Last night

Youth Night last night was interesting...
We had mass (YAY!) and I think the youth are really begginning to appreciate it... except that in the middle of it I was cussed at and almost hit by one of them, after asking him to stop playing with his cell phone, (he refused, and I reached to confiscate it)... I let him be after that, and he put it away, and at the end of mass he was crying... so I imagine something else is going on in his life, which I'll ask him about next week... He's a good kid...

after mass We had snacks (cheese tray, pepperoni, crackers, chips, salsa, candies) and then I split the group into MS and HS... the MS got to play cards, and hang out (I have alot less MS than I thought!) and the HS I chastised... Last week when I was gone they had been so disrespectful to my assistant that he emailed me and said he was considering quiting... Instead of a direct chastisement... I asked them what I was doing wrong that they chose to disrespect him and other adults so much... and from there I let them talk, and they came to the conclusion that it wasn't what I was doing, but that they needed to do more to be respectful...

Anyhow... as for my live in experience at the monastery, I'm still trying to sort through it... but I wasn't exactly pleased by it... they permitted non-catholics to recieve the Eucharist, and told me not to tell non-catholics that they shouldn't recieve it... the best way I could describe it is by saying that they are JFK (and possibly Kerry) type catholics... the Kennedy's are close friends of most of the monks, and the philosophy of the monks is very accepting and ambiguous... very Bhuddist... much like Merton... the quickest way of describing their philosophy is Catholic Bhuddists...

At times I felt like I was amongst a group of Greek Stoics, who weren't founded upon the rock of Peter, but the couch of comfortability with a facade of aesteticism... they are very very well off... making litterally millions of dollars a year... and they don't need it to support the grounds as they already have a fund that does that... and when I asked them about what the money went too, the vocations director got offended... and then said well we have to pay for 3 squares a day, and then proceeded to mention some other things, and only at the end almost justifyingly, saying oh and we also do almsgiving.

But I ultimately found that I wasn't there for myself so much as for my best friend, and four strangers I met, one from indiana, one "refugee" trying to get back on his feet, and two women on my flight back... they all needed Christ's truth, and were comforted by the love of Christ, and True church teaching as opposed to the misunderstandings they've always been told about both... I'll probably be posting some journal entries I wrote on my retreat... perhaps.