The Logic and Intention of Drag Queen Story Time

"Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Jesus.

"We are coming for your children."  Alan Ginsburg, militant gay Beatnik.

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were tied around his neck and he was thrown into the sea."  Jesus.

In my little world, the active homosexuals I know (family, friends, work) are almost all quiet, discrete, modest, restrained, congenial. They do not engage in Culture War. It is "live and let live" and "don't ask don't tell." We enjoy a mutual affection, delight and respect and a shared interest in a range of things including family, prayer, care for the suffering, books, movies, humor and more. Sexuality remains where it belongs: private, confidential, sacred. I do not know what they do or even what they think. They probably know my staunch Catholic views but we never get into that. Sexuality and also politics are set to the side so that we can get on with life together. Very wholesome! 

A different reality is the militant "Gay." Here we have indignant, righteous demand for full moral approval of these actions and lifestyle; aggressive Culture War; parades, pronouns, podcasts, Hawaiian shirts,  rainbows, social media obsessions; histrionics, narcissism, narratives of self-pity and victimhood; public, priestly blessings;  moralistic condemnation of the entire Christian tradition of chastity and spousal fidelity.

To be sure there is such a thing as homophobia: contempt for the homosexual. I encountered it mostly in adolescence when I was repulsed by the disgust in expressions like "queer" and "faggot." In retrospect, I attribute it mostly to adolescent masculine insecurity. Also, the graphic, inherently violent and demeaning reality of male-on-male intercourse is naturally repulsive to an innocent psyche not brainwashed into the gay-affirming, woke universe. 

Honestly, I have not encountered homophobia in my adult life. I worked over 25 years with truck drivers so I have not been entirely sheltered from the realities of male life. Like racism, homophobia is absolutely prohibited in elite and even mainstream culture. You may find residues of it on some high school football team in a rural area of some deep red state: a relic of the past.

To be sure: horrific emotional suffering accompanies the attraction. This is only slightly due to social disapproval. In places (Scandinavia, San Francisco, Greenwich Village) that have been gay-affirming for decades there remain elevated levels of addiction, suicide, mental illness, and quiet despair. The primary causes of this suffering are not social disapproval but twofold. First, the actions and lifestyle are themselves contrary to the moral order and therefore toxic. Secondly, the attraction is often, but not always, accompanied by related disorders: masculine insecurity, bad father connection, dread of the feminine, history of homosexual abuse, difficulty in male peer relationships, sexual addiction, and personality disorders. The suffering of the homosexual is real and profound. Unhappily, "gay affirmation" in the long run will increase, not relieve this agony. 

The LGBTQ crusade has the approval of mainstream society and all the elite institutions: law, Hollywood, media, academia, big business, liberal religion, even the military. The young are virtually unanimous in their approval. This is because the practice, culture and identity is the epitome of the prevailing culture or "religion" understood broadly: expressive individualism, materialistic consumerism, sterilized sexuality, technologized "reproduction," deconstructed gender, antipathy to masculinity, paternity, authority, and tradition. The isolated, narcissistic, hedonistic, progressive, therapy-craving, careerist, sterile "gay" individual is the ideal of the New World that exploded in the 1960s. 

In its narrative of victimhood and pity, it plays shrewdly upon the heartstrings of the (bleeding heart, limousine) liberal psyche which is sentimental, gullible, naive, and blind to the actual realities of evil, sin, Satan and guilt. It elicits a faux pity and a saccharine self-righteousness: "born that way," heteronormativity, intersectionality, and the entire "woke" litany.

The crusade is not satisfied with legal gay marriage and the virtually unanimous approval of elite/mainstream society. They indignantly require the approval of two moral authorities: the Church and innocent children.

The global Church and churches are violently polarized on this. This Culture War will be with us for a long time.

Perhaps more important is the young and innocent. Here is where the logic and intent of Drag Queen Story Time is manifest.

Traditionally, we revere the "latent period" of sexuality and shield our youth from exposure until adolescence, protecting their innocence, and trusting in their gradual, guided maturation into mature femininity and masculinity, into chastity, fidelity and generous-generative paternity/maternity (biological and spiritual). 

The gay militant, desperate for moral approval, torn from paternity-authority-religion, unconsciously and compulsively craves acceptance by those who are innocent, and so good. They need to be received by our children as normal. And so, we have Drag Queen Story Hour. 

