After October - Part II: Rhode Island, Michigan, Father Joe, and Coffee With Jesus

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‘You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you —
Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar!’

— T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady

Looking back, I wish I could tell you what I expected.

The miles pile up, the days slip by. Distance and time do their inconclusive work.

It’s been three weeks and counting since I walked out the door of my home into the deep darkness of a Carolina Tuesday night, trading everything I knew and loved for the uncertainty of the road and the unreliable healing power of “space.”

It’s not forever, I told myself, as the miles sped past, the dotted lines like an asphalt metronome.

But I didn’t know if it was a lie.

Twenty-some days later, I still don’t.

But I do know that there is value in the odyssey.

I’ve experienced a level of calm and self-possession I haven’t felt in many years. It’s so easy to lose ourselves in a relationship dynamic where we’re seeking the approval and happiness of another (despite our sometimes infuriating inability to make progress in this regard) to such an extent that we forget who we even are. And in that forgetting, we tend to make these kinds of problems that much worse.

People pleasers know what I’m talking about. You likely grew up in a home where you had to perform a certain way in order to receive love, or even to feel safe. What begins as a survival strategy transforms, over time, into a lifelong habit of trying to play the part that you believe others expect from you, and after a while, you don’t even know who the real you even is.

But how can you give love if you don’t even know or love yourself? How can you be a whole person when you’re always trying to be someone you’re not?

I had expected a lot more from having time to think. But aside from the unexpected calming of my nervous system, the real blessing has been found in the opportunity to sit with people who see me through different eyes, and to hear what they have to say. I have visited old friends and finally gotten to know some folks in real life I only knew through association or online. Each has given me something to take with me along the way. Every stop rewards me with a puzzle piece or two for a jigsaw set that forms a picture I cannot yet see.

It’s strange, after decades of sharing a bed, to always sleep alone. It’s so empty — though, to be honest, not as empty as lying in a bed where the person you love is next to you, but is emotionally a million miles away. There is no absence like the one felt in the presence of someone whose love for you has withdrawn.

I sleep better, in some respects, but I fight the melancholy most in the hours leading up to sleep. I woke up at almost exactly 3AM this morning — the witching hour — troubled by a dream I can’t even recall. It felt significant. I wish I knew if it was.

My visit to

Kale Zelden

in Rhode Island lasted a week-and-a-half, but it felt like a blur. It was my first multi-day stop, and I wasn’t sure when I arrived exactly what to expect.

What was I doing there?

How long was I supposed to stay?

What the hell came next?

I vaguely remember summer visits to Rhode Island in childhood — not to Portsmouth but Misquamicut — where little purple jellyfish would sometimes wash up on the soft, golden sand, or sting your legs as you waded towards the waves. The aptly-named “Ocean State,” was, to me, mostly a hazy memory and a name on a map, not a place I had any other real personal context for.

Coastal New England is almost humorously homogenous; the same salt box houses in bright colors or clad in faded wooden shingles, the same overcrowded streets. Every town a stone’s throw from the sea. Rhode Island, though, seemed to have more beaches than anywhere else I’d been. I visited South Shore, Narragansett, Judith Point, Breton Point, Beavertail, and Scarborough Point — and those were just the ones within a half hour drive of where I was staying. Newport was touristy but gorgeous, with its improbable mansions and too-narrow streets and upscale wharfside shops.

I decided, since the hospitality of my friends had made it unnecessary to buy food, to splurge and get an overpriced lobster roll while I was there. I hadn’t had good New England lobster in several years, and there was a place I knew down by the docks. When I got there, they were out of gluten free rolls, and I was “wicked bummed,” as a New Englander would say, but I wound up ditching the carbs and going straight up, eating the lobster straight from a paper cup, my tastebuds exploding with delight with every bite.

For the most part, I lived as a homebody. Kale teaches, coaches, has an online class, and other duties at the school, so he is spread thin. I mostly saw him at meal times in the cafeteria, at night (when he was losing the battle not to fall asleep), and on weekends. Several days in, I realized we probably talked more when we were not in the same place than we did when I was staying in his home. Our online messages and occasional phone calls find a way to catch each other in the in-between moments of the day in a way that being in close physical proximity did not.

