Catching Foxes

This is an interesting episode. We start off being stupid, as is usual, then Luke takes us to a serious turn as we discuss the end-of-life of our young friend, Katie Garcia, whom we knew from college and who lives here in Houston about 30 minutes from me with her truly amazing husband and four kids.

Luke mentioned A Severe Mercy, which reminded me of several scenes from the movie Shadowlands, which is about CS Lewis, AKA Jack and the passionate poet, Joy, that he marries knowing full well that she will die very soon from a terminal illness. Woven through the center of this episode, the movie tracks his life, his falling in love with Joy, and his time dealing with her death, especially with her son Douglas that she is leaving behind with Lewis.

Apparently, at the time while we were recording this episode, Katie Garcia breathed her last. When I woke up the next morning Facebook posts came pouring in announcing her death. May perpetual light shine upon her.

From our thoughts on her story, we move into discussing our culture’s experience of death and then getting older in general, and how that relates to our career decisions and restlessness.

Finally, we end where we should, complaining about ministry and whining about how sucky everyone is compared to us, or at least compared to our delusional self-image.

Please donate to Katie funeral fund, found in the show notes, to help her amazing husband handle the experiences, which will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Thank you for walking this road with us.

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We talk about Lent. Luke's is going pretty well, but then he visited me and I ruined it. Then Gomer shares his amazing experiences inside the Ferguson Unit prison during the Kolbe Prison Retreat Ministry. And Gomer got a prison nickname.

My Facebook Post on the Kolbe Prison Retreat Ministry

The experience of going to the prison was intense and amazing. The men in white (MIW) who were there for the three days of the retreat (Thursday-Saturday, 7am to 7pm) come from a variety of religious backgrounds- most were lapsed Catholics, some were anti-Catholic and some were agnostics or Muslims.

The retreat followed the format of an ACTS retreat as closely as possible. We had four testimonies followed by table discussions, two by the outside team and two by the MIW. They were powerful, to say the least. Each table had 5-7 MIW, plus one member of the outside team and one member of the MIW as table stewards/facilitators. The discussions were open and honest.

I was tapped as the answer man, so if men had complex questions at any of the tables, I'd get a tap on the shoulder and go and try and answer them. In the end, we had 3 or 4 Q and A sessions with the MIW peppering Deacon Bradley and me with questions. "Why do you pray to dead saints?" "Why do you believe in Purgatory?" etc.

I gave a talk on the Sacraments and another on the Mass/Eucharist. Deacon Bradley tag-teamed with me on the Sacraments.

We did things like Rosaries, Divine Mercy Chaplets, two daily Masses, and we even had an Adoration chapel set up in the prison chapel where each one of us took two holy hours, and the MIW team took holy half-hours from the beginning to the end of the retreat. We had Fr. Sebastine led a Healing Mass, which was very powerful for a lot of the men there.

The people in the Ferguson Unit are gang-affiliated, life-ers, or long-timers. Almost all are there for drug-related violent crimes. These are men who know they are sinners but also know little else about themselves. They are labeled "prisoners", "Offenders," and "Inmates", but we call them the Men in White, reminding them of their dignity. Fr. Sebastine preached against the word "Prisoner", reminding them that Saint Paul did some of his best work in prison. If you are a child of God, no prison can define you.

At the end of the retreat, they had an opportunity to express what the retreat meant to them. One man stood up and explained why he did not get his feet washed. "I was scared. My whole life I've only experience chaos, violence, and negativity. I never knew love. Here, I experienced the love that I never had before, and it scared me. I didn't know people could love like that, and I didn't know how to receive that love. I couldn't believe you would wash my feet and even kiss them. Who am I? I've never seen a man do that for another man before."

I found out while praying before my Life Teen talk last night that a Man In White slipped his name tag into my Scriptural Rosary book, with the words, "Please remember me." scrawled on the top. He's currently in the prison's RCIA program.

One of the funniest moment came at the end, where a man in white was thanking us for our work, then turned to me and said, "You have one minute to win me over on one issue that is killing me about you Catholics. We at a bus stop. The bus is coming in one minute. Before we get on explain to me this: Mary." So I plowed through as fast as I could (took me about 1:20). He looked at me, smiled, and said, "That makes sense. You won me!" Everyone jumped up and started cheering, hooting, and hollering, and then I led it into a "USA! USA!" chant. Then we all collapsed into our chairs laughing.

