 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 a friend. Hello, I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow. And I am Father Matthew Cout. 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. Hello Father Winslow. Hello Father Cow. I dare say we have been negligent once again. I suppose we could truthfully say we're not being negligent relative to our actual tasks, but negligent about finding time to get together to do this. Why do you always ascribe culpability to me equally? Well, because I could say that you're the one who's been hard to pin down. I could reveal to everyone that I think at least 70% of the culpability rests on you. But I wouldn't do that. I'll take that. I'll take that. Because it sort of lends to my to my air being a hard worker. Oh, is that right? All right. It serves me somehow. No, the truth is we've been hard. We both keep very active schedules and to get our schedules across is challenging. But that said, do we not say to one another all the time? We have to record. We have to record. Yes, we do. So you're not out. The people listening are not out of mind. However, last time we were together, we recorded one and it didn't work. Now, you can say one. I love how you said that. It didn't work. You could say, I didn't do it. I wasn't going to do what you did to me. So Father Winslow, who is normally more electronically gifted than I am, I being ludite and challenged in that area, he had messed up the recording. However, I think I can say honestly, it was startingly good. It was a stellar conversation. It was the one that we would actually go back and listen to. It was electrifying. It was electrifying. How do we capture that? What we talked about last time, and I think the reason we had so much fun with it, literally fun, is because the topic was play. And this is a sort of a mantra of Father Winslow's and mine to some degree, especially with the guys that are coming up through the ranks that we train in the seminary, that are young priests, etc. is that they can't become boars. And I happened to run across and what prompted our conversation last time that we'll try to represent to some degree today, what I came across was a very striking text in St. Thomas Aquinas, something you would not expect to find there. Which is in the Secunda Secundae, which is in the Summa Theologiae, it's broken up into different parts. And the Secunda Secundae is just the second part of the second part. And it's question 168, I believe, if you want to look it up. But it's about the fact that anything in human discourse, human interaction, that is contrary to reason, he would consider sinful. That is to say, anything contrary to reason that's acted upon is not aiming at the proper good. I don't mean massively sinful, but it's just, it's missing the mark. And what I was surprised to find in that particular article is the example that he gave, the thing that he's talking about is someone who's being a bore. He literally says, to lack the virtue of mirth and play, ludus, is to be sinful. Because you don't, in order to not share with others, in their playfulness, that gives a kind of relief to the soul, he says. He says, there's two kinds of things that give relief to the soul. The body gets tired, the body needs rest. The soul, quote unquote, metaphorically, analogously gets tired and needs two things. One is prayer. One is contemplation, he says, is the best rest for the soul. And the other one is genuine play. And he says therefore that the person who lacks mirth not only doesn't share in the playfulness of another, but also takes it away from the other. That kind of black hole that we encounter at times when we're trying to get people going to be able to enjoy each or this company. And there's someone who's just over there in the corner sucking all the light out of the room. Yes, exactly. It's usually not you or me. We're not those guys, right? But you know, it's true. Well, first of all, I am profoundly grateful for you to find, or for you having found, to Mystic Foundation for something that I've been harping on for a while. You have, this has been your, your bailiwick. Yeah. You wouldn't say Thomas, it's pretty much the same thing. It really is. I just, I'm a little less systematic, a little more charismatic. I'm a charismatic. You come at it quicker than he does. He's going to work through the Ratsunation. Yeah, I just jump right to the end to see it. So it's, it's one of these things where, especially as we get older, you can kind of fall into a world weary disposition and, oh, you know, why bother, you know, why bother with this game or this thing or who wants to play cards, that kind of thing where at that point, what's left, right? Right? You know, eating and talking about your illnesses. I mean, there's nothing left. The price of gas. Yeah. And so, so, you know, I think I had said to you not too long ago this past year, like, well, if we get together, we need to be fun. We