The "drag queen" is of course neither masculine nor feminine, but a contemptuous parody of the feminine in a grotesque, glamorous extreme. Therefore, it brilliantly but subtly deconstructs the wholesome, natural, God-given binary of mother-and-father. It attacks the very filial soul of the child in its trust, reception, reverence for the mother and the father.

It is widely known that gay culture is obsessed with youth and the young. Cut off from paternity, the gay man dreads aging and wants to maintain the facade of youth and fitness. We see in the priest sex scandal the obsession with young men. Very many gay and homosexual men have themselves been victims of seduction in their youth. Could this be a disordered expression of the frustrated paternal drive? Or could it be an expression of a wounded filiality, some primal disconnect with the maternal and paternal, that becomes sexualized into a craving for the young and innocent?

In any case, there is no doubt that the Drag Queen Story Time is an instance of the broader crusade: to indoctrinate our young into the gay cult of sterile, isolated, de-gendered, motherless-fatherless, anti-filial, non-familial, histrionic, narcissistic sexuality. To cover themselves with a facade of moral innocence, they are compelled to rob our own children of innocence. 

May we be clear, vigilant, forceful in the protection of our little ones from the fervid, unrecognized attack on childhood innocence which drives the gay crusade. 

Co-Creators of 21st Century, 3rd Millennium Catholicism

In a world of horrendous violence and chaos, and a Church divided and confused, the Holy Spirit has been at work in  splendid, symphonic extravagance. Let us ponder his presence as we entered this century and millennium. Three conspirators ("co-breathers") stand out.

St. John Paul the Great. He led us into this time. He is our Moses, our El Cid, our George Washington. In his dramatic engagements, personal holiness, iconic teaching...he embodied and articulated our faith in all its creativity, contemporaneity, and freshness as well as its ancient authority.

Saint Mother Teresa. In her dark night of 40 years, she emptied herself in service of our Lord in the very least, the suffering, the forgotten. She is one of many including Dorothy Day, Catherine Dougherty, Madeleine Delbrel and so  many. Pope Francis, to his credit, exemplified this for us, for example in his decision to wash the feet, on Holy Thursday, of women in prison rather than the cardinals.

Saints Andre, Solanus, Leopoldo and all the "little ones" of simple, childlike faith who open their hearts and minds to the invasions from heaven.

After that solid trio, we have others.

Kiko Arguello, Luigi Giussani, Chiara Lubich, Ralph Martin and all the leaders of the lay renewal movements who have interacted with the Holy Spirit in a dazzling variety that manifests the unbounded richness of our Church.

Ratzinger-Benedict, DeLubac, Balthasar, Speyr, again John Paul and the entire Resourcement, later Communio, school of theology that largely birthed the Council and then interpreted it authoritatively. In the USA this means the David Schindlers and the John Paul II Institute in Washington DC. Together they offer an extraordinary flourishing of Catholicism that integrates the best of modernity within loyal traditionalism.

Ecumenical Coalitions including the charismatic/Pentecostal renewal across the denominations (especially in Africa); the Culture War alliance in the West of evangelicals, Catholics and others; cooperation at every level in service of the poor and suffering.

Countless Flourishing of Faith in a million modest, humble forms on the ground: new religious orders, prayer movements, Marian devotions, works of corporal and spiritual mercy, home schooling, small colleges of countercultural faith, intellectual activity in journals, books and the internet. And of course: the mundane, ordinary fidelity of parish priests, families, teachers, catechists and so many who labor to pass on our faith to our young and others.

We have entered an age that can be threatening and discouraging. But when we consider the Presence and Actions of God, of the Holy Spirit, gathering us together in Jesus the Son, we are filled with wonder, joy, gratitude, agency and hope!

 

Girls Are Becoming More Liberal, Boys More Conservative: The Gender Divide

Gen Z girls self-identify as liberal at a rate of 40%; boys at 25%. This might not be so bad if it were not for other realities. 71% of this same cohort say they won't date or marry someone from the other side of the divide. Such extreme polarization spells trouble. 

A distinct but perhaps not entirely unrelated development is the troubling surge in mental and emotional suffering among this generation, especially girls, which exploded with the new technological world of social media in 2012. Jonathan Haidt has been following this trend closely and shown that the difficulties are strongest for young liberal women. 

