Who am I? I am uninteresting at worst, and unimportant at best. It’s the “what am I?” that brings me to the keyboard right now. I am a Catholic Adventurer—a man on the adventure of being Catholic. Like any adventure it has its highs and lows. It’s victories, defeats, glory days, and gory haze.
I’ve been feeling like I have a lot to offer to others, given my experience(s) in this adventure. But how to share it? I thought I’d start a blog, talking about the Catholic faith, or maybe a blog about spirituality. I considered starting this-and-that kind of Catholic blog; topics that others already cover, with much greater mastery and eloquence than I can offer. Since all forms of “Catholic blog” are being done to death already, I happily abandoned the idea of tossing my own hat into the arena (or is that “into the ring”?…eh!). Why get in the way of the good stuff? Why be part of the noise of the bad stuff? I’ll sit this one out, thanks!
But I told the Blessed Mother that if she inspires me with an idea, I’ll go with it. I’m at her service. Finally, here I am, with an idea that [I suspect] came from the Holy Virgin. I call it The Catholic Adventure…until Our Lady gives me a more clever title to use.
When I was a boy I used to watch a show on HBO called Fraggle Rock. My favorite segment of the show was when Traveling Matt, an adventuresome fraggle who was exploring the human world (what fraggles called “putter space”), wrote home to his nephew at Fraggle Rock to report all of the strange and marvelous things he had observed and experienced that week, or that day while exploring the world of man. At this stage of my life, experiences, and spirituality, I sometimes feel a bit like Traveling Matt, with all kind of things to write home about. And so here I am.
This first post is just a brief introduction, so I don’t want to weigh you down just yet with the telling of some part of my adventure. But I don’t want to leave you hanging either. What can I share with you that fits the tone and purpose of an introduction, but also gives you something substantial and interesting?
Being a human creature in the order of God’s design is a hardcore adventure. It’s not as simple as getting up in the morning, going to work, paying the bills, and loving your family, and all that. No way! There’s much more to it than that. It involves living in the world, growing in virtue, overcoming sin, and sinful inclinations; seeking out God, experiencing him personally through prayer, through grace, through the sacraments, and through the voice and life of His Church. It’s about a deepening of our persons so as to experience all of reality more perfectly and more fully—that means God, and man, and nature.
St. Irenaeus wrote “The glory of God is man fully alive”.
That sums up the Catholic experience, and the Catholic Adventure for me: To be a human being, fully alive. Being fully alive starts with life itself, proceeds to our expression of being (living well and rightly), includes and involves our coming to know God, our knowledge of God, and our life in God here on Earth, and our eventual union with him in Heaven. So in this blog I’ll write about that adventure. I’ll write a lot about the Church, the faith, and about life in general, from a Catholic perspective. I’ll try to avoid politics, but I won’t avoid political issues—again, from a Catholic perspective.
So there’s the end of my first note. More later. God bless you all. Oh, and here’s a little treat for you. The theme to the Fraggle Rock show. Enjoy
