Thomas Merton says, "The man who loves himself more than God, loves things and persons for the good he himself can get out of them. His selfish love tends to destroy them, to consume them, to absorb them into his own being." Oh, boy. This is hitting close to home. "With respect to the good he gets out of them, he is neither detached nor unconcerned. But with respect to their own good he is completely indifferent." Closer still. This is the oldest problem for me. I have always loved myself more than God ... or, at least, it seems easier to say than the inverse. I mean, I can't imagine myself saying "I love God more than myself." (Or I could imagine myself saying it, but it would sound false, arrogant, and presumptive.)

What kind of conversion could ever bring me to those words? It's probably truer to say that I have never loved either God or myself enough. It's possible that God has not been real enough to me because I have surrounded myself with (we all live in) a world of things that seem to reduce God to the words we hear in church or read in books - or in preposterous online journals. When will God become as real to me as any person (you, for instance) who could stand before me with a happy, hurt or confused expression? You, who could become so sad or disappointed or angry that I have forgotten you again, have a stronger presence than God who seems so far away, so abstract ... an ancient threat to make children behave.

Merton again, "To say that Christian renunciation must be ordered to God is to say that it must bear fruit in a deep life of prayer and then in works of active charity." So we're coming out of Lent and I feel that my "life of prayer" is thinner than ever - and as for acts of charity - well, I haven't slugged anyone lately.

Even my mom says that the latest journal entries have been kind of gloomy. They have been. Because I am dissatisfied with - stuff. In baseball they call it a slump. And there's no way out but to keep moving forward, doing the necessary work.

Yesterday I travelled with Jay down to my sister's house in Joliet for a birthday party. Mom will be 81 this coming Thursday. She and Meg and nieces Korie and Taylor came up from downstate. Then the rest arrived: Doc and Steph Annis, Ben and Helen Cabay, Aunt Lib and my cousin Jane (who had to introduce herself to me), my brother and sister-in-law John and Kathie, and a bunch of Egizios like Papa John, Tracy and Becca and Matt, and another bunch of littluns Tony and Delany and Brennan. The mix was good. If you don't know these people, these names won't mean much to you. We've all got family, but this is mine. I had a very good time ... maybe we all did.

I walked three times around the school without doing any serious harm to self or others.