Most mornings, I’d go to grab coffee from the kitchen and bump into Dimi, Kale’s wife, who would engage me in very insightful conversation for hours, as their big black labs would loll around on the floor or the couch nearby. In the afternoons, I’d write or go for day trips to see the local sights — usually visits to the ocean — and then I’d make my way back for dinner and more conversation after Kale got home.

I knew it was time to leave when I felt myself becoming too comfortable.

I was procrastinating about taking the next step on the quest.

So I finally forced myself to pack up my stuff and go. I’ve already written about the Buffalo leg of the trip, but after that, it was on to Michigan.

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I don’t honestly remember when I first bumped into Fr. Joseph Krupp online. If I remember correctly, he reached out to me via DM on Twitter some years back, when I was still running my little trad Catholic media empire. He was not a trad himself, but he saw something in me. A common bond. I think he told me he knew I had a good heart and that I was suffering, and that he just wanted to reach out to let me know he was there.

This became characteristic of our friendship over the years, and he has often appeared in those moments when I most needed someone to give me a gentle push in the right direction. We both always assumed we’d meet each other in person, only to find that, as the years stretched on, it never came to pass.

When I knew, earlier this summer, that separation from my wife was almost certainly coming, I reached out to him. He responded with love and a lot of off-color humor — exactly my kind — and offered me a place to stay for as long as I needed.

The trip from Buffalo to Grand Blanc was smooth and uneventful. It was a gorgeous day, cool but not cold, and as I drove, there were plenty of fall colors coming into brighter bloom. I arrived in town around sunset, and set about looking for something to eat before heading to his rectory. When I arrived, he came out to greet me, a big bearded German in athletic shorts and a sleeveless shirt, the Chi Ro tattoo on his shoulder visible under the streetlight.

“The prophecy is fulfilled!” I proclaimed, and he gave me a big hug. Not one of those perfunctory hugs. The kind that tells you that you’re family.

At his kitchen counter, we talked as I used a pair of cheap bamboo chopsticks to shovel drunken noodles from the local Thai place into my hungry gob. His tabby cat, Bob, prowled the scene.

Bob had just been demoted to the second most recent stray that the man had taken in.

I knew that Father Krupp had a huge heart, but over the past week that I’ve been here, living with him, watching him work, I’ve been so impressed with the kind of man he is. I don’t want to embarrass him, but as I said recently online, he is the closest thing to an actual apostle that I think I’ve ever met.

I don’t mean that just in the metaphorical sense. I mean, imagine the actual apostles. They were professional fishermen. Rough around the edges. Hardnosed working men who nevertheless cared deeply about the truth, and doing the right thing.

Father describes himself as a Michigan redneck, and he can come across as a very salt of the earth kind of dude, but he is crazy smart. Knows a ton about history. Handles tough questions with wisdom and deep insight.

I don’t make friends easily, but he could almost literally be my brother. We have a shared interest in many things. He has the humor and timing of a stand up comedian — and ribald jokes are not out of bounds in the slightest — and a mouth like a sailor. His ADHD is worse than mine, and keeping him on topic is like chasing a proverbial herd of cats — but these cats are on methamphetamine.

One of our typical interactions via text:

Me: “Reminder: Don’t be gay.”
Him: “Well, I wish you would have sent me that earlier.”

Multiply this times pretty much every conversation.

Since arriving, I’ve sat in the studio with him and his crew for four episodes of his twice-weekly podcasts, and they are non-stop entertainment, but with a real heart beneath the jokes. When he answers questions from the faithful, he can shift from a constant stream of zingers to a level of compassion that I have rarely seen from any member of the clergy. His answer to one woman’s question about her late husband’s eternal fate was so moving, I was wiping tears from my eyes by the time he was halfway through.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that he is genuinely one of the kindest, most generous, most loving people I’ve ever met. I showed up at his door as an agnostic apostate whose marriage has failed. But never for a moment have I felt judged by him, or lectured, or pressured to do anything but rest and be made to feel welcome. He is busy as hell — some days I barely see him at all — but at night he finds time to hang out and eat dinner while watching sports or other favorite shows with his 89-year-old father, Gordie, who has lived with him the past couple of years, and I’m always invited to join in.

