Rebelling Against Entropy

…would also be a good name for an album.

It’s tough to be bored and truly Catholic. Sometimes I wish it were otherwise, that my religion would gently tell me, “sit back, relax, God is an infinite, unreachable energy that pervades the universe as the whole of our collective consciousnesses.” That would be easy. I could turn up some Jack Johnson, smoke a morally subjective joint and take a nap with that world view. But my religion – may it live long and prosper – demands that I listen to Switchfoot’s latest album. It tells me – quite blatantly – that there are angels and demons in battle ferocious over my eternal soul, even as I type. That I have saints as helpers, graces as power, prayers as weapons, Mary as intercessor and an infinite being infinitely interested in my infinite happiness. There are moments when I yell to the skies, “Tone it down, darn it! I mean, c’mon, glossolalia? Really?” But alas, my religion is not convenient, it is true.

And thus it’s tough to be bored, because unlike the drama of our day-to-day lives, there is no rest from the drama, the narrative of our salvation. And that’s a good thing, because boredom…well, it’s boring. The world, in all it’s shininess, is inherently bored and dissatisfied. Because our souls are eternal, temporal things – worldly things – will fail to fulfill. Because we were meant to live forever, cars that break down, houses that crumble and jobs that end, no matter how fantastic they are when we have them, don’t quite cut it in terms of being fully alive. I would go into detail, but CAKE sums up the apathy:

So – in order to satisfy ourselves we do one of two things. We might go the way of the world and keep a constant inflow of ‘stuff’. The rational here is that, if temporal things satisfy us for a short time, then always having more temporal things, always having new pleasures, new thrills – all this will keep us constantly satisfied. And isn’t that the same as being truly satisfied? No, if you want the short answer, because Mick Jagger can’t get no satisfaction, and if there’s anyone who’s kept the constant inflow of pleasure and thrills and temporal garbage it’s him. The point is, it doesn’t work. All trying to fill ourselves with the world will do is make us want more, until we have hole in our souls that no drug can fill. Not that my major reader demographic are heroin addicts, but we all have places in our lives where we try to fill the need for something eternal with something temporal.

So instead, cling to the things that last. In a world where words go out of fashion in a matter of months, speak the name of Christ. In a world that grows bored of a book after the movie has been made, read the Bible. In a world that needs an average of 2 seconds a clip to keep us focused on their music videos, gaze at the Eucharist in adoration. In a world where boredom seems inevitable, realize that it is a lie, that life is exciting, an adventure almost too great to bear.