Two-Fer Friday

Yes, I know, I didn't link up to Small Success Thursday yesterday.  I admit, I was preoccupied by the news. My hometown of Beaumont, Texas has been on all the channels lately, owing to Hurricane Harvey.  I'd writtten my friend Mark Shea to ask him to pray.  He did me one better, he took my worries and fears and asked all his readers to pray too. 

At the time, I honestly felt very fearful for Beaumont.  This storm has already broken so many records and destroyed so many homes, and when they lost water, I wondered if we'd lost Beaumont. I admit, I went to adoration and my heart howled.  The words floated into my heart, Jesus is in the boat. You knew, there would be storms.  You also know, He's in the boat with you.

The howls went away, and the news from Beaumont brightened.  They still have a long way to go to even sort of get to normal, but I was reminded once again, of the steel in the bones of these people, and the gold of their hearts.

I'll brag as an older sister, that my siblings and their families in Texas are busy finding people to help, and calling others to do the same.   They live out what I'd written about in the aftermath of that time in adoration:  In Great Storms and Little Struggles, Be Christ to One Another.  Have a great weekend! Pray for all those recovering from the storm, and help out if you can, any way that you can.

Thank you.

Without Words, Always Inviting

It began as a consequence of reading three pieces.  First, I read a piece over at Aleteia on "Practical Steps to Keep Your Kids in the Church." and subsequently, a bit of Sherry Weddell's writtings over at Mark Shea's "Catholic and Enjoying it!" blog.

In December of 1990, Pope John Paul II issued these words of prophetic power in Redemptoris Missio:

God is opening before the Church the horizons of a humanity more fully prepared for the sowing of the Gospel. I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.

Since then, I’ve read hundreds of very critical, even sneering internet comments because the “springtime of the New Evangelization” didn’t just happen magically through bishops issuing a document or lay Catholics writing books. (Obviously, the sneerers aren’t gardeners or they would be able to recognize the “signs of the times”. The actual work of springtime is the most intense of all and that it begins in late winter and extends into early summer. Mid and late summer are the times when a gardener can relax in the midst of an abundant garden.)
In many ways, it was missional late winter when JPII published those words and late winter merges into early spring here in the Rockies. We had snow in mid May and the last frost here was on May 19. You spend late winter/early spring clearing the debris of winter and preparing soil for spring when it does come. You plan and order your plants and supplies and sharpen your tools. But you don’t *plant* until after the last frost.

You know that when “full” spring arrives, things begin to move really fast. You have been prepping for months and then suddenly, massive change occurs seemingly overnight. Full spring and summer also merge.

Note that JPII talked about committing our energies to TWO things, one of which we never talk about: “a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes.” In 1990, it wasn’t as clear as it is today that the “new evangelization” has merged with the “mission ad gentes” which refers to the first evangelization of people who have never been baptized or heard the proclamation of the Gospel. With the emergence of “baptized unbelievers” (Vatican term) or “baptized pagans” (Pope Benedict), the rapid cultural change in the west has blurred realities that in a Christendom setting were distinct.

Millions of “Marginal” and “non-practicing” Catholics dropping the religious identity altogether and spinning off into a vague spirituality that rapidly morphs into functional or self-declared agnosticism or atheism. Increasingly, “Catholics” in the west are already functional agnostics before they bother to drop the religious identity.

More and more, we can’t start with a simple proclamation of Jesus and a warm invitation to come back home. We are going to have to get very serious about a new kind of mission ad gentes to the already baptized who are spiritually, imaginatively, intellectually, culturally untouched by the Gospel of Jesus Christ in any meaningful way. The categories of Christian and non-Christian are blurring in ways we never anticipated.

Now is the time to get really serious about “near” pre-evangelization” and “far pre-evangelization” for the millions who have experienced almost nothing of the faith but baptism as an infant or small child and were and are being raised by non-believing, non-practicing parents. Many who still have some extremely tenuous historic or familial connection to the name “Catholic” are a million miles away from the faith in every conscious and living way.

The work of late winter: building bridges of trust and rousing genuine spiritual curiosity about Jesus is the work urgently needed now in the post Christendom, post modern west. And it is something for which we have few structures, little vision, and little leadership – especially at the parish and diocesan levels.

This involves really leaving the ecclesial building. This involves a true “ad gentes” approach to the nations, going out to the far, far places of heart and mind and imagination for the sake of those for whom God become incarnate, lived, suffered, died, and rose again.  

