Lawn Chair Catechism Week 4

Welcome to the 4th session of Lawn Chair Catechism, using Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus, by Sherry Weddell (Our Sunday Visitor, 2012).

Stop by Catholicmom.com to participate by leaving your own reflections in the combox or linking your blog up with your thoughts as I have done here.  

The question is not, “Who can I persuade to fill this vacancy?”  The question is, “Who has God put in my parish life, and what does He want them to do?”  The supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit enable the believer to carry out his or her vocation.

For discussion:

In your own faith:

• Can you recall a “before” and “after” time in your life, when you became a true disciple of Jesus Christ?  I know that I keep trying, but it is a two steps forward, one step back type of thing. I wish I could be stapled into place and not wander, but I am a person who constantly says to God, "Now what?" I have known God to answer all my prayers. Every single one. I have known and watched as our lives were rewritten before our eyes.  My son didn't get into Saint Martin's school for kindergarten.  We were a family of four, my husband, myself, William and Bonnie.  It suddenly became important to me, that my children receive a Catholic education. It became vital in my head and my heart.  We'd been denied. 

• A woman pulled me aside after mass --we were a two to three week a month drifting from Parish to Parish according to mass times and desire to go family, and told me if I wanted my kids in the school, I had to be involved. The pastor had to know my name.  Impulsively, I signed up for Parish Council that weekend.  Then I got the call, I could be on, but it was a three year commitment of three Monday nights a month and I'd have to be in charge of a  committee. God's subtle way of saying, "Do you really want this?" and I said yes.  We started going to mass more often because I had to sell donuts after them once a month and check to see that the other groups showed.  We got to know the Pastor, we became more regular and more involved. My son got into the school, and we were pulled deeper and deeper in...that to me is how it always happens, we say yes and God floods the world with opportunities to answer that yes if we really mean it.  It did change us.  We sometimes struggle with praying and the hardness of the labor of the yes, but we did mean it.  We said yes, and we have to go on saying yes, to go on proving by our commitment of time and our lives, that this is something we very much want, to have our children know their faith, live their faith, love their faith.    

• Have you ever witnessed that change in someone else?

• Yes. One of my favorite stories about my youngest son, is how he saved a life of a person he's never really known.  Being lonely and stuck at home and not coping with it very well that first year, I pushed his stroller all around the hot streets of Houston, desperate for company.  I made friends with the drycleaner, the photo lady, the pharmacist at the more expensive place which meant I wouldn't use the cheaper one because this woman knew my name, and the receptionist at my apartment complex.  Every day around lunch, she'd see me pushing the beautiful blue perambulator my in-laws had given us about the grounds. She'd wave me in and coo at my son.  One day, I walked by and she didn't wave me in, she was crying.

• I went in to see what was wrong.  She explained she'd just broken up with her boyfriend and then discovered she was pregnant.  Friends had offered her a ride to the abortion clinic but seeing my little baby every day, she just couldn't do it. She looked at my son and the tears came again.  I wasn't an expert on any of this, I was  a first time mom who was fighting tooth and nail the boredom of being home alone and not comfortable with my own self and my new role that seemed so limited and stifling.  But I put my arm around her and began asking questions that to this day, I know were Holy Spirit directed, because they weren't what I would have thought to ask. 
• Does your boyfriend know?  Answer: No.  I told her he needed to know because this was his child too. Even if you have broken up, he should know, he has a child, he's the father. She nodded, "Okay."
• Do you have family who can help you, like your parents? This is their grandbaby.  She nodded again, "I'll tell them first." I said no, tell your boyfriend first, he has a right to know. She admitted she worried he would counsel an abortion. 
• Long story short, we talked, I hugged her, fished a bit of chocolate I had with me out of my purse, the very thing that undermined my walks, and I went home worried and praying, really praying for my friend.  
• The next few days, I didn't see her, though I took my walk daily and worried. 
• The following Monday, she waved me in from my normal routine.  "You've got to come in!" she beamed, "I told him.  I told him and we are trying to work it out, to get back together."  she said.  We hugged.  She told me she'd moved in with her parents, they were supportive and that they were going to her first obgyn appointment next week.    Hugs and kisses, joy all around.  We moved from Texas and I lost track of my friend until we came back for a visit and stopped in to see our old home in Houston. 
• She ran out to greet me, to hug me.  She and her now husband had two children, a boy and a girl.  It was a hug that said so much in the few seconds we had together, of a life transformed by the loneliness of one woman, and a little boy only 4 months old in his pram, who smiled with his whole body every time anyone picked him up. It was a transformation of not just one but many lives, by the Holy Spirit. 

So the fruit of the Holy Spirit is always born out by its expansiveness, by its ability to pull out of suffering and pain and loneliness, something beautiful and luminous and greater than any human heart could imagine, for the human heart cannot imagine the joy available to it, by housing the Holy Spirit. 

Moments of Perfection

We did the epic.  We took all ten children to Disneyworld. 

Despite long debates and agreement that breaking the groups into two and tailoring the experience to the ages involved, we ultimately wanted this to be a family vacation and so we all went together.  We dressed alike, had assigned partners and switched off often. 

Here were the moments that acted as a photograph in my mind, of the experience. 

Regina's sly smile became a wide mouthed grin as she saw the princesses dancing at the castle. 

Rita's euphoric "I'm driving! I'm driving! Faster Mom! I'm just like a teenager." (editorial note, she's almost as good but that shout has made me consider the possibility that she shouldn't be liscenced until she's 18).

