At the Register Today

This week, practice asking God, "What do you want me to do?" and stand back to hear Him speak.  Every once in a while I remember, this relationship is a two way thing, and not all about me and my wants, and it is in that rare moment when I stop talking, that God answers. 

As such, I have a piece over at the National Catholic Register, "We Have Been Given Freedom in Order to Really Love God." Memo to the children, thanks for the inspiration.  Back to writing...

Over at the Register

Today, we're talking about how prayer is not an answer but a response to God's call.

Grace Can Pierce Stone

Driving my daughters to an appointment, we began a discussion about an article I read about a course where the students studied hate crimes, and in the process, encountered someone who had begun to repent, and who had from some, received the gift of forgiveness.  As my friend who sent me the article said, "No matter what we think about other people, change is amazingly possible."

The thoughts, "Grace can pierce stone. Grace can pierce the emptiness of years.  Grace, like water can seep through the tiniest cracks in the armor of the soul. Grace, like air, comes unseen, and we discover how necessary it is for life." kept running through my mind as I drove, and I repeated the thoughts as images in my head so I wouldn't forget.

The girls sat discussing how they'd write to someone who was incarcerated for hate crimes, and what they would say.   They weren't sure it would be just to be generous or forgiving to people who committed such grave offense, when those who were injured by the offenses still might bear scars from the events.  But God gives mercy to Cain, marking Him with a sign to all the world, this son I love, this son I will protect.  Despite Cain's sin against his brother and God, God offers him not merely mercy, but ongoing mercy for his life.  Grace is in essence, God's limitless love, manifested as mercy, upon us, His limited creatures.

Mercy remains, as Pope Francis constantly reminds us, amazingly possible for all who seek for it.  This does not mean the grace is won in an instant, for always, God wants us to go deeper and deeper into relationship with Him.  For that to happen, sometimes, we need the cross of time, so as to lean more solidly on God than ourselves.  We do not receive mercy via anything but God's generosity.  It reflects both God's heart, and the extent to which the soul of the person extending forgiveness or forbearance, is molded by God's heart.

Mercy manifested in this world by one person to another, remains to those who lack faith, hope and/or mercy, a mystery that amounts to foolishness.  Mercy manifested in this world from one person to another, viewed by the outsider who knows love, hope, and/or faith, remains a mystery, but a celebrated luminous joyful wondrous one,  It makes more sense than the sensible response the world would "understand," and thus is both impossible to explain, and more normal, more natural, more magnificent than what might be deemed just, fair or appropriate.

So today, as it is August 11th, the day I asked Catholic bloggers to offer penance and prayer for peace, both in their homes and hearts, and in the world both online and out there, I am praying for peace, for the whole world to be bathed in mercy, so that it might become more real and more natural, more what it was always intended to be.   Such a reality would be amazing, all the more so, because it is possible.

Small Success Thursday

Every Thursday, you know where to find me!

Small Success Thursday over at Catholicmom.com!

It's Thursday, come join us! Count your blessings!

The Little Extra Miracles of Every Day

Paul is four and a half. Words still mostly elude him.  He has good and bad days at school, so I get reports that he signed sandwich and cookie and said book and more and stop and days he dumped the shelf full of toys and pinned his best friend after chasing him into the boy's bathroom. 

Home is similarly conflicted.  There are days that begin with Paul taking out the skim milk and a sippy cup and lid to bring them to me while I'm getting dressed for the day because at 5:55 a.m, he's feeling a mite thirsty.  He's also taught his younger sister to climb up on the table with him and together bang out a clarion call for attention and more importantly, food.   We've discovered Paul putting three discs in the Wii.  He's also known  to try kick off his socks and shoes as soon as he sees the bus pull up.  In short, there is a gleam of mischief in those blue eyes.  He knows what he does and also knows how to use his disability to cloak his deliberate misbehavior.  Fortunately, his siblings have learned from his father and me, Down's syndrome is not an excuse.   It is not a get out of trouble free card.  If he dumps the book shelf, he gets to put it back together. If he scatters the muffin, he gets time out and no more muffin.  If he bites his sister, he gets removed from the room.  He howls like any four year old when justice is administered.  

But with those bad days, there are the momentary miracles, when we get to see Paul.  It has become his habit, after brushing his teeth for as long as we will tolerate (man does he love his One Direction playing electric toothbrush), to climb onto our bed and watch a bit of baseball with his dad.  Yesterday, his father was explaining where exactly his ankle hurt and what tendons needed to be rubbed.  Before I could move, Paul scooted down to his father's feet and began rubbing them.  It was a gift.  It was hard to do anything other than watch as a four year old son ministered to his 46 year old father's pain. It was a great moment of a little miracle, the kind we would not recognize if not for the silence he gives us most of the time.  His silence helped us see. 

Today, he did it again.  The kids were grousing about bringing up their laundry baskets.  Paul went over and picked one up and began the slow hard process of bringing one up the stairs.  Everyone watched as he moved the basket one step at a time.  It was very hard for anyone to argue afterwards about having to do the same chore.  "And a little child shall lead them..." I thought.   But his actions this morning like the other evening again revealed a listening mind and a willing heart. His body had to work to align itself with his will and his generous spirit, but that is the struggle we all have, getting that proper orientation of the will to the heart and the mind and the body to do good, to be obedient, to try for the benefit of another. 

There is a great temptation in the world to either ostracize/demonize children with disabilities --rendering them things to be discarded or destroyed or removed from society, or to sanctify them into heaven while here, to pretend they cannot sin, to make them cherubs or angels when they are what we are, humans, whose talents, like our talents, must be developed and discovered and encouraged, and whose flaws must be addressed and admonished and acknowledged.   Paul remains very human. He makes us more so.

Today he picked a dandelion, hugged his sister as if he hadn't seen her in years and came home to spend time coloring the table before I could get him paper.  He scares me by trying to run outside and out into the world and at the same time, his zeal for exploring is a reminder to me not to stay caged up at the computer.  He will compel me to play out on the grass kicking a soccer ball, to go examine the garden and to stomp in rain puddles and take walks.  Theoretically I do this for his sake, but I am made healthier and more human for it.   Likewise he will compel his siblings to work and to bring him out, and they will be made more whole in the process of introducing everything to him.

