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Well, given that my 12 Months Later review of my social media exodus was read as more of a 2023 Review (which it was, to be fair) I might as well do another re-view for 2024 😅  'Silver screen' rising into position. Note the storm clouds in the background. 2024 was kicked off by going out with some fellow World Youth Day pilgrims to the Westpac OpenAir Cinema on the Fleet Steps overlooking Farm Cove and the rest of Sydney Harbour. The film we’d arranged to see was One Life (2023), a biographical film about humanitarian Nicholas Winton and more broadly about the Kindertransport of Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain at the beginning of World War II. This is hardly a film for the faint of heart and as if to accentuate this point we sat, in provided ponchos, for about the last two-thirds of the film under wave after wave of rain pouring over Sydney Harbour. Watching a film outdoors on Sydney Harbour in rolling rain running off my poncho-covered head is an experience I won’t soon forget. Speaking of World Youth Day Lisbon, much of 2024 was spent finishing off a 12-month voucher for photo printing by having a selection of my photos from 2023 physically printed and then arranged by me in a photo album. To mark the 1-year anniversary of the WYD Pilgrimage in July, I organized two get-together lunches for the Over 18s Pilgrim (Italy and Portugal) cohort which many appreciated. I cannot comment about my fellow pilgrims’ experiences. But for me, a year-and-a-half on from Lisbon I’m only just coming to grips with, and processing through, what we all went through over those 22 hectic days of pilgrimage across Mediterranean Europe. But I can say that, for having done it once, I at least have more of an idea of what to expect a second time around and how to manage things and myself better than I did the first time, please God.
In comparison to 2023: 2024 was an exponential increase of train trips, train festivals and rail heritage excursions with my father. Our travels took us north to the Hunter Region around Newcastle and as far south as Goulburn and the Southern Highlands. Indeed, there were many long days with very-early morning starts. But we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, yet we were very tired by the end of those same days. September saw me travelling by airplane up to Brisbane for the IGNITE Conference 2024 organized by Emmanuel Community and its Ignite Youth ministry team. This was the real curveball of 2024 and it was my first ever experience of IGNITE.  Archbishop Mark Coleridge at the microphone. All the talks by various speakers that I went to were good and informative on different parts of the Catholic faith life. A special stand out was the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge’s talk on Encountering the Scriptures where he discussed how the bible “goes to the heart of hopelessness to find a hope that cannot be destroyed.” He truly enkindled in his audience a greater appreciation of “the black fire on white fire” as the Rabbis describe the Holy Scriptures.  Emmanuel Worship on stage, IGNITE Conference 2024 Brisbane. The rallies at IGNITE were experiences. There was much good in them, but by the end of the three-and-a-bit days I was ready to run back to my bunk-hole at home and not have another thousand decibels going right through my body. After attending IGNITE and commuting across Brisbane each morning and evening, it has confirmed to me that what’s needed is smaller and quieter events where good conversation can take place. There’s a place for the big events, as long as they are not the only option available.  Kodak M38 point-and-shoot camera arranged with Kodak UltraMax 400 speed film. On a less frazzled note, that same month I also started shooting 35mm film with a re-loadable plastic point-and-shoot camera. It has been a nice change of pace from taking photos with my smartphone. I don’t really know or have even an idea of what 2025 will bring, apart for the Jubilee Year of Hope that has just begun. Dear God, may this new year see an outpouring of Your love and of experiences of hopes and dreams fulfilled. Let’s see if there’ll be a 2025 Review, eh? Vincent Cavanagh 3 Jan 2025 Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account
of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. ~ 1 Peter 3:15-16, NRSV Catholic
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I will endeavour in this personal, reflective piece not to repeat things that I have already written much about before.  'Rise Up', Vincent Cavanagh © 2024 LISBON World Youth Day Week started on a Tuesday, 1 August 2023, which makes keeping track of events personally in one’s mind rather difficult. Later on, at times one could be forgiven for the honest mistake of losing, or even gaining, a day on your internal calendar.
