Category Archives: Discernment

08 July 2026

…but what do *I* have to offer?

By rabbitrunriot

Some Backstory

I posted a few days ago about a… let’s call it a vision… that I’ve been slowly piecing together over the better part of two decades. I’m learning to be as direct as I can about things, but it’s difficult because I don’t want anything to be understood as being about me. I’m a dangerously selfless person: I get taken advantage of a lot, and I never seem to be able to know when to stop being so nice. And my fear of people mistaking my frankness about things I think, know, experience as being self-righteousness or egoism often keeps me from asking for help when I need it, or advocating for myself because I don’t understand quite how to read people and discern ulterior motives.

When I was in middle school, one of the few friends I had — a girl who lived a few streets over from me — told me I was “conceited” when she overheard a conversation I was having with one of the “popular kids” on the bus one morning. I don’t remember the details about the conversation (that was 26 years ago) but I remember telling this kid I was good at some subject or another so I could help him study. I was often continuously ostracized through elementary and middle school for my academic prowess, so I was overjoyed with the prospect that it finally seemed to have enough value to my peers that I wouldn’t be so… well, alone. At the time, nobody knew that I was on the spectrum because I wasn’t violent and didn’t seem “slow” — I was actually in the “gifted” program.

I never felt very “gifted.” I felt like I didn’t fit anywhere and like there was something wrong with me because of it. All the intellect in the world did me no good to understand why people couldn’t just hear the words I would say, exactly as I said them, and receive the message exactly as I was trying to communicate it; they always read superfluous intentions into things I would say and make assumptions that I was doing something because I had a motive or agenda. And this was exactly the case that day on the bus when my friend told me, point blank, “you’re so conceited.” I did not realize it, at the time, but that accusation would haunt me for the rest of my life. I would go to great pains, every day, to make minimize myself and my presence in everything. Maybe that’s why monasticism appeals so much to me.

I’m not mad about the situation and I wasn’t mad at her, then, either. I was hurt, and I didn’t understand the context; I took a literal vow of silence for the rest of the school year and didn’t speak a word from the time I boarded the school bus at 6:57am until I stepped off at 3:15pm, with the exception of private appointments with my guidance counselor (who, in hindsight, I’m quite certain didn’t even remember my name when I left her office). That girl, who was once one of the few childhood friends I had, took her own life in the early 2010s. When I found out, the memories that surfaced weren’t of us bouncing on a trampoline or practicing for the karate class we were both in. It was that day on the bus. But I didn’t feel vindicated. I was sad. I was sad because I never told her it was okay, and that she didn’t have to feel bad for it, because I know she did. I know she knew, no sooner than the words left her lips and reached my ears, that she cut deep.

I still pray for her, sometimes. And I still struggle to pray for myself; even when its God I’m asking, I struggle to center myself enough to ask for help. “Am I being selfish?” “What about the people who have so much less than me?” “I don’t want to be a burden.” Of course, God seems to know and understand this, and has found other ways of guiding me, even when I don’t know how to ask for help, by communicating things directly to me through wisdom and faith… but then I struggle with wondering whether those “messages” are genuinely from God, or if it’s just my ego wanting to think it has the answer.

I wrote about that struggle last week. After weeks of carrying anxiety over a work situation, which has slowly been building for two years, my only choice was to listen. The message was clear: trust God, He’s got this; let go. So I did. And it immediately helped me feel better. The worry and anxiety are still there, but they don’t reach me, now. Not the way they did. So I trusted more, and wrote about the vision — an idea for a community of misfits not unlike myself who, after “flunking out” of life in the world, are ready to surrender and give our lives to God, inspired by the Apostolic Church, the Benedictine monasteries of the “Dark Ages,” and the work of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. I have no idea how this will materialize, but I know I need to put it out there if I ever want it to.

And, oh, do I hope it will.

So What Do I Have to Offer?