David French

In a thoughtful piece in the NY Times (Feb. 29, 2024), French acknowledges significant political events like the election of Trump and the #MeToo movement, but gives more weight to deeper, broader cultural developments. With Putnam (Bowling Together) he grieves the breakdown of community at every level and the isolation of the individual; with Haidt (Coddling of the American Mind) he sees that smothering, protective parenting has increased anxiety, risk-aversion, and social insecurity. The broader society, but especially the world inhabited by our youth, is increasingly lonely with less interaction, dating, romance and friendship. Likeminded people enclose themselves in silos, listening to the same sources and reinforcing viewpoints with less and less exchange with other perspectives. This is magnified immensely by the internet and social media. He notes the increase of what he calls "workism" as the conviction that career is the center of one's identity: a 2023 poll found 71% of Americans agreed that "having an enjoyable career/job is very or extremely important for a fulfilling life" while 23% said the same about marriage.

Education, Class, Culture and the Gender Gap

The gender gap in education is also alarming. In 1970, two generations ago, for ages 25-34, 20 % of men and 12 % of women had bachelor degrees...an 8 % gap. In 2020, there was 41% of women and 32% men, a 9 % gap. In our meritocratic, professional society, education is a significant marker of class and culture. This growing divide is problematic: our young women face a choice between "marrying down" and not marrying at all.

Our post-war society (1945-65) was structured around a dominant, expansive "middle class." In the exploding suburbs, teamsters, doctors, lawyers, unionized auto workers and others lived together in shared bourgeois homogeneity. Over the last 50 years, this inclusive class has fractured into the upper and lower echelons: the upper is educated, professional, prestigious, connected, secure in possession of real estate and savings programs, liberal, blue, largely urban/costal, secular and high in self-regard; the lower is blue collar, uneducated, low status, conservative, red, more rural and mid-country, financially precarious, and low in self-esteem. The former disparages the latter as deplorable-MAGA-racists; the later seethes with rage.

What makes things worse is that those in the upper tiers marry within their class. Those, for example, at the lower end of the upper tier (nurses, teachers, small business owners, policemen, unionized workers) enjoy two salaries close to or at six figures each and generous insurance/pension plans. Those in the upper level of the lower tier, the "working poor" miss out on the safety net for the real poor and struggle without permanent employment, insurance or retirement plans. 

And so, the gender gap of our young is (among other things) a consequence of our class/culture divide: young women are outperforming men in the competitive, meritocratic arena of a society increasingly removed from farm, factory, and hands-on labor and centered in bureaucracy, professions, health, education, information, media, and technology. 

There is high irony here! The progressive "intersectionality narrative" has women, blacks, and LGBTQs as victimized by white males. Actually, those groups are privileged and entitled IF they fit the class/culture mode: educated, liberal, professional, bourgeois.  (Example: average combined salary for same-sex married couples is $123,000; for heterosexuals is $96,000). White males are falling into the lower class at alarming rates. 

And of course we have the perennial difference in maturity. My personal observation is that a girl in a wholesome family matures into a motherhood-capable woman around age 14; a boy, if fortunate, reaches comparable maturity in his early 50s. (Ok, some exaggeration, but only a little!)

Our society systemically segregates  us from each other: the elderly in gated communities or nursing homes; the troubled in prisons and psychiatric wards; the young in schools; the poor in ghettos and the rich in enclaves. Our young people are entrapped with their peers, removed from the older and the younger; and now boys and girls are also increasingly detached from each other. So we have declining rates of marriage and the misfortune of an emergent gender divide,  with feelings of victimhood, suspicion and resentment on both sides. Always and everywhere: rupture of connection, isolation, loneliness of the Sovereign Ego.

 The Nature of Things

French's analysis, on the sociological level, is accurate. But he does not explore the inner, formal nature of man/woman. Implicitly he seems to accept the nominalism inherent in modernity: that there are no inner essences or forms; that there are only particularities and statistical averages; that any talk of an interior femininity/masculinity is a stereotyping in service of oppressive male chauvinism; that there is no ontological philosophy of gender; and that we can only speak of biological characteristics, cultural constructs and empirical statistics. 