have to do something fun. It needs to be fun. And remember, you're kind of reacting to that. And it wasn't too long after that that you came across as a Thomas. So it really kind of had been queued up, at least in a person like between you and me. But that, you and I have been really good at that in the arc of time. Yeah. And I think that there's two things that I think that I like to do with friends. One is to have the kind of conversations we're having on these podcasts. And that's, that's more akin to contemplation. I find rest in that, because if you're contemplating something, you're simply thinking about it by yourself. You're examining, you're holding it, you're marveling it by yourself. When you do it with someone else, you can always get a bit higher than you can on your own. And so what we're doing in a conversation is like unto that sort of prayer or contemplation where you're examining something before God. And it enriches the friendship. But you can't always have a high topic. You can't even always muster the jet fuel to get you out of orbit to talk about those things. Or maybe there's enough persons around where it doesn't lend itself to it. You don't have the same confidences it would have you. But you can always play. And that's the thing that I see even at our age, a number of our friends becoming more and more loath to do. They enjoyed previously when we were discovering the faith and discovering the parish life and what it was like to be a priest. It was an amusing, delightful adventure. Absolutely. I enjoyed the conversations surrounding that. But then, as you get older, it becomes about the food or the wine or the whatever. And it's, which is great. We all love a good feast. But not a boring. A boring feast. I don't want to get the conversation going engaging in something that doesn't require lots of mental energy that you can always that you can play with. It actually softens the arena in such a way that real conversation happens then therefore naturally without trying to say, now we have to have an important conversation. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No. And I think that's wonderful because we can float between more substantive matters that really bear upon the likes of contemplation and then move to the mirth, the play. And when we say play, we're not talking about necessarily play any game. That's not excluded by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I find games to be a lot of fun. I really enjoy them. But being playful with one another, showing up, you know, put it more colloquial terms, just bring your personality. Bring your personality. Show up. Be present. You know, I think parents experience this with teenagers, right? Yes. They can become a little bit stingy with their persona. And I understand it. You know, that's all those are hard set of years to kind of get through and navigate. You're trying to establish your independence. And it's one thing to control, right? Who you share your personality with, who you're so. And so by doing that towards your parents, sometimes it's a way of establishing the sort of autonomy. I don't have to show up in this way. I may have to be here. You know, I may be I may have to sit at this table. I may have to be in this car. I mean, but I don't really have to participate. Right. Sort of this rebellious attitude, which is a bit of a, it's like a punishment almost, you know, you're punishing someone else for having you do something, especially with kids, you see it, right? I mean, if you, I think we were mentioning last time that you and I went and played Topgolf and Father Winslow, he won. He won the game. Yes, of course. And he won it because this is the kind of thing that's not like real golf. That's why you can win if you can't play real golf. It's been like darts with a golf ball, right? You got to hit certain full size. You get a perfect shot and it catches the rim of some plastic piece. It doesn't go in and it's just, it was a little bit frustrating for me, who's slightly competitive in the sports. I watched lots of YouTube videos. But in the bay next to us was clearly some parents that were trying to do something fun with their kids and just to spend some time with them. And the girl was clearly not amused. It did not want to be there, et cetera. And at a certain point in time, she finally broke because she realized that she's there and she can only respond to so many texts to her friends and make so many posts. And it was actually fun. And it was fun. You had to really fight not to have a good time. And her brother was having so much fun at it. Her little younger brother that it would be becoming a little contagious. So she gets up there and, you know, sort of moping and complaining and hits the thing. And she had a good shot. And all of a sudden, she was all about it. But by the end of the thing, just to watch the family interact and genuinely have a good time and she put the phone down. That's got