Paul's little extra does not limit his open heart or generous spirit, but his condition keeps the rest of us from placing an over emphasis on efficiency, by making us listen to the wonder of the world, of living at a slower pace than the world prescribes. 

Have Mercy on Us and the Whole World

I have read as much as I could stomach of the Gosnell trial, and what I read fills me with both sorrow and revulsion.  The temptation to go all James and John, "Lord, let us reign fire down..." is strong, because the evil is so obvious.  However, James and John are rebuked by the Lord, it is not good for their spirits, and it is not good for mine either.  

While in Texas visiting my parents, I had a momentary glimpse into how grace works, a vision of sorts, while waking, brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed.  I saw a woman, not myself, standing at the edge of a cliff.  Below her were rocks and a fierce ocean. The wind was swift, the sky clear and immense, filled with stars and overwhelming in its emptiness.  The woman was suffering, pain of the heart, worry, every sort of care. 

A cross, a luminous cross came down to her and she threw her arms around it like a lover.  It floated up into the air, over the ocean, away from the cliff and the cares.  Then, it turned so the woman could rest on the cross, holding onto it still in a huge embrace.   The cross flew past the ocean and the stars and all of time with the no longer troubled soul resting as she saw everything fall away.  Grace works that way for all of us no matter what we've done. 

Reading the news, the very sure temptation to say, "Lord, I am grateful I'm not like that sinful man." is fairly obvious.  It is a grave danger to anyone who calls themselves pro-life to presume to know the state of another's soul, or to wish hell, death, pain and damnation upon anyone. Righteous wrath turns quickly to a lust for vengeance, and we do not manage our souls well when tempted with the opportunity to presumably end evil with an evil.  We cannot bring a good out of evil, only God can do this, and it is a great temptation when presented with grave evil, great injustice, and cruel indifference toward the innocent.

The saints did not curse their persecutors, they sang praise while going to their deaths, they focused on their own unworthiness to be martyrs or witnesses to Christ, they comforted others, they prayed.  I am no saint. I will not allow myself to entertain the thoughts I had about this man and what he deserves, because they hurt me.  I cannot call the cross to me, it comes unsummoned, I cannot make the cross fly across the heavens past time, I can only embrace or not.  The cross is a gift.  The grace is a gift, mercy a gift, forgiveness a gift, all of it, unearned by us, merely sought.  

So I focus instead on the reality, that this man, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, is beloved of Christ. 

Boy let that sink in for a minute.  This man is beloved of Christ, ergo, Christ loved him  so deeply, He would and did take the wounds and scourge and pain of death for this man, just as singularly as He did for Hitler or Margaret Sanger or Adam Lanza or Kim Jong Il or me.  

I'll just sit here and sting Ow...for a minute. 

We just know these people's public sins.  We should remember to God, all our sins are public.  All of them count.  All of them wound Christ's heart. Christ wants each and every soul.  We cannot love as Christ loves, so we cannot comprehend this deep ocean of mercy, except to know that the same ocean of mercy is available to us if we are willing to plunge into it, to accept that this ocean is His to give, not ours to dole out.

But...but...but...this is really bad. Really bad. Evil sick twisted wrong bad my soul sputters.

It is a great mystery that Christ can forgive evil, notice I did not say excuse or explain, but forgive. We have to trust, God's justice and mercy are never at odds, it is only our fractured fallen souls that cannot reconcile the two. Which would we want for ourselves, for our children, for our friends?  Justice or Mercy?  Then that is what we must pray for, for our enemies.   (Darn).

If we need convincing, we need only look at the cross.  It is God's answer to our sin, to our evil.  My mercy is the limit of sin's reach.   My mercy is here for you.  My mercy is all if you accept it.  My mercy is yours if you seek it.   My mercy, my mercy, my mercy.  

So I'll be asking all of you to consider praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet for Dr. Gosnell, today and every day as long as he lives, because the souls we save, may be our own.  

A Letter to the Older Sons and All Day Laborers in the Vineyard

Inspired by some of the various conversations on Facebook and other places, about the new Pope, the traditions of the Church, the earnest work of living a faithful life, and the hard slow walk to the foot of the cross.

Fellow Older Brothers and Workers who have Been Here since Morning Working...Unite!

Boy do we get the short end of the stick!  We are asked to work, we are promised a fair wage and off we go like the dutiful hard working responsible people we are.  We bear the heat.  We do the grunt ugly jobs of minutia that require day in and day out consistency.  We say our prayers. We are faithful to the Father.  We are honest in our dealings with the foreman of the vineyard.  Then these interlopers show up.  They stay half the day, they only start coming to mass at Easter.  They don’t know all the right responses. They’ve messed up more than 90% of their lives while we’ve been ruled by those ten rules all our lives.  How is it they merit Heaven?  How is it that these are our equals?  Will we honestly be greeted by a cavalcade of great sinners beaming with luminous light, graciously delighted with the joy of having been forgiven?  How is it possible, is Heaven peopled with people like the good thief? 

I don't know.  I only know God's ways...are not ours.  His are better.  

God’s mercy remains a great mystery.   It can be hard to fathom.  Jesus illustrates it to us in that when the end of time comes, we will not know whether we are goats or sheep, wheat or chaff, until He pronounces us as such.   We do not know all the times we are lost, nor do we recognize when we have been idle in the vineyard or when we have fed Him in disguise by our fledgling attempts at loving our neighbor as ourselves.   We only know we haven’t done the glossy sins that make for juicy novels thus far.

However, any sin will keep us from paradise. It is a hard truth for the soul (mine anyway) to grasp and keep, we cannot earn/win heaven, we can only accept God’s grace or not.  If we accept God’s grace and love Him, we must serve. Our lives must become reordered. We will race to the vineyard, eager to gain callouses in the labor He provides, we will only wish we could have come to work sooner.   That doesn’t however, satisfy the older brother in the story who sees the party starting without him or fill many of us for that matter.

Those already working in the field are vulnerable upon the coming of new workers.  

