Real Food

Everyone understands the difference between diet ice cream and the real thing.

It's true at first for diet soda as well.  But if you drink enough of the stuff, you start to forget what the sugar laden version is like, and come to prefer the not real carbonated concoction.  What we do as habit comes to define us.  

Ergo, if we start to divest ourselves from the real world, staying plugged into the computer and our Ipod and texting rather than talking, having virtual friends with no actual face time and playing simulated instruments rather than sitting to practice on the real piano or guitar, we will eventually grow to think of those pursuits as being really real, when they are not.   We will prefer the virtual simmulated world we can control to the messy organic chaotic experiece of the real which invovles struggling if not suffering as the price of progress.

If you read the Last Battle by C.S.Lewis, he talks about the real Narnia as opposed to the experience all of us have enjoyed over the 7 books, (Silver Chair and Prince Caspian not withstanding).  In the real Narnia, water is really wet, as opposed to here which now in comparison, one understands to be dry water.   Playing Rock Band is dry water to practicing the hard slug day in and day out of mastering a real drum set or guitar.   So also, liking and commenting on facebook, while it has promoted reconnecting with people in a tangential way, is not the realness of going out to lunch or actually encountering other people. 

Today, we struggle not to become a nation full of unreal people who do not have the self knowledge that they are as of yet, not real because they haven't yet surrendered sufficiently to love to become fully alive. They go on about their lives, Buzz Lightyear pre-epiphany of his flightless state, superimposing on the world their ideas of themselves and presuming it is correct.  They drink but do not taste, eat but do not savor, and practice to no effect. 

Why?  Simple.  Real is complicated. Real demands more of us than our fallen selves, absent grace want to or will give.

This weekend, we went to mass en masse, and my younger children ensured that whatever else we were that Sunday, we were real.   Three children sang like angels but also rearranged chairs, complained about how long mass was, and one played glom onto Mom like a skin graft even when she's kneeling while the other two pushed for a turn.   The four year old sat on his brother's shoulders because he kept touching the light switches or pushing over books, the two year old insisted on taking walks in the back foyer every five minutes or becoming completely physically rigid in an arch three point stand of her head and feet while screaming.  

The older set, not to be left out, had a cold war over the sign of peace, and an editorial in one of the songs, where one child sang loudly and well to emphasize that another wasn't singing at all.   "Am I being good Mommy?" one child was asking.  Another was declaring in a loud voice and partially crying, "I'm not being good. I'm never good." and wailing despite hugs, shushes and distractions "Hey, there's a song, let's sing!"  I felt the weight of why are we killing ourselves doing this?  What is the point? What is our purpose? Who needs all this grief?  Did they hear anything? Are they hearing anything?  Did I hear anything?   I could have been sleeping....but then, what we practice...we become...I would have become...asleep...(Sigh I hate/love when that flash of understanding rebukes in an instant what I was happy grousing about only two minutes ago).  

What we profess...we come deeper to understand...my children, me, none of us were perfect...we were here because of our severe imperfection, we were here with all our real realness. Thus it is with the Eucharist, this is the real presence of Christ, otherwise it is not worth our time or our energies, it is real food, everything else we eat, no matter how delicious or virtuous or decadent or wonderful, is dry water.   We were here to become more real.  We were here to eat real food and real drink so we could go out into the world and help make it more real. 

Small Success Thursday

It's Thursday and today, we take stock of the past week; of the small things we did that were in fact, big victories.  Motherhood is replete with these sorts of victories, over pounds, laundry, bills, homework, splinters and drawings on the wall.  If we do not recognize that these small daily things reveal sacrifice, devotion and love, we will succumb to the despair brought on by dull joyless dutiful grunt work.  All service must be love, or it exhausts more than the body.  But the trick is, we have to be mindful of what we do if we are to serve out of love; absent that mindfulness, we can turn what is supposed to be a gift into drudgery.  We don't always, but it's an easy slip I know for me.   

With that in mind, today we celebrate the little things we did with great love.  Please join in and visit the others who participate.  Use Mr. Linky and on your own blog, list three or more ways in which this week, by grace, humor, determination and love, you were victorious over minutia, dust bunnies, errands and the demands of modern life.  Then leave a comment.

This week I:

1) Took four kids to get hair cuts.

2) did a one on one shopping (Borders) with my daughter that probably is most hungry for this sort of time. Told her to ask me to do it again. She beamed.

3) Visited with my sister and we promised to go to adoration in our separate towns. (I made it last night!) The best description I have for being in front of the Blessed Sacrament, is Oasis.  You don't realize how thirsty  you are until you drink.

4) Thought the reading with kids would get derailed by last week's vacation (it was great by the way), but we picked back up and I can't wait for them to find out what happened to Eustance on Dragon Island tomorrow. 

5) Will meet this morning with my daughter's teachers to discuss learning styles and teaching strategies. 

6) Let a few go to see Harry Potter on their own, they loved it. --though oldest son said when Voldemort hugs Malfoy --most awkward hug ever.  (Three rows behind him snorted their sodas). We're going tonight. (Date Night).

7) Didn't gain weight on vacation --a victory of not going backwards.

Now it's your turn.

*****ARGH! Mr. Linky failed me.  :P
Here's Mr. Linky. 





I'll put all the blogs who commented onto Mr. Linky. Thanks!
(Had a morning meeting and a 12:00 appt. so I couldn't check the blog until 2 or I would have corrected this sooner).