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Have a Great Ash Wednesday...and I hope this Lenten journey leads you deeper and deeper in...

Sunday Musings...Getting Ready for Ash Wednesday

Yesterday, I read an article which irked me, because it took to task people who offer Spiritual advice from a Catholic perspective without having degrees or jobs which back up their offered counsel. I'm not linking to it because I'm only citing my response to the accusation, not to the article's main points itself. I chaffed because professionalism of the faith feels anti-Catholic to me. We specialize in people who aren't experts. Saint Peter was a fisherman. Saint Matthew collected taxes. Mary, the Blessed Mother, was a young unmarried girl. The Catholic Church loves and celebrates rookies with abandon. However, the article struck a nerve because I'd also recently read comments on my own work which called one of my pieces a waste of space. The comment got likes too.

(I know, first rule of the Internet). So I sat there worrying, am I wasting other people's and my own time? I don't have a degree in anything theological. Even worse, I knew I was experiencing false humility. I wanted to justify myself and wanted the credentials at the same time. I wanted to be...but I ain't bonafied.

With all of that kicking in my head, today, I read the news of a friend of mine, (online), who is experiencing great success and joy, an acquaintance of mine, (who I would like to call friend), who likewise participated in a women of faith conference and I felt both happy for them both and after a while, envy. I didn't like that about myself. I should be happy for both. Instead, I felt jealous, like why aren't I in that circle too? Why haven't I arrived as it were...and all the demons were present at once in that moment. I wanted the attention, I wanted the company, I wanted to be recognized....and envied those who have it...who earned it...who deserved it...and who probably, didn't envy anyone else their success. The earlier article resurfaced in my head. I am no expert on God, the Gospel, the Church or life, no more than anyone else. I have no credentials save experience and whatever I've absorbed from reading books and articles and listening to wiser more studied heads than mine over the years, So what business did I have feeling envious? These women did the work, I didn't.

Yuck. That's what I thought of my soul in that moment, laid bare with all its meaner, weaker, crueler, stupider desires. Except I knew one other thing. Spiritual battles will use truth without charity to get us to sin, or charity without truth (Whichever works), just as long as the attacks get us to focus on us and what we want, rather than on the blessings of our lives, the endless gifts, the joys and treasures, pleasures and bounty of our own lives. Sin and love cannot exist in the same space, one or the other will be deprived of the oxygen it needs to survive. How one fights off the erosion of soul the Devil uses to dishearten, and thus destroy us is an act of the will, and a combination of fasting, prayer, alms giving and the sacraments.

So I was reminded in mass, if I wish to grow in gratitude, to grow in joy, to grow in being a woman of faith for the right reasons (out of love of God and not my own glory), I must pray for others. If I want to be a woman of faith, I have to start working on this plank in my eyes, which prevents God from being seen through mine. I know, we're never finished. We've never arrived as long as we're here, on pilgrimage in this wasteland, seeking a home we've always known, but haven't yet reached. However, it would help if I saw better, if I weren't kept from fuller joy by wanting to somehow make the "A team," if I didn't care what team I played on, or whether I got to play at all, if all that mattered was cheering on the whole Church to victory.

Lent beings this Wednesday, and when I thought, what must I give up for not merely the next 40 days, but forever, it's allowing the need to be affirmed, approved, accepted and honored for showing up or doing the work which is required. To be able to recognize always and everywhere, I'm merely a servant, and an ungrateful one at that, doing only what is required. I need to go to Our Lord to listen at His feet, rather than to read off to him my rosary and list of needs. I need to need less to be in front, I need to practice more listening, more silence. I need to go deeper into the desert.

Honestly, I think giving up diet coke and chocolate would be easier for me. When I write these things, they're my attempt to pull out of my own heart, what it is I believe and why. The words are an offering. So I'm not an expert nor am I acquiring said degree credentials. Like everyone else in this life, I'm trying desperately to not be distracted, discouraged or dulled by my own desires to be something less than God aspires.

That's the real rub of it. God's plans are bigger than mine, better than mine, more luminous, happy, joyful, beautiful and glorious than any I can dream. Why wouldn't I want that? Happy Ash Wednesday March 6, 2019.

May I Pray For You?

May I pray for you?

I've been thinking hard on what to do for Lent.  I know one part of Lent will be the 40 bags in 40 days, but I also know, that is a physical discipline and God knows, I need to become more mindful in all things.

Part of Lent is to go deeper into prayer.   My own prayer life has been one big distraction, so I'm seeking to take my own wandering brain out of the equation by giving it others to focus on instead.

This year, this is part of my Lenten observance, to pray for others before the Eucharist.  Each day. Every day.  The offer will be made each day on this blog.  I will take any and all petitions to prayer for the day.   You can email, private message or put your petition in the com box. You are invited to be a prayer warrior for all petitions you see.

What will that prayer be like? It will be simply presenting whatever is received, probably in the course of the Rosary or Chaplet since those are my two favored ways to try to delve deeper into relationship with God.   My brother made a comment to me, which frightened me and at the same time, I didn't argue the matter, because that's what we're supposed to seek when we talked about the purpose of prayer.  Everyone is supposed to seek to have something as close as possible to being able to walk with God in the cool of the day.  He made a comment about my prayer life being direct.