It is the serpent that whispers, "Why didn’t we get to go squander our Father’s inheritance? Seems like we should have gone and partied at least a little with a goat or fatted calf or something before settling in to this gig."  Jesus looks at us with great love and says, “Sell everything you have.”  while we go away sad, because we thought we’d done enough, that we were doing enough. 

For the one deeply in love, service all day is a gift willingly given, and the cost, the tally of time is not measured or weighed or found wasted, it is worth it. 

God always wants our hearts to seek His, to desire more love, limitless love, always love.    

But we are fallen, we older brothers.  We didn’t go doing any great sins or ignore the law, yet, our reward is the same as those who failed spectacularly. Looking through the world’s eyes, God’s justice seems innately unjust to the faithful servant, to those who were part of the 99% of the flock. We feel less special, even though everything the Father has, is ours.  

It is understandably human, we want our moment in the sun, to be recognized and patted for the good and faithful servants we think we are.   But when we fail to rejoice that anyone is being pulled in, we are trying to shut them out, to horde God’s generosity for ourselves and those "like us."  It is a grave spiritual threat to our souls, to entertain this sort of spiritual envy combined with a scrupulous desire for a worldly fairness.  It will push us away both from God and our brothers even if we continue to pay lip service to both by our day in day out duty. 

None of us want to believe we are all both the older brother or the Pharisee complaining about the splinter and ignoring the planks, but we all hold onto our sins as fiercely as those lost out in the world we can easily spot.  When we wrongly perceive the inheritance as already ours, already earned, ours to demand because we are in the field working, we engage in self-justification, grace earned rather than given. 

If we still struggle, we must look at the perfect illustration of why we must be eternally grateful for the gift of faith and service we have thus far been able to eke out in the course of our lives.  We have to look at Christ on the cross refusing the vinegar soaked sponge. Surely, Christ had given everything He had at that moment.  

Why refuse this little tiny, almost minute touch of comfort? Why deny Himself a drink of sour wine after carrying the cross, being scourged, being mocked, spit upon, crowned with thorns, nailed to a tree?  Why not drink from the slender reed the dribble of wine from the sponge? 

Precisely so those of us who are trying (however ineptly) to live out a life embracing the cross, would recognize that we too must deny ourselves the offer of pain relief via something that numbs the heart and body, namely bitterness.   If we drink the sourness of entitlement, that is our reward for a whole life’s work. We opt for the self righteous vinegar of the elect, rather than the better wine served to all at the end of the day.

It is not worth it.  

So if you think that you are in the vineyard, and it is the heat of the day and the bite of the world seems about to devour you, rejoice that you have been given this task, rejoice in the work and know, the wages you will receive, are worth every drop of sweat willingly given.  And when you see a new laborer appear at the 11^th hour, be grateful that there are more willing hands to help in the harvest, God wants us all.   

  

Glimpses of Heaven

Sitting around the table after singing "Happy Birthday," someone asked my daughter what her favorite point of the day had been.  She looked around and talked about going to the baseball game with her father.  I looked about and my favorite moment was that one, with everyone around the table.  Even on Easter, we hadn't quite captured the knowing moment of being together, despite going to mass, despite breakfast lunch and dinner.  Today, Easter Monday, for a moment, we caught the experience of being at the wedding feast, when all whether eating or not, were present to each other.

Then someone asked for milk and another, a fork, a text message came which demanded an immediate response, one child vanished to the basement with her kindle while another two raced to finish the video game they'd paused and the birthday girl finished her cake and asked to go plunge back into her new book. The babies needed washing and the moment of communion over pink cake and candles fell into memory, blanketed over by the need to get one back to school, to do the dishes, to fold the laundry, to organize, to clean up the crumbs and keep moving.

If Catholics need a reason for weekly mass, it is that we live in an age that seems forever on the edge of dissolving into permanent rage. The Internet especially trades on the commodity of outrage that can never be resolved or absolved.  Any pockets of peace or tranquility have a singular quality to them, they are unique to the moment, to the post, to the writer or the reader.   Rage against the other side. Rage against the rich. Rage against those in power. Rage over what we do not have. Rage against what others do or do not do. Rage against what is being demanded or not.

Top that with the demand for instant access to our brains via emails and cell phones, i-pads and blackberries and we live in a busy busy angry exhausting world.  Carving out an hour, where we only need be present, we only need come with our needs, our wants, ourselves and all we love, seems like so very little for God to ask. Especially when doing so, would give us His peace even if we're stuck in the cry room with two children who have perfected the art of being both dead weight and oddly boneless while screaming. It is sufficient, God counts if we show up, if we are present, if we come to the table.

But we're busy crazy forgetful creatures, so he gives us moments to remind us, like sunsets, early spring flowers, snow falling and those few minutes after the cake.

And I think to myself, it's a good thing we have 12 birthdays to celebrate, we will perhaps be able to experience a few more slivers of what it is to be in Heaven and remember that the goal of this life is not to die tired and busy, but to be still and live presently.  

Prayers Please

Most of you know through this blog that my father has Alzheimer's.  Sometimes, it can cause people to misjudge distance and thus fall.  Yesterday, my dad fell.  He broke his left hip.

Today, he will have surgery to replace the ball in the hip. 

So I am asking all of you to pray for the surgeon, for the team that helps the surgeon, for my dad, for my mom, and for all of us who get the frustrating task of having to keep going, because we don't live close enough to go and be simply present. 

While I am at it, I will also ask you to pray for a complete stranger.  Yesterday at mass, I took my youngest to the cry room.  We were at our "It's-5-o'clock on Sunday Mass" Church precisely because they have a cry room.  The space for children at this church is a large open kitchen, walled in with a large glass window, used for meetings where whoever is meeting, will also be serving coffee and probably food.   There is a bin of toys, and there are chairs stacked available for the adults who bring their children there.  

When I arrived, there were two mothers and seven children in the room.One mother had an 8 month old and a 3 year old boy. The other mother had two sets of twins, ages 5 and almost 7.  The sets of twins were very busy playing and the mother's face looked stretched like leather, too thin, worn from pain and stress.

