The Very Hungry Caterpillar

So much has happened. My goodness.

Hello family! So much love from Wyoming. It has been a hot minute since I’ve posted anything, so here are the bullet points, and if you want more detail just read on, otherwise you can stop reading whenever you want, and really you can also stop whenever you don’t want. 

Before anything I just have to say I am so happy for Katie that everything seems to be going well! Still sending prayers.

1. Monica and the kids are doing very well! 
2. This has been a hard year working as a teacher. 
3. I’m looking to pivot my career into IT. 
4. I have been disentangling Catholicism from my conservatism. (I think I’m a leftist Catholic now, depending on how you take those two words.)
5. DnD has become my biggest pastime. 

Monica and The kids

Winter is always so long here, but Monica does an amazing job of being so present and attentive to the kiddos. They are so happy. Their favorite stories and shows continue to evolve. Spirited Away is a new favorite. Rocco has a toy pterodactyl which he calls “Yubaba Black Sheep”. You’ll need to watch the movie in order to get it. They love Beauty and the Beast so much. They both pretend to be the beast and the LOVE the scene when the beast fights the wolves. Rocco covers his ears in a tension of freight and fascination. Monica has it on her heart to write. She is a lovely writer, so we are figuring out how to get her the mind space to do that. There are not enough hours in the day!  

Teaching has been tough, and I have an internship with an IT company. 

There continues to be much drama at the school I work for. This blog is public, so I can’t say too much, but it is not a secret that the school has been struggling culturally: gossip, secret meetings, paranoia, and fear are very deeply rooted there. It has been very challenging to work with any sort of peace. I will be teaching a few classes next year, and I believe I will be slowly phasing out of my role as a teacher (or who knows, I may be forced out sooner! ha!) There is a great IT company in town that I got an internship with. I have been studying my butt off for a couple certifications so that I can start as a help desk and then eventually move into networking and perhaps cyber info security (a field I’ve always been drawn to from a great distance). The company seems really well run and focused on its employees, which is somewhat rare in the tech world, it seems. 

My good friend from San Antonio came with his family for a week visit back in March. It was so refreshing. We talked a lot about our faith and politics and economics. He is a brilliant man. He is in residency for in-patient psychiatry. He is a little further along the path than I am, but he is certainly a more “left-of-center” Catholic. His faith is so beautiful. His cousin is a priest. He lived at  a Benedictine monastery for nine months. I have been recently fascinated with the alliance that Catholics made with conservatives, and I am slowly figuring out that that alliance is not the default, like I thought for a long time. A big beautiful world has opened to me, and though I feel like I’m only looking seeing things from the inside of a dark room, I’m just exhilarated at what I will find. I don’t know if my faith has ever been deeper. The wonderful thing about truth is that I don’t need to do anything to protect it, to shield it, to promulgate it; it is a violent force because the Truth is God, and realizing that has given such freedom for me to explore without (so much) fear. 

Reddit and Discord have been a great resources for discussion and asking all sorts of people questions. It is a brilliant way to rapidly extend one’s horizon and check biases. 

Some resources and reading I have been doing: 

• The Bruenigs (a podcast hosted by Matt Bruenig and his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth often shows on “Left, Right, and Center” podcast. They are a very intelligent and educated LeftCath couple who speak on a whole range of things, but mostly policy and economics and law. “The World According to Matt” is a great episode to start with. Something that blew my mind was Matts discussion on how income and property is a social construction rather than a pre-social/divine fact. Totally changed my view of taxes.)
• Know Your Enemy (a podcast hosted by a Catholic and another guy who is agnostic, I think. The Catholic, Matt, is actually friends with Will, and you can find the episode where Will was guesting. It is a very intellectual podcast about trying to know the intellectual history of the conservative religious right. I’ve listened to them on-and-off for about two years now, and I always find myself arguing with them or sighing with agreement. Very insightful couple of guys. Start with their episode “What the Cold War did to Liberalism” and “After the Theocons”) 
• Poverty, by America (a book about poverty and how there are many systems and people that profit off poverty. If you are resistant to believing in “systemic” anything, as I am, then read this book. Full of the nerdy details like statistics and citations. Some pages are just numbers. Delicious. Something that blew my mind: republicans and democrats are equally likely to vote down affordable housing in their neighborhoods.) 
• An Introduction to Christianity, an Essay in the Grammar of Assent, and anything by Pope Francis. (Just good stuff here if you have the time to read. Father Agustin, the best priest ever, had Monica and I read Pope Francis for marriage prep over wine at the little Italian place near Our Lady of Grace Church in SA.)