In this Free-for-All-Friday, Trent sits down with long time friend Fr. Matt Lowry to learn about his new hobby of sand castle building.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
It is Free for all Friday here on the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn.
Mondays and Wednesdays, we talk apologetics and theology. Friday, we talk about whatever I want to talk about.
And recently, I was having a phone chat with a old friend of mine, Father Matt Lowry. Father Lowry and I actually went to the same parish in Phoenix, Arizona. This was the parish where I was received into the Catholic faith where I was baptized. It was through this youth group that I came to know Christ to know His church. So we go way, way back, even long before Father Lowry was a priest. We had all kinds of shenanigans trying to chaperone teenagers being teens on World Youth Day events, making all kinds of videos for our youth group. It was a blast.
And so we were chatting recently, and Father Matt told me about a new hobby of his. And I thought this is the coolest thing I’ve heard and why this thing gets so fun. We’re going to talk about sandcastles today because it’s Labor Day weekend. You might go to the beach. Maybe you’ll make a long trek to the beach. You want to build a sandcastle, and you want to build a perfect one. I wanted to talk to Father Matt about that.
Father, welcome back to the Counsel of Trent Podcast.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Thanks, Trent. Great to be with you.
Trent Horn:
Absolutely. Now, one of the other shenanigans I remember is shenanigans, of course. I remember when we would go on summer trips. That was always something to look forward to for our life teen days. Back when you’re a teenager, or a college student, or just were out of college like yourself, can handle that we would leave… What was it? We left at Friday at midnight, get to the beach Saturday… No, no. We left Thursday. Friday, we got to the beach at like 6:00 AM, whole day at the beach. Saturday was Magic Mountain. Then drive all the way back, right? For life teen.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
And it was exhausting.
Trent Horn:
I remember one kid fell asleep on the floor of the bus. You know the big charter bus that would take us out there? And somebody had left their Dr. Pepper sitting next to their seat on the bus, and then it tiffs over. It runs down the whole length of it. And the poor kitty, he just slept in Dr. Pepper that night. But a lot of people like to make sandcastles at the beach. And this is a new hobby that you’ve kind of picked up, right?
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yeah. I think all of us have an appreciation for sandcastles. I’ve been wrecked by too many waves. And I’m sitting on the beach, I’m like, “I don’t want to read a book. I want to do something.” I was like, “I’m going to build a sandcastle.”
Trent Horn:
Well, you channel your inner five-year-old. I mean, I have kids that are ages two, six, and eight, and they love to build. They’ll make towers with their magnet tiles, their Legos. I think, especially boys, they just want to build a castle out of anything they have around them. And so were you just playing around with this like a lot of us do and then decided, “Hey, there’s actually a way to get really good at something like this?” There’s people who really devote themselves to this, right?
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve learned. I think at my background too. I was an engineer for my undergrad, and so my mind is working. I’m like, “There’s got to be something to this.” I think I just searched for it online, and the first pro-tip that I got was that they said it’s all about the foundation, which kids never take time for. They just start scooping sand and trying to do something, and it just falls over, and then your brother comes over and knocks it over, and you punch him and all that. But it’s all about the foundation.
Trent Horn:
I want to get into some of the tips, but recently, you told me you even went to… What was it like? A convention or a tournament for sandcastle?
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Sandcastle festival. There’s a whole underground-world trend. Just so you know, there are people out there who are experts or masters. There’s professionals, there’s masters, and I’m what they call an amateur.
Trent Horn:
Okay, so you have a white belt in sandcastles.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yes. I’m open for the stripe soon. Yeah, it was up on Lake Huron, so it was Port Huron in Michigan, which has a three-day festival that benefits the lighthouse there. So there’s all these festivals all over, but the one in California was canceled this year. And I have buddies near there. And I’m like, “You know what? We’re doing this.”
Trent Horn:
So you just went out. And one of the reasons they do it in Michigan, right? It’s because of the quality of the sand.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
You want to hear something interesting? The guy was saying some of the better sand is actually in Florida because it’s been longer since an ice age. So the sand is like 3 million years old, but the sand on the Great Lakes is like 20,000 years. But here’s the thing. They found this byproduct of sand from a local quarry that they use to clean rocks, apparently. And so it’s like a leftover thing, and they’re like, “It’s sand, and it works awesome.” The guy said some of the best sand in the world he’s found.
