regimen of prayer and sacraments, the feedback of the people of God. Hopefully I can allow God to pilot the plane when needed too. It helps to have a partner in the cockpit that knows what they're doing because God knows as I steered us at 5,000 feet I had little clue how to do anything other than turn left and right or prop the plane's nose up or down.

After the plane ride, I wasn't expecting any subsequent adrenaline rushes, but the Lewis family decided as we boated around the lake last night that we should go around the peninsula to Green Bay, which is infamous for a cliff about 45 feet high that's ideal for plunging into the chilly water. Of course, after driving all the way to Green Bay and climbing up the rocky edge, I couldn't say no to the stunt. Here's a video of my jump, with an ending that wasn't quite upright. I'd call it a "butt flop." My rear end was a little sore for a few minutes afterward. No symbolic meaning for me here -- just a good time with friends and a just slightly stinging memory.

Schweitzer

There is not much I can write that these photos do not say by themselves, but they capture some of the majesty around Sandpoint. The first set is from the top of Schweitzer Mountain. To open the summer season, a big festival on Schweitzer is marked with vendors, games, food, and free ski lifts to the top. The second set of photos is from Independence Day with great friends on Lake Pend Oreille. 

The long bridge over the water and into Sandpoint is right center just past the initial set of mountains.

The surprisingly large village at Schweitzer is at the bottom of the ski lift in these photos.

This one is shot at an out-of-the-way lake about 20 miles north of Sandpoint. Ed and Paula drove us there to show off one of their favorite fishing spots and getaways.

The Lewis family had about 100 people gathered on their lakeside lawn for Independence Day and a homespun fireworks show that outdid the city-sponsored event.

Thanks to my two brothers and all our military veterans that have afforded us the freedom to live in the United States and worship freely. We are grateful for your service.

Steve

One of the most beloved ideas Mother Teresa championed was encouraging people to do small things with great love. At a funeral for an abiding friend on Monday, this thought echoed through the eulogies and celebration of his life. Steve Dellino impacted Boy Scouts, altar servers, coworkers, siblings, his own children, the parish to which he belonged, Knights of Columbus, neighbors, community members, and countless others by performing simple, unremarkable deeds with sincerity and commitment. This is the legacy of a life well lived.

I am fortunate to know Steve and the Dellino family, and I was fortunate to get time off from my summer assignment to attend his rosary and funeral Mass on Sunday and Monday. My favorite memories of Steve are snippets of him in action. He headed a Knights of Columbus project to ready a parishioner's home for sale, and I helped by demolishing and rebuilding a rotted backyard deck. For a couple hours the volunteer Boy Scouts and I pried the boards loose in a slow procession. Steve noticed our labors and came over with an axe. In two minutes of whirlwind motion, he equaled the total of our progress, and he rather enjoyed the process, grinning as we gawked at his immense talent for demolition.

At the Mass, his family brought forward for the presentation of the gifts a 20-quart pot that could have doubled as a makeshift swimming pool for toddlers and a wooden stirrer that looked more like a kayak paddle. These were Steve's tools for making his unmistakable marinara sauce. He made it in enormous batches for events like the parish Italian Dinner, and for his own funeral, he had prepared and frozen enough to feed the hundreds of participants celebrating his life.

The most intimate time I spent with Steve, though, was surely our 6 a.m. Cursillo small group on Tuesdays. We attended a Cursillo retreat together, and as part of the experience, attendees are encouraged to meet weekly with those from their parish that shared in the retreat. Steve and I were part of a group of five. Each Tuesday, we spent an hour talking about our week, examining the spiritual book we were reading at the time, and sharing the one moment from our week that we felt closest to the Lord. Steve shared simple moments -- speaking to an old friend, praying with family, receiving the Eucharist, realizing anew God's majesty at the peak of a mountain hike, or a meaningful conversation with a loved one during his chemo treatment. The sharing of these moments reinforced Steve's appreciation for relationships, especially with his beloved children and wife, and his devotion to service in the community through church, Boy Scouts, wrestling boosters, and activism. His life revolved around love and service. As his family said, Dellinos work hard and play hard. Steve illuminated this simple life strategy, and therefore made it gratifying for so many to celebrate his contributions and legacy.

To know Steve is to experience God's depth of love in the simplicity of a singular human life. Though he is mourned, missed, and loved, the Dellinos and their loved ones repeatedly expressed relief that Steve's physical pain had ended, his earthly journey was complete, and his life's work produced a remarkable family and people more faithful as a result of encountering him. What more can one hope to accomplish in this life?

Fr. Dennis told me that funerals are meant to make those who remain in this life better people. All who came to mourn and rejoice on Monday departed with the inspiration and example needed to become a better version of themselves. It was one more small act of love from Steve.