"Male and female he created them; in his own image he created him" we read in the Genesis 1. The two are intelligible only in relationship: 

- face to face with each other; 

- together facing outward towards their children, family, broader society; 

- together facing back gratefully to the Past and forward hopefully to the Future; and

-  together facing upwards towards heaven. 

If you tear masculinity or femininity away from each other, away from children-family-community, and away from God, gender/sex becomes an absurdity, a non-entity, a private or social construct, a raw Nietzchean willfulness raging into the abyss, a bare and meaningless mathematical average. 

The masculine and the feminine, in their very distinction from each other,  define, complement and complete each other. They are equal in dignity, in giftedness, in finitude. They crave each other. They generously bless each other. In the condition of sin, they crucify each other. In the state of grace they beg pardon, forgive, heal, strengthen, delight each other.  In every man/woman meeting, however trivial, the Joy of Adam resounds:  "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." 

The encounter of man and woman is the Great Drama at the very heart of Being. It is the Love Event

...as erotic-romantic-intimate-spousal, filial, fraternal/sororal, maternal/paternal.

...as singular analogue for the Eternal Embrace of the Bridal Church by her Bridegroom.

...as privileged icon of the love between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.

...as imaged in the (inferior) Petrine and the (superior) Marian dimensions of the Church.

...as mutuality in the contemplative gaze, delight, the dance of reception/donation, sacrifice ("sacra" holy "facere" make).

...as tenderness, reverence, gratitude, magnanimity within humility, generosity, fruitfulness, abundance, exuberance.

The two sexes, of their very nature,  exist in creative, wholesome, thrilling tension with each other: mutual completion, inspiration, affirmation, and delight. The two entertain distinct, contrasting propensities. So it would not be surprising to find different political tendencies. The liberal/conservative binary is not clear, interior or formal as their definitions vary according to context: what is conservative  in one time and place may be liberal in another. The traditional/progressive duality has more clarity: the one looking to the past for a revelation and tradition; the other looking to the future for enlightenment and improvement.

"If you are not liberal when you are young you do not have a heart; if you are not conservative when you are old you do not have a brain." If there is a coherence within youthful liberalism and seasoned conservatism, so we can consider the consonance of the feminine with the liberal and the masculine with the conservative.

In our current context, the youthful female psyche...in the dimensions of tenderness, sensitivity, receptivity, generosity, welcome, nurture, acceptance, empathy, physicality and concreteness...understandably resonates with environmental concern, welcome of the immigrant, strong safety net including care for children, restrictions on gun ownership, protection of the authentic autonomy and dignity of women. 

Conversely, the male psyche (especially if immature)...as competitive, assertive, individualistic, inclined to authority, tradition, clarity, abstraction, boundaries, hierarchy...intuits more value in economic liberty, secure borders, international assertiveness contra bad actors, and protection of defenseless, innocent human life. 

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt identified six  core moral values that influence political orientation: care, fairness, loyalty, liberty, sanctity and authority. While there are complex, contradictory ways that these core values find expression in both camps, (especially liberty and fairness), he finds that liberals lean heavily into care and fairness; conservative more into authority, loyalty and sanctity. And so the argument here is that youthful femininity also inclines to care and fairness as masculinity favors authority, loyalty ad sanctity. And so there is a natural fittingness that girls are more liberal and boys conservative.

Clearly we renounce stereotypes here: of course men are tender and women abstract. All of us have all of these interior qualities even as they gestalt within each of us as femininity or masculinity. 

Of great significance is the rich influence each of us receives from others. Ideally each child matures under the influence of one or more mother and father figures. And so, the girl interiorizes strong values from her father and mother both; and likewise for the boy. And we observe the boundless creativity and fluidity as children with the same mother/father interact in diverse, dramatic fashions. 

In the course of a seasoned, mature marriage the spouses mutually influence each other so that values that are lacking in each are interiorized from the other, making for balance and integrity in both husband and wife. This same dynamic holds for every relationship, community and organization: friendships, Church, education, business and politics. And so we would expect more exaggeration and imbalance in the young.

Deconstruction of Masculinity

Here we must mention Fleckinstein's guiding conviction: our crisis in virility. Femininity, also under attack, is nevertheless resilient, organic, instinctive, and ontologically-psychologically dense. Masculinity is far more fragile, vulnerable, and dependent upon a cultural itinerary of formation. While both are ontological, created forms, virility is more of a social construct as it depends more on training, motivation, discipline, correction, encouragement, mentoring and camaraderie. 