I first felt a calling to the monastic life ten years ago. In an e-mail to the priest of the parish I’m slowly grounding myself in, I even lamented my stupidity of walking away all those years ago. Not only did the world “chew me up and spit me out,” it missed the spittoon and I landed in a pile of rubbish. But since writing that, I’ve been granted a little bit of clarity on why that experience was necessary. I touched on it a little in those things I’ve written, over the last couple weeks. But now I have to address the hardest thing in all of this: my role. What am I able to offer such a community?

On one hand, in the world, I’ve been both a tech worker and a carpenter, and those are very real skills I can bring to such a community. Marketable skills, that could be used to raise money to fund the “monastery” (if you could call it that; I’m not sure what it would be called — Peter Maurin called them “rural communes” but I feel like this needs to have a much stronger spiritual element than “rural commune” suggests, more akin to the Benedictine Rule). That’s all good, great, and fine, but it’s not what God is calling me to do for Him.

And here I am, a twelve-year old on the bus, telling the world what my intellect can do to serve others.

If you know me, you probably know that I’m a philosophy nerd. I don’t just appreciate reading forgotten tomes of archaic wisdom; I do philosophy every day. It’s how I write code (logical philosophy), how I analyze the world (metaphysics), how I decide how to interact with people (ethics), and how I discern what information I should assimilate as knowledge (epistemology). I still haven’t finished my degree (it’s a slow going process; part time study means I should be done sometime in the next 3-5 years) but I already excel in practical philosophy, and I can hold my own in philosophical discussion. I recent had a course review following an ethics class, and I successfully argued that Kant’s categorical imperative needs to be understood in the context of his theological disposition; that his conception of a metaphysical dimension of objective ethics necessitates theological presumptions, but providing that makes it workable (for the record, I couldn’t stand Kant when I started my studies!)

But let’s take this a step further. For the past five years, I’ve also been a pedagogue for two kids (well, one of them is grown, now) in a home school situation. Both of them, like me, are on the high-functioning end of the spectrum. During the first year of this experience, I discovered the classical education model, rooted in the liberal arts tradition. The oldest, now twenty, is building his own career-ready portfolio in computer science; the youngest, seven, reads better than most middle school children and will be exploring computer programming and introductory Latin, and knows more about black holes and quantum physics than I do. The best part about this experience is that it has never required me to be “smart:” I get to learn with them, cooperatively, and fill in the gaps I missed in my own conception of the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, and rhetoric, comprising the trivium, and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, comprising the quadrivium), which I have come to understand as a lifelong process of learning and enrichment.

I believe this is what God intended for academics and the continuity of human knowledge. A fluid experience, for those whom He so gifts, that becomes a lifetime process of assimilating knowledge about ourselves and the world, through which we can come to know Him better, and that we may pass on to the next generation to bend and shape according to their needs, so that they, too, can know Him in their own way, according to their own needs.

The icing on the cake? Their mother1 has started listening to me talk about theology. When I read Bible stories and tales of the Saints to the little one before bed, she asks questions about God and Jesus, and wants to understand. She used to hate it when I made sounds that even remotely resembled the Gospel. I have long-since accepted that we cannot have the happy-ever-after husband-and-wife story I used to imagine; but I’m starting to understand that maybe God didn’t bring us together for that in the first place. I think it was for something better.

Just like the liberal arts with the next generation, talking with her about theology is a cooperative learning exercise. I realize that I understand the Catholic Faith much better than I ever thought; but it also grounds me the understand that I don’t have to know all the answers. I’m not afraid to say “let me get the Catechism…” — and that tells me that I’ve internalized and am acting on the lesson God gave me as a caution against Gnosticism and hubris. And I’d like to think that, in spite of all that has transpired, I might have succeeded in giving her the greatest gift I can imagine giving anyone: faith.

Last week, when I was exploring the website of the parish I’m attaching myself to, I found a useful tool they shared: a spiritual gifts assessment. It’s about fifty questions, and the score helps you identify what gifts God has endowed you with. It suggests selecting the three highest scores, but I seem to had 4, all tied with a score of “12” (the highest possible score): Faith, Prophecy, Teaching, and Wisdom.