I cannot help myself.  During the offertory song, I said "Hello." 
She spilled open. 
"I don't know why I come to this mass. I've been coming here since they were babies and I can't get them to listen or get anything out of it and I'm getting less and less."  If ever there was a soul that seemed to be begging, "Please don't let me quit coming to mass but help me get something from it," it was she.

I sympathized, told her I understood that there were masses like that for every parent, and she mentioned that she normally goes to the 11:30 where there's a children's mass but they don't like to get in the car.  I admittedly made a joke about how if they want to control the schedule, they should learn to drive.  She smiled.  I then suggested bringing along a friend, that she needed some help.  I couldn't stay because at that point, my two year old found the door knob, opened it and was skipping back to where the rest of my family was.  

But her lament stayed with me all mass.  The Communion song felt like a love song from a Smitten God to her soul to me, "Come Back to Me...with all your heart...stay with me..." I could hear God courting her.  The closing song was an encouragement, "My grace is sufficient, My Grace is enough. My Grace is enough."

After mass, I returned to the cry room. She was still there packing up.  I told her I'd hoped I'd find her again and suggested the Magnifcat as a way of feeding herself daily, and Fr. Barron's Word on Fire for Sunday preparation.  It was all I could do, my family was already bustling out the door to get back home for dinner.   So I would also ask also, that all of you pray for this woman, that she heard how much God wants her and her children at the mass no matter how they act, His Grace is enough.  

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. 

Ways to be Salt and Light

Yesterday I ranted. Politics get to me sometimes.  I work hard to stay informed.  Sometimes, being aware of the world can weary.  We run the risk of becoming jaded and cynical. I'm reminded of the dwarves of Narnia, who after the long last battle, cannot see beauty, cannot taste the good.  They pride themselves in their certainty.  "Dwarves are for dwarves!" They cannot partake of the feast Asland presents them.  They eat, but do not taste.   They cannot see the great lion, nor can they hear his true roar.  

We live in a cacophonous age, with constant sound and news and diversion.  It can make it hard to hear God's voice.  So today, I'm offering a bit of salve:  How to be God's voice to others.

Pray.  Pray for everyone that ticks you off and everyone you love. I recommend the rosary.  Maybe a decade in the car after you catch the morning blips of news and the traffic report.  Say a Hail Mary for the Deejays happily chirping about how cool it is that so-and-so moved in with so-and-so  and for the so-and-sos involved.   List the politicians, the celebrities, the pains and anxieties of your life, and ask a saint to take each of these on, hand them over.  We have a litany of saints because we are a litany of sinners.  Invoke them all for all of us. 

Create beauty.  Put fresh flowers at the table.  Put away some one's clothes and maybe fluff the bed with an extra pillow.  Cleaning for someone else's pleasure is a gift, it gives them time because you gave your time.  De-cluttering to give to charity or simply to create a peaceful feeling of the home will have ramifications on your family beyond you not feeling like despairing because it's a mess.   Give yourself 15 minutes but be sure some of that time is thought on how to make whatever you're doing look better.  A little thought goes a long way. 

Visit.  The last one was a gift of time for others.  This suggestion is to be the gift of time with others. Invite a friend to lunch or surprise your spouse with a date, call your mom.  Call your brothers.  Ask about their lives, their days.  Listen.  When was the last time you called and it wasn't to share your news?  Relationships, all relationships atrophy without care.  Giving the care to a friendship is like adding seasoning to meat, it makes it tender, it makes it better.

Play.   Invite your children to play. Let the homework wait for 30 minutes.  The reason they are here, is to keep us fresh and young in our spirits, that can't happen if our only time together, is duty.  Homework, chores, errands, meals, bed.  We need to grow our relationships with them beyond physical care too. Otherwise, we're the cheapest bed and breakfast in life, and we won't know them when they grow up, and they won't know us either. 

Quiet.  Thirty minutes before bed, turn off all the machines.  Open a book or take a bath or both. Give yourself a retreat from the over caffinated 24-7 clutter of our electronic age.  It will refresh your mind and your spirit.  (Don't let yourself read more than a chapter --otherwise it will be 3:17 AM before you finish and that's really hard the next day trust me). 

Watch.  See how your life is rewritten when you aren't trying to be the author of all of it.  You will hear God's whispers in the softer tone of your family's discourse.  You will feel His breath in the warmth of your friends company.  You will hear God's voice.  How do we create a better world filled with salt and light, beauty and peace?  Start small. Start at home. Then, don't stop. 

Cramming Catholicism

This week my daughter had to do some sketches for a theology class.  She was charged with crafting images that would capture the symbolic meaning of the sacraments in a new way.   "But what if I think the sacraments themselves capture everything they are without embellishment?" she asked.

While she could argue the danger of trivialization via simplistic or saccharine metaphors for the sacred, I still just smiled and said, "Yes, but then artists would be out of work."  She had the grace to laugh.  

But the reality remained, she felt stymied and stumped by the task. 

That morning, I'd overheard a snatch of a lecture on Pope Benedict and his writings.  My mom had given me Benedictus and I'd recently taken to reading the daily meditation.  However the book tended to wander from room to room with the business of our household and thus often weeks were lost in the process.  It remained an organic habit rather than a daily ritual.  I happened upon the book.  Opening to the date, the reflection was on Ezekiel and the creation of a truly human heart from our hearts of stone, and how Baptism in effect resulted in a spiritual heart transplant. 

I called my daughter and read the passage. 
She immediately got it and set to work with the final comment, "This is another example of God cheating Mom." 

God cheats she said.

He doesn't have to play fair, He's God.   He can forgive 70 times 7, He can pay the last workers in the vineyard the same as the first.  He can shine on the just and the unjust.  

God cheats with 1000 whispers to our heart every day of how He loves us, pointing out what He hopes we will see. 

My daughter came back with the first painting, the Sacrament of Baptism.  A font of water trickled over a heart of stone, turning whatever bathed in it into a human heart.  We talked a bit about how it could be better rendered, but the thought was there. 

God doesn't cheat.  He just knows we're not very good at studying for the test and likes to hold impromptu review sessions.

