Happy anniversary...

I think I have mentioned before the alleged Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Translation: change is difficult. Still, four days after arriving in Syracuse, so far it has been pretty smooth. It will be a little while before I know my way around town, and until I actually meet people (activities at school don’t start for two more weeks), but I have so far managed to find a few essential places (grocery store, gym, school, etc.) and to keep myself busy. In the past few years I’ve gone to a gym in New Orleans a few times with some of the Bro’s, and it’s the kind of place where they give you towels out of the freezer and there are flowerpots in the locker room. Nice place, but half the times I went I was afraid of getting sweat on the equipment, and the other half the air was up so high I never broke a sweat. Believe me, there are no frozen towels at this place: it’s dark, full to overcrowded with beat-up old weights, the walls are covered with ancient posters of past greats like Larry Scott, Sergio Oliva and Ah-nold, the place smells like rust and half the mirrors are broken. It’s definitely a dungeon, and I love it already. I know that once I register for classes I can use the rec. facility at SU, but part of me wants to stay at this place just for the dungeon factor.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of making perpetual vows, and today is the tenth anniversary of first vows. I certainly would not have anticipated on either of those days that my religious life would lead me to Syracuse, New York. I do think I had hoped I would have grown up more, but the more I try to think about my spiritual development over the past decade, the more I find that there isn’t much to speak of. Just like ten years ago, it is still so much easier for me to ask questions about faith than to have it, to read books about prayer than to pray, to think about justice than to work for it. As the saying goes, “O wretched man that I am!” It is just such realizations that spark my faith, however – realization of my need for “mercy within mercy within mercy.”