A wonderful day has been passed in the company of my wife's (and therefore my) extended family and friends at a bar mitzvah celebration in Brooklyn. A few notes from the day:

*I was nearly stricken by a 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans' when the bimah became study-desk as the young man of the day was joined by several relatives and the rabbi, all intently focused on their copies of the text to be translated-recited. The rabbi moved to one side so that 4 people surrounded two sides of the bimah. I have also seen three sides taken up with intent translators and readers during such recitations at bar/bat mitzvah services. As someone for whom reading and textual wrangling are such constitutive spiritual exercises, such moments have nearly overwhelmed me, and as a Catholic, I wonder whether a Catholic altar could ever be rendered such a study-desk, whether a study-desk could be rendered an altar.

*At one table, a conversation among friends who graduated high school in the early 1980s, recalling with no effort whatsoever the musical palette that structured their crucial adolescent days and remains with them even now: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; James Taylor; Neil Young; Billy Joel. When Joel's "New York State of Mind" was crooned lovingly in a karaoke moment at the typically lively party, it was as if an open secret had been allowed, and a musical soul-setting acknowledged for a certain cohort. And I wondered what the real movitations are for people's 'faith' decisions, whether and in what ways the palette of popular media culture is now permanently exceeding any 'native' religious tongue. And if so, what's a 'religious' person to do, to be of service in this situation?

Could it be that only a return to Christianity as it was understood by so many in its first several centuries--that is, as a philosophy--promises one of the few ways of conceptually holding Christianity's ongoing significance while at the same time situating it in the contest of claims to truth better understood today as 'philosophies' than 'religions'?

Tom Beaudoin Brooklyn, New York

I have just returned from seeing the rock group Rush perform a more than three-hour concert in Concord, California, thus marking at least the dozenth time (maybe closer to 15th or 20th?) that I've seen them live since my first Rush show around 1986.

After spending the evening with so many for whom rock lyrics are a kind of gospel--sung, shouted, dramatized, memorized, existentially rehearsed--and whose "adherents" are primarily drawn from the generations born from the early 1960s to late 1970s, I could not help but wonder about making a theological sense of the night.

The surrender to theatrical lighting; to musical and musicianly processions; to formalized gestures of exuberance, defiance, or witness; to communal recitations of philosophical fragments (as rock lyrics); in other words, the joy and freedom in and through a constellation of askeses, made me wonder whether my Catholicism made me more susceptible to rock, or my rock and roll to Catholicism.

I was also struck by the fresh spectacle of rock stars aging before our eyes, and their potential spiritual placements in lives of fans. The three members of Rush are now in their 50s, and as I watched guitarist Alex Lifeson enter an ecstatic guitar solo rendered as trancelike, blissful, mournful, and painful, I thought that those of us who have followed this band for decades, a band now approaching its 35th year of existence, need these musicians to inhabit our time in a particular way: to inhabit this span of time with and for the fans, bridging the 70s, 80s, 90s, and now, by both how faithful they are to their music, and at the same time how they play it now with the faces and hands and bodies of men more like 'us'. These aging rock stars school fans in inhabiting the passing years through profound 'spiritual' exercises for so many who live and move and have their being in 'secular' cultures.

Tom Beaudoin Palo Alto, California

On Monday, I gave a talk to an assembly/conference of a couple hundred high school students from Catholic schools in San Francisco, with my assigned topic being "sexuality and spirituality today." With all the caveats about the potential minefields assumed, it was also an exciting opportunity to try to reach the level of the real with them (and to try to consider what that might even mean).

Despite coming from Catholic high schools, one cannot of course assume any common Catholic knowledge or identity, whether Christian or otherwise, among these students, which frames the pedagogical task most challengingly from the start.

I focused my talk on three points for their personal consideration about faith and sexuality, which were my attempts to render a Catholic approach in 'nonreligious' language: [1] Know your culture; [2] Know your power; [3] Know your community. Under the first, I discussed recent scholarship on high school and college 'hookup culture' as it might pertain to them, and the challenges it poses. Under the second, I discussed discernment about acting on one's own 'authority,' which in Christian terms is a participation in God's 'authority', God's power, understood not as commands but as freedom for love. And under the third, I encouraged them to consider their practices as caught up in the practices and values of their own 'beloved communities', from which they can get good formation - or malformation.

