 It's been a long, long day. I got a lot to say. It feels like I'm carrying a two-ton weight. I go to see my friend. Hello, I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow. And I am Father Matthew Cowth. And we are speaking from the Rooftop. A podcast brought to you by Tan Books, in which we invite you to join our conversation out here in the open air. Where we look out upon the world around us from the rooftop of the church and share with you what we see. Well, hello again. Hello, Father Winslow. Good to be with you. And you. Well, wonderful. So what shall we talk about today? Well, I actually was going to punt that to you since last time I began talking about habits and habituation with the guys coming back from seminary of memory serves. And so I thought maybe I'll yield the floor to your perspicacious mind and you can begin to. My good. Well, all right. How about we do this? How about we offer constructive advice, especially since, you know, people have set upon New Year's resolutions that we've talked about before, ways in which we can be effective in developing the type of habits we want to cultivate to help strengthen the muscles that need to be strengthened. And I think that over the course of years, we've had some experience with human formation in seminary program. You immersed in with a mix of a lot of men, me with a with a handful relative to the guys that are entrusted to me in formation, but also I think in our work with people and the faithful parish environments where we're doing much the same thing. And what struck me also, just as another note as a side to this, is that parents, this is what they do day in, day out, right? They're forming children, they're forming these, I don't want to just say souls because their bodies as well, but these people and they're forming them in so many profound ways. It is a huge responsibility. And I think that we could do better in articulating, I think broadly from the pulpit, to parents that we priests understand this massive responsibility that you have in shaping and raising your children. Because we are trying to help everyone in that congregation, not just the children, but the adults and the elderly alike, do the same to the course of their life, that ongoing human and spiritual formation that has to take place over the archetyme and of course education and that parents are doing that very attentively and are dealing with all sorts of challenges from the culture around us, but also to the particular circumstances of any given child. And whether they be health or otherwise, there's a lot going on there. So props to all moms and dads, respect to all moms and dads, because we get it. This is a huge responsibility. So I think some of the things that we could offer, maybe talk about, touch upon not only how to cultivate and form ourselves, but how we can be even more successful in cultivating and shaping the lives of others. I would throw out this, I think that oftentimes we start too big. This is, I think, exactly where I'm going with this. We use an exercise analogy. We put too much weight on the bar. When we decide that something needs to be addressed, we throw 100 pound weights on both ends and we say we're going to do 12 repetitions and three stats of the, no, I can't get this thing off my neck. And then we just walk away. And this image of you lifting 245 pounds, which would it be 100 pound weights with the bar? No, I don't see that even coming off the bar. Well, your defective imagination, Claire is giving the better of you. No doubt I could do it with one arm. But all that said, it's true though. I mean, I think people throw too much weight. You really have to, whether it's yourself or you're advising others, start in a focused kind of way, smartly, in a focused kind of way to start to build muscle where there may not be much. Which is where all the weakness kind of flows from. I don't know if you want to pick up on that, but I think that one of the first problems that we have is we start too big. And as a practical example, oh, I'm going this year, I'm going to lose weight. Everyone does that. So I'm not going to eat more than 800 calories a day. Right. Well, you're going to go from what, 3,500 calories a day to 800? Yeah, good luck. It's likely not going to happen. That will end and then you'll be worse off than when you started because you'll end up with a defeatist attitude. Right, because you fail. And every time you fail, it just, it reignites that sense that it's impossible. This is a huge part of attempting to coach men in the arena of prudence. Because when you go into seminary, and this is a bit different than the family, but by the time you get to seminary, you have this sense that I'm going to do something great. You don't go to seminary because you think, because it's hard to go to seminary. And it's not rewarding on the sense 8 level. And it's not something that the world praises. And so it does take a modicum of pluck and courage to be able to do so. And so the typical young man that comes in, he's going to throw himself at it, at least in his own mind. And he typically bites off more than he can chew, as you say. And you watch it when they first come in, like, he's going to fall, he's going to fall, he's going to fall. And it's okay. And he's going to become miserable a little bit because... When you have to then begin... It can't be everything I want to be. But you're not doing enough, usually, for them when they first come in. Because they have this image of what they must be by the time they get to second semester, first year, in terms of their level of sanctity. In