I find myself unable to truly let go.

Ten years ago, I started writing this blog.

Ten. That is two presidential administrations, three popes, and at least fifteen attempts by Hollywood to reboot Batman (I am still a fan of Ben Affleck in the role, by-the-way, but my opinion has not been requested). In that time, I have reflected on Catholic education, Ignatian spirituality, leadership, adolescence, adulthood, and everything in between. I have told you about my students, my school, my family, my failures, and even (because I am nothing if not humble – just ask me) my minor victories.

This year, I told myself – and maybe even told some of you – that this would be the last lap. A full decade. A clean ending. A mic drop. Cue the credits.

But then… well… life happened.

As many of you know, this has been a year of profound change. I moved to the West Coast. I endured the great and tragic loss of Caroline. I have continued to walk forward. 

Love, loss, transition, growth. Some endings I chose. Others came uninvited. And through it all, the rhythm of this blog – a Wednesday reflection, rain or shine – has held me in a way I did not realize I needed. It has been, to borrow from our Jesuit toolkit, a kind of weekly Examen. A pause. A place to notice where God has been hiding (or very obviously waving) in the middle of the mess.

So yes, I have said this is the final season.

And yet… like Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a moving plane again in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, I find myself unable to truly let go.

Which brings me to this announcement:

Something is coming next year.
Something will fill this space every Wednesday.
What exactly? 

I do not know.

(Insert dramatic music here.)

Will it be shorter? Probably.
Will it involve Ignatian reflection? Almost certainly.
Will it include a story about a student, a teacher, a ridiculous email I received, or an encounter in the grocery store that made me think about God? I mean… have we met?

So, mark your calendars:
Wednesday, August 13, 2025.
That’s when we launch what’s next.
Tune in. Subscribe. Or just accidentally click on the link in your email while trying to delete it. I don’t care how you get here, I’ll just be grateful that you showed up.

I’ll close with the words of the great poet and theologian… Jason Bourne: “Look at what they make you give.”

Somehow, it still resonates. Especially this year.

Thanks for walking with me through this decade.

And thanks, in advance, for sticking around for what’s next.

Finally, and critically, thank yourself.

As we wind down this academic year (and this blog? I still have to figure out the next steps for this), may I encourage you to do one thing before this year ends? 

Please say “thank you.”

Find 10 minutes, just 10 for appreciation and gratitude. Go somewhere quiet. Put on your earphones or put in your earbuds. Sit alone. Reflect. Take out a piece of paper or use your phone and make a list of those to whom you might say, “thank you.”

Thank your family and friends, your boyfriends and girlfriends and other friends and significant others who have supported you in this work.

Thank those who welcomed you to your school, thank whoever who hired you.

Thank the parents who entrusted their children to you.

Thank the students who sat in your classrooms, who played on your fields, acted on your stages, made music in your rehearsal spaces, deliberated in your student councils and mock trials and Model UNs.

Thank your colleagues, those with whom you have journeyed this year, for their guidance, support, and love.

Finally, and critically, thank yourself.

Give yourself credit for all you have done, for the long work you have begun, for the way you have influenced your students, for the gift you have been to them. Thank yourself for getting near the finish line, for perseverance, for faith. Thank yourself for each time you went on when you thought you could not, for each step you took when you were exhausted, for each time you went the extra mile or five or ten. Thank yourself for being part of this vocation, this incredibly important work.

Bottom line at this busy time of year: if you can only steal a moment to thank someone, to show your appreciation for one person on this list, make it yourself.

You deserve it. Know that in your heart. Feel it in your soul. Repeat it in your head.

You.

Deserve.

Thanks.

Give it to yourself, please.ude. Go somewhere quiet. Put on your earphones or put in your earbuds. Sit alone. Reflect. Take out a piece of paper or use your phone and make a list of those to whom you might say, “thank you.”

Thank your family and friends, your boyfriends and girlfriends and other friends and significant others who have supported you in this work.

Thank those who welcomed you to your school, thank whoever who hired you.

Thank the parents who entrusted their children to you.

Thank the students who sat in your classrooms, who played on your fields, acted on your stages, made music in your rehearsal spaces, deliberated in your student councils and mock trials and Model UNs.

Thank your colleagues, those with whom you have journeyed this year, for their guidance, support, and love.

Finally, and critically, thank yourself.

Give yourself credit for all you have done, for the long work you have begun, for the way you have influenced your students, for the gift you have been to them. Thank yourself for getting near the finish line, for perseverance, for faith. Thank yourself for each time you went on when you thought you could not, for each step you took when you were exhausted, for each time you went the extra mile or five or ten. Thank yourself for being part of this vocation, this incredibly important work.

