Playlist Choice Week #1
(See below for continuing weeks)
The Monkeys Theme Song
The monkeys theme song is not a great artistic piece of music but it’s a lot of fun – a light-hearted piece that serves as a musical calling card, introducing the band’s carefree, offbeat vibe right from the start. It was one of the first theme songs to function as a character introduction on TV. It became something of an anthem when I was a kid.
Early in my time at the seminary, a class competition was held. Each class year at the seminary was asked to compete against each other in a three-mile run around the seminary grounds. Our best runner had just sprained his knee, so we had no chance. Rather than giving up, I had the bright idea to recreate the Monkees’ opening credits, where they push a bed through town.
We couldn’t find a wheeled bed, but we did find a wheelchair. We sat him in it, gave him a newspaper and a cigar, and entered the race. When we passed the judges on the front road, we were in the lead pack. Then we took a shortcut around the back and rejoined the race near the stands. We placed—but no medal.
Playlist Choice Week #2
American Skin–Bruce Springsteen
I used to joke that we only went three places for vacation as a kid; either the Jersey shore, the coal regions of PA to visit my uncle, or to my aunt’s house –which happens to be in Ireland. We loved to visit family in Ireland but hated to get there – not because of the travel or roads, but because we had to go through the North.
Back in the 1980s and early ’90s, there were no highways from Dublin Airport to Donegal. None. If you were lucky, you got a winding country road barely wide enough for two sheep and a prayer. Add medieval hedgerows, potholes deep enough to legally qualify as lakes, and the occasional donkey cart, and you get the idea.
The fastest route meant cutting through Northern Ireland—which, during the Troubles, was about as relaxing as sunbathing on a landmine. Especially if you were a bunch of teenagers or young adults crossing the border midday, which to the British Army screamed, “Please search us thoroughly and with suspicion.”
Sure enough, as we rolled up to the border crossing, a British soldier came into view. He was manning a watchtower and looked like he’d just finished his high school equivalency test—pimples, peach fuzz, the works—but he was gripping a mounted machine gun with a barrel big enough to swallow our car. He squinted at us like he wasn’t quite sure if we were tourists or a boy scout troop gone rogue.
My uncle, who had picked us up, told us, “Just act natural.”
Now, “act natural” means different things to different people. To my younger brother, it meant slouching down and casually whistling the theme from The A-Team. To my cousin, it meant clenching the door handle like he was preparing for launch. To me, it meant stuffing my copy of Ireland for Dummies under the seat like it was contraband.
A military Land Rover pulled in behind us with flashing lights. Then another. A soldier in full camo stepped out and waved us over, pointing what looked suspiciously like a leaf blower. It wasn’t. It was some sort of high-powered rifle that could probably launch a watermelon into orbit.
“Out of the car, lads,” he said. “Nice and slow.”
We obeyed. Largely because of the leaf blower.
They lined us up like suspects in a poorly cast boy band. One of them squinted at us and asked, “Where you headed?”
“Donegal,” my cousin croaked, like it was a confession.
So, yes—they patted us down. Thoroughly. I’m fairly certain one of them found the snickers bar I lost in my coat pocket back in 1979.
Eventually, they let us go. But not before one soldier, clearly enjoying himself, leaned in and asked, “Yanks, are ye?”
“Yes, sir.”
He shook his head, grinning. “Figures. Only Americans would try sightseeing through a border checkpoint. During lunch.”
Springsteen wrote this song in response to the February 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old unarmed immigrant from Guinea. Four NYPD officers from the Street Crime Unit fired 41 shots at Diallo in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, striking him 19 times. They claimed they believed he was reaching for a gun, but he was pulling out his wallet. The song centers around fear, misunderstanding, and the deep racial tension with the governmental systems meant to protect.
Playlist Choice Week #3
Zombies -The Cranberries
Dolores O’Riordan wrote this song in response to the Warrington, England bombings on March 30, 1993, which tragically killed two children. The heavy grunge guitars and Dolores’ scream-filled chorus reinforce the song confronting the brutal reality of violence.
One of the closest times I came to getting killed was during a trip to Ireland in the early ’90s. We had just arrived in my Mother’s hometown and found out that our cousin was returning from college. We immediately volunteered to pick her up in Derry. Since we didn’t know the city too well we planned to meet at the Richmond Center – the local Mall. While waiting, we wandered around the outside of the mall and noticed plenty of security forces with armed vehicles. As Americans, we were casually checking out the gathered security forces outside—being curious tourists.
We wandered inside, rode up the escalator, and as we reached the top of the split level mall, Mo Mowlam (soon to be the shadow minister for Northern Ireland under the labor party) entered. Spotting my sister—clearly the youngest woman under 60 in the mall—she made a beeline for a photo op handshake. Just as this happened, the security forces—who had seen us casing the place earlier—had all of their guns lined upon us.
Somehow, we ended up on the front page of the Derry paper (the Derry Journal): my sister proudly shaking Mo Mowlam’s hand while her brothers stood behind her—bulging eyes, hands half-raised, hoping not to get shot.
Playlist Choice Week #4
Saw Doctors—Freedom Fighters
This is a great rebel song -who doesn’t like rebel songs-armed with music rather than weaons.
When I was a kid, Father Aedan McGrath used to come over for tea. He was a friend of my parent’s through something called the Legion of Mary, which sounded suspiciously like a superhero team if all the superheroes were Irish, Catholic, and into rosaries. Because of that, I classified him as a kind of mystical hybrid: one-third uncle, one-third saint, and one-third leprechaun.
Now, to my childhood eyes, Father McGrath was tiny, feet unable to touch the floor while sitting in the chair tiny. With the brogue, we knew he was a real life leprechaun. Someone who had stared down the Black and Tans in Ireland, survived Japanese soldiers in China, and the Chinese communist imprisonment. As a child, either this man is seven feet tall on the inside, or he’s been drinking really strong tea.
Speaking of tea—my mom took Father McGrath’s visits very seriously. Out came the good china. You know the kind: dainty little cups with handles you couldn’t fit your pinky through unless you were a squirrel. She even brought out the special box of Barry’s Irish Tea, which normally lived in the cabinet behind the cabinet behind the emergency holy water.
I was allowed to “help,” which mainly involved hovering near the sugar bowl and sneakily eating spoonfuls like I was taste-testing for the pope.
And then, once the tea was steeped and the scone buttered, Father McGrath would start talking.
In his thick Irish brogue, his feet swinging off the chair like a leprechaun hovering over its pot of gold waiting for story time, he would casually drop phrases like:
“I once saved a thousand women from Japanese soldiers… because I knew Loretta Young.”
I blinked. At that age, I had no idea who Loretta Young was. I thought maybe she was a famous Irish martyr. Or the Queen of China. Possibly both.
But then he launched into The Loretta Young Incident—a story so implausible, it had to be true. Because if it weren’t, angels would’ve struck him with lightning just out of professional courtesy.
It was the late 1930s. China was in chaos. The Japanese Army had just leveled Nanking and was heading north like they were late for an apocalypse. Father McGrath was holed up in a small mission compound with a thousand Chinese women who had taken shelter there.
They had no weapons. No guards. No plan A. Just one stubborn Irish priest, a half-broken gramophone, and possibly the world’s last supply of nerve.