I finished it off with Rebecca French's excellent piece, The Hardest Part is Watching...
I agree with her.  The hardest part is watching.  

The combination roiled in my brain.   We cannot "keep" our children in the faith, that is, we can do all the right things and still, they might drift or run away.  You can do everything and still, free will taps into the equation.  After all, God created Eden, He gave his first children everything and still, they rejected a relationship in favor of their own opinions. There isn't a formula, there's you care for them, you love them, you sacrifice for them, you witness to them, and you hope more of it sinks in than they admit.   Other than that, you have to hope and pray and fast against the age.

When I finished reading, I looked up the term "ad gentes."  It means, "to the nations," and is a term used in Vatican documents, as part of an address or decree.  We're called to evangelize ad gentes, omnes gentes if my Latin is correct, which after a quick google translate check, it is.   We cannot guarantee results, we are, as Saint Bernadette said, "to inform, not convince."  We still have that free will which means, we're always invited to the table.  It's will we come to the feast?  I went back to the problem.  How do we thaw the ground to plant the seeds?

The media dubbed the young adults of this age, "Nones."  "Nones" are people who belong to no community, no faith tradition, even if they've grown up in one.  It seems to be that for the newly minted agnostic in all but name, the number one common denominator is a deliberate indifference to the Divine; sort of a "I don't know if God is, and I'm not about to find out," boredom with all things beyond the present.   The "None" is a soul committed to being uncommitted and deliberately unquestioning.   Because they still are, because grace is still possible, they are like seeds sleeping.  To extend Sherry  Wendell's metaphor, it is Winter.  Snow and Ice cover the ground.  We need to begin the thaw.  Except I'm not sure how.   

The basic ways of evangelizing are Truth, Beauty, Love, Sacrifice, Miracles and Witness, but our age is soaked in Relativism.  Everyone believes, "there is no truth." and no one is swayed by the irony of saying, "there is no truth," being professed as a truth.  They do not see beauty as anything but aesthetics. Love is not sacrificial, or if it is sacrificial, it is too costly to seek or sustain. They do not see marriage as anything but a personal choice, and children are burdens, consumers of time and energy and effort.  All sacrifices are merely preferences; they hold no weight.  And miracles?  There are none.  Witnesses, well, that's just proof of your preferences.  The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, and to me, indifference is the hallmark of the soul committed to not encountering God.  I'd managed to depress myself in the process. 

Then, I was tasked with writing a lesson for the Chapel room in my writing critique group, so I wrote:
Most people aren't converted by argument. Most people aren't evangelized by scripture quotations or sermons. Most people go deeper and deeper into their faith as a result of an encounter, and if you ask them about that experience, it's a story.  A story isn't sensation or feelings. We can't share your feelings just because you tell us, these are my feelings. We can't know your awe of God because you state, I am in awe of God. We can't even appreciate your being overwhelmed with God's grace or mercy or forgiveness unless we know the why of that experience.

It seemed to me, this is the problem with most CCD/instruction ABOUT the faith.  It is about the business of the faith, not an encounter.   How, not who.  Which begs the question, how do you introduce people who do not know Jesus, to Jesus.  I know how it isn't done.  Walking up to someone and saying, "Do you know Jesus?" is like walking up to someone and saying, "Will you be my friend?"  No one wants to answer yes, even if they might think "yes" in reality. We get a lot of direct frontal assault story telling in the Chapel room, the kind that uses sweeping generalities and sentimentality when what is needed is reality, and witness. I'd meant to try and illustrate how that doesn't work so I'd written more:

To give you a better sense of what I mean, I could tell you my son has Down Syndrome. He is often the means by which God lets me know how to love my children. Saying that doesn't really convey anything that doesn't sound like a cliché. Telling you, "he brings his family closer to each other," may be true, but that statement doesn't move. I have to bring you into the story, to bring about the revelation.  

I illustrated the point: 

Taking my son to the ocean, he filled his pockets with shells. Next he dug and flung sand on all of us. His joy at digging overwhelmed even his oldest sister's cynicism, and she helped him dig out a fort. Covered from head to toe in sand, he tackled his brothers to take him into the water. For the next hour, they held his hands and helped him jump the waves. When they wouldn't jump, he'd tell them, "Come on guys!" They jumped until their shins grew sore.