Luminous Cross

Yesterday, I was flat. Moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer, from the dryer to the couch to begin the hard slog of folding, I just felt empty. Two weeks of not writing had left me wondering (as I am neurotic this way), could I write, was writing what I should do?  Or was it an exercise in ego that took me away from my main vocation, parenting these ten children? 

So I told God, "I need to know YOUR will.  I know Mary obeyed perfectly, so she got an angel to tell her directly what God's plan was.  I don't merit an angel, but I'm stupid and stubborn so I need a big NEON sign on a Silver Platter, what do you want me to do?"  Then I folded the clothes, dealt with a sulking teen because Wendy's messed up his order and so all he got was fries (mine), convinced a reluctant 10 year old to do math and an 8 year old to read, did the dishes and picked up school supplies for the new high school student who was hyperventilating over 3 ring binders.   When we got back from the Popsicle social (swimming lessons were to follow but got canceled due to thunderstorms), I checked my email. 

There was a Neon sign on a silver platter.  1) The Arch Diocese was considering my application to be a writer for them and 2) Museitup publishing sent me a contract for THE BOOK OF HELEN.  I owe God some serious knee time in thanks and gratitude, 1) because I'm very happy and grateful and 2) because He took my silly demand for a overt message seriously.   I'm glad He humors my impatience. 
But He expects reciprocity from me.  

To celebrate, I got to change two diapers, my teen said, "That's nice. I have homework." and the other said, "Stop calling people and help me pack for school."  So I did.   My younger children wanted to throw a party, so today, we're making a cake and I may get balloons and champagne.  

Back when I was in graduate school, my advisor asked, "How will you keep from being seduced by academia?" as I detailed my dream of running an inner city school for students with special needs that provided real services, cleaning for low income housing, home repair, landscaping and a soup kitchen.   Being a smartalec, I responded, "That's my husband and children's job."  I don't know why I said children, as at the time I had one.  But God understood and essentially said, "Okay, that's your path to holiness."  and graciously gave me this luminous cross.  

So today, I'm celebrating....and getting more school uniforms, a lunch bag to replace the one that's broken, and I have to stop by the doctor's for medical records and have reached critical mass on the dry cleaning...so in the midst of triumph, it will still all be very real.  

Thanks for sharing in my joy! Now I have to get to the real work.

Understanding Free Will

The teacher assigns homework.  The child has the options of:

1) Doing said homework well and earning both a good grade and possible praise from teacher and parent.
2) Doing said homework indifferently and possibly eeking out a good grade or more likely garnering a lesser mark and some grumbling from the parents.
3) Blowing off the homework and getting growls from mom, notes from the teacher and additional work, a bad grade and a slip designating that the assignment is late. 
And there are all the variations inbetween...

The child knows all three basic consequences.  The child knows good from bad, right from wrong.
But there's this pesky thing, free will. 

It allows us to knowingly, freely choose the worst of all possible outcomes because we don't want to go about the hard business of studying and gaining knowledge and learning what has been presented. Choosing the best option requires of us that we use our gifts.

Sin works the same way. We can know God's will.  We can even know the consequences of failing to abide in His love.  Yet we chose freely and knowingly that which short circuits our best chances to grow and delve deeper into how it is God calls us to love.  It's easier to take the pill, to blow off the sacraments, to rage at the world or others for their misguided views than to educate or even better, pray for those with whom we have definitive and difficult relationships.  It's our free choice to do so, it's just we make lots and lots and lots....of stupid free choices. 

But God loves us enough to respect our freedom, the gift He has given us to not be robots.  Robot children would do their homework perfectly every time.  Real children sometimes decide to watch Batman, sneak downstairs to raid the second refrigerator of the leftover birthday cake and then announce at 10:30, they don't understand this assignment or hide that they didn't do it or that they did do it but lost it, or that they forgot to turn it in, or that they forgot about the assignment entirely or blew it off. 

God would not rail at this johny-come-lately for showing up last minute with a bit of homework to do, but God does not tire of our whiny free willing sinful selves.  He loves us for what we are and what we could be if we loved Him more. But he does have expectations, that we will use our gifts wisely, that we will do what we ought, that doing what we ought reveals our love, while doing what we want because we want it means we wind up with a lot of extra stress, mess and poor marks.

The sins we freely chose to commit, keep us from God, just as the child who has multiple missing assignment slips might keep themselves from going to their parents or to the teacher, out of fear and shame and a desire not to face the consequences of freely chosen actions.  But ultimately, the hiding doesn't work, nothing is hidden, and only we are deceived in this process, deceived by the belief we could hide anything at all.   The only way the grades and homework situation turn around, is the child  admits there is a problem and begins the hard process of doing things differently.  The only way we access grace is to begin to submit ourselves to scrutiny and recognize our own innately sinful nature, and seek forgiveness. Start over.  Freely choose differently than we have, and do it again and again and again and again, to slowly grow ourselves in the habit of conforming to God's will out of free will.

With that being said, I had to ask of myself, "Did you do your homework?" And the only honest answer is I really need to go in and ask for some extra credit assignments to boost my grade.

Willingly Willing It

 It is the paradox of seeking to live an authentic Catholic life.  If we would do so, we must mold our will, our stubborn prideful selves to God's. If we would do that, we must "Will it."  So on the one hand, we must surrender our willfulness and on the other, we must wilfully throw ourselves into God's will.  It is a both and experience, that takes everything we have and pours it out, and constantly fills us with the infinity of God's grace. 

Lent is a time for strengthening our resistance to sin, strengthening our capacity to "Will it" to be molded as God willed us from the start, but loved enough to allow for our own fumbling about. 

Why are all these thoughts crammed in my head? 

Because I've spent the week seeking to get my children to see, via love, via talk, via reminders and sitting next to them until they're tired of me and I of them, that if they would blossom as their intellects and creativity indicate they could, they must "Will it."  I can check every assignment. I can go over every paper, but if they will not own something of this, they will not be what they could be, they may master some, but what they could own, they will forget and lose.  It takes a sublimation of the self for each of them to do this and that is not easy. What they do not see, is I too am having to "Will it" when I sit there, when I check the homework, when I force myself not to just let it go. 