When news came that Japanese soldiers were coming, panic spread—panic so intense, even the chickens started praying.
So what did Father McGrath do?
He walked out the front gate like he was going to the corner store and flagged down the nearest Japanese soldier.
“I told him I had a thousand women inside,” he said, “and not one of them was to be touched.”
Just like that. No yelling. No waving. Just a polite, tea-sipping death stare, delivered in either Irish-accented Chinese or telepathically.
Then, as he tells it, a younger officer came over who spoke some English. The officer pointed to the gramophone and said:
“You like music?”
Father: “Yes.”
“You like movies?”
Father: “Yes.”
“You know Loretta Young?”
And here’s where the theological gymnastics happened. Because without so much as blinking, Father McGrath said:
“We’re friends.”
Friends. With Loretta Young. Hollywood starlet. Oscar winner. Rescuer of missionaries. Father McGrath gave me a wink and added, “Bit of a stretch, maybe. I did meet her once. But I think the angels filed it under ‘creative diplomacy.’”
Apparently, that soldier was a die-hard Loretta Young fan. The next day, he returned with an official sign, stamped in red, declaring:
“DO NOT ENTER. PROTECTED.”
That piece of paper—written by a starstruck soldier and backed by a saintly con artist—protected those women for six months. Six. Months.
Nobody crossed that line.
Father McGrath said he later wrote a thank-you letter to Loretta Young. I hope he mailed it, because I would pay good money to see her face reading that.
Looking back, I’ve met a lot of impressive people. But none of them ever saved a thousand lives with nothing but a gramophone, and some celebrity name-dropping.
Father McGrath was small. Humble. Quietly terrifying in the way only holy people and retired gym teachers are. He may not have been tall…But in the world of saints, soldiers, and scones, he stood taller than anyone I’ve ever met. His weapons: a gramophone and his faith–a true freedom fighter.
Playlist Choice Week #5
Sounds of Silence – Disturbed
The Sound of Silence is one of my favorite songs. I’ve always loved the original, with Paul Simon’s poetic melancholy. Pentatonix, the a cappella group, adds layers of harmony that deepen it into a kind of choral lament. But the version that hits me the hardest is by Disturbed—yes, the heavy metal band. It’s the only song of theirs I can actually listen to.
David Draiman’s deep, gravelly baritone starts as a whisper and builds into an operatic cry of rage and grief. Every time I hear it, I’m transported back to a specific moment: the day I learned that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.
9/11 is a day that still lingers like smoke.
At the time, I was in the town of Nice, France, studying French for my doctorate. It was part of a six-week immersion program designed to help me read ponderous theological tomes. In practice, it meant I spent most of my time wildly gesturing in supermarkets and accidentally ordering duck pâté when I was just trying to ask for milk.
French immersion, as it turns out, is a lot like actual immersion—except instead of drowning in water, you’re drowning in verb tenses.
That day started like any other afternoon in Nice and I was finally reaching a level of semi-competence—by which I mean I could ask for a baguette without being handed a bicycle.
And then it happened.
A fellow student, a Brit (we were the only two native English speakers), came running up to me. Normally, he looked like he’d just stepped off the set of a BBC period drama—precisely ironed shirts, crisply starched socks, the whole deal. But that day, he was visibly shaken, his face pale, his voice breathless.
“A plane,” he said, “just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
I blinked. “New York?”
“Yes.”
We rushed to the nearest bar—not for a drink (well, mostly not), but because bars in France have televisions. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a quiet espresso-sipping kind of bar. This was full-blown techno rave chaos, at 3 in the afternoon! The lighting flickered like a malfunctioning toaster, and the music felt like being attacked by robot bees.
People were dancing like their pants were on fire and only interpretive movement could save them. Somewhere between the fog machine and a woman in platform shoes the size of jet skis, we found the TV, bolted above the bar, glowing faintly amid the neon.
And that’s when we saw it—the second plane. The fireball. The impossible.
And around us?
People. Were. Dancing.
Dancing.
One guy was doing this thing with his elbows like he was swatting invisible insects off his hips. A couple nearby seemed to be performing a mating ritual inspired by endangered birds. It was like someone had mashed together the Book of Revelation, Footloose, and a glow stick convention.
On one side: CNN.
On the other: the Macarena.
We sat there in stunned silence, trying to make sense of the horror, while also silently admiring how the bartender had shaped his hair into what appeared to be an actual radar dish. Anthropologists call it “cognitive dissonance.” I call it “Tuesday in France.”
I wanted to scream. Or cry. Or at least turn off the Macarena remix. Instead, we sat, trying to listen. Trying to process.
I tried calling the U.S.—my family, the parish office—anything. I used a pay phone, a cell phone, and, in my desperation, I might’ve tried a baguette. Nothing. Lines were jammed.
Eventually, I walked to a small Catholic church nearby. I stepped inside and was swallowed by silence—the kind of silence that sits heavy on your shoulders like someone just turned off the world. Candles flickered. Stone walls ached. I whispered names I wasn’t sure were still alive. Lit a candle. Prayed a Rosary.
To this day, whenever I hear the line from The Sound of Silence:
“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made…”
—it takes me back.
That glowing, blaring, fog-machine-blasted neon god. And the worshipers, adorned in body glitter, techno beats pulsing, while the world burned on the screen above them. It was surreal. But also heartbreakingly accurate. We still live like that—chasing distraction, lost in noise. Always moving, always plugged in, missing what matters most.
The warnings were always there. But as the song says: “No one dared disturb the sound of silence.”
And so, whenever I hear that song, I whisper a little prayer.
In French. Which probably still means something wildly inappropriate.
Playlist Choice Week #6
M.T.A. Song- Kingston Trio
I first heard the “M.T.A. Song” when I was studying in Rome. The song, recorded by The Kingston Trio back in 1959, tells the tragic tale of a man named Charlie who boards the Boston subway and never gets off. Not because he didn’t want to—oh no, Charlie would’ve loved nothing more than to disembark and go home—but because the transit authority added a secret “exit fare” and Charlie didn’t have the extra nickel.
This is a humorous scenario unless you ever dealt with the bureaucracy of the Gregorian University while writing a doctorate.
Every Thanksgiving in Rome, a bunch of us American priests would gather for dinner, which consisted of turkey, mashed potatoes, and the annual tradition known as Musical Doctoral Student Humiliation. This involved some guys—mostly the musical ones, who had too much energy and not enough pastoral assignments—singing parody songs about how long it was taking the doctoral candidates to finish their dissertations.
When they sang about Charlie riding the subway forever because he couldn’t scrape together a nickel, we all laughed—because we knew that Charlie was us.
I wrote my dissertation while teaching at the seminary, since I had been called back early due to personal needs. I had to fly back to Rome to defend it. The defense went well. But even after defending the thesis, the hoops to pass through are only beginning. You had to get the Dean’s signature, a task which made crossing the Red Sea look like a quick errand. The Dean, a man who may or may not have been a functioning hologram, held “office hours” from 12:00 to 1:00 PM on Tuesdays, or possibly during lunar eclipses. There was a line out the door and I had a flight the next day. Things were getting desperate.