Anna Maria in "It's a Small World." Up until that point, she'd shook her head "No." to everything, but this was the ride that began to uncurl her from thinking this world was just too unreal for her sensibilities.

Getting completely drenched top to bottom with six of my children --not from the ride of Splash Mountain, but from the rain which started falling with a vengeance during Splash Mountain.  We all started laughing. They did warn us, we might get wet. 

Marta going into the sweet shop to buy her sister a rice crispy treat when the samples got devoured before she got one. 

William lifting his brother John up onto his shoulders so he could see the electric light parade. 

Bonnie playing with her younger siblings and really helping them experience Disney. She lifted up Regina to look out the ferry so she could see the final parade on the lake surrounding the Magic Kingdom.

Faith and John driving by themselves on the speedway.  Both felt very important and proud.

Peter going on multiple rollercoasters (twice). 

My beloved husband shouting out in surprised joy at the fireworks.  They were lovely.

Paul wanting to hold both his dad's and my hand during the laser show. He got that this was a communal experience, that it should be, and that this was a perfect moment to be cherished. He was right. 
 

Hey Beautiful

Originally written back in 2007 for Father's Day. 

Dad always answers the phone to me, “Hey Beautiful.” It always makes me smile.

My dad reads German theologians for recreation. He also puns constantly and loves Notre Dame, the Astros, fishing, hunting and 99.9% of all classic English literature. He is Texan. He is Southern. He is Catholic.

When I was a kid and he was mad, even if I wasn’t the person who did anything, I went to my room and cleaned. The thundercloud would roll by and see a virtuous kid doing only right stuff. This was the image I strove to maintain. I had figured out it would keep me out of trouble. It did, and my parents got a clean room out of the bargain, by allowing me to think I was manipulating them.

I remember him teaching me how to do flips off the high board and how to drive. He taught me to rig a lure for fishing and retrains me when I forget. He didn’t yell when I wrecked the car again. He met all my dates. He made me watch Casablanca and The Quiet Man. He bought me a guitar and a silver bracelet. I can gut a fish, train a dog and make Coq au’Vin today because at some point, he taught me. I cannot do algebra. He tried to tutor me. I know something of Latin. He made me take it. I scream like a banshee at Notre Dame Football. He showed me the game and helped me come to obsess over it.

Dad drove me to get ice cream when I lost my wallet at Christmas. Dad took me out to lunch when I worked at his office. Dad asked me to paint some crabs on the fireplace at the beach house and helped reel in the 40+pound Red Fish I had hooked. Dad danced with me at the Debutante ball and I wished, oh how I wished, he was at the table with me, for my date was boring.

Senior year at Saint Mary’s College, he wasn’t coming to Father/Daughter weekend. I tried to be offhand about that, I wished he could be there but knew money was tight. The Sunday before the Father/Daughter weekend, my then boyfriend proposed. That Friday, Dad was on a plane.

As my roommate and I got dressed to go out to dinner with him, Dad was serving as her dad for the night too, I said, “Just watch, the first thing Dad’ll say is “Why do you want to marry my daughter?” Annie laughed and disagreed. “I’ve met your Dad, he won’t say that.”

We picked up Marc, my fiancé at Notre Dame and drove to the restaurant, Dad, Marc, Annie and Me. No sooner were we all seated, then my father said, “Why did you ask my daughter to marry you?” Annie and I looked at each other and bust out laughing. Marc was left with two giggling girls and no help. He rallied. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Dinner was fun.

That summer I worked at his office. I went on walks with him sometimes when we were both dieting. We’d talk about food and how much we missed it. We’d argue over wedding plans, band vs. DJ, morning suits vs. Tuxes, receiving line vs. announcements by the band.

Eventually, My Dad sang the Notre Dame Fight song to me as I walked into the Church to get married. It helped me to stop shaking. I remember Dad’s smile as he walked towards me at my wedding reception to have our dance, but I do not remember the song.

Sometimes he sends me papers by his favorite theologian, Von Balthazar. I dutifully try to read the treatise, “Does Original Sin Exist?” but I want to scribble back a short post-it, “Yes. Next Question.”

Dad has had many heart surgeries, but the one I remember is the one in 2000. I arrived after the surgery had taken place, and sat in the living room with Danny and Joe and Jennifer and my newly crawling son, feeling how empty the house felt with Dad in the hospital. When we went to visit at the hospital, Joe and Danny attempted to move Dad by lifting the recliner he was in, and dropped the chair. I was terrified, but Dad was okay. He showed me the stitches that ranged all over his body. They had cut open his chest, taken out his heart, stopped it, cut away things and put everything back together and stitched him up. I looked at the long line of black threads on his legs and arms and it looked like a large black rosary to me had been carved onto his body. It hurt to look but he was alive and so I looked anyway. It was ugly and beautiful at the same time.

Just before we left, a former partner of Dad’s, dropped by to check on Dad. I had entertained a long-standing dislike of the firm restructured and Dad left. I occasionally called to jam up the 1-800 line at the firm but knowing this was childish, I had stopped. Seeing the man visit my Dad at the hospital, I thought, “Damn, now I’m going to have to forgive them.”

Dad held no grudges so I couldn’t either, much as I might sometimes want to…really. That ugly stuff still doesn’t matter. He still calls me and says, “Hey Beautiful.” because that’s how he sees me and how God sees each of us. “Hey Beautiful.”

And by saying that, over and over, eventually, we come closer to becoming it. 

Happy Father's Day Dad!

2013 update:  When I went to see my dad in April, his face lit up. He doesn't speak often these days.  But when I came into his room in April, his face lit up and he said, "Hey beautiful." Yeah. I cried.