Yes, I’m back and this may or may not be a newsletter under a different guise.
You can do it like I have 💀 by staring off into the sea of empty calorific YouTube video suggestions wondering what that last thought was that you didn’t want to forget. Or reading through multiple inter-referenced substack pages and church journalism and a touch too much European politics “news” – which I still don’t have my head around; and should probably be grateful for that fact. Or not-quite-compulsively checking either the weather application or if there are any updates on Facebook Messenger to previous text messages (or trying to reverse engineer which comment someone liked due to the latest update, grrr!) Speaking of substack pages, one that I’ve been gravitating back to of late—and isn’t as overly swimming in bar graphs or generally depressing as others—is the School of the Unconformed by Ruth Gaskovski. For about the past year(?) or so she has been doing shared essays with her husband Peco that they cross-post between each other’s substack page (Peco’s is Pilgrims in the Machine). The general theme of their essays is regaining man’s [1] humanity from both the jaws and bowels of the inhuman Machine world we now find ourselves living in. Of which this quote by Ruth from their recent article, ‘Building People with Three-Dimensional Memory’, is an example: The incessant distraction of interfacing with devices leaves us feeling as if our brain and our body are forever in a different place. It almost seems as if we are in a race to upload our life into the virtual universe. Our desire to capture and share the present is numbing our ability to form natural memories of the moments we want to actually treasure. By excessively documenting our lives artificially Marshall McLuhan might say we are “autoamputating” our memory. And Peco continues in his section of the piece by exemplifying how technology is artificially engendering the tell-tale symptoms of Alzheimer’s into all of us glued to our digital devices: Some segments of the culture might experience a carefree insouciance as they become largely forgetful of what has come before—the wisdom, knowledge, and traditions of history—and more gripped by the here-and-now stimulation of their screens. I would highly encourage anyone else interested to read the whole article here. As well as Ruth’s interview with Erin Loechner (don’t worry, I’d never heard of her either), ‘Turning the Algorithm Upside Down: The Opt-Out Family’, where Erin answers Ruth’s daughter’s question of whether there even is a “healthy” way to be on social media: I know the more palatable answer here is to speak of digital well-being and balance and how to successfully navigate the algorithm in a way that we can consume the good without the bad. But we can’t. Just like any mind-altering drug we might ingest, social media makes it so we are not in control of the experience we’ll have immediately after. And I can no longer see any potential reward in delivering our God-given brains to a [tattooed] group of tech bros in Silicon Valley.” [Note: At the time of writing, this post by the Gaskovski’s was open to non-subscribers (June 2024), future readers of this blog post may find these articles behind Subscription/Pay Walls. Their substack posts tend to be open for a few months before going behind the Subscription Wall, depending on whether an article is important enough that it remain open for the greatest number of people to read and gain use from it.] Keepin’ Up wit’ Gen ZNow on to lighter fare. Amongst my varying sojourns through internet-life I have compiled a list of all the various different Internet Grammar and Acronyms that I’ve come across over the past month or so: LLAP ‘Live Long and Prosper’ 🖖 rekt Internet form of ‘Wrecked’. 🗿 Moai (Easter Island Head) emoji. Used to communicate a deadpan or shocked/embarrassed-into-speechlessness expression. Or alternatively—if in Japan—used to arrange meeting up with people at the Moyai statue near Shibuya Station in Tokyo. IYKYK ‘If You Know, You Know’ Vietnamese “teencodes”: Hixx or Hixxxxx – written version of 😢 (crying face emoji). Huhu – written version of 😭 (loudly crying face – or as I know it, ‘waterfall tears’). TIL ‘Today I Learned.’ ily / ILY ‘I Love You.’ Not to be confused with illy, the Italian Espresso company. bby / BBY Internet alternative form of ‘Baby’. (ex. ‘Woohoo BBY!’) More often used when using ‘baby’ as a term of endearment. RTFM ‘Read The … Manual!’ Often used within the Linux user community forums. Jubilee 2025For those of us not on TikTok (or whichever platform it was announced on), the Reverend Samuel French (@frsamfrench) will be leading a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St Paul through Greece and Turkey with Harvest Journeys exclusively for Young Adults aged 18 to 35 for the Holy Year of Jubilee in 2025: ‘Pilgrims of Hope’. More information about the pilgrimage can be found here. AS I WROTE at the beginning of this blog, this post may effectively be a newsletter in all but name. Yes, there are already plenty of other blog posts on this website that have been tagged with “newsletter”, but I specifically chose to name this RANDOM Things #001 because I’d prefer to make a clean break of the prior hodgepodge of blog posts and because the perfectionist in me wouldn’t let up unless I went through and counted every-single-blog-post with either tag or semblance of “newsletter” both on this website and its predecessor. Which is not an option that I look upon with any enthusiasm, hence why RANDOM Things #001. I do—and I ask that you reading this likewise—not expect this to in any way be a regular or (dear God save me) quarterly affair. It is my estimation that RANDOM Things be more of an ‘every now and then’ or just ‘I haven’t painted anything, but here’s what’s been kicking around in my head recently’ type of blog post. So until the next one of these not-newsletters eventuates; Peace and Happy Feast of St Peter and St Paul. Vincent Cavanagh 29 June 2024 Footnotes [1] As in the genus man (mankind) of which both men and woman, male and female, make up the whole category (ex., “earth men” and “Men of Earth”) – for the peculiarly post-Age of Aquarius pedants out there. Happy Feast of St Joseph. Painted 14 March 2024  ‘St Joseph and Jesus (2024)’, Vincent Cavanagh, 2024 This painting may have only taken a day to paint, but it was a whole year—and two months—in the making. The product of a deadline that I didn’t think that I was even supposed to be working towards and God’s Timing. Aack! Leaving the histrionics aside, the photograph that this picture of St Joseph and the child Jesus is based upon was taken at a local church just before mass. A father was sitting with his family in a pew, about three rows over, holding his sleeping youngest son over his shoulder. One of those “take a photo or regret it”–moments from God. In the end, very little actually changed from the photograph—well, apart from changing clothes to robes, adding head coverings, and including hair on the back of St Joseph’s head, of course.
This whole hectic schedule of events was due to a conflicting parish event after the youth night and the lateness of the St Joseph’s Day Eve party at Joseph House being on at a prohibitively late time for me to attend. In the end the picture was printed (Thank God!) and present to the housemates, and it should now be hanging somewhere inside Joseph House. Vincent Cavanagh 19 Mar 2024 Now, as for an update on my previous update about working on writing down my experiences of WYD Lisbon, that’s no longer moving forward. I’m not joking when I write that it was a commandment from on high. And given how much I was reliving certain emotions to an unhealthy amount, I’m more than alright with just letting it drop and focusing on what God actually wants me to be focused on instead. Ask God before you leap into things whether you should be leaping into them at all. P.S. Also, the writing was the reason that I only had a single day left to paint Joseph and Jesus. (Face palm) Oi vey! A brief update as to what I’m up to at the moment.