To me, Faith makes perfect sense. At the times in my life when I’ve been “lowest,” when Faith was all I had, it was enough. And even when I’ve been in grave error about the nature of God and His work, even when I’ve been over-burdened by anxiety and unable to think clearly enough to express it, I have never had less than an overflowing glass of Faith.

But the other three? Wisdom? Uh… I’m a moron. Look at my life! Would a wise person be in this mess? Prophecy? No, no, no. I can’t even trust myself to know what to make for dinner; how can I trust myself to discern and relay God’s advice? These are gifts that great men and women through the ages have been given. Me, on the other hand: I’m competing for gold in the “train wreck” event.

And Teaching? My mother used to tell me I should never be a teacher, under any circumstances. “You’re just not a teacher; you have no patience.”

The point is, never, in a million years, would I have pegged myself in this kind of role; in any of these roles. I’m a nobody, a disaster of a person, and about as hopeless as it gets. I still shy away from the prospect of expressing that I possess any “talents” or “gifts,” and I don’t believe I have much to offer, even if my predilections suggest otherwise.

However. The one thing I’m absolutely certain of is that God blew up my life — again — in all the right ways, at the same time, to put me in a position to evaluate what I’m supposed to be doing. And I don’t know what that particular thing is supposed to be, but I know that the reward is beautiful, peaceful, and fulfilling. And whatever it is, I will do whatever He wants me to, to get it.

Endnotes

  1. This is an interesting situation. One of my first clues that God was doing something with/through me, over a year before my conversion experience (and largely responsible for my ultimate surrender to God’s will), was discovering my wife was having an affair. This wasn’t just someone I married because I was going through the motions; I was head-over-heals in love with her and I had poured my heart and soul into this relationship. I was a born romantic, and it was one of the things that largely defined who I was. When I found out, I was deeply hurt, and to say I wasn’t angry would be a lie, but I kept my temper well (I learned to rely on God for temperance many, many years ago, even if I didn’t wholly get my conception of God right), and I found that I was not nearly as devastated as I had been. Our romance had long since faded. Months later, she confessed to me that her feelings evolved into a more sibling-ish format years before. The more I think about it, the more this made sense. When I decided to come “Home to Rome” (as I often say), one of my first questions was “what do I do with this?” The doctrine of “like brother-and-sister,” even though it wasn’t exactly garnered to our situation, fit well, and it has allowed us to provide two boys with a stable, normal home life, and remain the closest of friends in the wake of a perilous relationship. I think it was good for both of us, to be honest. Since giving in and surrendering, and having my conversation experience, I have largely lost any interest or inclination for romance, anyway; it seems that God has other plans. 🙂

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04 July 2026

Catch-22: trusting God while distrusting myself

By rabbitrunriot

The last several weeks have been a trying time for me, evidenced not least by my lack of writing, here — I’m sorry! (I don’t actually know if anyone reads this, but it’s a good exercise for me, and at the very least, I’m apologizing to myself for denying myself that catharsis.) I have not handled life “in the world” well since choosing this path over pursuing a monastic vocation about a decade ago. Not for lack of trying, but I just don’t seem to be “wired” for the world and I chalked that up to “just sucking at life” for a long time. However, the past couple months have abounded with synchronicity and coincidence to a degree that I can no longer deny divine intervention.

People often get put off with the idea of discomfort as part of God’s action in the world. I used to be one of them, but I think that’s the wrong approach. I have a motivation problem; not that I don’t want to do things so much as I struggle to make the first move towards something. Whether because I don’t like change or because I’m afraid people with think I’ve lost the plot when I tell them, “I dunno; it’s God’s idea, not mine” — it doesn’t really matter why. But sometimes, the only way to get me to move is to force me to do so. Something has to catalyze the action but when it finally does, I generally adapt very well. The past week is a perfect example.