We are all engaged in an ongoing battle to will what is proper and surrender what is not.   In a sense, all of life is Lent, of learning to surrender the excessive attachment to appetites, power and glory. 
Every time we think we've licked it, we've deluded ourselves, because we continue and the next moment will come when we shall be tempted yet again.  Like the dieter who has lost four pounds, the next day, I still have to watch it today and tomorrow and the next and the next and so on or they'll come back.  There is no rest in this battle, it is ongoing. Sin is like that, a fresh drink to an alcoholic, an offering of a "free sample" to lure you back into whatever it is.

Fortunately, God's grace is ample to defeat sin in our own lives, but we have to avail ourselves and all too often, I find after I've had a momentary triumph, I forget to keep going back to avail myself of still more.  Because I am stubborn, I keep trying to go on alone. Even worse, I find groping for that next moment after I've had a temporary triumph, is all the harder, that moment is the mile before the last leg of a marathon, when it seems justifiable for one's body to fail and the only thing that can keep it from failing is "Willing it."

How do we reach for God's grace in that moment when it seems impossible?  This is what prayer and fasting are designed to do; to give us a method for those moments when appetite or weakness or desire for the things of this world threaten to disorder our lives.   We shall not be perfect, but if we grab onto these gifts and seek God's grace, we shall be perfected in this great struggle.  It will be epic, but we know the outcome, the happy ending, and as such, as hard as the journey may be, it will make for a great story. 

When We See

This past weekend I flew down to Texas.

It was for a baptism, meeting a future sister-in-law and seeing my mom and my dad who suffers from Alzheimer's and cannot say all the things he thinks or know anymore all the things he once knew with startling ease.

We ate, we talked, we went to mass. We hugged, we did ordinary things like shopping for diet coke and jeans and making pot roast and folding laundry. We also tried to hang onto moments, to slow time. To freeze the frame when the baby smiled, to remember the words my father could get out and cram every moment with all the stories and thoughts and feelings that too infrequent visits allow to pile up.

It was a joyful luminous glorious sorrowful ordinary time.

At mass, I watched as my father followed my mother to receive. He bowed his head and took the Eucharist on the tongue. He then tried to follow his wife but the traffic to the cup was confusing and for a moment, he looked lost. Then my uncle steadied him by putting his hand on my dad's shoulder and he received the precious blood. I breathed out.

Meanwhile, my mother realized Dad was not behind her. She was about to look about when my brother gave her a reassuring touch of the shoulder to show all was well. My dad was returning.

As a Godparent, I (along with the Godfather)was in the second pew with my sister and her husband and their newly baptized daughter. It was an unfamiliar church for my Dad, but he turned and he stopped. He looked at my face. Out of the packed pews and confusion, he pointed and nodded his head with a slight smile. "I know you." the smile said.

In that moment, I flashed back to the first year I really knew how to swim. I'd had a tracheonmy for the first 8 years of my life and so at nine, swimming underwater was a wondrous new thing for me. I was at the YMCA pretending to be a dolphin or a seal or a mermaid. A man came swimming towards me and his face flowered into a smile. It was my dad. I had not recognized him, being lost in the wonder of being surrounded on all sides by water. When I did, I remember smiling back at him underwater in sudden recognition and then zooming upwards for a breath. Dad had been in the fog of his disease, but for a moment, saw me clearly. I was a mess for the rest of mass.

I was so grateful to see that moment, and all the moments before, the kindness of an Uncle, the comfort of a brother, the strength of a parish bursting with song and with children, the solid faith of my niece's family, the whole of it, all of it, that it was hard not to have my heart both burst with joy and weep.

Saying those vows, receiving, and being present, anticipating a wedding feast in July, it felt a bit like heaven , in that all of time collapsed in that full moment. Yes my dad is dying, but he is still with us. Yes I live far from a lot of the people I love, they are still with us, in this family, this Universal Church.

It was hard not to want to love endlessly in that moment, despite all the known and hidden crosses in that Parish, in my own, in our nation, in the whole world and the whole history of this fallen, broken confused world. For an instant, I understood how grace breaks through the fog of our hearts and even when we are lost in our own worlds, calls us to really see each other, and come out of the fake world where we cannot last long and into the real place where we can breathe easy.

On that day, we will be walking, and we will see Christ's face and He will smile at us. In that moment, when we recognize Him, our face will say, "I know you." too.

Through Paul's Eyes

My sister and I call each other on an organic-wish-we-called-or-lived-closer-gee-has-it-been-two-weeks basis.  But we keep each other on our toes.  She with her new mom new eyes enthusiasm, me with my veteran don't fret about it vision.  The virtue of each is complimentary to the vice of the other.  She is the Mary to my Martha.  Sometimes, I can get a bit calloused, after all, I've done this for 18 years, but she doesn't let those bruises to wonder scab and scar over, she demands I remember, it's always new.  As she said to me, "If you get through all this and are jaded, you did it wrong."  and I hold to those words.
On a similar note, this week, a friend of mine told me, God gave me Paul as he is, down syndrome and all, so I would not be jaded.  She pointed out that I'd seen first step, first tooth, first crawl, first word eight times over before I got to him.  Now, I even had a daughter that was trying to catch up.  But with Paul, what are run of the mill actions for everyone else, are victories to be celebrated and savored. 

October 31st, I'd scrambled to assemble 8 costumes, including for my youngest two.  The oldest boy and girl took care of their own Halloween needs.  Not knowing if either my three or my 8 month old were going to cooperate, I'd dressed them in football/cheerleader garb so that even if they didn't want to wear the dinosaur or Tigger, they'd be appropriate for the school parade, party and subsequent Trick-o-Treating.  

Evening came and reassembling outfits after dinner was a chore.  Still, I started to get Paul dressed.  My husband didn't think it was necessary, as the little guy looked pretty cute in his Redskin jersey and jeans.  However, I put the outfit on Paul and he pulled down the hood of the dinosaur outfit and made an "Aaahhhh" sound.  I lifted the hood to see his eyes.  He pulled the hood back down and said, "Aaaaahhh!" again.  We hadn't thought that he would get Halloween. 

Well, he got it. 