The society-wide, systemic destruction of virility formation leaves our young men adrift: prone to insecurity and indecision or to toxic, vicious machismo. And so, we witness in the Trump phenomenon the emergence of a crude macho politics: irreverent, nationalistic, defensive, raging, xenophobic, chauvinist. 

This bipolarity of weakness/viciousness elicits, of course, a feminist liberalism of suspicion, anxiety, and resentment. An unhappy polarization of the sexes!

Conclusion

If isolation is the problem, connection is the solution.

At every level, we desperately need connection: husband and wife, male and female, Marian and Petrine, traditional and progressive, conservative and liberal.  Such can happen, however, only within our greater communion, all of us, in the "Communio" of the Holy Trinity, in Christ and his Church. I have found it helpful, in every encounter and engagement, to "triangulate"...to engage the other (my friend, partner, competitor, enemy) in the presence of a "Third", Jesus Christ himself. In that luminous presence, all that is good in the other is enhanced, and all that is bad is overcome. 

May our youth engage, at every level of politics, all that is Good, True, Beautiful, Pure and Holy!

USA 1965: Why the Sudden, Catastrophic Collapse of the Catholic, Post-War Camelot?

The short answer to this question: a hundred million events and developments masterfully coordinated by the greatest intellect in Creation: Lucifer himself.

A slightly longer  answer: the Church emerged from the Vatican Council in 1965 confident, optimistic, credulous, eager to embrace and affirm all that is good in a world that was at that very moment about to explode in a tornado straight from hell: the Cultural-Sexual Revolution. The cohort about to take the reins of Catholic life, the Great Generation, was entirely unprepared for this assault. The Council, inspired by the Holy Spirit and authoritatively interpreted by John Paul and Benedict, not so much in its specific wording, but in the tone and mood that surrounded it, left the Church all the more unguarded, gullible and vulnerable to the imminent attack. Some of the steams that fed this flood are evident:

1. Prosperity, Security, Affluence, Achievement.  After the war and throughout the cold war, Catholics escaped the ghetto and were fully integrated into mainstream, bourgeois society in the happy ecumenical peace that largely pervaded the county. This contrasted sharply, of course, with the earlier travails of the depression and two wars. Inexorably there emerged a moral softness, materialism, consumerism, careerism, technological arrogance, individualism, and cultural superiority of the dominant world power. Unconsciously, without deliberation, they transitioned from urban ghetto to middle class suburb, from working to professional class, from social pariah and underdog to privileged achiever. The sharp countercultural identity...ethnic, anti-Protestant, persecuted (by WASP and Evangelical-Fundamentalist), "thick" religion...was inexorably replaced by a "thin," homogenized, accommodating partnership in the club of the successful and elite.

2. Individualism. From the roots of its founding...Calvinism, Enlightenment, Freemasonry... the USA had been anti-Catholic as individualistic and disparaging of communal Catholicism in its sacramentality, magisterium, religious life, Tradition/traditions, Mary and the saints. Catholic ethnics maintained an ambivalence about the country: appreciation for liberty and opportunity, but resistance to the WASP hegemony.  This sharp, thick, combative identity steadily dissolved from 1945-65 as Catholics blended into a society already secularizing and transitioning from Protestant to moralistic-therapeutic-deistic.

4. Loss of Sense of the Sacred and of Sin. The earlier poverty and suffering of immigration, two world wars, and the depression kept our grandparents close to death, sickness, and the precarity of human life as well as the realities of the supernatural...the heavenly but also the hellish facts of sin, evil, the demonic and damnation. This sense was diminished, if not lost, in the prosperity, power, and competence of post-war America. Comfort, security, achievement and the quasi-omnipotence of techno-science became an addictive narcotic for the now-bourgeois Catholic, smoothly ascending the ladder of professional/educational meritocracy. This trend surged around 1965 when immediately, intuitively the entire apparatus of Tridentine Catholicism became incoherent and nonsensical: confession, reparation for sin,  purgatory and hell (but not heaven which was welcoming, now, of everyone), judgement, the diabolical, spiritual warfare, the miraculous, and the very reality of the supernatural. Within a few years, the efficacious sacramental economy was replaced by an obsession with therapy and social activism as decisive in the fight against human suffering, without reference to sin or God.