Trent Horn:
Alrighty. So let’s say you don’t make it to Port Huron for the big festival. You just go to the Gulf. You go to California, and you want to just build a sandcastle. Whenever I try to do it… If you have a kid bucket, I always like, “Oh, fill up the bucket. Put it out. It makes the shape.” You try to build this stuff. And then I try to add, like, a little divots. It always just seems like crumble, and it just collapses under its own weight. So give us the scoop. So you said first is you got to make a good foundation.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yeah, so it’s all about… Some people think there’s a trick to it, but it’s just water. But water mixed with sand almost becomes concrete-like. And so the first thing to do is to get a ton of water, and you mix the water in with the sand. One person said, “Create little volcano and fill the inside with water, and just you keep mixing it.” We’ve all felt like that soupy, wet sand mix, and you’re like, “Wow. It’s just like goop.” That’s actually really good, and it’s what you want. And what the really good people will do is they’ll mix it a few inches at a time and pack it down, and then put another layer, get some sand, water, mix it up really, and then pack it down. You have to be patient. So that’s the first step that people skip is doing that over the course of whatever. 20 minutes, an hour, you build up your pile until you’ve got that block of marble, so to speak, that you’re going to carve your Michelangelo.
Trent Horn:
Okay, so that’s interesting because a lot of us just build from the ground up. We just start straight up just the beach, and then you’re building the towers on the walls on top of that. So as the way of building this, are they basically kind of… Because we think about just building the sand up and making the shape. Do they basically create just a block of sand and just chisel the castle out of it?
Fr. Matt Lowry:
That’s exactly what they do. Think about it. If you’ve ever dug down into the sand itself, the deeper you go, it’s like, “Wow, this is hard.” And it keeps its shape. And so you have to do that above ground. And so you have to be patient, and you have to think in advance. Well, yeah, it’s like theological, right? You got to begin with the end in mind, like, “What am I going to build? How big is it going to be? And so let’s make a big pile.”
Trent Horn:
So that definitely separates the pros from the novices right off the bat. The novice is going to go down there, try to make a tower, it’s going to fall apart. Nobody thinks I’m just going to spend an hour making a block of dirt, and that’s when I can really get started.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
That’s right. What I like to do… I mean, I wait. I build a pile, wait a few minutes, so I go on the water or whatever, hang out, do something else. I come back after a few minutes, and-
Trent Horn:
So it’s like baking.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yeah. It’s becoming hard, and the water’s working its way through. And from what these guys say, they almost say, “You can’t put too much water,” which it feels counterintuitive. I’m like, “Is this going to wash away?” They’re like, “No. It’s the beach. It’s fine.” Just lots of water, and over time it becomes concrete.
Trent Horn:
Okay.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
And so then you start cutting away. For a long time, I just used the little plastic beach shovel. It actually works pretty well. It’s got a little edge, and you just start carving away. Here’s a little rule. You start from the top down because if you’re working on the bottom, then you go up, well then, all that sand from the top just falls down, and you’re like, “Oh man.” So you start with that little shovel, you start carving away, and you can actually can almost go more than perpendicular. You can cut under a little bit if it’s that hard.
Here’s another little pro-tip. You can actually use all sorts of tools. I had a little piece of plastic that’s like an inch and a half by three inches. And it’s like a little straight edge, and it moves the sand, it cuts into it, and it makes it so there’s no sand leftover.
But one of the tips that I really was fascinated with… Because sometimes I like to do letters and write words. I was in Hermosa Beach, and I put the Hermosa life or something, which means beautiful. I wrote that. And letters are a little hard, but what they do is you take a simple straw from a restaurant or whatever, and you blow through the straw, and it blows away all the extra sand. And if you made a little trace of a letter or something, it’ll actually blow out the extra sand and make the letter look really good.
Trent Horn:
Well, I mean, you might have to import. I’m guessing a plastic straw would work a little better here. Well, I guess even the paper ones, until they fall apart in your mouth, you’re trying to blow because I know in California, they’re always… That’s the worst when I go there. I get a drink, and it’s got the paper straw in it. You just try drinking it. I’m just like, “Oh man, come on.”
Fr. Matt Lowry:
And-
Trent Horn:
Okay. So that’s interesting. I think, yeah, I always think of compressed air to blow at things and to clean stuff up. But to even just do that, it seems like once you start shaving and sculpting, I guess, in one hand, it’s pretty strong, but also, it’s pretty weak. It’s easy for it to crumble, so you got to be real gentle, right? As you’re trying to shape it.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yes. And you learn. Through practicing, you’re like, “What works? What looks good? What doesn’t?” These guys, they would create windows, right? So you dig in. Here’s something cool for a window. They were saying, “All you need is a spoon.” The spoon goes in, and you go down. And it creates a thing that looks like a window, but they’ll go above and beyond. And they put a little straight edge in there, and they’ll just push into it a little bit. And it looks like shutters. It looks like a window within the window you created.