Bottom line at this busy time of year: if you can only steal a moment to thank someone, to show your appreciation for one person on this list, make it yourself.

You deserve it. Know that in your heart. Feel it in your soul. Repeat it in your head.

You.

Deserve.

Thanks.

Give it to yourself, please.

As I suspect is obvious to anyone who has read the blog this year, has been a year unlike ANY other I have ever lived.

Exactly nine months ago today, I posted Playlist ‘24-’25. Written prior to all of the events this year, the playlist has new resonance as I look back on it this week. 

As I noted in August, readers of the blog may remember that, years ago, my good friend and educational leader Sean Gaillard (author of The Pepper Effect – great reading for any and all Beatles fans and a must read for educators!) introduced me to the idea of #OneSong which developed into the idea of a mixtape which morphed into the exercise of developing an annual playlist. For the last few years, I have put together a playlist to lead me with energy, optimism and enthusiasm into the upcoming school year.

My specific criterion for songs to make my list: 

• songs whose lyrics of the song resonate with me,
• songs that move me, 
• songs that inspire me,
• songs that send me. 

Below are my reflections on the songs including one quote from them and how it resonated with me this year. 

As I suspect is obvious to anyone who has read the blog this year, has been a year unlike ANY other I have ever lived… The playlist was designed to be about school, but it is impossible to review it through that lens alone.

Playlist ‘24-’25

Track One: Magic  |  Olivia Newton-John

And if all your hopes survive, destiny will arrive

If all my hopes can survive after this particular year – and I believe they have – I am grateful and know that they can survive anything the world can throw at me.

Track Two: September  |  Earth, Wind and Fire 

Do you remember never a cloudy day?

This one is aspirational. I would like to never remember a cloudy day. This is a goal for my life. Move beyond the clouds.

Track Three: Overture – Star Trek the Motion Picture  |  Jerry Goldsmith

Instrumental

How I have needed my comfort food this year. Star Trek, in general, and Star Trek The Motion Picture in particular have ever been that for me. I must have rewatched it over five times these last nine months and listened to this soundtrack over 100 times. Really.

Track Four: Queen of California  |  John Mayer

If you see her say, “Hello”  … The Queen of California is steppin’ down, down

And so she did, so shockingly unexpectedly.

Track Five: Upside Down  |  Diana Ross

Instinctively, you give to me the love that I need/ I cherish the moments with you

So, so, so many people have given me the love that I need this year. I hope I have shared half as much with them. How would I have made it through this particular year without the blessing of all these people? Answer: I would not have.

Track Six: Cool Change  |  Little River Band

Now that my life is so rearranged/ I know that it’s time for a cool change

My life is utterly rearranged. I know that changes are coming. I am embracing them…

Track Seven: I Can Do It with a Broken Heart  |  Taylor Swift

I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks/ ‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart

I think this one might be self explanatory…

Track Eight: Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday  |  Stevie Wonder

What happened to/ The world we knew

This year has taught me that the world we knew becomes the world we know. That has to be okay. This is okay. 

Track Nine: Change  |  Taylor Swift

Cause we never gave in/ And we’ll sing hallelujah, we sang hallelujah/ Hallelujah

In education, we cannot give in, even though we get tired, even though the days are long. The same is true of life: we cannot give in, even though we get crushed, even though the nights are longer than the days. I will not give in.

Track Ten: Hell of a View  |  Eric Church

You holdin’ me holdin’ you/ It’s a hell of a view

It is, indeed, one hell of a view.

… what I have come to understand – is that Xavier would become a place of personal healing for me, even as it called on my professional self.

When it comes to luck you make your own
Tonight I got dirt on my hands but I’m building me a new home

– Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen

I stepped onto the campus of Xavier College Preparatory High School in Palm Desert, California as principal in March of 2024. I came with a full heart and a ton of excitement. I suppose I was thinking about what had come before in my life and all that had brought me to this school: three decades I had spent in Catholic education leadership, relationships I had with people at Xavier, the Jesuit mission I tried to live. I was also excited about the promise of a new chapter in life as Caroline and I were moving here for an adventure together. It seems hard to believe that the joyful beginning of this new venture would turn to sorrow when, a few months later, Caroline was gone.

What was impossible to know then – but what I have come to understand – is that Xavier would become a place of personal healing for me, even as it called on my professional self. 

Xavier is a remarkable school. It is the only Catholic high school in the Coachella Valley, and it carries a responsibility because of that. I feel that responsibility almost every day. There is something unmistakably special here. From the moment you enter the gates, you sense that this is not just a school, it is a community grounded in the Jesuit tradition, committed to forming young people who will live lives of service, leadership, and faith.