His comment was coupled with a discussion held online where I asserted what I believe, prayer always works.  Not how we plan, not as magic, but it always opens us to going deeper into relationship with God.  Between my brother's comment and the discussion on prayer, I felt the tug to ask, and so I ask again, "May I pray for you?"

The reality is, we all should be more comfortable asking this question but for some reason, I am not.  I can't figure out why, but I am not.  I know it has something to do with how intimate prayer is. but that's not quite it.  I know there is more.  I know that more is the great unknown, the deeper ocean which isn't safe.  It is the desert where everything is vast and I am small.

God doesn't want us to have a safe relationship with Him, God wants intimacy, infinite intimacy and that always requires us to move toward the infinite.  I didn't know until I wrote this, that this idea frightens me, exposes me, somehow unnerves me.  It shouldn't, but it still feels as if it does.  I do so not like and yet love and appreciate how God lets me write until I discover, how the soul clings to the haven of an oasis, staying where I know, staying where it's safe.   Lent is not about being safe.  It helps to have that smear of ashes on the head, again outing us as mortal, and as Catholic.

So if you wish, if you want, may I pray for you?  

Walk into the Desert

Today is Ash Wednesday. Liturgically, it's the anniversary of my father's death.  The actual date is two weeks away, but nothing quite reminds one of the reality of ashes like the reality of an anniversary of a parent's death.  It doesn't feel like so much time has passed.

The past few weeks, I've lost my computer.  As a result, I've not quite known what to do with myself. My writing lay fallow more than I'd like and come this week, I felt apprehension as Lent approached. I didn't have some grand inspiration for the day or the 40 days.  Normally, I have big plans.  I'll do 40 bags in 40 days! I'll go to daily mass!  I'll well, I'll do something big, important, holy.   It's a zeal and enthusiasm I have naturally, but it is often without actual correct orientation.   "Martha"-ing Lent is not the way to go.   But it took 40 or so years of mucking up Lent to get to this recognition.

That recognition came with the other hard point, a personal revelation about my own tendency to do the same thing to Lent in everything else I do, to focus on the flash and sparkle and newness of whatever, rather than the reality of the work to be done.  It allows me to flit upon the surface of things, relationships (my friendships suffer from this), and the home (man does it suffer from my cursory keeping), and my writing --which is fire and forget and seldom edited more than once.  It's perfect for blogging style, but not for writing anything with weight or length.

It's an ugly and unsettling thing to recognize, you've spent the last 40 years wandering, still not getting it. I've churned through rosaries, read a daily devotional, done any number of things seeking holiness, without necessarily beginning where Lent demands we begin, with my own faults, my own faults, my own grievous faults.  The temptation for me, and I'm sure for many, is to say, I'm not so bad...and list all those devotions, all those ways in which I've sought to live out an authentic life of faith.  But all of those good things, as good as they are, do not change the fact, that even alone, I require my God to do this:

I cannot begin to fathom the ugliness.   I only know Ash Wednesday requires I recognize my own dullness of spirit, and my own inability to "Get or Do Lent" correctly. I can't get an A or a gold star.  I can either grow in faith, or grow duller. That's it.  That's all.

The goal is to grow in holiness, to free ourselves at least in part from addictions, and to recognize however far we've come, we're not there.  We're supposed to wind up at the foot of the cross by the end of this journey, to know we have crucified Him. We called for His crucifixion.  We betrayed Him. We denied Him.  What did He want us to do?  Love Him.

Have a Blessed Ash Wednesday. Pray. Fast. Give Alms, and do it all with a smile and grateful heart.
Walk into the desert, and know when you do, you will find the one who loves you this much.

 

Breaking Heart News

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I'll never forget Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, because today my dad passed away.  He'd been suffering from Alzheimer's for a long time, but it doesn't make the loss any easier, he's my Dad, my first love, and it's hard not to feel just broken no matter how old you are, when a parent dies.   I love him, I miss him, and I'm so grateful to have known him all my life.   

Mom and Dad at my brother's wedding in 2012

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.

The Blog will be obviously quiet for a while.  Thanks for your prayers and thoughts.  

Giving Up Fat for Lent

It was a funny day, this Ash Wednesday.  After having written a piece for Catholic Digest,  40 Ways for 40 Days,  I sat there on Fat Tuesday wondering, what am I going to do for Lent?  I tried on different suggestions from prior Lents, from prior attempts at prayer discipline, nothing seemed to resonate, "Yes."

Then I remembered a conversation with my sister, the more Marian of the two of us, wherein she discussed trying to avoid butter for Lent, as a way of not allowing "Richness" or "Fat" in her fasting on Friday.  I sat there thinking guiltily about how I don't mind fasting from meat, as we have pancakes or pasta or cheese pizza and wondering if my meatless alternatives weren't in some way, not fasts at all.  After all, I'd regularly dispatched my husband for a Friday night run to a favorite Cajun place for seafood gumbo and felt positively virtuous eating all that okra goodness.  I tried to push off her words, but it wasn't the food, it was the purpose or way of approaching food that needed slimming.   