to be hard for parents. We have, we kind of have a built in cadre of friends, given the fact that we've gone through somewhere together. We've kind of suffered in blood in the same fields together. We work in the same field. And more than anything, we pursue the same goal, of course, which is heaven, which is our Lord. So it's a little easier for us on some level to have that sort of network of opportunity for enjoyment, for leisure, for fun. Whereas if you're dealing with your kids, like when they're little, it's easy, right? You put them in a playground and let them go. But when do you get to enjoy them? And the inhibitions are lower. The inhibitions are lower. Teenagers have lots of inhibitions. And then you have that rebellion of trying to be independent. It's hard for them to fight. And it's all new to them. So I get it, right? We've all been there. But you're right. How do parents help their kids put down all the defenses and just be themselves? Because to be sure, and this is the secret that the kids don't really know, is if they were just themselves, the parents would find it hard to say no to just about any request. Because when the kids allow their personalities to be shared, their playfulness to be shared with their parents, I mean, come on. I mean, this is their superpower when it comes to persuading their parents to some end. And so often they don't even realize it. Assuming, of course, that their personality when it comes out is actually an enjoyable one. What would it say? That's what a Jordan Peterson's big lines is, it raised children that you enjoy, that you want to be around. It was a really important point. I heard some talk that he gave. The basic point was this, that kids need friends sets, right? They need to be able to navigate those waters of school. And there's so much pressure on them that they gravitate to whichever group that receives them to some degree that they can identify with. Because it's sort of like these pack animal scenarios in school. There's so much pressure and fear. And I want to be part of something. And then I take that on with my own identity. And if you don't want your kid to join the wrong one, or if you want your kid to avoid that most horrible thing, which is that kind of peer loneliness at that age and not have other friends, it's the best thing you can do for them is to raise them in such a way that their personality gets developed, that they actually have the kind of character and personality that people want to be around. Because then they'll have friends. Ultimately, you're going to be caught in marriage. I mean, this will determine the pool of, you know, from which you can draw into their life. Because if you don't have a compelling or magnetic personality of some sort, if you don't allow for yourself to come forward and live away, how are you going to find someone that in the end will be able to go long haul with a spirit of joy? That's it. You know, Chesterton was, G.K. Chesterton, the great Catholic author was, he loved children and he didn't have any of his own. And he would spend a lot of his time with his friends, literally playing with their children, because he found it to be the most seriousness of affairs in how serious children take their playing, in the best of sense, right? Oh, they are so serious. And I've sort of found that with myself, too, in so far as whatever I'm in a social situation and there's kids there, for whatever reason, I always become, you know, the donkey that they ride and the thing that they climb on and the person that chases them, that one they want to be chased or whatever else. And I'm almost 50 now and it's still the same way. Yeah. And I think because I've always enjoyed their, their penchant for play. Yeah. And I want to support that. I want to promote that. But I'm at the age two, where I think to myself, I wouldn't mind sitting and talking to someone else. Imagine when I'm with your family. Yeah, exactly. All those kids, I'm still doing the same thing I was 20 years ago with those kids. Yeah. Now they're getting so tall that they'll crush you. But that said, you're right. There's something magnetic about entering into the world of a child who's just so earnestly playing. Well, you mentioned earlier it doesn't necessarily mean just playing a game. So what are some other things that we could recommend and or encourage that people do when they get together? Well, I think the use of humor. I think a sense of playfulness. Yeah. Right. Like, you know, you're going to cook, right? And you're going to prepare a meal. It could be arduous and just an annoying necessity that you have to take care of to get food on the table. Or you can throw on some music, you can have some great conversation, you can very musingly engaged in, you know, dividing up of tasks and responsibilities, then the whole exercise becomes a playful exercise. And isn't that so much better than an arduous task? Well, you and I love to cook. And I