EPISODE 301: HONEY I'M HOME

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

It’s season three of Pop Culture Spirit Wow. Not to be on-brand, but in a word, Wow! Thanks for sticking around.

And thanks for the feedback some of you have given me over the last eighteen months. It’s helped guide my thinking about what this is and what is it good for (...say it again, needle drop). More than that it’s been a huge source of encouragement.

I've got some fun stuff planned in the months to come. (Video games! Secrets of V'ger! Wine!) Stay tuned.

But today we jump in with trampolines, super secret self-repressed dance parties and unexpected Christmas gifts. Giddy up.

A couple years ago I had an article published a few days before Christmas about the value of being sad at the holidays.

Good times, right? If you’re looking to make your family happy, I really can’t recommend this move enough, especially if you also choose not to go home for the holidays; they really really love that.

In fact my own experience had nothing to do with being or not being with family. Off and on for about a decade, in fact, I’d had this experience of just feeling kind of down at times during the holidays. Years I was spending the holiday here in Los Angeles, away from family, those feelings had a chance to stretch their legs a little, come out like a cat from under the couch, lie down before the fire and enjoy themselves.

Back with my family it was more the case that it would hit me in a quiet moment between things or at the movies.

And always, always at Midnight Mass. I’d be sitting there with my dad, my mom up front with the choir singing away—both very happy parts of Christmas for me. (For years the pastor at my parents’ parish would ask, Why don’t you come concelebrate with my priests? A very kind offer, but one I always rejected, in large part because it would leave my dad sitting there alone. I can remember somebody saying, “Ah, he’d be happy to see you up there." I don't know, maybe that’s true? But still, on years my sister and her family were up in Appleton, that would mean he was sitting there all by himself. And that ain't right.

But more and more in recent years everything else about midnight Mass has felt bleak and kind of empty for me. Sometimes I’d blame it on the homily, real babies being used as priest props, choirs off the chain. But it was never just that. There was just this desolation.

(And if that sounds like a weird thing for a Catholic priest to experience, try being the priest!)

It was also true that off and on for the last ten years I’ve had these fantasies about spending Christmas in Australia. In 2008 I spent seven months over there as part of my training as a Jesuit. I wasn’t there for Christmas, and I never thought about anything Christmas-related while I was there. But weirdly, when I returned to the States it became a sort of thing for a little while. One year I spent part of the holiday following a boat race that happens between Sydney and Hobart. Other years I’d just suddenly be thinking about friends over there, what they might be doing right now, what time it was where they were.

After the first few years it faded in force, but still it would rise to the surface from time to time.

Then this year kind of out of the blue, a couple things fell into place and suddenly it was happening. I was two weeks in Melbourne before Christmas doing some talks, catching up with some friends and trying to connect with some people in the TV industry. (Hi, my name is Jim McDermott I know I'm American and what do I know but please hire me.)

On the 22nd of December, I flew to Perth for Christmas and New Year's. And as the plane was landing and I was walking through the terminal, this song kept playing in my head.

Perth is not my home. I have a couple good friends who live there, Jesuits I was going to visit. And I’ve had some very meaningful experiences with them there, things they probably aren’t even aware of and that I don't totally understood. One of my deepest experiences of what this crazy thing called the Eucharist is happened here, eating cut-sandwiches and drinking tea with a friend on an outdoor patio.

And again, if that sounds nutty to you, well, I’m with you.

So Perth is not home, but still, I had to stop myself from sort of dancing down to baggage, where I was going to meet my friend Joe and drive back to his parish in a suburb called Nedlands. It was all sort of weird and too much and as soon as I saw him I kind of shut it all down.

I think I kind of kept that lid on tight for a lot of my time there. It's always good to suppress what you don't understand. Definitely doesn't come back to bite you later, no sir.

But from time to time, always in the seemingly most mundane of moments, something would peek up out of me. One night we were watching this sort of variety show that’s done every Christmas in Great Britain for the Royal Family (Americans, think a Kennedy Center special meets a talent show). I was fascinated just in principle because this is a thing that people in the U.K. and Australia look forward to (or so I imagined) and yet in the States it’s completely unknown; but it wasn’t like it was a show-stopper of wow.

Then all of a sudden sitting there I just found myself kind of overwhelmed with gratitude for this moment, for being here and being able to enjoy this.

And then it was gone.

Joe had mentioned that the Midnight Mass at his parish actually took place at around 5pm. I have to admit, when he told me I was disappointed. What kind of Midnight Mass happens in the day time? And in addition, it was outdoors. For some reason I immediately imagined us having to deal with lots of hay.

As I walked over that afternoon, I could sense my normal Christmas disappointment slowly making its way to the surface and preparing to get comfortable, my sadness its egg nog, I guess.

The actual set up was a lot weirder than I understood. In a little park next to a Catholic grade school and some houses, a small-ish table had been set up, the white fabric covering it held in place before gusty winds by a variety of substitute paper-weights. (Chalices have so many uses.) A choir was practicing alongside, the women's hair blowing in the wind. Boxes of church-y stuff – dishes and cups and I don’t know what -- sat alongside, askew. All kind of a mess. And there before it all were a growing number of families, some laid out on picnic blankets, others holstered up in fancy lawn and beach chairs they’d brought from home, just needing a beer for the cup holders to complete the scene. Instead of a church service it was this chaotic and unwieldy picnic slowly coming to life.