After an elocutionarily chaste 25 minutes of talking on my part, what followed was 45 minutes of good conversation with them about the above and more.

As privileged as I left feeling to have this time with them, I am left with two doubts about my thinking: First, several students, including women, indicated that they thought the 'hookup culture' did represent some progress, however ambiguous, for young women's freedom, and that that needed more attention. I think that this response cannot simply be categorized as immature or false consciousness. Second, despite my attempt to try to start and stay as much as possible in real questions and discernments, I had the impression that we were still not touching down enough in the nitty-gritty of their reality, that my own thinking in particular, and maybe even 'the Church's' thinking in general, has much further to go to inhabit these questions at the level of practice--whatever that level is. I am thinking about what seriousness and courage in this realm demands.

And above all I am grateful to those who teach in Catholic elementary and secondary schools, who are the vessels of the everyday miraculous in the lives of students for whom Catholic schools are among the greatest hopes in their lives.

Tom Beaudoin Santa Clara, California

A common trope of professorial reportage is the moment of illumination about the shape of undergraduate life today, the classroom surprise that, at best, can become a theophany for future teaching.

I had such an experience last week in my introductory course on Christianity. While reaching for examples to explain 20th century interpretations of salvation as the movement from inauthentic to authentic existence, I confidently asked how many in the room had read Thomas Merton, thinking I could invite a student to share what they'd learned from Merton that could illustrate the point at hand. Out of 33 students, zero hands went up. Then I asked, okay, how many had ever *heard* of Merton. Again, out of 33 students, with probably half (at least) coming from more or less Catholic backgrounds, *zero* hands went up.

Earlier in the class, when I mentioned a theological question my 2-year old daughter had asked, a young woman in the class asked if I had taken my daughter to Disney. (The answer is no.) In response, I asked the class how many of *them* had gone to Disney. A full 32 of 33 students raised animated hands.

(Vincent Miller, in reflections occasioned by his own young daughter, well characterizes the transition to Disney language in his excellent book _Consuming Religion_, where on page 6 he memorably (and critically) writes: "Gloria in Excelsis Deo! Hakuna Matata!")

I left the lesson that day with a keen awareness for how much work must be done in entering the world of thought, emotion, and intuition of this post-post-Vatican II generation. And in bringing the worlds of thought, emotion, and intuition from other theological times and places into my students' sensibilities. It seems to me a task both daunting and absolutely essential.

Tom Beaudoin Santa Clara, California

I've spent the last 60 hours amidst the wild diversity that is the Catholic Church, and that is manifest so beautifully here at the annual Religious Education Congress.

Five students from Santa Clara University have traveled here with me, and have been taking in all that the Congress has to offer: hundreds of sessions on Catholic life and ministry; and acres of Catholic exhibitors of books, art, kitsch, graduate schools, clothing, vestments, and religious life (one of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement was very effective at loading me up with enough posters and prayer cards for half the undergrads at Santa Clara--"Here!" he barked jovially as he shoved the goods into my hands, "You better take these, because I worked so hard to set all this up!").

On Friday, I gave a session about how Catholic college students relate faith to sexual decision-making. Nearly 700 people were there, and I am happy to say that perhaps half of them were students. My presentation, edging somewhat toward the didactic side, focused on recent studies that try to gauge the dynamics of sexual practice in adolescent and collegiate culture and relate those dynamics to the faith backgrounds students bring. There was a palpable energy, especially among the students, about the issues. And afterward, one well-known professor from a prominent Catholic university told me that in his view, the relation of faith and sex was the number one issue of concern about undergraduate life at his institution.