Just as I approached the office, the Dean slipped out the side door like a Vatican-trained ninja. So I did what anyone in a panic and fueled by espresso would do—I shouted, in my best frantic Italian:
“Aspettat! Firma qui!” (Stop! Sign here!)
And amazingly, he did.
Had he not, they’d still be singing the M.T.A. song about me—only instead of a subway train, it’d be me stuck riding the administrative loop around the Gregorian University, clutching a manila folder and weeping softly into a panino.
Now fast forward to the present, when Charlie’s song came roaring back into my mind, since I tried to order a $2 magnet from Amazon. This magnet, you must understand, was crucial to the operational stability of the rectory. It said “CLEAN” on one side and “DIRTY” on the other and was the only thing keeping the dishwasher, and by extension life in the rectory, in order.
Amazon cheerfully informed me: “Your package is arriving today!”
That did not happen.
Instead, I received the following ominous message from UPS: “Delivery Exception: Address Insufficient. Please contact the carrier.”
This is UPS-speak for: “We know you exist, but we’re not emotionally prepared to acknowledge it.”
Now, the rectory has been standing for approximately 150 years. Amazon delivers here. Fed-Ex delivers here. Even Steve the Pizza Guy eventually found the place after going to all the floors of the Oakwood Apartments.
But apparently UPS has recently decided to become a school of postmodern philosophy and now doubts whether addresses are real.
So I did what any normal person would do.
I clicked the tracking link.
It said, with cheerful menace: “Please contact the delivery service.”
So I called UPS–This was a terrible idea.
A chipper robot voice greeted me like we were about to take a zipline adventure together: “Thank you for calling UPS! In a few words, tell us why you’re calling today.”
I said, “A package was not delivered.”
“Great!” it said, which is not what you say when someone is missing a package. That’s what you say when someone tells you they brought guacamole.
It asked if I was the sender, recipient, or “other.” I said “recipient.”
It asked if the shipment was domestic or international. I said “domestic.”
Then it asked me to read the 18-digit tracking number.
Then it said: “There appears to be an issue with the address. Would you like to update your address?”
“No,” I said. “The address is correct.”
“Great! Let’s fix it.”
“No, I said it’s already correct.”
“Fantastic. Updating address now.”
Click.
The robot hung up on me.
Yes, I got ghosted by an AI.
At that point, I was convinced this magnet had entered a logistical black hole, possibly orbiting Saturn with a handful of misrouted Christmas cards and at least one IKEA Allen wrench.
I called back, punched “O” like I was launching missiles, and finally got a real person, a lovely woman in India. She was unfailingly polite and read from a script so thoroughly that I suspect if she ever deviated from it, she’d be yanked into another dimension by the Ghost of Corporate Protocol.
After another 12-minute back-and-forth that included weather, philosophy, and the metaphysical limitations of brown trucks, we landed right back at the beginning.
Her: “The address is insufficient.”
Me: “It’s not.”
Her: “It says it is.”
Me: “It isn’t.”
Her: “Then perhaps… the package changed.”
Me: “…What?”
Her: “You need to call the seller.”
Me: “They aren’t the ones delivering it.”
Her: “The seller can help you. Have a good Day”. Click.
I gave up. The magnet is gone. It has joined Charlie on the M.T.A., forever riding around, trapped in a UPS truck that no longer believes in reality.
And once again, I’m left staring at the dishwasher, wondering:
Are the dishes clean? Or dirty?
No one knows.
Not even Charlie.
Playlist Choice Week #7
Bella Ciao – La Casa De Papel Version
I’ll admit it: I’ve always had a soft spot for a good rebel song. You know, the kind where someone with nothing but a beat-up guitar and a questionable mustache manages to inspire a nation—or at least get kicked out of a pub.
One such song that I was introduced to in Italy is “Bella Ciao” (lit. Goodbye Beautiful), which most think started in the North Italian Po Valley as a 19th-century protest anthem sung by women rice field workers. Then it got picked up by the Italian resistance in World War II, who presumably sang it while tossing grenades at Nazis. And in recent years, it was made wildly popular by the Netflix show La Casa De Papel (Money Heist), which is about people in red jumpsuits being very emotionally intense in slow motion while robbing a bank.
“Bella Ciao” sounds like a combination of a funeral dirge and something you’d play while escaping a crumbling regime on a motorcycle (think Steve McQueen in The Great Escape). It tells you that even little people can take down big powers, and that if you’re going to go down, you might as well do it with flair and possibly jazz hands.
Anyway, the first time I heard it was when I landed in Rome, to begin theological studies at the Biblicum.
I had planned everything in detail. I was going to arrive at Fiumicino Airport, breeze over to the train station, catch a swift and graceful ride to Termini, and stroll into the Casa Santa Maria, the house for American priests studying in Rome. It is a charming 16th-century building located roughly one gelato throw from the Trevi Fountain and has all the plumbing reliability of the Renaissance. In short: charming.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, here’s a fun fact: Italy has a magic word that can instantly destroy your itinerary. That word is sciopero. For the uninitiated, sciopero is not Italian for “Welcome, weary pilgrim!” It means strike—no trains, no explanations, and certainly no refunds and unlike in the U.S., where a strike comes with weeks of buildup and possibly a Netflix documentary, in Italy a strike can occur because:
- National Unrest.
- The football (soccer) team lost.
- We need a day for Christmas Shopping
So there I was, standing in Leonardo da Vinci Airport—which has more directional signs than an IKEA and just as much logic—trying to figure out how to get on a train that did not, in any meaningful sense, exist. After twenty minutes of wandering in circles and praying for clarity (or at least a working timetable), I realized the train was not happening. So I got in a taxi.
The driver introduced himself as Luca, made the Sign of the Cross (never a good sign from someone about to operate a vehicle), and took off with the grace and subtlety of a fighter jet being chased by bees.
Luca drove like a man who had personally offended every traffic law and was now trying to escape justice. We rocketed past scooters, buses, pedestrians, and at least one mime, all of whom seemed surprisingly unfazed. Apparently, this is just how it works in Rome.
Luca provided live commentary as he drove:
- “Red light? That’s just a suggestion.”
- “This lane is for amateurs!”
- “Ahhh, the horn—it speaks my truth.”
At one point, we took a turn so hard my breviary flew into the glove compartment and started reciting prayers on its own.
And then—just when I thought things couldn’t get any more Italian—“Bella Ciao” came on the radio.
Luca cranked the volume and began shouting the lyrics like he was leading a revolutionary charge across the Rubicon. He slapped the steering wheel for percussion and sang with the passion of a man who has driven directly into—and possibly out of—several government coups.
“E se io muoio da partigiano…” he belted.
Which translates to: “If I die as a partisan…”
At that moment, I looked at the oncoming traffic and thought: That’s not hypothetical, Luca.
I would have asked him to turn it down, but I was afraid he’d take both hands off the wheel to conduct the horn section.
Eventually, after weaving through what I believe was a street festival, a fish market, and a parade for someone’s pet goat, we skidded to a halt in front of the Casa Santa Maria. I tumbled out of the car, kissed the cobblestones in gratitude, and made a mental note to never trust Italian train schedules, rebel songs, or anything with wheels in Rome.