think I find sometimes that when we have gotten together, the larger group, it turns into something arduous because at times, I'm just not puning this to anyone, but other people expect you to entertain them. That's true. Like they didn't even pay the 10 bucks to get into the theater. Well, that's it. Exactly. I mean, if this is a performance art, I'm going to get paid. Yeah. No, I have no tolerance anymore. You got to show up. You got to show up. You got to show up. Which means the price of innovation, you got to engage in the food. Even if you don't know how to do it, I don't particularly, and there are times in which it's just fuel, fuels, you know, fuel is just fuel. But if I'm going to take the time to get together with my friends, I want to think about something interesting relative to the food. I want to experiment a little bit. I want to have some fun with it a bit and get everyone involved in doing it. And it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out. But not that I'm going to spend the entire day doing that, but it is. And it's one of the things that we love about fun McCarthy. Mm-hmm. That man does not mind spending an awful lot of time in the kitchen. No. They're meticulously. David Teba, the salad. Oh, yeah, get this. So I'm with my sister, Deborah and her husband, Tofer and the kids, we're in D.C. I think it was when I was studying Canada Law. And Father McCarthy came into town and we went over to Eastern Market, which is just around the corner from where they live. So we were going through and we were getting items to make a nice dinner. Well, we had picked up, I don't know, some beef and for steaks and things. And then we picked up some other items. And we finally got to the pastries and desserts and I think we're all loaded. We had a lot of bags. And I said to him, I think we're done, right? We're done. He goes, no. And he points back to the meat counter. So we go over to the meat counter and he has the man pull up a whole pound of beef. And I looked at him and I said, Mac, we got stuff in the bag. We just got steaks. I think we have a lot of them. He said, no, no, this is for the salad. He wanted to make a carpaccio. I said, a salad. I said, what a pound of meat for the salad. Yeah. Just watching him go, though, is that's worth the admission. Remember, this is the man who made those insane cowboy pulled chops for high tea. For high tea, right? It was tea. I expected crumpets. I think once he learned that tea involved food, he was all in. He was all into the tea. That's true. And he's not a glutton in the sense that he just loves the art of doing it. It's a fascination. It's a goal. It's wonderful. It's actually contagious, right? Because you want to get into it. It's fantastic. I remember the one time he prepared something. I think we were on a singing vacation and he started laughing as we were about to sit down. So, what's funny, Mac? He said, look at this Google. Yeah. There's a pound of butter hidden in here. Somehow there was a full pound of butter hidden in all the ingredients that we were eating. Last time he was here just a few weeks ago. He was at the seminary. And the sisters were having a retreat for all the young women in the diocese that were thinking about a vocation. Imagine there's 100 girls over there. We've just gotten back from making a few errands and visiting a few people. And he asked us to stop at the store and he said, sure, I'll pull over. And he said, I just have to pick a couple things up. So, it comes back in with, because you have butter at the seminary, we have 100 pounds of butter at the seminary. He's like, oh no, I only need like four. For tea, probably. Well, what it was was he decided to make chocolate chip cookies for the girls. In the big mixer. And it was post-lunch, right? So, we had had pizza for lunch and I don't like to do anything. It's one of the reasons I don't like to eat lunch because it gets me tired. I've been going all morning and so I brought the stuff up to the kitchen and I thought he would make them at some point, right? Well, he just began right after lunch making cookies. I'd go back in there two hours later and the place is, it's just everything's everywhere. I can imagine. He's making hundreds of cookies. I can imagine. So, I ended up helping him. He loves that. I mean, yeah, I don't know. Because now you have big equipment, right? Because it's an industrial kitchen. So, big equipment and it's cooking. I mean, that's two worlds that come together for him. He loves big machinery for toys and then cooking. But this is all, I mean, we're not just telling stories that amuse us about our friend, but it's just examples of how he brings his personality, his character. And it's unique and it makes you love him all the more. And it's so playfully contagious and delightful. And that really is kind of what we're getting after in terms of showing up or being, you know, entering into play. There's always the possibility of actually