We hadn't planned to spend the whole afternoon digging and jumping waves. Some wanted to go for ice cream, one for a jog. Three hoped to return to the cabin and play computer games, and we had a pool waiting for us. Nine children ranging in age from six to twenty-four scrambled to build a massive fort big enough to withstand the first few waves of high tide. Paul had caught most of us in his play. However he wasn't satisfied with having 90% of his family with him, and began to search for the one sister who went jogging instead of coming to the beach, calling out her name.

His calling for her reminded me of when we serve dinner. He always wants everyone to come to the table, and won't sit himself until we either tell him, this is all there is, or everyone is seated. His desire for everyone to be there, mirrors my own. I always want everyone home. I always want everyone at the table, everyone involved.  

I cannot gather all my children as I once could.  Many of them are adults. However my son has no problem going to taking any of his siblings by the hand and leading them to the beach or to the table. He isn't about to be deterred by age or opinions. He simply wants them present. His simple desire for their company often brings them along. Sometimes, he calls and they come.  Sometimes, when they don't come, he seeks them out. All I can think is, "And a little child shall lead them," and who knows, he might.  He isn't interested in how they get to the table.  He's interested in who's at the table, and he wants them all.  It isn't full or complete or home without them.  

Who, not how.   He is warm, and he invites constantly, and never with words.   He trusts the invitation to do the work.

That's how we thaw, without words, always inviting.

None of the Above

Last week, I took a standardized test; the first such exam I've taken in about twenty years.


Three hundred minutes of multiple choice, a computer monitor and me.   We had headphones for silence.  We had to sign in, and sign out. We had ten minutes allotted to bathroom breaks to be used as we wished.  In short, everything about the test conditions had controlled parameters....except my brain.

Half way through the math, an earworm made its presence known.  I'm doing a problem with square split end roots or radios or some such  and not loving life.  Instead of thinking of the process I needed to solve the equation, my mind went to the mental equivalent of X.  J

"Welcome to my secret layer on Skull Crusher Island...."  Mark Shea introduced me to the silly lyrics of Johnathan Coulton during one of our Connecting the Dots podcasts.  Stupid silly fun stuff, not very helpful for jogging the cobwebs off my brain from math I fought with over two decades ago. 
I flicked the thought away and perused the answers, looking to get rid of the outliers.  

"You like monkeys...you like ponies...you maybe like monsters...not quite so much..."
and I had a moment of clarity.

Next problem.  But the lyrics did not go away.  

I finished, fighting down the song the entire rest of the exam.  If I don't pass this math test, I'm going to blame Mark Shea.

My Swan Song with Connecting the Dots

Mark Shea's program with Breadbox media is becoming a podcast only program, and as such, my Mondays have been freed up for my kids to ask me, "What's for dinner?" and "Can you drive me to the mall?" and "Can we watch a movie?" As such, while I'll still stop by to visit Mark on his show from time to time, it won't be a regular fixed gig.

For the past few months, I've been able to post a note on my door at five o'clock on Mondays "On Radio," and thus insured that no one bothered me for a full sixty minutes. 

 I'm thinking, I might not tell them just yet.  

Here's the most recent and last episode of Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea and Sherry Antonetti. 

Connecting the Dots

Every Monday, Mark Shea and I enjoy a good talk.  This past week, we shared Easter Sunday stories and delved into the great mystery that is The Shroud of Turin.

Connecting the Dots

I'm sorry I didn't get to this yesterday, it's been a busy week.  You'd think having Spring Break, I'd have more time to write.  Somehow, it seems there is less time.  I'm guessing that's how it always feels, you never have enough time to do everything you would will, and when your time is free, projects line up like jet fighters to take it away. 

All of which is a long prologue to a link to Monday's Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea. We talked about Palm Sunday.  Or as I call Connecting the Dots, Sherry's private public CCD experience where she pays attention, with a good friend as the teacher.

It's Holy Week, and I feel I'm crawling to the finish.  Somehow, my prayer has become ever more scattered as we've drawn closer.  I still take all the intentions to prayer, but my capacity to focus, to sit, and to pray seems to be less and less.  I suspect this is God's way to make sure I don't attribute any success in this Lenten journey to me, but rather consider myself to have been borne through it. Someone who wakes up from having been sick for a long time, cannot take credit for losing weight, even if they do, but reap the benefit.  I vote for that explanation of why I think my prayers have become more a tangled mess of intentions, and intentions about tangled messes.