Luca waved goodbye, shouted “Viva la resistenza!” and disappeared into traffic, narrowly missing a mime and two Roman centurions demanding money from unsuspecting tourists who took their picture.
Bella Ciao, indeed.
Playlist Choice Week #8
Save Me – Jelly Roll
Since I began sharing my playlist, every so often, someone corners me after Mass and asks, with polite curiosity, “Father, do you have any Christian music on your playlist?” The tone is always kind, but I know what they’re really asking: Is it just Springsteen and U2 rattling around in there, or do you ever tune into the Holy Spirit’s Spotify?
Here’s the thing: I want to like Contemporary Christian music (CCM, for those of you playing liturgical bingo at home). I’ve given it a fair shot. But a lot of CCM seems to follow the same script:
- Start with soft piano
- Add a whispery verse
- Build to a big emotional chorus
- Throw in a dramatic bridge
- Add one unnecessary key change
- Repeat everything until the Holy Spirit has clearly had enough
It’s like someone downloaded the Hillsong app and accidentally hit “loop forever.” Eventually, it starts to feel like musical fast food: digestible, familiar, and oddly indistinguishable from the fourth Beach Boys song on any album. The first one is great. The rest? Eh… more beach. More sonic cocktails of California sunshine
That said there are a few artists and songs that have stood out to me. One such is Jelly Roll. Yes, that’s his actual name. No, he’s not a pastry. He’s a country-rap-soul-singer-songwriter-former-convict-type-person who looks like he could either give you a deep spiritual insight or repossess your car. Possibly both.
And his song “Save Me”—specifically the duet version—is not your average toe-tapper. It’s a spiritual confession cracked open at 2 a.m., whispered into a broken mirror under a flickering gas station light.
The lyrics aren’t polite. They aren’t poetic. They’re raw:
“Somebody save me / Me from myself / I’ve spent so long / Living in hell…”
No metaphors. No youth-group-approved euphemisms. Just a man baring his soul and quietly begging the universe not to give up on him yet.
And every time I hear that song, my mind wanders back to my field education assignment in seminary. I was sent to Norristown State Hospital. My job was simple: walk around, listen, be present. A ministry of awkward nods and trying not to look too scared.
One day, I found myself in a wing called Double Indemnity, which sounds like an insurance fraud thriller, but was actually the ward for patients dealing with both addiction and mental illness.
That’s where I met Coffee Guy.
He was wiry, agitated, and had locked onto one holy grail: coffee. Not spiritual coffee. Not metaphorical coffee. Literal, steaming, caffeinated glory in a Styrofoam cup.
The nurse, who was maybe five feet tall, kept telling him, kindly and camly, “You know you can’t have coffee. It’ll mess with your meds.”
But he wasn’t hearing it.
He began shouting. Loud. Louder.
“I WANT COFFEE!”
That’s when time slowed down. His arm pulled back. He was about to hit her. Now, I want to be clear here: in moments like this, you don’t think. You don’t weigh options. You just move. And I did. I grabbed his arm. With the speed and grace of a spooked llama. I don’t remember making a decision—I just remember grabbing his arm mid-swing.
Then, in a blur, the orderlies came charging in like a swat team in scrubs, took him down, restrained him, strapped him to a gurney, and began wheeling him away.
And that’s when it happened.
As he was being rolled down the hall, tears streaming down his face, his voice cracked—not with anger, but with something far deeper and more broken—and he said:
“All I wanted was coffee…”
That line still hits me. Not because it’s about caffeine, but because it’s about everything else. About the desperate, aching desire to feel normal. To feel okay. To feel like somebody, somewhere might hear you and say, “You matter. Even if your meds say no coffee.”
That’s what Jelly Roll is saying in “Save Me.” He’s not writing a neat little worship song for the carpool crowd. He’s crying out—raw, messy, honest. He’s the guy who just wanted coffee. Who just wanted something—comfort, grace, a moment of peace in the chaos.
It’s the prayer of the guy who’s on the floor, metaphorically or literally, begging for something—grace, forgiveness, a second chance, or maybe just a lousy cup of coffee.
And somehow, despite all the darkness, there’s a flicker of hope in that song. Not a searchlight. Just a candle. But when you’re lost, sometimes that’s enough.
So, Jelly Roll is on my playlist. Right between Bono and Norah Jones.
Sometimes, the songs that save you aren’t the ones that sound holy.
Sometimes, they’re the ones that sound human.
Playlist Choice Week #9
The Day 80’s Cool Got Me Detention
When I was in high school, 80’s cool had just been invented — or at least that’s what we thought.
The 70’s were gone. Bell bottoms were gone. Polyester collars the size of patio awnings were gone. Gold chains so heavy they could double as a mooring line for a fishing trawler — gone.
We were making a bold statement: We are different.
And we expressed that difference by… all dressing exactly alike.
Our uniform of rebellion was the skinny tie. (Miami Vice hadn’t hit TV yet to bless us with pastel jackets and sockless loafers, but we were still certain we were on the cutting edge of fashion and possibly human civilization.)
If you wanted to be somebody, you went to Chess King at the mall. The tie rack was a monument to questionable decisions:
- Neon red, for the guy who wants to be noticed from space.
- Keyboard print, for the music geek who couldn’t actually play, but flawlessly plays air-piano Benny and the Jets.
- Black silk, for the minimalist who had just watched The Godfather and who thinks “dangerous” means keeping the top shirt button undone.
- White-on-black checkerboard, for the guy convinced he was probably about to be discovered by a record label.
- Holographic Tie – Changes color as you move, so your tie looks like it’s trying to escape your body.
- Faux Leather Tie – Because wearing an actual seatbelt around your neck was frowned upon.
- Tie with Tiny Martini Glasses – For the 15-year-old who wanted to seem “sophisticated” in homeroom.
Skinny ties in the early 80’s were kind of the fashion version of Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight: minimalist, like the song’s slow, haunting build; cool, not loud or glittery like disco, but sleek, understated — “I’ll let you notice me when I want you to”; and mysterious, like the guy in the skinny tie knows something you don’t… the same way you’re not quite sure what Phil Collins is singing about, but you know you’d better pay attention.
The rule was ironclad: never wear your skinny tie on the bus.
That was freshman behavior. And we were not going to look like freshmen, even if we technically were freshmen.
You kept your tie in your locker and put it on right before homeroom. Knotting the tie in the hallway wasn’t just dressing — it was performance art.
One chilly morning, disaster struck.
Two teachers — veterans of the polyester era — stationed themselves at the school entrance. These men wore fat, polyester-wide ties, the kind favored by used car salesmen trying to distract you from noticing that the Pinto only had three hubcaps and a suspicious raccoon smell and make you thank them for it.
They were checking every student for a tie and handing out demerits to anyone arriving bare-necked.
Crazie Eddie was the self-appointed mayor of cool. He had the big grin, the beginnings of a Flock of Seagulls haircut, and the kind of confidence that says, “I will absolutely get you in trouble, but you’ll tell the story for the rest of your life.”
That morning, Eddie had three extra skinny ties he had just bought and was bringing them to his in his locker.
We spotted him. He spotted us.
We reached out like drowning men reaching for a lifeboat.
Eddie clutched those ties like they were woven from the hair of Debbie Harry herself.