Fat is a biblical sign of joy, and something I really understood!   But I was looking to go into this Lent to make my spiritual life less fat, more fit, more full.  I wanted to really fast.  Many years, I've been unable to do so, owing to pregnancy or diet restrictions that resulted from pregnancy or nursing.  My discipline towards food is very slack, as the scale will testify.   I needed to learn how to be filled without being over full of that which did not satisfy. 

I considered banning fast foods, but there were times when this would be not feasible owing to our large family's schedule.   I considered fasting from fried or from chocolate which felt honestly 4th grade even though I knew it would be hard for me, I knew diet coke couldn't go, if only because having a mom asleep at the wheel and crabby when she's awake was a non starter. Was I making excuses?  Yes and no.  I was looking for the resolution that echoed "Yes." in my heart. 

My younger sister's words kept coming back to me.  Giving up the "Fat" of my life.  What was fat in my life, besides to some degree, myself?  Yeah, butter, cheese, olive oil, ice cream...but there were other forms of fat too; letting the kids watch TV, letting myself surf the net, eating on impulse, credit card budgets, ignoring schedules, routines, all sorts of things that needed trimming, restraint.  It fit.  There was simply too much fat in my life that needed exercising. 

As soon as I decided I would give up the "Fat" in my life, I felt both at peace. "Yes. This is it." and the instant panic plague of "You won't be able to do it, you'll forget. You'll get slack." Yes. That would be a problem, part of the fat we are talking about, part of what we are seeking to reduce.  

My son brought me a cheese stick.  Normally, if it's been peeled and presented, I eat it.  This time, I gave it back.  He ate it.  Feeling momentarily smug, I then went to the kitchen where I found the discarded half of the cheese stick.  Throwing it out, I sighed.  This would be hard.   My two year old came in and handed me a "dum dum" lollipop.  She'd unwrapped it and everything.  "Eat it Mom." she beamed.  "Fun." 

I took the treat. She sat in my lap, content that each of us had a sucker.  It was still fasting and it was still feasting.  It was not fat, it was "trans" fat. (I know).   I laughed, and just like that, found myself looking forward to the next 39 days of surrendering the unhealthy fats of life. 

Happy Ash Wednesday!
    

Pass the Eraser

Today is Ash Wednesday.  In the back area of the Church there is a wall separating any who sit there from the congregation. This is in leiu of a cry room. I hoped by sitting there we would draw less attention.  It was not to be.  First, they dumped their coats.  Then there was the mad scramble to sit on the kneeler only to discover one of the kneeler's cushions could be removed if you sat there and bounced.  After fixing the cushions, the girls kept bringing me flyers from the table.  I would replace them from one, only to be resupplied by the other.  Their favorite was a pink pamplet "PURE WOMANHOOD," they handed me six of those.

My son was in his stroller and kept throwing a plastic pink pig which the girls thought great fun to pounce on and throw back.  I took away the pig and got crying in stereo.  The baby then began to cry too.  I fixed her bottle and tried hugging the girls into compliance while letting Paul play with the pig.  It lasted five minutes.

When my older daughter who should know better started dancing as if she'd chugged a whole Mountain Dew, I admit, my resolve to be loving went out the window.   Right then, I just wanted quiet compliance!  I snapped at her to sit down.  She sat, crumpled, took a deep breath and howled. The sound echoed.  I considered packing it in but the irony of me trying to get her to be still and quiet so I could pay attention to the fact that all of us are sinful, noisy and distracted....pounded in my brain.

As the kids in front of us went up for ashes, I couldn't help thinking, "I've just proven how I still don't quite get it." and this is why I so need that black cross on my head.  I watched as my daughters skipped up the aisle, eager to receive. The rest of mass after ashes ran pretty much the way it had up to receiving ashes. I did have to give the "Behave or We'll leave" speech after receiving the Eucharist but the anger and irritation and "Why is this happening to me" type thinking that plagued the earlier part of the mass wasn't there.

This is why God handed so many souls to my heart to manage. They'd hopefully crowd out the "I" with their love, and if not, they'd at least distract the "Id" with their own needs. Blessed Mother Theresa understood the more people we serve, or the more we wholey serve people in our midst, the less we become attached to our own opinions and thinking and feeling and the more of what we are not, (Christ), shines through. Most are graced and talented enough to do this with less than ten. 

But human nature being what it is (fallen), we can turn any grace, even a lavish one into a source of sin...resting on laurels, presuming at all times that whatever we are doing, it is sufficient or has merit. But God is not satisfied with where we are because where we are isn't with Him.  Just as I didn't want my kids just to be at mass, I wanted them to behave and attend mass, God didn't just want me to show up with my kids, He wanted me to love even through all of that; (and I wanted not to be taxed to have to love through all of that).  

As sinners, we say "No more." and draw lines around our hearts, insisting that God cannot push beyond this point. But we are called to imitate the Saints who spent their lives trying to erase those lines around their own souls so that there is no space  in their minds or hearts or lives where God is not allowed. Any response I had outside of love was incorrect.   Ash Wednesday is about remembering the lines we have drawn around our lives to keep God out.

Pass the eraser please.