4. Non-evangelical. In contrast to "I-love-Jesus-Protestantism," our mid-century Church did not clearly invite to a personal, intimate, eventful relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, man and God. Our boomer generation was systematically catechized into our sacramental, moral and dogmatic legacy, but not evangelized. The Christology of Tridentine Catholic piety placed a heavy accent on the suffering and death of Jesus as reparation for our sins: stations of the cross, the theology of substitution, a just and wrathful God.  This Jansenist trend was softened by devotion to the Sacred Heart, but even that accentuated his suffering and so was not entirely inviting. The merciful face of heaven was often projected on to Mary who is often described as restraining the wrathful arm of God. Such a Catholicism, lacking a clear theology of and devotion to the person of Jesus Christ, was viable within an enclosed, thick, ethnic, ghetto culture. But was unstable when released into a broader society, becoming viciously anti-Catholic.

5. De-Programmed.  More than anything else, the talented young athlete needs:  a good program  which includes competent coaches, stimulating teammates/competitors, balanced/challenging schedule of exercise, practice and games. So much greater is the need for solid spiritual programs. The Catholic Church is rich in this! St. Benedict gave us the monastic model which created Christendom. Francis, Dominic, Ignatius and a legion of such left us a superb banquet of options. In our time we see in the 12-steps of AA such a program; likewise renewal movements such as Opus Dei or the Neocatechumenal way exemplify this. For five centuries, since the Council of Trent, Catholics practiced such a sound program: obedience to the ten commandments, Church precepts, and the natural law; engagement with sacramental life; and fidelity to one's state of life (married, ordained, religious.)  For the more zealous, there was much more: devotions, third orders, novenas, missions, spiritual direction, confraternities of various sorts. Even minor things like meatless Fridays, choosing the names of saints, crossing oneself when passing a Church, hearing the Church chimes,  and ashes on the forehead at the start of lent played a role in defining one's identity, community, vocation and destiny as Catholic. 

In 1965, not according to the actual documents of the Council, but in accord with the "spirit" or overall pervading atmosphere at the time, that entire network of Catholic practice was disparaged by our fashionable, progressive elites. "THE PROGRAM" was dismantled. It was replaced by:...Nothing! A vague, innocuous, voluntarist, moralist individualism resulted. You can eat meat on Friday; just choose your own penance. That Church precept was immediately forgotten by everyone. Why confess sin when it is almost impossible to commit a real mortal sin (unless you are Hitler or Stalin.) Why pray for the deceased when we know all "good people" automatically go to heaven? 

6. Intellectual Superficiality. For several generations, from the start of the 20th century, the core of priestly formation was the dry, rigid manualist scholasticism which was detached from engagement with the broader academic culture. It was widely received as sterile and superficial. Especially in the thriving, fertile, activist post-war era, the pragmatic, can-do clergy were building many and massive physical plants, but pronouncedly low-brow and allergic to metaphysics (of Being)  and (realistic) epistemology. Intellectually, as well as spiritually, our clergy/hierarchy was unprepared for the assault launched in 1965. The younger clergy at the time, again practical and non-philosophical and technical, drifted swiftly into the social sciences, especially psychology, sociology and political science, as comfortable venues of human service. 

Conclusion.  It was hardly obvious at the time, but looking back we must conclude: the massive, impressive edifice of post-war Catholicism was vulnerable because it had a weak foundation, spiritually and intellectually. It was like a huge tree, with shallow roots. It could not resist a strong wind; and certainly not the tsunami-tornado-earthquake that struck immediately in 1965.

That post-war Catholic renaissance (1945-65) was a time of bounteous blessings. But we do well to avoid nostalgia. Every "Camelot" is in part illusory. That was not a perfect time. That impressive, but in some dimensions hallow, Catholic civilization was largely, but not completely destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. 

But Catholic life continues and thrives in millions of families, parishes, gatherings of all sorts. In different circumstances, Christ remains with us: in the Eucharist, his Word, every gathering in his name, and in billions of prayers and acts. The Holy Spirit abides with us and moves within us and among us.

 We surrender, Jesus our Lord, to your abiding presence; and, Holy Spirit, to your movements among us!