One man was 70 years old. He will never leave prison. At the age of 7 he married a Baptist who told him he's not allowed to be with her and be Catholic, so he left and never looked back. This Friday he went to Confession and is now fully reconciled to the Church.

One of the most bizarre parts of the weekend was how normal it was: men talking about their wives and their kids, talking about friends and faith. It seems so normal. I'm looking around at all these men sitting at tables and thought, "This could be at any retreat site." I was so nervous going into the retreat because I have no experience of prison life. But that ended after 10 or 15 minutes. It became totally normal. It was weird how normal it was.

That said, we were dealing with convicted felons and men with violence in their past. They were in there for a reason, and many of those reasons were heinous. First Rule: You never, ever ask them what they did. Let them tell you. In fact, after that initial curiosity burns off, you kind of don't want to know. They are trying to change their lives here and now. We all know they have a past, but we do not want that preventing future conversion and the sacrament of the present moment.

Finally, I received my prison nickname.

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• Kolbe Prison Ministries - Home

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We get to talk with America's favorite Catholic, Leah Darrow, as we explore her roots in farm country, Oklahoma, what conference life is like for an introvert, and how she balances this stuff with family and fashion, which is still a good part of her life, but in a human way. We talk about some super interesting stuff like Slow Food, Slow Fashion and the whole Slow Culture. Fascinating!

• https://www.facebook.com/leah.darrow/
• https://leahdarrow.com/
• Reject McFashion
• The True Cost - fashion documentary on Netflix

Special Guest: Leah Darrow.

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OUR FIRST LIVE SHOW! Thank you to everyone who attended on March 8 at Deacon Baldy's Food Truck Park and Bar!

I tried my best to edit the crap out of this, thinking from your perspective, dear listener who wasn't in attendance. There's some gold in here!

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Aaron Gillespie, a drummer and vocalist for Underoath, talks to us about the industry, life, family, sex and faith. He ends up asking more questions of us than we do of him, which is a blast!

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I got to interview Aaron Weiss, lead singer of mewithoutYou, a band that literally defined this podcast's title. It's a 35-minute interview on their tour bus, which Aaron was super-gracious in allowing me on board. I met his lovely wife and little daughter they nicknamed Birdie (and you'll hear her in the show!). We talk all things lyrics: inspiration, spirituality, Thomas Merton, and more.

At the end I hop on a phone call with Luke and Deacon Colin Parrish, who helped arrange the whole thing with their amazingly accommodating manager. I recap how the interview went down and Colin expresses why he got involved.

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We discuss our amazing MEETUP and LIVE RECORDING at Deacon Baldy's on March 8 that all of you should buy a plane ticket and come out and hang out. 

A big THANK YOU to our fans who have downloaded this show from iTunes. We are ranked Number 178 out of the Top 200 in the Religion and Spirituality category. This means we were ranked higher than Bishop Barron's Sermons! Take that! (I love you, bishop Barron, please be on our show). 

In this episode, Gomer goes pee and Luke literally talks to himself, but I drown him out with The Girl from Ipanema. Like a gentleman.

We talk about Trump and the Johnson Amendment. Just remember that the Johnson Amendment was pushed by LBJ in 1954 to protect his re-election because the local Christian groups in Texas were calling him a communist and he didn't want pastors preaching against him. Interesting, but it still has merits. I do not want my pastor telling me who to vote for, but at the same time, until 1954 all pastors and non-profits were able to do this. Blah.

Luke asks about how to talk to teens about death, and since my parish just experienced the death of a 20-year-old, it was a very pertinent question. Hard, though. 

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They are YouTube's dopest Catholic couple proving that Fun is Universal one video at a time. 

Luke and I interview "That Catholic Couple" for today's show, which is a dream-come-true (for them). This fine couple works hard to create a fun and Catholic show that respects the YouTube culture. We discuss "The Incident" that almost ended their show and how Luke saved the day (yeah, we retell that old story). Then we talk about how handsome Gomer is and that's pretty much where the show picks up.

You can find their YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/ThatCatholicCouple

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For the first hour, we talk about the life and trials of a man who is a Catholic musician that travels the world bringing his own powerful presence to the stage. The second hour we talk about being a black son of African immigrants in America. This leads us into conversations about culture, being rootless, identity and the walls we Earthers tend to put up around us.

Special Guest: Ike Ndolo.

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• Ike Ndolo Music on Facebook