Mike is Hitting it Big


A couple of months ago, I broke the story of Mike Mangione to the world of blogs. Catching up with the trend, the widely-read Catholic blog American Papist has a profile of Mike and the band.

Go check it out, the coverage is extremely complimentary. There's even some video of the show.

Update: Buy his new CD Tenebrae

Spirituality in the Bathroom

I was thinking the other day about a situation that came up with a friend and I a couple of years ago. A friend of mine goes to a Franciscan school and I go to a Jesuit school. When we were both assigned to clean bathrooms as a part of the service team on a retreat, the following situation arose:

There was a stall where someone kept locking it from the inside and then getting out somehow, leaving the stall locked. My friend and I both encountered this stall, but we didn't compare notes about it until later. My friend got into the stall by getting on the floor and crawling under the door. Once inside, he cleaned the toilet, unlocked the door and left. When it was my turn to clean that stall, I twisted the piece of metal on the outside of the door that connects to the inside lock handle. The door opened. I cleaned the toilet.

I think that, in a nutshell, illustrates the difference between Jesuit and Franciscan spirituality.