Smoldering Wick

Are good leaders born or formed? Earlier this month I had an opportunity to spend some time speaking with some school leaders from around the diocese. I was supposed to give a talk on creating a culture of conversion at our schools, which is a topic near and dear to me. But as the day of the talk drew closer I found myself being drawn in two very disparate directions with what I wanted to do with my allotted time. My thoughts eventually coalesced into a simple equation. To create a culture of conversion you need two things: 1. People who have experienced conversion and value it as a pearl of great price 2. People who want to do whatever they can to lead those in their spheres of influence to the joy and freedom of conversion As I noodled on a method for articulating my equation, I tried to come up with something concrete to give to the leaders in both categories. Knowing full well that God alone can effect conversion -- and not wanting to take for granted that my audience

Greetings friends -- Last Friday I spent a few extra hours at the office dotting all my i's and crossing all my t's ensuring that I'd be able to take off all of this week. As I cleared my desk, set my out-of-office email response and voicemail, I could feel the weight of a very busy autumn at work falling from my shoulders. I got in the car, started it, turned on the heat and let the engine warm. Chopin's nocturnes came on automatically when I plugged in my phone. The haunting beauty of those slow, fragile melodies filled the atmosphere. I closed my eyes for a minute and absorbed it, breathing the beauty, freedom and peace. As I drove through the snow and dimming light of early evening in the Northwoods, I turned the gaze of my heart and mind homeward. Nine days with Stephanie, John Paul and James Henry lay before me. My favorite thing in the world is getting to do life with Stephanie and the boys -- drinking coffee and praying early in the morning, cooking and

Wow. So that was a bit of hiatus… That’s the funny thing about blogs – at least for me – no matter how good the posts are and no matter how consistent they are for a time, I always find myself thinking, “We all know this is just a fad and it’s going to peter out and this blog will eventually just be another URL consigned to the scrapheap of history like Furbies and Billy the Singing Wall-mount Bass. But I digress… Earlier this week I was cleaning my desk at home and rediscovered my 2018 goals. I made about eight or so goals back around New Years and I’m killing it on approximately two of them. The others not so much. One of them, if you’ll recall, was to read 12 books this year and to use my blog as a way of processing and sharing what I am reading. Well, let’s just say that this goal hasn’t proven to be one of the two that I’m succeeding at. But we’re all about second chances, right? Well, over the past few weeks I read two books, one was a Eric Metaxas's biography of the grea

I'm a fever guy. Ever since I was a kid when I would get sick, I would get sick. No half measures; no ambiguity; no dithering about whether I should take a sick day or not. Like a finely tuned European sports car, my engine accelerates from a cold start at 98.7 to 102.5 without a second thought. High delirious fevers and a few days in bed and normally the problem sorts itself out. All of that to say, when I went to bed on Saturday night last weekend the writing was on the wall. A tickle in my throat and a bit of a cold sweat on the back of my neck. And, Bam! Sunday morning I woke up with a fever of 102. Lots of sick baby/toddler-wearing this week... After a day of watching NCAA March Madness on Sunday (fever still hovering in 101-102 range), come Monday morning I decided to spend my sick days a little bit more profitably. My reading quota (see previous posts) has been coming along pretty well: my reading group finished up Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning ,

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've committed to reading a shelf-full of books this year. I chose them from amongst the dozens -- aright, hundreds -- of books that we own that I've never read. I specifically asked myself, 'what are the books that I want to have read?' I guess that's sort of my motto this year: what are the things that I want to have accomplished? I've learned that there are lots of things that I want to do  and there is an altogether different set of things that I want to have done -- not in the passive sense of having them done to me, but in the past tense of having done them. For me, reading has always fallen into this category. I wasn't a reader growing up; and even though I attended an awesome liberal arts college (and got decent enough grades), I really didn't thrive academically because I didn't enjoy the act of sitting down and reading. In fact, it wasn't until graduate school that I felt like I ever totally comm

Last Wednesday I wore a green bow tie with white polka dots to work. In a moment of objectivity, as I was tying my favorite new tie that morning, I realized that it was perhaps a strange fashion statement for a northwoodsman to make, but we Hurtubises have always done our best to cut a fine figure and one must bear the old ancestral mantle as best one can. My late grandfather Jim, after whom our second son James is proudly named, was always a very snappy dresser -- nothing too fancy, just nicely put together and dapper. As I picked out a shirt and tie that morning I thought of him. When the green bowtie caught my eye I thought of an iconic picture of him as a young man -- maybe at his wedding -- looking like a Golden Age of Hollywood movie star in a white tuxedo jacket with a bowtie. In the end, as I weighed the green and white polka dots against my other bowtie options, it was a theological reason that swayed me. Last week was the first week of 'Ordinary Time', which i

So, I have two liberal arts degrees. One is in a dead language and the other is in things divine and supernatural. Needless to say, for me the old adage ringeth true: there is no trouble like car trouble. On Saturday we were due to take a 75 minute drive south to visit family for a late Christmas celebration. The night before we were out much later than we've ever been since the advent of James Henry -- 9pm! We had an awesome evening with the Anchored in Christ Catholic young adults group in the Rice Lake area. And as we rolled into the driveway we praised God for the gifts of new friends and a stellar community of wonderful young Catholic disciples. As our tongues confessed that Jesus was Lord -- and a good Lord at that -- my eyes saw the low engine oil light flicker on and my prayer plummeted from praise to petition as my heart fell from grateful to ungrateful at light speed -- "low engine oil light" speed. For those of you that don't know me, one of my many

A very Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you, my dear reader! Sorry about that five year gap in posts. Like old friends, let's forgot how bad we both were at keeping in touch and pick up where we left off, shall we? Good. I had my monthly appointment with my spiritual director (Fr. SD) today. We talked over the phone instead of in person since a scheduling conflict came up; it was a slightly different dynamic -- it felt easier to hide -- but we still had a typically fruitful conversation. Fr. SD and I have been meeting monthly since October and I can genuinely say that it's been nothing short of life-changing. I've lost something like 35 pounds, my prayer life is more consistent and fruitful than it's been in years, I'm a better dad and husband and I've grown in other areas as well. I can't recommend consistent spiritual direction with a good director highly enough! Thanks again, Fr. SD! We talked about goals for 2018 and categorized them under our