fact, sometimes that involves levitation. They think you should be levitating in the chapel. And just because I do it doesn't mean that everyone should do it. But in reality, that's not levitation. We know that those are smoke and mirrors. My trapeze artist. Exactly. It's really to keep up your reputation. It is. We won't tell people the secrets that you do, but I will out you. The only time I ever saw a saint levitate, by the way, was pretty cool. You saw with your eyes? I did. So I was in, this is an aside, levitation is not a virtue you can cultivate. It is a gift given by the Holy Spirit for some, like St. John Cupertino or as long as Casey. So I was in the crypt church of Santa Chiata Nesisi. And I am beseeching St. Clair to intercede for me on a number of things. And just basically said, it's okay if you want to give me a little sign that you're going to fulfill this request, whatever else. That's good of you. Exactly. I gave her permission basically to give me a sign. And one of the things I had in my mind was that maybe she would, like maybe her body would just sort of lift up a little bit. Because you're in front of her? Yeah, I'm in front of her body by myself, completely by myself at that point. And down in the crypt church. And she's laid out there so you can see her body. It's, she has a mask on now, but you see her whole body there. And you know, you might ask for these things or think that you believe them relative to the saints and everything else. But when something like that actually happens, it's wild and freaky. And so I began to see the body rise up. And I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. You never told me this. And so it kept rising. And I'm, at this point, I am really getting scared. Like I should never have asked for this. This was ridiculous. What's happening? And then I realized that there was actually a sister in there cleaning. And she was behind the body and she has the same habit on. And so I saw her body rising up. And so she turned and looked at me and looked at her and she just sort of waved. And so, thank God. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, in a way that was actually, I see, I would interpret that as a sign. I totally accept it as a sign. You did see her rise. So it wasn't inaccurate. But to answer your question, I think that sometimes families, I've witnessed in seminary, families get a little nervous when their sons go out to seminary because they're going to be a reflection of the formation that they did. And they're nervous about that. Yeah. Meaning the parents are concerned that any flaws will be exposed. Any flaws, any inadequacies, whether it's in their education or their manners or their whatever. And they can either become defensive or they can become embarrassed. And one of the things I tell them, and I didn't do this in the beginning, and I should have, I wasn't smart enough to figure this out until I had felt some of this for a couple years. But to have a little parent orientation in the beginning to say, listen, what you just said, I get it. I didn't get, I didn't have to do all the remedial stuff. And so I'm not, I'm not at this stage trying to judge family of origin. Right. I'm a bit of a finishing school. I mean, if you got into seminary, he's a good guy. Right. And you are, they're above average. Yeah. They're ahead of the curve, as we say, right? And so the first thing that has to happen with, whether you're working with your children and your family, or whether or not it's the seminary, I believe, is just helping a guy to see. You're just helping a guy to see who and what he really is. That kind of self-knowledge. So no more fronts, no more lies, no more make believe. I just want to see who you are. And I want you to see who you are. It's so hard to do whether it's information or whether you're a parent, because one, we get caught up into it. So if there's a fault, it's manifested in our direction, then sometimes we want to strike back. Same thing with parents, right? Absolutely. You want to punish the kid. You want to just say, you did wrong, slapped the hand, time out, whatever the case may be. But not saying that punishing, I'm being agnostic on that front, but I think what you're articulating is something that's a higher response, which is seeing what the core issues are. Is that right? Absolutely. Seeing clearly what the child is struggling with. What are those subterranean habits that you didn't know you had that everyone else sees? Where do they come from? Do you want to hone that thing in a different way? Do you want to, as it were, begin to shave that down and reshape that particular response to reality? Do you think that you have gifts that you don't have? Do you not recognize the ones that you do have? And then when it comes to deficiencies and sins, what's the plan? As you were saying earlier, how are we actually going to go about... Once you see yourself with some accuracy, then you can actually set about saying, okay, I need to do this. Right. If I'm not putting 100 pounds on the bar, you start small. Or in the opposite, we can look in the mirror and think, yeah, because we sort of like, suck it all in, we're like, I'm not looking too bad. I'm still holding my own. And then you see a shot of yourself when you weren't posing. You're like, wow, that's very inflightering. That's why I hate peripheral vision. I hate peripheral vision. I hate photographs at this point. Mirrors are not my friends anymore. But it's to see you as you are. And if you know that you've got this deficiency, okay, what's the best way of going about it? So one of