The actual “catastrophe” was a job-related situation. Since it’s under investigation, I can’t say anything of any detail, but let’s just say I caught someone — who should not have been — digging in the proverbial cookie jar. I’m a coder, so take that as you will. It’s not a massive catastrophe, but it goes a little beyond “so-and-so ate my lunch.” I reached out to HR but, since I appear to have been the “tool” for the manipulation that was being attempted (one of my neurodivergent quirks is that I trust people maybe more than I should), this immediately spawned a second inquiry into my own mistreatment. To be honest, I couldn’t care less; I’m not an “office politics person” and I do much better when I’m just giving a clear and concrete list of tasks to complete, and sent off to live in my coder cave for a month while I work on them. However, after having enough sleep over the primary issue, I decided I needed to finally let HR in; then the anxiety over the personal problem set it, and I sent a second e-mail to HR. I immediately felt better about the situation at work, but this works like a domino effect, and it led to new anxieties.

This situation is, as far as I can tell, irreconcilable for me. In a best-case scenario, I may be able to move to another department, assuming my reputation for being a “rules snob” hasn’t already circulated via the aforementioned office politic. More than likely, I’ll find myself looking for a new job because, even if there isn’t any direct retaliation for this, I have glanced behind the proverbial curtain and seen how deep the rabbit hole goes; I don’t know if I can realistically trust anyone I might work with, elsewhere, to continue working here without taking a toll on my mental health. And if I’m being honest, this job has been needling away at my mental health for some time — two years, maybe — anyway. It’s time to move on. I know this, and have known it for a while, now. I just have no idea what I’m going to do.

And that brings me to the next problem: I live in an expensive city, in an expensive state, in an expensive country. Losing my job without something else lined up is going to ruin me. And I’m not really worried about me; if it was just me, I would be content, even excited, to be stripped back down to nothing. I have mentioned, before, that one of the happiest times in my life was being homeless. But the young lad who depends on me, and my other (adult) dependents didn’t sign up for that. I’m already in a pickle, economically, between bills I can’t pay, a poor credit score, and an ever-increasing cost of living. The average middle-class family of four in this area needs almost twice the income I currently make (which is not a negligible amount) to maintain a decent quality of life.

The part that bothers me the most about this is that I’m not a unique case. There are probably hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of families in this same predicament. When I pace around my living room, asking myself out loud what I’m going to do in a dozen different ways as if one will magically summon an answer, what I’m really asking is, “what are we going to do?” We, as the collective working class1 of the world, have been put in an impossible position in which, at any given point in time, one small disaster could result in our lives being completely demolished and irreparably broken. And it only seems to get worse with each passing generation. In times like this, I cannot help but think back to the time I spent as a vagrant “traveling kid” and how liberating it was not to want or need more wealth than what I could earn at my part-time job as a kennel technician.

Something has to give. There needs to be some kind of change: a solution that doesn’t just alleviate immediate problems at the high cost of spawning new (and often bigger) ones. So, as I find myself in the familiar position of trying to spruce up my resume, I also find myself entertaining a secondary strand of thought: my vocational calling. On one hand, this feels irresponsible — shouldn’t I be focusing on securing stability? — but on the other, as I mentioned, certain things seem to be lining up in a way only God can ensure, and a voice in the back of my help keeps urging me to trust Him.

I think I know what I’m supposed to do. Or at least, where I’m supposed to start. And if I can find and assemble all the pieces quickly enough, it would resolve a great many difficulties — not just for me, but for a handful of other families in similar situations. And I want to trust God, and surrender everything to Him. I’m tired and as far as “life in the world” goes, I’m cooked — I have no desire, whatsoever, to continue trying to “make something of myself” or “carve out my niche.” What I’ve been doing for the better part of the last decade has never been for me; the work and money and worldly acclaim has never brought me any happiness — but it made life bearable and comfortable for a few people who trusted me to provide for them, and that brought me happiness.