Our students are at the heart of that mission and have been so helpful in coming to terms with Caroline’s passing. They are bright, funny, messy, determined, deeply human and they want to be challenged. They want to be seen. They want to matter. I am thinking specifically of my senior Cura Personalis group with whom I meet weekly and of my ninth grade, Pre AP English One class with whom I am blessed to talk about literature almost every day.

I get to journey with a wonderful team of educators and staff, colleagues who are passionate about their disciplines and deeply invested in the whole person of each student. They know the power of accompaniment. They know that formation is more than a transcript. They show up, day after day even as they contend with a principal who is just learning the school.

There is nothing flashy about the work we do, but it is sacred. It is in the ordinary rhythms: morning check-ins, classroom discussions, retreats, hallway chats, practice fields, service outings, and liturgies that stop us in our tracks with their quiet beauty. It is in the way we pray together, the way we wrestle with hard questions, the way we tell the truth. At Xavier, when we are at our best (as we often are), the Jesuit call to be “women and men with and for others” is not just something we teach, it is something we try to live, imperfectly to be sure.

I often think of Caroline when I am walking the campus. She quickly fell in love with the school and she loved the season of Lent, especially the idea of metanoia: the Greek word for conversion or a turning of the heart. For Caroline, metanoia was never about shame or penance. It was about freedom. It was about being open to transformation.

Since her death, that word has taken on new meaning for me. These past months have been a season of profound metanoia. Grief has turned me inward and outward all at once. There is a stripping away that comes with loss, but also a deepening. The work I do now is filtered through that clarity. I do not take the days for granted. I know how fleeting they are. And I know how important it is to use our time to build something that lasts. Each day that passes, I am somehow more peaceful. The people of Xavier Prep have so much to do with that. There is work to be done. We are working on enrollment, on transparency in decision-making, on the spiritual formation of both students and faculty, on the concretization of the president/principal model.

But this is joyful work for me. It is rooted in hope.

So here I am, in the desert, still walking through the mystery of resurrection. Still grieving. Still grateful. Still believing in the power of Catholic education to form young people who will go out and set the world on fire.

And deeply, deeply thankful to be doing that work here, at Xavier Prep.

… I was immediately struck by a significant question: can I do this job?

Had a coat of fine leather and snakeskin boots
But that coat always had a thread hangin’ loose – Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen

Following my late summer departure from Mullen High School and an aspirational – if ultimately unsuccessful flirtation with consulting and starting my own enterprise – a singular reality hit me: I had worked in Catholic education my entire life and had not made enough money to live on savings for very long. Motivated, perhaps, more by fear than anything else, I began to look for positions in school leadership and turned my eye toward charter schools. They held two advantages. First, I had never worked in them and wanted to try something new. Second, they did not immediately require credentials, a reality very appealing to an uncredentialed dude approaching his mid-fifties.

Following a significantly arduous application process, I was hired as Assistant Principal of Culture at KIPP Northeast Denver Leadership Academy. I was eager and I was anxious. 

Arriving at KNDLA with an understanding of my position that bore little resemblance to what the job would actually entail (a situation for which I blame myself; no one misled me), I was immediately struck by a significant question: can I do this job?

There are so, so many individuals at KNDLA who are doing wonderful, even heroic work. They are serving a school in turn around that has challenges beyond my limited understanding to enumerate. They are working with students who need them and are changing lives each and every day. They are passionate. They are devoted. They are first responders in the most praiseworthy sense of that term. 

I was sad to realize that I was not one of them.

Early on in my one semester at KNDLA, I understood that the work behind me – the almost 30 years I had already spent in schools – had not prepared me for the work ahead of me, at least not the work at KNDLA. Though I worked very hard, I was not successful and had a suspicion, a gnawing feeling, that I was letting the school down, letting my colleagues down, letting our students down. I was overmatched and I was underperforming. 

I was, simply put, miserable. 

That I also was dealing with health issues during my short tenure there was real – though the hindsight of a couple of years leads me to understand that the mental health issues I was contending with were utterly intertwined with the physical ones.

Determining with my wife (who was suffering in her own purgatory at the time) that our next positions would not be in Colorado, I resigned in January and devoted myself to a nationwide search for my next position. 

This was the right decision for us, but I will ever feel shame for departing KNDLA in the middle of the school year.

There were heroes there, colleagues who changed my outlook on education and who challenged my conception of our work. I smile when I think of Carrie and Brittani and Kelly and Erin. Kelly and Brittani, in particular, have had a lasting impact on my life. I was blessed to know them all and blessed in my short time there. 

For, without question, my months at KNDLA led me to Xavier College Prep.

But that is a story for next week…

Next week, Lucky Town – Xavier College Preparatory High School