*midst | as in: ‘in the midst of him’; not a synonym for ‘middle’. 19 Mar 2024 For any update about the writing, you'll find it at the bottom of the next blog post. Reviewing my 12-Month Social Media Exodus.  Heading towards the Marquês de Pombal Monument, Lisbon. Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Well, it’s been 12 months since I started my Social Media Exodus and now it’s time to review the year that was. Okay, so starting off, 2023 was World Youth Day year for me. You may have seen some posts here and there on the blog and archived on the website, and possibly also on Facebook (sarcasm). Speaking of the aforementioned social media platform, I think it’s safe to say that (apart from WYD) I haven’t been signed into it any more than strictly necessary. Nowadays it functions, for me personally, as more of an alert-slash-events manager and reference tool for finding people and past events. Since WYD I have been using Messenger far more than I thought I ever would in my whole life. It’s certainly been a change of pace having a social life.  A day out on Sydney Harbour. Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Twitter is all but officially mothballed, waiting for a reason (if any) to actively post on it again. Even though most Catholic parish Youth Ministries appear to have highly active profiles, I still don’t ever see myself returning to Instagram. Certainly not under my own name in any case. As for YouTube… oh, dear. Apart from proactively uploading two videos from WYD Lisbon featuring the lead vocals of Fr Samuel French I’ve been passively over-consuming other people’s YouTube videos. My anxieties over travel, packing, and WYD preparations absolutely did not help cut down on my ‘Watch time’ as I had hoped to rein in 12 months earlier. Being stuck in a maelstrom of choice-paralysis over what small new camera to buy to take over with me to Europe for the pilgrimage didn’t cut down wasted hours either. And in any case, I ended up taking more photos with my smartphone than I did with the camera I bought to stop me over-using said same smartphone. Live and learn, eh? I have bought a Peak Design camera strap that should help aid in using the camera more in future. And speaking of the future, I am all too aware of my current (ahem!) “habit” of bookmarking videos and website articles about various different foods, religious sites, and locations of interest across both East and Southeast Asia in the possibility of preparation(!) for 2027 World Youth Day. People are not kidding when they talk about the WYD/Travel "bug". As an aside, I still don’t think that I’d ever be able to learn, let alone read, Hangul / Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. I’ve accepted that A) I don’t have to know everything and B) that I’m going to be especially reliant on those who can and have persevered to learn Korean. Returning to YouTube specifically, I did come across the DF Tube Chrome Extension that has been of some great help in cutting down more video-related rabbit holes than I would have without it. Its main attraction (for me) was the ability to turn off the righthand video suggestion box whilst watching a YouTube video. Admittedly it makes things lopsided visually, but it does mean that I have fewer distractions from the video in front of me. Sadly, DF Tube can’t do anything about my procrastination. That’s all on me. So, to sum up. I have been relatively withdrawn from my social media profiles – discounting blogging about the WYD pilgrimage. I have gained a social life that is aided by messaging applications which come with their own problems – the applications, not the social life. My personal struggles with self-discipline and YouTube over-consumption remain. In part I know that some of this is due to a lack of projects and regular routine. Pray for me. Putting my focus on posting blogs and standardizing parts of this website has helped me feel less pressured than I would have been if I was still only posting on Facebook or Twitter. As well as not having as much comparison-itis with the edited and project lives of other people on social media. This doesn’t mean that I still don’t struggle with comparison, it’s just not as severe as it has been in the past. In closing I think that I will continue as I have done so these past 12 months and with God’s help get a better grip over my YouTube-surfing and other self-defeating habits. Until next time. Vincent Cavanagh 25 Jan 2024 Just a brief update to let you all know that, yes, I am still alive. I am currently in the middle of a 6-week course on “Theology of Body” by Pope John Paul II which is taking up nearly all of my mental and physical energy and leaving myself with not much left in tank for anything. This is in addition to my general lack of focus and purpose in the wake of World Youth Day Lisbon 2023 and finishing my 2024 Calendar. Currently, I find myself living (read: surviving) from one ex-WYD pilgrim social event/get-together to the next, which are so far averaging about a month apart. Post-World Youth Day Blues? Perhaps. I know that I shouldn’t complain, because before WYD I had never had any social life what is filling up my calendar now. But I am aware of how fickle sudden-social-relationships can dissipate in the blink of an eye unless they are tended to and (hopefully) cultivated into last friendships. Please kindly keep myself and all my fellow “Theology of the Body” course participants in your prayers. Thank you. Vincent Cavanagh 22 Oct 2023  Cremorne Reserve Lighthouse, Sydney Harbour | Vincent Cavanagh © 2023  Luggage Check-In, Madrid-Barajas International Airport ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Just before 7am Madrid time, we were checking our luggage in at Madrid-Barajas Airport. Qatar Airways was taking us on both the Madrid to Doha, and the Doha to Sydney flights. For our Madrid to Doha flight, we were in a Boeing 777.  