playing a game. Sure. Which, you know, I like to do because I like to have a little something to look forward to. I think competition, especially for a group of guys, is fun. Because a lot of, you know, teasing and rasping happens around that. And that is an opportunity for us to sharpen our wit and, you know, to draw on some history as well. And it just becomes a great centerpiece around which to have a lot of fun and just interact. Well, imagine the diocese now and Jim Kelly will love this. Someone who works here at the diocese, you know, he's been a Euchar player for a gazillion years. It's his greatest love, perhaps, after our Lord and his wife. I'm not sure that children come before Euchar, but they probably could do. But he's been playing forever. And Euchar is kind of a Midwest game. It's been fun now because we have so many people in Chancery and friends that get together for Euchar. So much so that the sisters are now on it. They play Euchar and the seminarians play Euchar. Everyone's playing Euchar. Are they enjoying it? Absolutely. Remember Tofer? Tofer came and taught so many of the seminarians a couple years ago. And it's great because you can just walk in. There's a game you could go and you can step in, step out, whatever else. And guys are making food or it's just, again, one of those, one of those ways to slightly take the attention off. Now we have to do X. It just relax by playing a game, in this case a real game, that you don't have to think about tremendously. You don't have to concentrate so much on it. But it takes the focus off any one person that you kind of lose yourself in it and conversation just begins to happen a bit more freely. Right. It's true. That's true. Well, I'm glad that we've been able to recap a little of our lost segment. You know, it went into the mist. It did. It did. This one wasn't as, it wasn't as electrifying. Well, I'm joking. I don't remember the last I think it's true. No, I think I only get better with age when it's low. I never know. I never know. I can't really depend on much from year to year. I can't depend on my memory. Yeah. I mean, it's a horrible thing. I'm trying to get my brothers and sisters to join me in a class action shoot against my father or genetic betrayal. Basically, we're just going to, we're going after the inheritance early. Good. Yeah. Good. That's the plan. No, unfortunately, he still has his memory. Yeah. I wish he wouldn't. It's a selective one, though. Sure. Sure. Boy, oh boy. Well, that's good. We keep threatening to get him on here. Well, listen, before we go, I have to tell you something that I think you would be fascinated by. I was recently in Ortizé, which is a city in the Dolomites in Italy. I was doing some hiking and a little vacation before retreat. And I came across an artisan there who's kind of of the old school. And it's a fascinating method that he has that is so homespun, but his statues are incredibly beautiful. But they look as if they're three, four, five hundred years old. And I said, what do you do? Because it's painted wood. They're carved, of course, sculpted, as you will. And if you will, and then he does the same method that our painters are working on our polytech now are doing, which is on sized wood or on wood that's kind of been glued and aged. Then you put gesso on it, which is kind of a crushed stone, like an old cast sort of a thing. And then you put bole, which is a clay. And upon that you can guild or you can paint. And that's what they do on these statues, most statues, polychrome statues are done in that fashion in the old school. What he does is he puts the gesso on. So imagine a pasty white gesso that typically on an old board or a polytick or an icon or whatever, you want super smooth, no pinholes, no cracking. He does the opposite. So he'll do the gesso, and then he takes the statue and he puts it in his shower. And he throws the water all over it, hot, then cold, throws it in the sun, throws in the freezing cold, throws it back. He keeps alternating its temperature control. He's trying to stress the surface and water. Yeah. And he distressed it and it is gorgeous. Really? Absolutely beautiful. Does it give an antique look? It does. Now, I would imagine that when persons were originally making these statues, you think to yourself, in the 1300s, were we trying to go for an antique look? No. And what was that looking like? You wanted to go, you know, a new, fresh. Because that's the thing. That would be impossible. Having said the gold was probably a very easy thing to come by. It was. And it still is, actually. It's pretty simple to obtain the gold, and Italy is still in France. And I got to watch some of the gilding going on there, which was really, they use a squirrel tail. And you take the static from your hair or a little bit of oil from your face to grab the super fine sheets of gold, the 23 karat gold, and watch this, watch this gilded do it so fast. It was beautiful, brilliant