On Saturday, I chaired a roundtable on Catholicism and homosexuality, the fourth such roundtable in four years here. Along with Charles O'Neill and Sr. Kathleen Bryant, RSC, I discussed Catholic spirituality as manifest in gay and lesbian ministries and lives. In particular, I talked about the spirituality of being an "ally" for LGBTQ+ Catholics. We had around 600-ish people, all extraordinarily attentive to the issues being discussed, and as has been true for the last several years at these sessions, they were in remarkably good and feisty spirits. I noticed this year an increase in the number of parents of lesbian and gay Catholics who spoke up during the discussion period and with whom I talked afterward.

In all, quite satisfying sessions, though of course I replay them in my mind many times, and think about what could have gone differently or better.

But also a real delight this weekend has been seeing my students get into this rich Catholic world. I had a long and leisurely dinner with them this evening to begin to unpack their experiences, and was surprised and gratified at how much a quick and deep immersion into this giant temporary Catholic camp has meant to them. Many of them see it as a significant plateau-point in their theological journey, especially as several of them are preparing to graduate as religion majors in a few months.

I feel deeply fortunate to have this "event" on my calendar each year, because I know I will be conducted into hope for, and joy in, the Church. And that has indeed happened again this year.

Tom Beaudoin Anaheim, California

In a few days, I head out to the annual Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, a grand carnival of Catholic spirit: people, ideas, books, and prayers that span (and exceed) the various confessional, ecclesiological, political spectrums of North American Catholicism. It is the only annual Catholic gathering I know of that so well represents the diversity of and within the Church. (Not that there isn't always room for more.)

This year, I'll be giving a talk on spirituality and sexuality in college student life, and on lesbian and gay Catholic identities and spiritualities. It is my eighth year at the conference, which has become one of a few stops during the year (along with, for me, the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Academy of Religion annual meetings) where I can reconnect with friends and colleagues from around the country, to catch up personally on currents in Catholic theology, and on the many interesting and compelling ways in which a theological life can be lived. (And at last year's Congress, there was also the happy coincidence that I also got to see Winger in Los Angeles--that's for all you fellow '80s rock fans, which Catholic theology contains not a few.)

I'll try to check in from Congress... and will no doubt see many of you readers among the 40,000-ish assembled...

Tom Beaudoin

Tonight, I gave a presentation to a group of students and staff at Santa Clara, regarding recent research on the relationship between spiritual practice and sexual decision-making in the lives of college students.

No one who works with the current generation of college students will be surprised to learn that to a person, and irrespective of political or ecclesiological orientation, everyone was totally tuned in. So many wanted to stay and continue the conversation that we added on an extra 55 minutes.

The crux of the conversation was the contemporary "hookup culture" in college life, its characteristics, causes, and spiritual challenges, and what sort of horizon for adult Christian faith and sexuality lies beyond it for these students, and for all of us in American Jesuit higher education.

It was another reminder that today's Catholic college students want to learn to pay attention to their lives--in ways both practical and theological.

Tom Beaudoin

Greetings from Reno, Nevada, where I gave two talks today at the Annual Diocesan Conference (actually, its 25th anniversary, with the theme of "Integrity: Rooted in the Soul"). It is a beautiful cross-section of the Church as it lives on the ground, and I am surprised by how "midwestern" in their niceness the conferencers are, how vigilant about the needs of this visitor, anyway. (A member of the Knights of Columbus, in KoC outfit, generously volunteered to walk me the 150 feet from the prayer service to the registration desk. I felt like I had the Catholic Secret Service with me the whole way.)

This is my first time in Reno, and more illuminating for me, my first time in a real, live, shiny, loud, smoky, slice-of-Americana-dishing casino.

At one of my sessions today, I marveled that a big Catholic ministry conference could be held in an even bigger casino. "It's a Catholic casino," someone yelled out from the back, good-naturedly.

And I thought of all the Christian conferences at which I speak that could never, ever, not once, not ever, be held in a casino. And I was proud of being Catholic.

A faith tradition that helped give us the carnivalesque from Louisiana to Brazil and beyond, and which so frequently threatens to specialize in the decadent, can indeed find a home for a ministry conference in a casino.

Tom Beaudoin