And right then, Phil Collins’ voice rolled through my brain:
“If you told me you were drowning… I would not lend a hand.”
Only this time, it wasn’t drowning — it was social death by fat tie.
We all got detention. Eddie walked into class like Indiana Jones sliding under a closing stone door — except instead of a priceless artifact, he carried three perfectly knotted skinny ties and grinned like a man whose hair had its own zip code.
Of course, In the Air Tonight has its own legend — the one where Phil Collins saw a man watch someone drown and later sang the song to him in concert. Collins claimed that was never true. He says it came from the pain of his divorce, written almost in one stream. The drowning line? Just a dark image that fit the mood.
But that’s the thing — sometimes the legend is better than the truth.
Whether it’s Phil Collins confronting a man who let someone drown… or Crazie Eddie refusing to hand over a neon red skinny tie… the myth is what people remember.
And if you’ve ever been left high and dry — or wide-tied — you know exactly when that drum fill hits.
Playlist Choice Week #10
Oliver Anthony’s song “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
[Warning some minor language]
When I was a kid, we used to camp around Schuylkill and Carbon counties, near where I had a priest uncle, Fr. Jim. Now, Uncle Jim loved two things above all else: fire pits and ghost stories. He knew every ghost story in Carbon County, and he told them with the absolute relish.
One summer we visited Jim Thorpe — the kind of town that looked like it was designed by people who couldn’t decide if they were building a Christmas ornament for grandma’s tree or a Dracula movie set. Every building had turrets, every street went uphill, and everything smelled faintly of coal dust and funnel cake.
So there we were, standing outside the old Carbon County jail, a block of stone that looked like it had been designed by architects who wanted to punish children for smiling. Uncle Jim squinted at the wall and said, “This is where Alexander Campbell made his mark.”
We leaned in, trying to look solemn. My youngest brother did it best, but only because he had just dropped his last jawbreaker down a sewer grate and was actively mourning.
“Campbell,” Uncle Jim intoned in a whispery haunting voice, “was one of the Molly Maguires — Irish miners who stood up to the mine owners. They said he killed a man, but really he just had the bad luck of being Irish, Catholic, and mouthy all at the same time. They locked him in here, and on the day they were going to hang him, he slapped his muddy hand on the wall and declared: ‘This handprint will never come off till my name is cleared!’”
Uncle Jim marched us inside, down creaking corridors that smelled of dust and old socks, until we reached the cell. And there it was.
The Handprint.
It looked… well, like something you’d stepped on in the woods. If you tilted your head one way, maybe it was a handprint. Tilted the other way and it was a potato pancake. Or scarier still, one of uncle Jim’s pancakes — the ones where he used us to clear out the old food in his fridge. (Nothing like discovering bologna in your flapjack.)
Uncle Jim crouched down and whispered, “It’s been scrubbed, painted, plastered. And yet it always comes back.”
That was all I needed. My ten-year-old imagination immediately went haywire. I pictured janitors with mops and buckets, scrubbing like their lives depended on it, while the ghost of Campbell leaned against the wall, arms folded, muttering, “Go ahead, fellas, waste your time. I’ll be back by morning.”
And then — the handprint started to glow in my head, pulsing faintly like a radioactive lava lamp. I was absolutely sure that at any second Campbell’s ghost was going to come lunging out of the plaster like one of those Planet of the Apes gorillas. I could practically hear Shaggy screaming, “Zoinks! Like, let’s get outta here, Scoob!”
By the time we returned to the campground, us kids were already working out defensive strategies. If Campbell’s ghost came for us in the tent that night, we figured we could hold him off him with a marshmallow roasting stick or distract him with a sacrificial offering of my brother’s jawbreaker collection while we fled.
That night in the tent, every rustle of leaves was Scooby-Doo saying “Ruh-roh!” Every creak of a branch was Campbell’s boots on the path. I knew — knew — that at any moment, a cold, spectral hand was going to slap me on the shoulder and whisper, “High five, kid. High five.”
That’s the thing about stories — and songs. They don’t just entertain; they carry memory, anger, and hope. The coal regions are filled with them: Mother Jones marching mill children to Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home, the Anthracite Strike of 1902, Sid Hatfield staring down company gunmen in West Virginia.
Every so often — a song sneaks up on the world. Not because it’s polished or sophisticated, but because it says out loud what a whole lot of people are muttering under their breath. That’s what happened last year with Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
One man, one guitar, sitting out in the Virginia woods — and suddenly the whole internet lit up. No Nashville polish. No big label advertisement. Just raw voice, raw frustration. Of course, the political divide affected its reception: some tried to cancel it, others tried to claim it. You don’t have to agree with every premise in every line or every solution offered but you can feel the raw emotion of someone who wants to be heard.
And maybe that’s where it all connects — the Gospel and the ghost story, the handprint on a jail wall and a viral YouTube video. Because whether it’s a miner in 1877 pressing his hand into plaster, or a farmer with a guitar in 2023, the cry is the same: Don’t leave me behind.
No handprint. No song. And no human heart is ever forgotten.
[Warning some minor language]:
Playlist Choice Week #11
Waterfalls – TLC
It was the late ’70s, which, for children, was a terrifying era disguised as carefree. Every day you risked death. Our parents left us in the back seat of parked cars like forgotten laundry. Seat belts were considered optional suggestions. Neighbor kids invited us to play lawn darts (Imagine a giant dart — about a foot long, made of hard plastic with a heavy metal tip — that you were supposed to toss underhand into a plastic target ring on the grass. On paper, it was wholesome family fun. In reality, you were basically handing children weighted spears and telling them to throw them at each other’s feet. Inevitably, kids ignored the rings and aimed at siblings, neighborhood dogs, or unsuspecting distant cousins drinking warm Schlitz.
Yet somehow, we survived.
Through it all, one thing we could count on was Kool-Aid. It was the fuel of childhood. Forget soda. Soda was expensive, exotic, something you begged for at McDonald’s once a month if your report card didn’t look like it belonged to a career criminal. But Kool-Aid? That was ours. You could make a gallon for about twelve cents. It came in packets colored like a nuclear accident, including “Electric Blue,” which was indistinguishable from windshield washer fluid, and “Purplesaurus Rex,” which tasted like sugared motor oil but in a good way. We drank Kool-Aid out of anything that would hold liquid: glasses, jelly jars, Frisbees, garden hoses. It was the sacred fluid that stained your upper lip a shade of red not found in nature and made your mother shout, “Don’t spill it on the carpet!” It was eternal. Unquestionable. Safe.
Until that night.
We were watching CHiPs, lying on the shag carpet, when the anchorman appeared with the Voice, you know that doom-soaked voice grownups only used for nuclear accidents, papal visits, and the death of Elvis.
“Mass suicide in South America… hundreds dead after drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.”
Poisoned. Kool-Aid.
The words dropped like a bowling ball onto my nine-year-old brain. Kool-Aid had gone bad? For a kid, this was not “news.” This was The End of Civilization. By nightfall, I had convinced myself that any Kool-Aid left unattended in the refrigerator for more than 24 hours automatically became poisoned. I pictured the Kool-Aid Man, the big glass jug guy, busting through walls shouting “OH YEAH!. But instead of cheerfully handing out drinks, he was whispering, “You shouldn’t have trusted me, kid,” before smashing through the living room.
