Brazil!

For the rest of July, I'll be in Brazil for Magis and World Youth Day, guiding students from Jesuit schools in Europe, South America, and the United States from Salvador de Bahía to Rio de Janeiro before meeting up with pilgrims from around the world. I'll do my best to condense and share some reflections on my experiences– social and cultural immersion, juggling at least three languages, living out of a hiking pack with only 25 pounds of gear, Mass with Pope Francis on a giant airfield– over the course of August; in the meantime, feel free to consult the sites below for more timely information from Brazil.

Please pray for us, and know that we'll be praying for you.

Magis & World Youth Day (US Jesuits' site)
Magis 2013 (Brazil Jesuits' site)
The Jesuit Post (blog maintained by US Jesuit scholastics)

Gentle Currents

Horseshoe crab (and hitchhiking snail)
Avalon NJ

Thanks to happy circumstance (and some subtle conniving), I was able to follow my last day of work at Holy Cross with a full week of family vacation at the Jersey Shore. For the first time in over ten years, I joined my family for Fourth of July week at my grandparents' summer house, reviving a tradition that I fondly recall from my youth. Some things have changed (we can now take different beverages to the beach for the fireworks display) while some have remained the same (the house still has much of the 1970s decor that seemed weird to me as a kid). Most importantly, my parents, sister, and I were able to relax in one another's company, enjoy our favorite activities on the beach (reading for hours, taking the sun, swimming in the ocean), and enjoy some respite from the routines and responsibilities of life on the mainland.

Dune path at sunrise
Avalon NJ

The week also served to begin my gradual turn from administrative work at Holy Cross to graduate studies in theology at Boston College, a new three-year assignment that I'll begin at summer's end. Between chapters of novels and short dips in the unusually cold (56 to 60 degrees!) Atlantic surf, I stared out at the rolling waves and felt myself being pulled along in a new direction, ebbing away from the shores that I've happily called home for the past four years. I certainly feel sadness and loss in leaving behind many fabulous colleagues who became friends, and an atmosphere where I was blessed with so many opportunities and resources that facilitated tremendous personal and professional growth. At the same time, I sense an undeniable goodness to the movement that's carrying me into a new stage in my Jesuit formation, a new community of brothers from around the country and the world, and a milieu that will foster intellectual, pastoral, and social engagement with a variety of issues, rooted in the context of a vibrant city that I've long known well, yet never called home. Though I won't arrive there for good until mid-August, now that I've turned in my office keys at work and dropped off some winter clothing in my new digs, I know that I've been caught in the first tugs of a tidal shift, and I'm grateful to be riding such a glorious current.

Tidal pool, Seven Mile Beach
Avalon NJ