That night, he walked everywhere.  He went to people's doors and knocked. He took candy. He said Trick-o-Treat and Thankyou.  He nodded his head and high fived.  He often went into people's houses when they came to greet him.  He loved it and so did we.  "Behold, I make all things new." came to mind.  

At mass, he did it again when we attended on Sunday.  Some of my children don't sing, they're teens and tweens, it's not in their nature to participate, they don't want to feel, they don't want to be too religious.  But they had not counted on Paul breaking through their hearts. 

Paul full throated sung when the organ began Alleluia.  He stopped when the singing stopped, he started when the chorus returned.  He knew it.  He nodded at his siblings and clapped for them. There had been some dullness in some of my children, a sleepiness that was rendered fully awake when this little guy participated.  The rest of the mass, those that were near their brother, sang with him, sang for him, sang because of him.  And the words, "unless you become like one of these..." floated into my head.  Paul was leading his brothers and sisters to be like him, to sing without hesitation, to pay attention, to be wakeful, to see the mass and this section of the mass with new eyes.  

The real beneficiary of Paul, is everyone in our family, for he keeps all of us unjaded.   He'll keep us from "doing it wrong."

Arranging the Stars

Fall is one of those times when one can feel as if the whole world is fading away.  It is a time of packing away the easier parts of life like sleeping in and unobstructed weekends and breaking out the bulky clothing of coats and scratchy sweaters, homework and back to school nights.  It can easily oppress to the point of leaving one an emotional parallel of the trees that have already shed their glory and seem overly prepared for winter. 

The malaise of Autumn like the dog days of summer, has more to do with mood than the month.  But fortunately, it can be countered, with hot cider and pumpkins, football games and the trees that are willing to wait and allow themselves to be changed by the weather rather than surrender to it. 

So when today was raining and rough and I'd seen a note from a friend who seemed to hold the weight of the world on her heart, I wanted to paint a picture of beauty with words.  I wanted a scene of peace and beauty because with our 24-7 news cycle, politics, internet noise and the speed of our lives that often seems beyond our control or understanding, we need the stillness that beauty invokes.  But the question had always lingered for me, why is beauty the answer?

We need that moment of awe that comes and makes everything better without explanations.  It brings us back to being fully human. A baby's toothless smile, a letter in the mail, a found ripe tomato amongst the ravaged remains of a summer garden, these are treasures designed to help us through such times when the very air feels moist with dullness.  Prayer, a phone call from a family member, a visit from a friend, these are things which refresh and restore. 

The deeper grace that comes from beauty  is designed to get us through the dullness and tedium that otherwise threatens to engulf the daily grind of life.  Falling in love makes us remember we are more than here.  Reading a great book or seeing a fine film does to, because we can forget time and place not because of instinct, but because of a higher appeal than can be described and understood through the mechanics of science.  Our need for beauty is not limited to sexual appetites, we need and desire it for all our desires.  It is hard wired and further in than the DNA.  

That is part of why hunting for beauty often fails, it relies too much on the physical senses for validation. 

Beauty comes unbidden.  It reveals itself in little ways like wild flowers and a favorite song on the radio, the desirous kiss of one's spouse, the hand holding of a child, and in larger doses like reading the daily gospel and knowing somehow, that reading was picked just for you because you would need it today.  Most of beauty comes with our hearts unaware of how fully it is desired or needed. 

The animal in us does not understand the need for such indulgences; the spirit however, is starved for things like flowers and hugs on birthdays, fires in hearths even when the home is warm, and music that fills the air without clattering.    God knows this deep need echoes His deep love and pours out this beauty in sunshine and rain showers and seasons and creatures and people.  It is to teach us that beauty is indeed, necessary.  God took the time to arrange the stars for our pleasure, out of love for us.  We are to be about the business of arranging stars for others here from that same impulse to please and to love and to serve.

Today, there was a five point stag in my back yard.  If I'd been about my chores and not looking about for something other than my duty, I would have missed this breathtakingly perfect buck.  As big as the creature was, it was amazing that an animal this large could disappear into the woods as stealthily as it had arrived.  Beauty had come unannounced and, having done its job, left. Echos of that moment stayed painted in my mind, patching frayed nerves that had been created by the day's schedule and the to-do list that remained to be tackled.  I wished for my friend that she might have the equivalent of a five point stag in her back yard, catching her up short, filling the space, calming the mind and heart.  

My four year old told me, "Mom, the beautiful deer is gone." as she ate her cupcake that she insisted needed rainbow sprinkles.  Eating only the frosting and sprinkles, she is feasting on beauty as children do before they become jaded to dismiss such intrinsic wants in favor of pragmatism, when it doesn't matter if there are sprinkles or not.  Likewise, my 8 month old doesn't just want a bottle, she wants to be held and have her bottle.  Even she gets that we need more than what we think we need.  It is only when we get lost in the adult world that we fail to see the deer or ask for sprinkles or remember that all of this time here is an extravagant gift.

Nothing we do is unmarked, unnoticed and that at no moment are we ever unloved. Everywhere, there is deep beauty ready to fill our deep need.  Everywhere is the opportunity to arrange stars for others. It is as close as God, as close as creation, as close as the next human in the room. It is in the very air. 

To my dear friend, I hope you know the stars were arranged for you. Breathe deep. 

Kids Like Paul

My son is two and a half. He has blue eyes, a mischievous smile, loves dogs, balls and chugging my diet coke if it is in arm's reach.  He dances to any music, applauds at mass at the end of every song and will shake his head "yes" when you serve him cake.  He will then destroy the cake in a matter of seconds, becoming "Cakebeard the Pirate" to his siblings and require a long shower before bedtime. He likes dumping the laundry and pulling the Cd's out of just one bookshelf in particular.  He loves going to the pool but it takes him about an hour to feel confident in the water, then you can't get him out.  Paul can bark like a dog and vroom like a car.  He'll climb on any table, chair or bed so he can sit with you and he loves books.  In short, he's like every other two year old I've ever raised in every respect except he has the bonus of an extra chromosome.

Paul has Down Syndrome.