the things I experienced a lot in Seminary 2 is that guys will attack the wrong thing. Like, they'll attack something that's sort of accidental or inconsequential, like, I'm not going to smoke anymore. Missing the bar. Or I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not saying anything, yeah, or nay, about smoking. It's just that they've got a huge character flaw. And that's not it. That one we can work on. But you may not want to work on that plus these other three things that are really large at the same time. Because then all of a sudden, you're bereft of everything. So that the same thing, we should probably at some point talk about this also relative to Lent, which is coming up to the wrong corner. But I think, so I'm trying to relate it to a parent. So how do you take, whether it's a smaller child or a teenage child, the defenses go up. I mean, it's kind of cute sometimes for the younger kids. I didn't do that. The denials immediately. The not me of Bill Keane. Do you remember that family circle? No, no. So Bill Keane was a cartoonist for family circle, which is probably still around. I kind of remember that. He's a brilliant cartoonist, but it's a normal family with several kids. And when the dad will see everything in the house to shovel broken, not put away, spilled, whatever, he will say, who did this? And all the kids will say, not me. And so he always drew into the cartoon, this little ghost that was running away from the house and on his chest was written, not me. Not me. Someone else did it. But you know, with kids, even scripture says this, they feel nagged. And so oftentimes there are reaction to correction, which ultimately, we're trying to get them to see so that they have, so if they can see it, that they can begin to fight it, is just feeling nagged or picked on. And they translate it into, well, you don't love me, or they feel like I'm being picked on. And it kind of goes down a different road. Or I can never do anything right. Mom and dad, you're always on my case. So that kind of thing, that's a hard thing to peel back and say, no, actually, I want you to be able to see this. And especially if you are irate, right? Because maybe they did something to the other kid and you're angry about it. Or maybe they did something that costs a lot of money. They broke the television or broke a mirror or a window. And you're angry about it. But that is probably not the best moment to try to help them see the thing that they need to work on. Would you agree? Well, I think we should probably go off line here and unpack some of your issues that you're talking about. Oh, absolutely. Actually, I think both my mother and my father would welcome the continued formation in my life. They would not feel impugned in any way. I just think that it's true. I mean, I totally agree with you relative to if your child is of an age where understanding is possible. I'm not suggesting that we try to make the three-year-old understand those sorts of situations where you simply need to correct. But correct in that way in which it's firm. And yet there's no absence of love. It's just firm. Like this is reality. Because sometimes I notice I watch families a lot. And whenever I go to dinner or whatever else that I watch the way they parent and everything else. And I don't always pick up stuff. Because some of them really fascinate me. Some of them are really good at it. That so much more patience that I would have and so much more attentiveness than I would have. And sometimes I watch them and I hear the kid. And the kid's got a great defense. And the kid is not being honest. Like their defense is incredible. It's impassioned. And they feel nagged or unloved or anything like you say. But none of that's true. None of that's true at all. Watch the see if the parent folds by that manipulation or they just calmly stay the course. And this is one of the I think the trap set everybody can fall into. And you can see with parents is that they feel an inherent obligation to be a just judge. Especially when it has to do with kids. More than one kid you're looking at all sorts of things. And you're trying to put on balance and make judgments about something that happened or didn't happen. And you're trying to be just judge or equity with respect to you know who gets what who gets what. And is a quality outcome. Yeah. And so as much as I also have that same instinct. I think it's worth the while in attempting to see it differently than being the just judge. But maybe to shift the frame of mind and thinking to what does this soul need. Absolutely. Which is a better understanding of equity anyway. Injustice. It is. And then maybe you know maybe injustice. The child you know okay should get an equal size piece of cake. But the circumstances were that the child didn't get an equal size piece of cake or brownie or whatever. Okay. So is that the real issue or is this this child. Is there something more deeply going on. Is there an incapacity to be generous. Is there an incapacity or a lacking of a sufficient capacity to be generous. A lacking of a sufficient capacity to let small things be small and run. Right right right. Like there are more things at play than the equity question. Absolutely. And it's hard no doubt. Especially when you want to be fair to all your children and. But this is sort of a new phenomenon I think. And so far I'm not you. But I don't remember my parents ever even attempting necessarily to be fair in that sense. Like if I would say to my dad that's not fair. The response was always the same. Whoever said life was fair. We have something along those