A couple days into my visit, someone from the National Catholic Register interviewed them and did a piece on their relationship. It captures the essentials, but not the depth. I know firsthand the challenges of taking care of an elderly and increasingly infirm parent, but Father Joe is the biggest hype man imaginable for his dad.

“Papasan! PAPPPAAASSAAAN!!” he’ll yell in an exaggeratedly ridiculous voice, going through the house looking for his dad to include him in whatever activity they’re doing together next. “My dad is the BEST!” he’ll say, or “Best dad EVER!” or “My dad is such a BADASS!”

Even when his dad isn’t around to hear.

It’s clear that the man is his hero.

And to be fair, his dad is a very cool guy. He likes to tinker in the garage, and when he heard me mention that I needed some compressed air to blow the dust out of my laptop fans, he spent the next couple days rigging up a compressor with an air line I could use to clear it out. I told him I only needed a couple of quick blasts, but that didn’t slow him down. Once the cleanout was done, we sat in the garage and had a cigar together.

He’s a man of few words, but his presence is significant. As the article I linked above says, Gordie goes with Joe on every sick call. He prays the rosary in the truck while padre does his thing. He’s there for every podcast. He’s there for every event. Walking has become a painful ordeal for the elder Krupp, but he doesn’t let it stop him.

As for Father Joe, I think his most-used descriptor for his fellow man is “Beautiful.” “Such a beautiful priest,” he’ll say, or, “Just a beautiful soul.” There is not an ounce of artifice in his love for people. He genuinely sees the good in them, even when they’re a colossal pain in the ass.

Which is probably why he likes me.

He’s as likely to punctuate his diatribes with the phrase “Come Holy Spirit” as he is to slip in a casual cuss word. He is a man who grew up brawling, and the last fight he was in came just a few weeks after his ordination.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to tell this story, and I may get the details a little wrong, but it’s too good not to share, so I’m asking forgiveness rather than permission:

Many years ago, when he was a brand new priest, he had been asked to give a blessing at a local racing event, and had showed up in civilian clothes, not his clerics. There was an accident of some kind, and an ambulance was on route, and he wound up as part of the group of people trying to keep the crowd out of the way so it could get through. That was when a drunk, gigantic redneck sucker punched him, breaking his jaw.

Krupp is 6’1” and was about 240lbs at the time, so when he said the guy towered over him, the dude must have been colossal.

“I don’t really remember what happened,” he told me. “I remember spitting out tin foil — turned out, it was my fillings — and I vaguely remember getting up and going at him, blowing out his knee. After that, there’s nothing.”

His friends told him that after the huge man went down on his ruined knee, Father Joe was on top of him, fists flying. They had to pull him off. The attacker wound up in the hospital with a broken jaw of his own, and a few other broken bones besides. The case went to court, but when the judge saw how much bigger the other guy was, and the Roman Collar on the newly-ordained Father Krupp, he looked at the prosecution and said, “Do you really want to do this?”

They ended up dropping the case.

I mention this only because it’s important to contextualize the man’s character. He’s a man’s man living out his vocation within a priesthood that includes far too many weak, effeminate men. He’s attracted to women. He likes to fight. He loves sports. His head is full of stories of war. He believes in the importance of rites of passage for boys.

“I know how to love you or to burn down your village,” he told me. “I don’t have a middle gear.”

“Same,” I said.

Fortunately, his heart usually wins.

The other night, we had our first minor dispute about something trivial. It wasn’t any big deal, just that he liked one thing and I liked a different thing. I don’t even remember what it was, but he looked at me with a stunned expression on his face.

“Holy crap,” he exclaimed, his eyes huge, “you’ve been here a week and we finally disagree about something!” Everything he does is animated; intense, and often loud.

(A congenital condition he inherited from his late mother has left him mostly deaf, and even with hearing aids in, he often has to read lips to understand what you’re saying. When he has them out, he shouts at me, asking if I can hear him OK. I find this hilarious, especially because his 89 year old father hears just fine.)

He’s just a fire-filled guy. Our temperaments are weirdly similar.