work. So I've got some new connections now for the statuary. Yeah. Well, heaven knows we always need those. Well, good. But before you go? Oh, before I go, I have nothing on the top of my head. Let me see. I don't know about anyone else, but here down the southeast, especially in Charlotte, our June was cold. Yeah. Memorial Day was horrible. So having any real summer kind of just started for us. I mean, we had basically an extended spring, but normally we start summer in earnest in the beginning of June. Yeah, that's true. We had no June. So I'm just starting to get out and do more summer things, kind of doing some lawn work at my parents' house down here. And it's hard. Because it's over. In the heat, you mean? In my body. I mean, when they say you're going to be digging ditches, that terrifies me the thought of it. Just digging up a little hole for a plant or a flower pot or something is unbelievable. Of course, the heat is now we're up there in the 90s and it's oppressive. I am just stunned how absolutely exhausting doing that type of garden. It's not really gardening as much as the landscaping, I think. Right. Because I can mow the lawn anytime and I can do the weed whacking with the weed whacking machine and things like that. But it's the planting, right? It's the bending over and plucking. I remember when my mother was my age. I remember her making a comment about how hard it was to get up off the floor or something. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, here, I was half her age, thinking, really, are we not exaggerating a little bit? You're just getting up off the floor. Right. I can do that up, down, up, down, up, down. This is not hard. You're not doing burpees. No, exactly. I just get up. Now it's an extreme sport. I've got to grab on to something. And then if I come up too quickly, I get lightheaded and I think I'm going to fall down and faint. And of course, in the oppressive heat, this is unbelievable. Yeah. When I was a kid, I remember I always worked outside jobs and whatever I could make money doing, whether it's shoveling snow or raking leaves or chopping wood or digging ditches. And I love working outside. Of course, you're ineffable when you're a kid. Yeah. And I remember digging this ditch that really did break me. This guy paid me to dig this huge ditch at his house. And after a few days of just nothing but straight digging and just gravelly dirt. And that's when you were young. He said, he said, yeah, exactly. He came over to me and he was a lawyer and he says, you remember what this feels like because unless you get that education you need, you're going to be doing it the rest of your life. It's a good lesson. It was a good lesson. Yeah. That said, I've kind of gone in the other direction to some degree. I do admire so much the men and the women that sort of have their whole life given over to physical labor. Especially now that I get older and I'm not used to it anymore and can't do it the way these people do. I watched so many of them when I was doing the hiking in Italy. Some of those places, the hills are too steep to cut the grass. They need the grass to feed their animals. They're still taking out sickles. I saw a guy that must have been 75, burnt as leather, just out there in the field swinging, swinging, swinging. I went on my hike, come back, he's still swinging. Amazing. I think I just swung three times and I'd have been going to the chiropractor. In some sense, it's kind of, if you hadn't stopped, they say lotions in the motion. Part of our difficulty is we don't do it. Getting out there and doing it not just once because I've got a hobby of planting a few things, but actually engaging that. I'm trying to get into that a bit more myself and make sure I get a lot more physical labor in as opposed to going to exercise or going to the gym. I live on 90 acres. I'm trying to work outside more. That's great. I find just bending down and picking up a piece of debris. That's half a workout right there. I remember, I got to say this, when we were at Zedama's, we used to go to that gym. Do you remember that? Oh yeah. I have a different mentality about a gym than Father Wynzo does. We would go there together in the evening sometimes and we had that first year together. I come back. I'm a mess, right? We're there for 45 minutes, whatever else. I come up to you on the machine. You're doing the elliptical machine and I'm destroyed and whatever else. I'm like, are you ready? Yeah, I just finished my show. You were on that thing and I thought it was doing the work for you. It was like, you didn't break a sweat. It was not. It was hard work, but I had to finish my show. That's right. It was great. All right. Well, great to be with you all and sorry about the delay. I will promise to keep Father Kaoth a pace. Please do. I will do my best. I need much assistance. Pray for me. God bless you all. All right. Take care. Ciao. 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.