And the Boxing Kangaroo pillow belongs to … ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 You might remember that when we landed in Milan for the beginning of our pilgrimage, a flight attendant gave this neck pillow into my keeping since it obviously belonged to an Australian pilgrim. Despite sending up flares on social media, and making other enquiries, its ownership was still unknown. I had hoped that someone would have claimed it at the Australian gathering in Lisbon, but no. Yet waiting in the lounge at Madrid airport the connection was made. This pilgrim was a helper with the White bus; and had elected to do his European sight-seeing before meeting up with the White bus pilgrims in Lisbon. Since he had already ordered an exact replacement of his missing neck pillow, he graciously bestowed it on me. You can’t make these things up!  The Orchard, Doha-Hamad International Airport ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Going through the indoor tropical garden at Doha airport to find food. I ended up choosing sweet and sour fish with rice. Despite longingly looking up at the elevated driver-less people-mover monorail both times we were at Doha airport, my fellow pilgrims elected to do the 15-minute walk between where we landed and where the second flight was departing from.  Ground-level Sydney ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Yay! Thanks be to God. Just before 5pm on 12 Aug we were back home on ‘terra firma’, at Sydney International Airport, Mascot. We landed 10 minutes after the pilgrim flights from Paris. The pilgrims who flew home from Lisbon arrived in Sydney on 11 Aug. From a straw poll of pilgrims, the average length of sleep that first night home was 14 hours. All of us are slowly recovering from jetlag and exhaustion. We’ve been told to expect it to take two weeks to get back into normal sleep rhythms again. Please pray that all the seeds of grace placed by God in pilgrim hearts over these three-and-a-bit weeks will, in His timing, yield an abundant harvest. Amen. Vincent Cavanagh #bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023 15 Aug 2023, 9.32pm Sydney After travelling all day from Fatima to a hotel close to Madrid airport we thought that Mass was out of the question. But God had a surprise for us. Our most resourceful seminarian just happened to know the dean of Madrid cathedral: and learned that in the months of July and August there is an 8pm Mass on weekdays. So off we went.  Side entrance to Almundena Cathedral, Madrid, Spain ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 We approached the Cathedral by this side entrance, which is quite small compared with the rest of the Cathedral. While the need for this Cathedral in Madrid was known for centuries it has only comparatively recently been built. Taking 110 years to build, it was consecrated on 15 Jun 1993 by Pope St John Paul II.  Preparing for Mass at Almundena Cathedral ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 The cathedral has one main nave, with two side naves; and three transepts off the main nave to give it the form of a Latin Cross. Our Mass was in the right-hand side nave dedicated to Our Lady of Almundena, or as we would call it, Our Lady of the Citadel. Under this title Mary, Mother of Jesus, is best known and loved by the Spanish people because the original statue has stories of miracles attached to it. The Christians of 8th century Madrid had deep devotion to Mary, Mother of God, and when the area was invaded by the moors, this statue was hidden to prevent its destruction. It lay hidden for some 300 years before a Christian king came along and demanded it be found. Although the secret location had been passed down from family to family, by the time this Christian king came on the scene the holder of the secret had just died without telling her young daughter where it was. After much prayer a miracle happened, part of the castle wall crumbled to reveal the statue.  Roof of the Lady Chapel, Almundena Cathedral, Madrid, Spain ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 The patterns in this roof are very colourful and look a lot like palm fronds to me.  