Trent Horn:
Okay. And so then, when you’re building also, I guess, because it takes so long, it seems like… Do you have to take into account wind and tide so that you don’t get overrun, basically?
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Yeah. So I always try to… I look at the beach, and I say, “Where does the water come to its highest point?” And right there is where I build my sandcastle because the sand’s going to be pretty wet underneath and you’re closer to the water. But what’s cool is if you build a good sandcastle, it could be there for a while if the waves don’t take it away, or if some kids or a drunk guy don’t run it over or something.
Trent Horn:
Totally. That’s what hard yo. When you’re a kid, you always try to build it. Like you said, your brother always comes and stamps the thing out or something like that. But I guess if you’re really good, if you build up a big block as a base, it could stay there, and you could build a moat and it just kind of fills up or something.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
I often will put a moat, or something, some sort of base around it, which basically says, “Stay back.”
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
It’s like, this is the sandcastle. Stay, but it works for a while. Actually, the seagulls are also pretty bad too. They come, and they’re looking for something to land on.
Trent Horn:
Oh. Yeah, yeah. Any other tips? Anything else off the top of your head you can think of that would help if someone’s out trying to master their building?
Fr. Matt Lowry:
I really like certain elements, like stairs, because it just looks cool. And if you have a round tower, you can actually do stairs around. And so it’s basically just you chop down, scoop away, go down, pull it away, and then you do an edge around the outside of the stairs. And you can do a little finish around underneath the stairs and make it pop out. And then, at the bottom of the stairs, have it curved back into the round pillar, and you can make it look like a door. The stairs go somewhere into a doorway. And so there’s a little finishes like that. It just makes it pop.
Trent Horn:
I love that. Okay, so I guess a good way for people to start might be just if you’re going to the beach and you want to do that, start with something small for a base. You just build a really small castle, maybe a few feet by a few feet to make that big column, that cube, have patience, let it set for a half hour, and then use a straight edge, toothpick, spoon, straw, and then, I guess, just play around to see how the sand behaves as you’re working through it.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
And you can see how far into it I can go. But here’s another cool pro-tip that looks really cool is arches are actually not that hard, and they look really cool that if you… You’ve got to find something like maybe round, or you just have two columns of sand, and you put your hand in the middle, and what you do is you take handfuls of really soupy, wet mixed sand and just pile it on top. And it looks like it’s just running all over the place. But you keep doing that. When that hardens, it’s really hard. And then you pull your hand out, or pull the bucket out, or whatever’s underneath it. Then you can carve it a little bit. That’s really easy.
Another little trick they did that it looks really sweet is if you have something pointy, something sharp and simple pointy, as simple as a pencil or a pen, that you can drag it along the surface of the sand. Say if you have a flat edge and you could actually make a little pattern of bricks just real lightly or rocks that are non-symmetrical, and then you take your straw or you just blow on it, and it blows off the top layer, and it looks like rocks or bricks.
Trent Horn:
It’s like cobblestone. Yeah, you can make it a little your cobblestone path to your sandcastle. Now, I think that’s great. So as we close out a little bit though, another reason I wanted you to come on to talk about this is because, one, I love when people have interesting hobbies. I think it’s great when people can apply themselves in this way. I think it’s also good for priests to have this kind of thing.
I talked a little bit about something related to that earlier this month. I feel like some people, they think priests should just say mass and just… They have this priestly thing that they have to do, and if they do anything else… Obviously, priests shouldn’t do scandalous things. But if a priest is doing something that’s not like him in church, it’s like, “Hey, what’s going on here,” right? He’s a priest 24/7. But I think it’s good for a priest’s mental health to have fun hobbies. So I think this is a neat example of that. Maybe you can speak to the importance of that as a priest.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Well, Jesus says He came that we might have life and life to the full that we receive and enter the kingdom of God like a child. I think there’s something about a child, like faith and joy, that delights in life. And the joyful life is attractive. But it’s also for good mental health, right? To have outlets, hobbies, and maybe certain hobbies are nice too, because as a priest, you don’t always see fruitfulness. How do you measure growth or fruitfulness in someone’s life? It can be a little difficult. And so some priests like to do things with their hands, carpentry, gardening, where you see a fruit, a product, and sandcastles might be something like that. And it’s just something cool that’s rejuvenating and fuels you to go back into relationship and walk with people.
Trent Horn:
All right, very good. Well, father, thank you so much for joining us here on this Labor Day Weekend edition of Free for all Friday here in the podcast. We’d love to have you back anytime to talk also theological matters as well.
Fr. Matt Lowry:
Anytime.
Trent Horn:
Alrighty. Thank you so much, father. Thank you all so much for listening, and I hope that you have a very blessed weekend.
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