But I’m scared. Not to throw it all in on trusting God, but that I might be wrong in my intuitions about this. I’ve been wrong so many times before, when I was so certain I was right. I’ve eaten the Fruit of Knowledge, of Gnosis, and been burned by it over and over. So how do I know that what I think I know, this time, is actually God’s will and urging? How can I be sure this isn’t just another instance of my own ego — or Satan, if you prefer2 — tempting me to think I know or understand something that, in reality, I’m still as ignorant of as I ever was? I’ve become so anxious about falling back into that “trap” that I’ve gone from Gnostic to “doubting Thomas” — where even if God were to reach down from Heaven and tap me on the shoulder, I would demand more confirmation and evidence just to assuage my fears and confirm that I’m not completely losing my mind.

The mention of the apostle is deliberate. Today was the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. As I read the entry in my copy of Lives of the Saints, I find that I share quite a bit in common with “the doubter,” beyond just the struggle for certainty. Thomas was a passionate and zealous follower of Jesus during his earthly ministry, and in addition to his famed capacity to question what is right in front of him, he was impetuous, and filled with anxiety. When Jesus told the disciples he was going to prepare a place for them, that they knew the place and the way, Thomas immediately pleaded, “What?!? How? We don’t understand!” — I’m paraphrasing, of course! Tonight in my prayers before bed, I’ll be pleading in my own way.

At the same time, this weekend, Jesus offers a reassurance of his own. On Sunday, in the Gospel, we will hear his words to a crowd of disciples:

Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light. (Douay-Rheims Bible, Matt. 11: 29-30)

This is a genuinely beautiful exhortation that I often recall when I’m feeling anxious, even when it as far-flung in the lectionary from my present as possible. It is also not the only place this sentiment is echoed; I read Luke 12: 22-31 to my little one earlier tonight before bed — it wasn’t intentional, it just happened to be the next story in his Children’s Bible, and this parallels Matthew 6: 26-34, which concludes with, “sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”

This past Sunday, as the kickoff to my “catalyst week,” I heard the story of Elijah granting an old widow a child in gratitude for her hospitality as the first reading during the Mass. She put her faith in him as a prophet, and reaped “a prophet’s reward,” as Jesus described it in the week’s Gospel reading. There, Jesus says plainly:

And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. (Douay-Rheims Bible, Matt. 10:38-39)

I mentioned, early on in this excerpt, that one of the reasons I cannot deny God’s intervention in my life at this point is the astonishing amount of synchronicity and coincidence that seems to occur in spite of the odds. I have no reason to doubt God’s influence — I have experienced it first hand many times before, despite my hard-heartedness and stupidity (it’s okay, I’m fine calling it what it is!) — and I’m not even struggling to accept it and believe. However, my own faults and susceptibility to the temptations of pride and knowledge keep me apprehensive. I’ve finally figured out enough to know what to believe, and I’m terrified of losing so much more by falling back into my old bad habits.

It feels like a “catch-22” and I’m not even sure what to do with that. Pray for me.

Endnotes

  1. When I say “working class,” I’m not specifically referring to the “blue collar” notion of working class, but of the broad spectrum of workers ranging from laborers to doctors and nurses who cannot afford not to work. In other words, if you can’t quit your job and live indefinitely off existing wealth and interest, then you are part of the working class; you have to work to survive. As the billionaire class absorbs and hoards more wealth from the working class, the nature of this survival becomes less and less comfortable; eventually we will reach a point where even the most prestigious workers will be priced out of anything but their basic necessities, and I don’t even want to think about what that means for the rest of us.
  2. At the peak of my descent into Gnosticism, I rejected the idea of Satan as an external being, interpreting the devil as merely anthropomorphic expression of our own inner misgivings: pride, hubris, ego, etc. My conversion experience turned this upside down, as I suddenly understood how this force is a very real, external influence on our lives now and throughout all of human history. But I cannot help but wonder if there wasn’t some truth, partial though it may be, in my old deductions: if God is the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, would it not stand to reason that the devil might be a hellish sire (Satan), a worldly heir (and, admittedly, I’m at a loss to identify this one), and an incorporeal anti-spirit (the ego)? I don’t dwell on this, because I’ve spent enough of my life wasting thought on unholy things that become irrelevant when we turn our hearts towards God, but it does occasionally pique my curiosity for a brief moment.

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