I made dinner one night, and even though it was just American-style tacos, he acted like it was the best thing he’d had in months. It wasn’t flattery. He even tweeted about it:

Another night, as we were both sitting there barefoot in our athletic shorts and t-shirts watching something, sprawled out on recliners in the living room like the fat slobs we are, I told him I loved that he hangs out the same way I do. He agreed wholeheartedly that the most comfortable way to chill makes you look like an absolute schlub, but it feels so good.

“I hate clothes,” he told me.

“Me too,” I said.

At some point, every night, at least three times, he tells his devil-spawn cat to attack me. “Bite uncle Steve!” he cajoles. “Attack the apostate!”

Usually, Bob attacks him instead, drawing expletives and sometimes even blood.

I haven’t done much since I’ve been here except write, edit videos, run little errands, and enjoy hanging out with a couple of other guys, doing guy stuff. I got my oil changed. I got a haircut. I saw the new Tron movie. Father has an incredible German automated machine that makes the best damn drip-style coffee I’ve ever had. I’m totally hooked, and drink as much as I can get away with without the jitters every day.

The theater where I saw Tron: Ares. Bring back Art Deco architecture!

For me, the combination of alone time to do deep work and fellowship when there’s time for it is exactly what I need. But because he’s so busy, I’ll stop in the middle of whatever I’m working on to just go talk if I hear him come back from whatever the latest thing on his calendar is. I think we’ve only had one or two serious conversations since I got here, but they’ve both been great. He never presses. He’s just all about being my friend.

Correction: my brother. He reminded me of that last night. He has a bunch of adopted siblings, so the idea of family to him is much more than just blood. In fact, he pretty much refers to me as “Brother” and nothing else.

On the second or third day I was here, he mentioned that he had a private chapel. It’s just a room with an altar, a tabernacle, a few saint statues, a crucifix, and a bible.

I made a visit one night in the dark. I obviously struggle with belief in the Eucharist, but it’s right there. There was no good reason not to stop in.

“Is the Blessed Sacrament reserved in there?” I asked him the next morning.

“Yeah.” He said.

“Ok, I was just wondering, because there’s no…”

“Sanctuary candle? Yeah, I know. Guess why? BOB.”

The cat strikes again.

I’ve gotten in the habit of bringing my first cup of coffee to that chapel every morning. There was a comic strip, I don’t know if it still exists, called Coffee With Jesus. I think of it every time.

I go in, I sit down, I have a sip, and I stare at the little metal box.

“I don’t know if you’re here,” I say, “but I sure could use your help.” Then I talk. I dump. I ask. I plead. And then I sit and wait. And as has always been the case for as long as I can remember, nothing comes. No little whisper, no tiny voice in my head, no big realization, no solution to the problem that presents itself unbidden to my mind.

People ask me, sometimes, what I expect to hear. They sound incredulous.

“I don’t know,” I tell them. “Something I can perceive as being God. Something that clearly isn’t me. Something that helps.”

It’s not my job to tell God how to reach me. I don’t know what the hell my problem is and why I can’t feel him there. I can give half a dozen reasons for losing my faith, but none for why I can’t find it again. It’s just…gone.

You might think that’s odd, considering the daily visits. Hell, I even went to Mass on Sunday, because, again, it’s right here.

“It’s as good a time as any if you want to give me an epiphany, Lord,” I said, from my spot in the Narthex, so far back I was almost inside the sacristy.

I still don’t like the Novus Ordo, but my man has such a reverent love for his priesthood, his people, and the Eucharist, that it didn’t bother me the way it often does in places where I don’t perceive those things. He had the words “Introibo ad altare dei” painted above the sanctuary. I wonder how many of his parishioners know that the line is taken from the old prayers at the foot of the altar.

On the wall in his private chapel, he has a set of altar cards for the TLM. I don’t know if he’s ever offered it. I didn’t ask. It doesn’t honestly matter to me. The man is one of the best priests — no, one of the best human beings — I’ve had the privilege to get to know. I don’t care nearly as much about which Mass he offers as what kind of man he is.

Authenticity is such a big deal to me. I have never for one second felt like he was just being nice to me because he felt like he should.

He challenges my autistic need for strict rules and order within my conception of religion. He answers questions about the faith in a way that sometimes drives the formerly theologically-rigid part of my brain crazy, but I have decided maybe that’s exactly what I need.