Most of the time, he wears this disability quietly.  It doesn't pinch the day, it doesn't dampen his mood or ours,and the actual quietness of his world is masked to me by his ever present and sometimes overly helpful next two older sisters.  Paul says very little, but he expresses much.

However this past month, the audiologist has indicated that he is struggling with a hearing loss that is the result of fluid in his ears (common for kids with his condition), and we are taking steps to remedy it. At these moments I'm reminded of what he faces and how everything is actually affected at some point by having that little extra chromosome, teeth, eyes, heart, hair, weight, height, speech, what he will understand, what sports he must avoid to prevent the likelihood of spinal injury, thyroid issues, and those are just the little things I remember from the instructive video "Your Down Syndrome Child" the hospital sent home in the complimentary diaper bag when we took him home. 

"Kids like Paul" have these sorts of issues. But these sorts of issues can be dealt with, by modern medicine, therapy and vigilance.  Children with Down Syndrome have bigger problems than all that come from having one more than everyone else.  That moreness is often fatal.

"Kids like Paul..." have historically been left out of society in a hidden home somewhere or institution, they used to be hidden out of shame. One wonders if that shame ever was eliminated as now-a-days, kids with Downs are eliminated before they ever get to show how much love can be packed into a smile. It is an ugly fact which even some people who work in the field of Special Education do not want to believe, but there are statistical studies including analysis by the Guttenmacher Institute that indicate 90% of all children diagnosed with Down Syndrome in utero, are then aborted.  Because their condition can be known, people have the luxury of deciding, "I don't want a handicapped child." ergo I will not allow myself to love a handicapped child.   For those who say that's harsh, I recognize it's an agonizing decision, it should be because choosing to kill a child rather than love it should cause agony --I'd be more appalled if it didn't. 

There are 5000 "kids like Paul" born each year in this country, thus there are 45,000 other children that were discarded. 45,000 ghosts that would have reminded all of us to slow down, to smile more broadly and to enjoy the great gifts of everyday life. 45,000 families each year that have willing allowed themselves to cut off a limb because they did not think that limb productive or necessary or perfect.  That's a lot of invisible loss. That's a lot of scarred wounded hearts walking on this Earth unable to address an ache they chose to inflict.

The thing is, for a society that promotes inclusion and having broad compassion for the poor and the weak, we have remarkably little patience with the perceived imperfect; be it age, disability, weight.  How are we as a society to become accustomed to differences if the range of possibilities is being ever more narrowed?

If science discovers a gene for diabetes or autism, will these folks simply get erased from the future as the 45,000 of 2010 have been?  Human nature and past evidence would seem to indicate "Yes," that all flaws that are detectable should be eliminated. What about ADHD, Parkinson's, MS, MD, Cystic Fibrosis and Tourrettes?  Somewhere in that list is a someone that you know, maybe even love.  Imagine a world without all those people peopling it. As knowledge of the human genome expands, will our tolerance of the genetic possibilities lessen?

There are certainly voices willing to say that we ought to spare these folks pain by eliminating them before they are born. There are certainly voices today that openly advocate abortion for children who have physical and mental defects when compared with "perfect children,"  sometimes even after birth and these are the so called smart people of our society who work at universities and write op-eds in the New York Times and  hold positions of authority and power in government. This attitude presumes the value of a person is economic and other dependent and thus only additional with effort having to be less than reward to make the proposition of care worthwhile.  The value of an actual person is always universal and multiplies out the value of others, people exist to grow the hearts of all around, each person adds to life simply by being.


None of us who have children with special needs wish our children needed special education to manage things.  None of us say "Yippee! My kid has a disability."  We do however rejoice daily in our children regardless of their ability and thank God for each of them.  We learn more and have more people in our hearts than our lives would have held if we hadn't been forced to rethink everything from dressing to feeding to school because we had a child with a disability.  It's said when you have a kid with Down Syndrome, you join a club of other families that have kids with Trisomy 21.  More accurately, you become part of a great adoptive family with special educators, speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and all the other families you never would have met except for the fact that you see in the eyes of their child, your child's own.  Who couldn't do with more family, community and support in this world? This is the little extra that children with Down Syndrome bring.

It is sad to me that 45,000 "kids like Paul" will not get to be loved as Paul is loved by his brothers and sisters, friends and family.  It is sad to me that people decide sight unseen that it is better to never be born than to suffer being born known to be by others as "less than perfect." I've never known anyone to meet my son and say, "He's less lovable because he's less than perfect."  They've met him and loved his smile, his eyes, his happy happy, happy spirit.  His spirit is not suffering.  Those who spend time with him find, their spirits are not suffering either.  His joy (not his condition) is contagious.

Finally, being less than perfect ought to be known as a universal truth for all of humanity regardless of genotype, but being less than perfect, we forget that also applies to ourselves.   By the logic of perfection and no suffering, the whole human race ought to die out, for to live is to struggle and even suffer a whole host of pains.  To be human is to feel that emptiness as if one has never eaten even if a feast was set, to be able to be alone in a room full of people, and to in a moment sense how still time can stand when we ache and wish the ache would stop.   We cannot exist and breathe without knowing that this life is fragile and the relationships within it all the more precious.  The only thing that lessens suffering is love in action. Love in action comes most quickly and perfectly through others. 

No wonder our world struggles with pain so, we've thrown away a lot of others. We've rejected a lot of "kids like Paul"  and called it anything but what it is, a waste of a whole town worth of love a year; and we've done it out of fear of the other, fear of love, fear of service, fear of having our lives directed beyond our vision, and fear of how our lives would be altered.  How frightening to face a lifetime with people who have gentle natures and whose natural response to everything, is to smile and be happy and yes, dump one's Cd's from that one particular bookshelf. 

From a spiritual sense, the world would be deathly afraid of more "Kids like Paul" and prefer they never be seen, heard, known, born.  Each "kid like Paul" that survives the gauntlet of the womb softens a bit of the edges of life and brings that community of his or her larger adoptive family.  Each "kid like Paul" brings the corner of the world they live in a bit more love, a bit more proof that while we all naturally sin, our default desires in the deepest of our hearts is to love, to serve, to be part of a larger body than the island of our own selves.