And then Harold showed up.
Cousin Harold was what you might call the family eccentric. He was a storyteller extraordinaire, but his stories always looped back to the end of the world and the apocalypse.
He could find the signs of the apocalypse in anything: traffic lights, baseball standings, the gasoline lines. Once, during Thanksgiving dinner, he pointed at the Jell-O mold and declared it a harbinger of the Beast.
Most importantly, Harold was the only person who drank beer in our family. My parents didn’t touch the stuff, but they always kept a case of it in the basement, “just in case Harold comes by.” It sat there for years, slowly achieving room temperature and eventually the consistency of lukewarm soup. Harold would show up, pop open a can, declare it “just right,” and guzzle it like fine wine. Whether he was being polite or truly enjoyed it he would guzzle it down. That day he lounged on our sofa, popped a beer, and said:
“Well, there you go. Kool-Aid’s turned deadly. That’s the sign. World’s about done. Revelation. Trumpets. Fire from heaven. You kids better get ready.”
And then he took another swig of warm Schlitz.
And me? I believed him. When a man in plaid with warm beer breath tells you the End is Nigh, you take notes.
Of course, I grew up. I learned the terrible truth about Jonestown — the manipulation, the tragedy. Nothing funny at all. But as a kid, I didn’t know that. I just knew Kool-Aid had apparently gone rogue, and Harold had declared the end of the world from our sofa while burping Schlitz foam into the ashtray.
TLC’s Waterfalls is one of those rare songs that manages to be both warning and beauty at the same time — elegant, haunting, a melody you lean into. Impossible not to love it when Left Eye Lopez breaks into a rap in the middle of the song. Her loss, too soon, makes the song ache even more. The line “Don’t go chasing waterfalls” feels like it was written for people like Harold, forever pursuing the next big sign of the end.
But chasing those illusions is like chasing waterfalls — it looks dramatic, but it won’t sustain you. You miss what’s real. What’s real is not some purple pitcher sweating on the counter or a half-baked doomsday chart. What’s real is God’s presence, here and now. Not far away. Not hidden in secrets. Not in poisoned Kool-Aid.
God is with us in the Eucharist. Not a fantasy. Not a symbol. Not a maybe.
Don’t chase waterfalls. Don’t chase apocalypses. And definitely don’t chase Kool-Aid pitchers glowing suspiciously on the counter while Cousin Harold drains another Schlitz and mutters about fire from the sky.
Playlist Choice Week #12
James Blount—Monsters
When James Blunt sat down at a piano and sang Monsters to his father, he gave the world this beautiful, heart-wrenching hymn to saying goodbye. A man pouring out love through grief. The lyrics—“I’m not your son, you’re not my father”—capturing that tender, painful moment when the child becomes caregiver. The video, with Blunt’s voice trembling and tears visibly falling, increases the tenderness of the song. Less a performance and more a private farewell, inviting listeners into the universal, heart-wrenching experience of love, loss, and letting go.
But if I were to sing goodbye to my father, it would not sound like James Blunt. Mine would sound like a brass band marching down Main Street while someone in the back was firing off a nail gun and Alexa was blaring Debby Boone at top volume.
Because nothing with my dad was simple. Nothing. He was a stubborn man — stubborn not like a mule, which at least has the courtesy of standing still — but stubborn like gravity, like a force of nature. You didn’t argue with it. You worked around it, occasionally cursed it, and eventually came to realize it was holding your world together.
Take, for example, the car. Dad loved cars, but not in the way most fathers did. Other dads bragged about horsepower. Mine bragged about tire pressure. Before anyone — and I mean anyone — could get into the car, you had to be weighed. Yes, weighed. Friends, cousins, aunts, didn’t matter. He wanted exact poundage before he turned the key.
So there we’d be, a gaggle of eighth graders on our way to Dairy Queen, when Dad would stop us cold:
“Son, what’s your buddy here weigh?”
“Uh… 130?”
“130?! He’s taller than you. He looks 150 at least.”
Dad wasn’t trying to embarrass us (though he achieved it with mathematical precision). No, he was calculating weight distribution like we were prepping for reentry from orbit. He didn’t want the shocks to fail while we were in the car.
And Heaven forbid you were in a rush. The faster you moved, the slower he got. You’d be running late for a school dance, shirt untucked, hair barely combed, when he’d stop you with:
“Did you check the tires?”
“What?”
“The tires. You’re not leaving this driveway until you’ve checked the air pressure.”
Nothing says “romance” like showing up to homecoming smelling of Goodyear rubber.
But that was love. Maddening, ridiculous love. He didn’t want us stranded on the side of the road. He just had a way of showing it that made you wish for adoption by another family — preferably one with a cool dad who owned a guitar.
This stubbornness wasn’t new. It was his whole life. For example: the roof. We once spent a summer putting a new roof on the house. Dad’s system was: measure fifteen times, fit once. Which, if you are a teenager, translates into “this is going to take forever.” After about three rows of shingles, Mom mercifully sent him to the store. The second his car left the driveway, my brothers and I went full blitzkrieg. Hammers flying, shingles slapping, we finished the whole roof before he returned. He wasn’t happy but couldn’t find a fault to yell at us for.
This was the same man who taught math at John Bartram High School for over forty years. Almost half a century of teenagers and chalk. He had seen every excuse in the book: the dog ate it, aliens abducted it. By the end, he could smell a lie at thirty feet. That kind of radar never turns off.
And then came Alexa. The doctors said Dad had peripheral neuropathy, losing control of his hands and feet. The solution was an Alexa in his room: lights on, calls to family. It was the Saturday Night Live skit. It was Dad versus Alexa.
Day one: “Alexa, call my son.”
Alexa: “I don’t know who your son is.”
Dad: “Well then you’re useless.”
Day two: “Alexa, turn on the light.”
Alexa: “Playing ‘You Light Up My Life’ by Debby Boone.”
Dad: “NO! STOP!”
Alexa: “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to stop.”
There he was, a retired math teacher with fifty years of wrangling teenagers under his belt, locked in mortal combat with a plastic cylinder. He treated Alexa like she was one of his students, stubbornly repeating himself until she obeyed. And one day, she did. “Turn on the light,” he said. And the light turned on. He smirked like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Dad: one. Amazon: zero.
So of course, when he finally softened enough to move into the nursing home, he adjusted faster than anyone. He loved it. Within days, he was celebrating how good the food was, organizing breakfast gatherings, introducing us to everyone who poked in the building as if he was mayor.
Then COVID hit. Nursing homes went into lock-down, and everything suddenly resembled a dystopian movie set in Delco. No visitors allowed. My brother would drive over with his kids, line them up outside the nursing home window, and they would wave at Dad like penguins in a zoo, while their grandfather sat inside like an aquarium exhibit.
Dad waved back as if this were all perfectly normal, like “Yep, this is how families interact now, through six inches of reinforced glass. Nothing weird here.” It was surreal. Imagine George Orwell writing a Hallmark Channel Movie: “Love in the Time of Plexiglass.”
It was family life as imagined by Kafka. Dad — stubborn, proud — never complained. He just waved back like it was business as usual.