The Mass itself only added to that feeling. As the readings proceeded neighbor kids in an adjoining backyard flew in and out of view on a trampoline, while others peered over the fence at us. The Gospel was read alongside a bunch of young children enacting the Nativity; as soon as they had to step in front of the crowd many forgot what they had practiced. Some whispered to each other, trying to get to them to move, while the others refused to budge. At the end of the Gospel the girl playing Mary walked off with the baby Jesus, only to realize and rush back as Joe stepped forward to preach.

His homily was very short – always a blessing on Christmas. And it was all about this unusual experience of being together like this, the mess that is the human scene, and how that’s the perfect way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, because that’s what he chose, to enter into and love us in our mess. To help us embrace our mess.

And in the meantime the neighbor kids bounced along and other children ran in circles in the back and looking out on the congregation I saw we were all there together in this ridiculous circus and it was okay that it was windy and we were all messy and maybe there was a little bit of hay.

In fact it was more than okay, it was all right, it was absolutely fine that we were like this, than I am like this, it was home, this was home, it was all messy, it was ridiculous, it was exactly and perfectly right.

Midnight Mass goers with pastor Joseph Sobb after the Mass.

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One of my last days in Australia (sigh) I was driving what seemed cross-country but was actually just through one tiny sliver of the Eastern part of the country (guys, Australia is so super-enormous).

And as the sun came into its own on that Sunday morning, I came across this:

For a second I thought, Wait, is that a tree that has broken through some sort of concrete block, providing one of the greatest metaphors for how hope prevails no matter what?

So I pulled over and turned around and saw this:

From this side it’s not quite as clear that the concrete whatever that is was at one time one solid object, but yeah, that’s what it is – there was a huge concrete solid thing standing there, don’t ask me why or what for it was doing in this field. And then at some point, a growing tree broke through.

Or (probably more likely) it’s a sculpture of some kind, and that’s fine, too, it’s beautiful and it’s my official image for 2018. Lock it down as hard as you want, in the end life is going to have its day.

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I’m always trying to figure out how to do this better. If you ever have feedback, don’t hesitate to send it along to me at jptmcd@gmail.com, @popculturpriest or the Astral Plane. I'm the one with the third eye that needs contacts. You are all my sorcerers supreme.

And if it moves you, feel free to send others along to join us Wowsers in celebrating life, pop culture and the interwebernets. Always room for more at the party.

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LOVE:
My friend Regina Small has started an occasional newsletter called Life’s Fitful Fever. Regina and I used to work together at America; she’s one of the funniest and smartest people I know. She’s also a great writer. And unlike other newsletter writers who shall go unnamed but you might be reading them right now, her columns are right to the point.

I’ve even structured my links this week along the lines of what she uses, which I really like.

LOOK:
I’m kind of done with SNL right now. Hey look, more political humor, neat! No but thank you tho.

But this unaired sketch from the Christmas episode, which to me comes from the same wonderfully absurdist brand of SNL comedy as David S. Pumpkins, Stefon and pretty much everything Kate McKinnon does (ya been Ginzburged!) is really kind of great.

If you haven’t seen SNL in a while, I highly recommend googling Cecily Strong. Her sketches as Claire from HR trying to deal with workplace harassment are just spot on.

LISTEN:
My flight to Australia was maybe perhaps a wee bit bumpy. (The first seven hours were a nightmare rollercoaster of fear that had me so shook I spent the whole flight home twitchy expecting a repeat. I don’t know what I did to who but I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.)

Bizarrely, I found myself able to mostly just roll with the rolls. (This is not a normal version of me.) Two songs seemed to help a great deal, one about a snowman (this video is so great) and another about of all things remote controls.

READ:
A glorious largely-photo essay into the making of one of my all-time favorite things, the pencil.

In an era of infinite screens, the humble pencil feels revolutionarily direct: It does exactly what it does, when it does it, right in front of you. Pencils eschew digital jujitsu. They are pure analog, absolute presence. They help to rescue us from oblivion. Think of how many of our finest motions disappear, untracked — how many eye blinks and toe twitches and secret glances vanish into nothing. And yet when you hold a pencil, your quietest little hand-dances are mapped exactly, from the loops and slashes to the final dot at the very end of a sentence.

I came back from Australia and was immediately responsible for producing a 4000 word article on Easter lilies. The story is a great drama I think, I can't wait for people to read it, but wow getting it out of me with jet lag and culture shock has been tough.

Why is it when mothers finally have their babies they love them unconditionally, but when writers finally finish work that sometimes takes just as long or longer they hate it and wish it were dead?

Yes I've just equated writing a 4000 word article on farming with bringing a new life into the world. I'm not a monster. Or hopefully a sometimes fun monster, anyway. I'm really tired, y'all.

It’s a new year. We start fresh. Life is mess, you can try to lock it down all you want, it's going to find a way out.

Ready? Here we go.