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A couple Saturdays ago, Fr. Dale and I went to the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Arizona Cardinals stadium. I always cherish the time I spend with Fr. Dale. I know thousands of people who would love to have lunch with him. He knows what he’s doing.

I asked him how God deals with our humanity. I’ve always heard that “God thinks bigger.” Whatever plans we might have, they are nothing compared to what God has in mind. I know God isn’t a project coordinator for Humanity, Inc., but I’m dying to know what He’s thinking. I want to take a look at his action items. Or something like that.

If God thinks bigger—then we should thing very BIG and we’ll be fine. Right?

I feel uneasy now. It’s reductionism gone wild. It’s like a confused, Christianized 1990’s dot com strategy.

Damnit. Come on! Let’s do this. I’m not going to let my small-mind keep God from making a difference in this world.

I am getting so hyped up, I start to tingle and it shoots to my head and toes. I have to slow down so I don’t start flipping tables or something. I’ve gotta go.

There’s some things in life I won’t have time to do. I’ll never be able to bust perfect flares, halos, or a windmill (that’s breakdancing.) I doubt I’ll have time to build my own hotrod. It’s too late to be a ninja.

As a kid, I’d lay in the pastures of our little farm, dreaming about all the adventures I wanted to take, just like “The Little Koala” did on Nickelodeon.; Or the Hardee Boys and MacGyver. Those guys did all kinds of cool stuff. I can do all that, now. I am grown up. Adventures aren’t confined to the woods behind my house. I have more tools than a hammer and some roofing nails.

I’m not really MacGyver, but I do cool stuff. I travel around the world, meet all kinds of crazy cool people. You could hand me a map of the U.S.A., and I’d tell you of the adventures I’ve had from ocean to ocean.; When you are grown up, I’ll tell you the full stories of what happened in some of those places. The Apostles didn’t just skip around from one PG adventure to the next. I’ve flown in helicopters, driven WAY TO FAST IN cool cars. I’ve been on safaris. Five of them, actually.

Though part of me is disappointed that I’ll never do some things, that washes away when I think about what I AM doing.

I feel so…disappointed in myself right now. Maybe those aren’t the words. I feel like I should be more than who I am. Like I get caught in a blatant act of shallowness.

Part of me will always be insecure. I was never this way until I went on The Real World. Reality TV makes people celebrities faster than anything else in the entertainment industry. Bands and actors pay their dues, we showed up to a casting call. Some of us went on the Real World, other’s shipped off to an island, and then a guy became a not-millionaire.

It’s hard not to be confused by other’s images of success. I am happy. Very happy. I have wonderful friends. I love what I do. I am financially established. I am healthy. What’s missing? Nothing.

I am getting to the “weird age” for being single. Not everyone is single anymore.

This is a time of transition in my life. I don’t know what I am transitioning to, and I can’t imagine it’s a bad destination. I don’t know…

I feel different now than I used to. I am from a big family and I’ve loved it.

I think I’ve bought into a misguided understanding of masculinity. I heard something on the radio the other day that has kept me thinking:

“Jerzy Kluger has the personality of a Beethoven Symphony. He has the sweetness beyond words, especially in regard to his children and grandchild, but it can give way in an instant to resounding kettledrums. To him, life is a passion to which he clings like an obsessive lover.”

We don’t have cable at my house, so I popped in “The Lion King” a couple Saturdays ago. I was in eighth grade when that came out, and I didn’t get it. The movie began with father and mother raising a baby lion. At the end of the movie, that baby lion was now a king, and he was raising a young cub. The story keeps going.

My parents are grandparents now. They’ve not always been. I remember when Dad was young and super strong, when mom’s face was a smooth as mine. I am single, and they aren’t pressuring me at all to get married and have kids. But, there was something; Dad sat on the couch and looked to me. I am the joy of his life. So are my five brothers and sisters, and my niece and nephew. Dad wants me to be a Dad, because he wants me to love someone as much as he loves me. For me—for any child—to reject the call to parenthood, is a horrible, devastating insult to life and creation. For me to reject the call to parenthood is to reject my parents who’ve loved me unconditionally for 24 years. It is a rejection to Mom and Dad’s parents who gave them life.

I am insecure about parts of my life. It’s small, but a real insecurity. I hope that recognizing it will get it out of my life. I don’t like saying things like “when I have kids I…” or anything like that. Actually, I can’t even say that…it’s easier to type.

Three things make me insecure about talking about being a parent:

1. It’s the end of cool. I am not really that shallow, but it is there. Being cool comes from being on The Real World. After an experience of pseudo-celebrity, you’ll never feel cool unless you are still a pseudo-celebrity. “Cool” in high school was lame, and so was “cool” in college, but, the cool of living in a cool part of town in a cool house, I think that’s cool.
2. I don’t know if I am called to be a priest. I still am not sure what my vocation is. My conscious is hypersensitive and the future is wide open. I don’t have a poker face.
3. I am trying to be a peer minister to teenagers, and if I talk like a parent, I’ve gotten too old and can’t keep up what I am doing now.
4. I am terrified by normalcy. Dear God, save me from a normal life! Even if that means taking it. I am skeptical of anything that is routine or “what Americans do.” I see so many people that don’t know what else to do, so they start a family.;

My first experience with parenthood was with the parents of the teenagers that I minister to. I became so angry with the parents that didn’t love them. In a wild fantasy, I’d take a baseball bat and beat the hell out of deadbeat dads and whorish moms.

A few months ago, my friend Candyce* told me, “You are going to be the best Dad in the world.” It caught me off guard. By the way I responded, she could have told me I would grow up to be a fine cowboy: it was a bizarre concept to me. Why did she say that? What are the qualifications for being a good dad?

If you would not be a good dad, what good are you? A good dad is loving, responsible, hardworking, and selfless. A bad dad is indifferent, irresponsible, lazy, and selfish. What a despicable void of masculinity.

*Note: 4/10/08. I ended up marrying Candyce in 2007, four years after I wrote this. We’re now expecting our first child together.

The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I realize I want to be Mr. Rogers. Sure, he had great hair and a fine array of cardigans, but he did more than leave his mark on fashion history.

I think I want to make a kids show. Or puppets or something. If you’ve ever made a kid laugh, you’d know why you would take the time to make a puppet. I don’t’ know. I guess I just like making kids laugh. It makes me happy.