Eventually his health declined, and he wound up at Springfield Hospital — right there in Delco, where the main activities are shopping at Wawa, eating at Wawa while using a trash can as your dining room table, and avoiding traffic cones. And of course, no one was allowed to visit at the Hospital either. The rule was ironclad: no visitors, unless you had a badge, a PhD, or the ability to disguise yourself as a rolling blood-pressure cuff. My sister, being a nurse, pulled the “nurse card” and managed to sneak in once or twice. This nearly got her fired. (Apparently you can riot in the streets, but visit your dying father in a hazmat suit? That’s a capital offense.) Eventually I got in too — collar, oils, the whole priest kit — just in time to anoint him before he passed.
He embarrassed us. He slowed us down. He drove us crazy. But every quirk, every maddening ritual, was love — stubborn, inconvenient, relentless love. The weigh-ins, the roof, the car rules, the Alexa wars — all of it, love.
That’s what the song Monsters captures. James Blunt got it right: in the end, it’s not father and son anymore. It’s just adults, saying goodbye.
Only in our case, one of them had just beaten Alexa.
Playlist Choice Week #13
Dolly Parton – Coat of Many Colors
Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors is about dignity in poverty, love in the face of ridicule, and memory stitched into cloth. Her mother sewed her a patchwork coat from rags. The kids at school mocked it, but Dolly wore it proudly because it was made with care and carried meaning.
My parents were never part of “cool culture” or fashion trends. They did things that felt perfectly normal to them but left us kids a little socially displaced. My mother’s family were farmers in Ireland — potatoes, cows, the whole bit. My dad was a high school math teacher, which meant we weren’t raised in Gaelic culture so much as in geometric proofs.
Lunches reflected that. Mom usually packed a thermos of tea and a buttered scone — the kind of meal you’d expect if you were cutting turf from a peat bog, not sitting in second-grade math. Delicious, yes, but nearly impossible to trade for Tastykakes. Occasionally Dad got lunch duty. That meant peanut butter and jelly, plus one hidden surprise: a Vitamin C tablet the size of a hockey puck. He buried it in the sandwich as if we were Labrador retrievers who wouldn’t notice. Bite into it, and you’d hit a chalky orange landmine that tasted like expired Tang. Dad apparently thought we’d chew happily until—SURPRISE!—we’d swallowed enough Vitamin C to keep the Navy scurvy-free. In reality, the cafeteria filled with orange dust clouds as I hacked through my sandwich like a miner hitting bedrock.
Fashion sense? Nonexistent. Money was tight, and with a big family newly in the suburbs, thrift stores were our mall. Which brings us to the Riddle Hospital Thrift Store — where clothing goes after even Goodwill says, “No thanks, that’s too hideous.” From there came my first-day-of-high-school jacket: a plaid polyester disaster. Loud, itchy, with more intersecting lines than a geometry textbook. From orbit, NASA could probably track me as a moving plaid anomaly. If Dolly’s coat made her Appalachian Cinderella, mine made me look like Sherlock Holmes after losing a fight with a Scottish picnic table.
Within 30 seconds of arriving, I was surrounded. “Nice jacket!” classmates sneered, which in high school translates to, “Prepare to socially perish.” I wore it again the next day because I had no choice. When the mockery began, I shrugged and said, “You liked it so much yesterday, I thought I’d give you an encore.” Somehow—by divine comedy—that worked. The laughter shifted, the ridicule stopped, and suddenly my plaid polyester shame was my social passport.
My mother told her sisters overseas like it was the tale of Cú Chulainn. “He wore it again! And he told them he wore it again because they liked it!” she said, like I’d just split the atom. They were proud—beaming heroic pride. Meanwhile, I was standing there tugging her sleeve: “That’s great, Mom. But seriously… can I please just get a new jacket?”
Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors resonates because nearly everyone has lived some version of that story: being embarrassed by what we had (or didn’t), wishing we could trade our “patchwork” for someone else’s “new,” only to realize later that what we carried was richer than it seemed. It’s a parable of perspective — humiliation in the moment, treasure in hindsight.
Playlist Choice Week #14
Jars of Clay – Tea and Sympathy
Jars of Clay’s Tea and Sympathy is a play on a English idiom about providing simple comfort during times of grief or difficulty. Tea represents the everyday, ordinary gesture of care; sympathy represents the emotional embrace. Together, they signal gentle presence rather than solutions. The song is filled with a sense of vulnerability, intimacy, brokenness, and longing for authentic connection.
The song reminds me of my mother’s kitchen, sitting at a table sticky with toast crumbs, staring at the inevitable pitcher of tea, that oddly comforting combination of strong tannins and whole milk—and hear the rattle of mismatched mugs coming out of the cupboard.
It’s funny how a song can sneak you back in time like that, carrying not just sound but smell, taste, and the constant background fear that if you poured the tea wrong, an aunt might disown you.
My mother ran on tea the way most people run on oxygen. Deprive her of a cup and the headaches came—a sort of seismic disturbance in family life. “For the love o’ God, somebody put the kettle on before I lose me head entirely,” she’d mutter in her Donegal brogue.
To guests, though, tea was hospitality itself. No matter who came through the door—a neighbor dropping in, a traveling cousin, even the postman if he lingered too long—the kettle went on, the tea was poured, and the conversation began. It wasn’t just a beverage. It was Mom’s way of saying: you belong here. People left our house warmed twice over—by the liquid and by her ear that never failed to listen, even when she disagreed with you in about six different ways.
But if tea was comfort, it was also combat. Making a pot in Mom’s family was like arming a bomb. The first pour was so pale it looked like someone had only thought about dipping in a teabag. The last pour was so dense you could trowel it onto bricks. Aunt Ann demanded the first pour, delicate as bathwater. Aunt Nora required the bottom, which could have been legally classified as roofing tar. Mix them up and you’d unleash a feud that would last until Lent, maybe longer.
We cousins weaponized this knowledge. Whenever a new in-law arrived, we’d hand them the teapot and say, “Oh, just pour—it doesn’t matter.” This was, of course, a lie. Within minutes Aunt Nora would be glaring like she’d been poisoned, while Aunt Ann was stirring her cup with a spoon that stood upright on its own. The in-law, meanwhile, was sweating like a criminal in court. We, naturally, were under the table choking with laughter.
And always, always, there was the scarf. Mom had been crocheting it for as long as any of us could remember. It had started as “just a little project” when she first landed on American shores. By the time I was in high school, it was long enough to cross the Atlantic back to Donegal.
The scarf was in her lap the day the Jehovah’s Witnesses came. Dad loved these visits. He’d usher them in, pour the tea, and prepare to joust with their theology. He treated it like a friendly chess match—calm, witty, sipping tea between points.
Mom sat quietly, needles clicking. The scarf pooled on the floor like a small woolen continent. At first, she paid no attention. All was peaceful—until they started in on the Church. Mom’s head snapped up. Her eyes narrowed. The scarf slid to the floor. The crochet needles rose, gleaming like twin lances.
“You’ll not be speakin’ ill o’ my Church in my house!” she thundered.
I swear, those men moved faster than I’ve ever seen missionaries move. They left so quickly they nearly took the screen door with them.
We children collapsed in laughter. Mom looked around, baffled. “What’s so funny then?”