“A God who would die on a cross for you,” he said on his podcast today, “isn’t looking for some loophole so he can send you to hell. He will do everything he can to make sure you’re there with him in heaven. He loves you more than you could ever love anything.”

That’s the God I want to believe in. Not the wrathful, jealous one I’m used to imagining.

I couldn’t have asked for a better brother at a time like this. It’s going to be incredibly hard to leave.

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As the days go by, I collect little tidbits of wisdom that the internet seems to be chucking my way. I saw this one and joked, “I’d like the universe to please knock it off now.”

Although, if this is right, maybe there really is a pot of gold at the other end of this utterly devouring rainbow. Guess I’d better stick around to find out.

Over the days and weeks, these little notes I stumble across form a mosaic of insight in my mind. Maybe you’ll find them cheesy, but here are a bunch of the nuggets I’ve collected recently:

The problem I’m facing now is that I’m homesick for a home that is no longer mine. Every scrap of comfort, every moment of real friendship, every shared meal or communal cigar, every night I come back to a room that I’ve been allowed to make feel like my own…it makes me want to stay where I am. I crave routine and familiarity and conversation. I crave belonging.

But this is not where I belong.

I am a man of many solitary pursuits, but I hate isolation and loneliness.

The situation here works well for me, because I’m an ambivert — a mix of introversion and extroversion. I only need a couple hours a day of human interaction to satisfy my need for people, but that need is deep and non-negotiable. Last night, Father had to go to a fundraising dinner and I was here eating alone, watching a movie. The house was so damn quiet. Darkness fell. The feeling of isolation was almost suffocating — particularly because I know that this is the life I will have to live every day when I head back to Raleigh at the end of this trip.

I don’t know how to face that. I can’t imagine it’s ever going to get easier.

The upside is, I’ve been reminded that part of the reason I’ve been spinning my wheels for the past few years is because I don’t get nearly enough solitude. The fact that it’s quiet here and I am allowed to work for hours without a single interruption is why I’m able to get pieces like this done. I haven’t experienced that in years. There was so much interruption and turmoil in my life that I rarely had the opportunity to do the deep work I crave. The stuff I’m made for. I’ve worked on this piece for about five hours over two different days, and not once has it been interrupted in a way that made me lose my train of thought. I’d almost forgotten what this was like.

It’s one of the things I could never figure out how to solve: it’s almost impossible to do creative work in the context of a large, busy family. So what do you do when that’s the thing you’re best at?

Despite how great it’s been, I can’t stay here forever. I am growing too comfortable in the wrong place. My children are an 11 hour drive away, and I have to decide if there is more to this odyssey that I need to learn from before heading back to be close to them. However that’s supposed to work.

Even when I do go back, I don’t have a place to live. I’ve received no invitation to come back home. I’ve got zero support network. Not a single friend or family member. I will likely have to rent a room in someone’s house, or maybe a tiny home, if I can get one just as cheap, and then the isolation will begin in earnest. I’ll see my kids when schedules permit, certainly, but I will have no adult companionship. Nobody to come home and talk to about how much it sucks to see my kids on someone else’s terms, and then have to turn around and leave. No more tuck-ins, no more lying in bed with the little guy until he goes to sleep. I may have bought that bed and slept in it for years, but it isn’t mine anymore.

And how do I learn to pretend to be OK in the presence of the woman I loved for half my life, as I feel her suspicion and emotional distance and boundaries made of ice?

I’m not ashamed to admit that I am terrified of this. If I’m not careful, this could be a path to a slow and suffocating death of self. If I don’t return home with a solid sense of self, and purpose, and where I’m headed, I may well get sucked back into despair.

For now, as the weather gets colder, and the clock winds down on my reasonable time to be away from that eventual fate, I am looking West, and trying to decide if I should still go. Do I drive thousands of miles into the unknown on a boomerang arc back to a life I dread, in the hope that I find the culminating insight that ties all the suffering and wandering together in a singular understanding of the man I want to become?

Is there more to learn out there, away from comfort and quickly-fashioned familiarity? Are there lessons I need to learn away from the consoling company of friends? How do I form the man who must return, at the end of the journey, to a Shire that has already been scoured? How do I find the strength to face what comes?

I’m increasingly inclined to think that the only way to know is to cut the cord to safety and just get in the car and go.

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