St Isidro's ark (funeral chest), located behind the main altar of Almundena Cathedral ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Behind the priest with the white shirt is a reliquary box encased in glass. Inside the reliquary box are the remains of St Isidore the Farmer, patron of Madrid, who died on 15 May 1130. Although sometimes he is called St Isidore the Labourer. He and his wife St Maria belong to that rare breed of married Saints. They had a son who died in his youth. Not that holiness is limited to consecrated life, nor to martyrs; and not that holiness in married life is uncommon; but it is a lot easier for religious orders to keep a cause for canonization going through several lifetimes of postulators. What makes St Isidore the farmer so special? He put God and prayer first. He would go to Mass each morning before work. At least once when his fellow workers complained that he wasn’t working, they found him deep in prayer, and an angel ploughing the fields in his stead. St Isidore is also known for his kindness towards animals, and for the hospitality of his home. Frequently St Isidore would bring hungry people home, and his holy wife always had a pot of stew on the fire waiting for them, and once when St Isidore brought home far more hungry people than usual God multiplied the food for them. On the far left-hand side is the statue of St Isidore the Farmer, and on the far right-hand side is the statue of his wife St Maria.  Looking up from behind the main altar ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023  That same ceiling in more detail ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 The painted panel on the left-hand side is an icon of Pentecost. The painted panel on the right-hand side is an icon of the Baptism of Jesus.  Reredos with statue of Our Lady of Almundena ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 The golden statue underneath the carved crucifixion scene is the 16th century copy of the original statue. From the book of Revelation are the details taken; a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars, whose son was to rule all the nations. In the other painted panels around the Virgin of Almundena are scenes from the life of Jesus and the life of Mary.  Tomb behind the side altar ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 This tomb belongs to Queen Maria of Spain, a.k.a. Mercedes of Orleans, 1860-1878. In her brief 6 months as Queen before her death she became a co-initiator of the building of this cathedral. Because the cathedral is a short distance away from the royal palace, the cathedral is the Spanish equivalent of Westminster Abbey for major royal weddings and funerals.  Gelato after an "adventurous" dinner ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 On pilgrimage the meals we had to locate for ourselves became known as either adventure lunches or adventure dinners because we had no idea where we were going, nor any idea what kind of food we would find. Thankfully it was easier to find gelato. What better way to end the evening than gelato? This time I chose two scoops of gelato, one Coconut and the other Bailey’s Coffee Flavour. Since we had to be ready for breakfast at 5.30am the next morning, and a 6am departure for the airport, after the gelato we made our way back to the hotel. Vincent Cavanagh #bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023 11 Aug 2023, 12.30am Spain | 11 Aug 2023, 8.30am Sydney On our final afternoon and evening in Fátima we had a group session followed by Mass and then our last group session. These big group sessions, which contained some small group conversations, were designed to help us begin the internal processing of all that we had received on pilgrimage, before we return to our regular lives at home. After that all 4 bus groups gathered for a final dinner together. From here on we go in four different directions: some go back to Lisbon and catch homeward bound flights from there; some go by coach to Paris and catch homeward bound flights from there; some go by coach to Madrid and catch homeward bound flights from there; and some adult pilgrims continue to explore Europe with family and friends before coming home.  Statue of Mary and Jesus, Consolata Hotel, Fátima ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 This lovely statue caught my eye. It stands behind the reception desk at the Consolata Hotel in Fátima. Of course, everyone wanted the evening to last as long as possible before we went our separate ways. So the Green Bus members decided after that final dinner there was a necessity to go looking for gelato.  Famous Fátima tourist landmark ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Thankfully I got to this landmark before the rest of the gelato-seekers arrived. Getting a photo of it without pilgrims draped all over it is a bit of a win.  Farewell hugs around the Fátima sign ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 If you look carefully through the pilgrim bodies, you can make out the contours of that landmark.  Morning Prayer ~ Vincent Cavanagh ©2023 Because our coach to Madrid wasn’t leaving until 9.30am, there was time for Morning Prayer and some silent prayer in the smaller of the two Consolata Hotel chapels.  Route Map ~ via Google Maps ©2023 After studying maps before leaving home, it looked like we’d be coming into Madrid via Toledo. But to my surprise we actually came into Madrid via Salamanca. Perhaps the bus and truck fuel and food facilities on that route were better, because they were sure crowded. On the map the red marker is Fatima, the blue circle is our coach about to cross the Portugal-Spain border, and Madrid is like one of those places that all roads lead to. It was a 10-hour journey. Vincent Cavanagh #bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023 15 Aug 2023, 10.58pm Sydney |
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