“Mom,” we wheezed, “you were waving those needles like broadswords!”
She shrugged, sat back down, and resumed her eternal project. “Well, they’ll not be back, will they?”
And she was right. They never came again.
So when Tea and Sympathy plays, I think about Mom’s kitchen: the kettle forever on, the tea wars that bonded us cousins through mischief, and a Donegal woman who could defend both her family and her faith with nothing more than crochet needles.
And I smile, because the tea wasn’t just a drink. It was comfort, welcome, belonging. And sometimes, it was laughter so deep it still warms, years later.
Playlist Choice Week #15
I can Only Imagine – Mercy Me
This will be my last playlist article for a while. Things have gotten busier at both St. Charles Seminary and here at St. Stanislaus. By “busier,” I mean the kind of schedule where you drink coffee not for the caffeine but because you think maybe, just maybe, it will give you an extra day between Tuesday and Wednesday.
And if you’re going to pause something, you should do it with a good song. For me, it’s I Can Only Imagine. Now, the song isn’t flashy—it doesn’t try to guess whether heaven looks like a Renaissance painting, or whether St. Peter is running a clipboard system at the gate. It asks the one question that matters: what will I actually do when I stand before the Lord? Will I sing? Dance? Collapse? Or just stand there in stunned silence, the way you do when you walk into the DMV and realize you grabbed the wrong number ticket?
It’s a song about awe and possibility. And, oddly enough, the place where it first struck me wasn’t in a quiet chapel, but in the Paris Metro, where awe is generally replaced with armpits. Because that summer—World Youth Day in Paris—we were definitely imagining a better place. Paris while beautiful was hot. Death valley type hot.
For World Youth Day in Paris, we had a tour guide for one of the days to see the sights of Paris. His name was Franz. I don’t know if that was his real name, but it fits. Franz had the manner of a man who had seen too much, possibly including the Franco-Prussian War. He believed in mileage rather than stopping to see the roses.
Other guides carried flags or stuffed animals on sticks. Franz had…a half-empty Evian bottle duct-taped to a broom handle. It was like following a postmodernist interpretation of the French Revolution. He held it aloft, set his jaw, and marched forward as though liberating Paris personally.
When we arrived at the Paris Metro only two of the group could get in at a time. After that, they slam shut like a guillotine, which feels historically appropriate for Paris.
A few people slid their tickets into the slot like civilized humans. Others—new to the whole “machine with a slot” concept—shoved their tickets into the crack beside the slot, which is like mailing your electric bill by cramming it into a storm drain. The tickets disappeared into the machinery, never to be seen again. Behind them, the more athletic types attempted to hurdle the turnstiles, weighed down with fanny packs, sunscreen bottles the size of artillery shells, and large crucifixes bouncing on cords. Parents shouted things like, “Stay together!” and “Stop before the French police arrest you!” Meanwhile, Franz had no time for such frivolities. He leapt onto the first train with six pilgrims and disappeared into the tunnel.
The rest of us jammed onto the next train, shoulder-to-shoulder with French commuters who radiated the universal body language of “I despise you.”
The smell was…memorable. Paris in August is already a sauna, and the subway smelled like it was staffed entirely by hot, overworked people who had all just run marathons in wool sweaters. At that moment, I finally understood why the French are so devoted to perfume. Unfortunately, this offered little comfort to the shorter members of our group, who found themselves inhaling directly at armpit level. They looked like pilgrims not so much on a holy journey as on a forced march through an industrial deodorant testing chamber.
At every stop, we popped our heads out like prairie dogs, scanning desperately for Franz’s duct-taped staff of dehydration. We finally found him several stations later, sitting smugly on a bench, sipping his Evian like Napoleon taking five after conquering Europe.
Later, Franz led us to Notre Dame Cathedral, which, judging by the crowd, was apparently hosting all of Europe at once. We were pressed so tightly together that some reported their feet were no longer touching the ground. One teenager shouted, “I’m not walking! The crowd is carrying me!”—which would have been funny had the same thing not been happening to his grandmother.
Inside, conditions didn’t improve. Franz marched ahead, bottle aloft, pointing out architectural details none of us could see because we were all trying to (a) avoid being trampled, (b) reclaim use of our lungs, or (c) locate our missing shoes. He would announce things like, “Observe the delicate Gothic tracery!” while all we could observe was the back of someone’s Hawaiian shirt smashed against our faces.
Tourist survival techniques began emerging:
- One mom shouted a roll call every thirty seconds like a human foghorn.
- A dad had his arms extended like Moses parting the Red Sea, except the Red Sea was unimpressed and kept closing in.
- The teenagers attempted humor: “If we don’t make it out, tell my Xbox I love it.”
And through it all, Franz plowed forward, confident that if we were meant to see anything, we would.
When we finally staggered into the Louvre courtyard, the famous glass pyramid didn’t look like art. It looked like an enormous ice cube plopped down in the middle of a furnace, just to remind us we hadn’t seen anything frozen since we left Philadelphia. The French, of course, glided across the courtyard with quiet dignity, as if the August sun were a pleasant accessory, like a silk scarf. And then there was us: thirty overheated Americans arriving like a marching band that had been left too long in the dryer.
One poor mother, sagging against a fountain, suddenly erupted with, “WATER! I NEED WATER!” in a voice that could have carried to the Eiffel Tower. The courtyard froze. Parisians stared at us the way you might stare at a skunk that settled under your porch—both in horror and in fascination. Tourists snapped pictures, probably captioning them later with, “American wildlife, spotted in its natural habitat.”
A few French children pointed as if they’d just learned that Americans were not, in fact, like other humans. Their expressions said, “So it’s true… they really can’t survive without yelling.” And there we stood, a sweaty, desperate commercial for why Europe invented perfume and café culture, while our fearless guide Franz raised his duct-taped Evian bottle like it was the Olympic torch of hydration, silently confirming to all of France: Yes, these are my people.
At the time, I didn’t think it was funny. But years later, I laugh until my ribs hurt. Because amid the blisters, ticket mishaps, and airborne pilgrim transport at Notre Dame, there were small flashes of grace. Strangers shared water. Parents kept track of kids. No one was lost forever to the Parisian underground. Somehow, against all odds, we stayed together.
And that’s where I Can Only Imagine sneaks back in. Because that’s life, isn’t it? We stumble through turnstiles that jam, crowds that carry us where we never meant to go, and the occasional whiff of armpits in the subway. We grumble at guides who vanish into tunnels with Evian bottles duct-taped to broomsticks, only to discover later that the very chaos gave us stories we treasure. We look back, laughing until the tears come, and wonder what it all meant.
And maybe that’s why the song still matters. It refuses to give the answer, but it nudges us to keep imagining—imagining heaven, imagining a future better than the sweaty, jostling present. Because if we can imagine standing before the Lord, then maybe—just maybe—we can also imagine being carried there together, feet sometimes off the ground, held up by grace, laughter, and the strange mercy of staying close.
9/28/25
This will be my last playlist article for a while. Things have gotten busier at both St. Charles Seminary and here at St. Stanislaus. By “busier,” I mean the kind of schedule where you drink coffee not for the caffeine but because you think maybe, just maybe, it will give you an extra day between Tuesday and Wednesday.
-PJB