lines. Well it's or you know just say. And I'm not saying that was the right response. Yeah. But we just tend to over correct all the time. Yeah. And so now parents are attempting to A. explain everything. Which okay it's better than because I said so. Right. But sometimes they lose their firmness. Then you kind of go to the just judge mode right. Because now everyone's going to litigate. Yeah. And that's I think not the best position. Not the best position. Because it really what it comes down to is forming each one of them. And they all need probably something slightly different. Based upon what they're bringing to the table. Right. Circumstantially and inherent to their characters. All right so. Well since we've solved all that. Since we've solved all of that of course. I can thank God that I'm not in the position of a parent. Yeah. God bless you all. That sense. Grateful to my own parents. Grateful. Exactly. But at the same time we are we are fathers. Yeah. And so we are doing this more broadly than with smaller children. We are doing this. And the children come to us. We don't necessarily invade their lives. You know people. The family of the church doesn't have to avail themselves of the fathers if you will. But we are here. And that's one of the things we try to do and help with. So we do have some common and parallel experience. In the family of the church as they do in the family of moms and dads and their homes. Indeed. So all right. So before we go then I'm not sure if you have a thought. Well I just have to say that I have been working on a new thing that has worked for me. We're always talking about how to organize our lives and reduce the amount of noise and waste as it were relative to forgive you one example. My favorite way to learn. Everyone's different. My favorite way to learn something is to write it to hand write it. When I read a book or if I'm studying something or if I'm trying to put together a class to hand write it. The problem is I lose my handwriting. I love my I have nice handwriting well enough. But but I lose the papers. So there's just all over the place and I'm never going to organize them ever. The rest of I've tried for 10 years. 20 years. I won't do it. So I moved to the computer but I don't like typing. I don't like reading off a computer. When I go to the class with computer notes I never look at them. And so I found this you probably have all heard about these various new devices that basically act like a notebook. But it's only handwriting. You just write things. They can convert it in text if you want. But I won't give you a brand or anything else. But there's different kinds out there. It's like a tablet with a pen. It is. And it's you can't access the Internet. It throws it to a cloud. So you don't lose it. As soon as you write something it's it's there. Does it feel like a pen? It feels just like a pen. All right. Now I mean you can choose pen calligraphy pen pencil. And when you have a pencil you can even hear it. Are you writing on paper? You're writing on a screen. But the screen is not backlit. It looks like a piece of paper. And it feels like a pen on paper. It's a glorified etch of sketch. Right. Frankly. But it's immediate and you can even erase with the back of your pen. And it goes away. I will try this. I'm just saying for me it's finally working. Because I have tried the various methods that have worked for you. And because you have a much more diverse amount of things to maintain and take care of. I didn't have that many diverse things. So it didn't quite work for me. Yeah. And I've tried lots of different methods. But this thing I have finally found it's fantastic. And their motto is kind of getting out of the way of your brain. Like remove social media, remove the Internet. You can't go looking it up. There's no distractions. It's you and a piece of paper basically. But it organizes it for you and saves it. Interesting. Yeah. All right. Now I need to see this. Was that a Christmas gift? Uh, to myself. Oh, nice. Post Christmas, I waited to laugh. All right. But I knew I was going to do this to try to organize my life in 2023. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. On my end, I would just like to simply say that I received a Christmas gift from my brother this year, which is a sweatshirt, which has from the rooftop on it. I kidding me. The first merch. The first merch. The first merch. We've got to get into that. I like swag. Oh, heavens. But yeah, so I haven't worn it yet, but it's hanging in my closet. But I was going to bring it today so that you could see it. I want to see it. It doesn't have the look. It just, you know, it's just embroidered. That's cool. From the rooftop using that. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. So I need to show it to you. Well, we were just in DC. You know, a little while ago, and we were talking. I was talking with someone, and he said to me, shouldn't you guys go back up and do a show from the original roof? And I thought, we'd have to break in. But we should probably try to do it at some point. We probably can't even get off those windows anymore. Oh, we could. We're not flexible. Airlift. We'll get an airlift. All right then. God bless you all. Have a great week. Try now. Thanks for listening to this episode of From the Rooftop. For updates about new episodes, special guests, and exclusive deals for From the Rooftop listeners, sign up at rooftoppodcast.com. And remember, for more great ways to deepen your faith, check out all the spiritual resources available at tanbooks.com. And we'll see you again next time. From the Rooftop.