However, I did hear one really solid podcast I also want to share. I've been following Fr. John Riccardo's Rerouting series, and the most recent one, hits hard.   Before you listen to it, take a calculator and figure out how many days you've been alive on this Earth.   For example, I calculated I've been alive exactly 18,546 days.   You can use this generator to do it for you. (I was off by two days when I checked it).  That's the easy part. 

Now, if you don't have a lot of time, but can give 8 minutes, listen to this podcast. 
The more in depth homily which proposes this project is here. It's fifteen minutes.  If you don't have time for either, or don't want to do a podcast or can't, the project is to write out all of your sins, from the beginning of your life until now.  Ask the Holy Spirit to show your sins to you.  Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your flaws not as a form of condemnation, but as a revelation of how we required, each of us, the crucifixion, and to prepare us for the great goodness of Good Friday.  

Connecting the Dots

With writing, it's either feast or famine these days, but you can always count on a good conversation between Mark and me over at Breadbox Media's Connecting the Dots. Come listen to the two of us discuss the Death Penalty, and why from a Catholic perspective, it might be that such a thing in this century, should be unthinkable. Why? Because God desires mercy, not sacrifice, and even the first murderer was given the full protection of God from retribution by others.

Woman at the Well

I bring this up because the Woman at the Well keeps showing up or more accurately, Jesus keeps meeting me at the well, and since I didn't come to the well, he keeps moving the well.  It was there on Sunday in the readings.  It was there Monday with Mark Shea and Connecting the Dots.  To top it off, I saw a link to the priest who challenged us to enter more deeply in, Fr. Dan O'Leary.   

Now I love Fr. Dan. I've loved his theology, his homilies, his thinking and his faith ever since he burst into our lives when I was pregnant with Faith. I met him on Easter in 2002. He'd been through the busiest week of priesthood there is, and came to the hospital to anoint me.  I also love him because he was willing to risk our friendship when he saw me holding onto a grudge.  He warned me, I could hold on and be destroyed, or give it over and find peace.  When the Holy Spirit hits you over the head three times with a reading, it's clear if nothing else, you need to go back to it, to consider am I holding onto something, am I keeping myself from the living water?

It was a reminder.  Jesus is there, seeking a relationship with us, breaking down the walls we've created through false gods, through our sufferings, through all the failures we've held onto over the years.  We all are the woman at the well, going to find something that would satisfy, because we've tried everything.  We are all the woman at the well, wanting something more and knowing what we've found up to now, wasn't it.  

So we go again, hoping this time, we'll find the living water.

Connecting the Dots Podcast Link up!

Mark Shea and I talk about the Resurrection on Connecting the Dots!

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Today Mark and I talk about Lent, about joyful deaths, about the Orans posture at mass, and about evangelizing Aliens from other worlds. In short, we try to get to as many things as our imaginations can fathom in an hour.  

My take?   I spent some time thinking about this after the show.

Would meeting aliens from another world or finding life on other planets shake the foundations of our faith?

Simple answer?  No.

Why? I think it is possible, we are unique in the universe, in that we are the most sentient (God help us), in which case, it speaks to perhaps needing to recognize our task as stewards of all creation including the suns, moons, planets and stars and get to work caring for everyone we encounter, for they too are made of the same stuff as the suns, the moons, the planets and the stars.

However, I am not troubled by the idea of  not being alone in the universe because even if that first scenario is the case, we have a lot of company.

If there is other life (tangible, living through time and occupying space and having matter), if it is non-sentient, then we must care for it as we are called to shepherd eagles, embryos, humpback whales, butterflies, orchids, redwoods, penguins, lions, wolves, lambs and all that grows or creeps or swims or flies upon the earth.

If we discover life forms with will and intellect, then they are our brothers, and we know, we are always  our brothers' keepers even if they are stronger and bigger and more evolved intellectually, physically or even morally than we are.  Our mission does not change even if our position on the food chain might, it only, (like the universe), would be expanded.  

Catholic means Universal, ergo I'm going to go with the concept that such a faith would include within it, all that inhabits the Universe.  As the bard said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

We cannot outdo our God in love, in generosity, in creativity, or I would add, imagination. If we can conjure wizards, two-hearted thirteen lives doctors, hobbits, Vulcans and Jedi Knights from our limited minds, who knows what wonders God holds for us to find if we were to venture out past our own safe shores.

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea Podcast is Up!

You can listen to Mark Shea, Rod Bennett and me talk about writing, the process and some of the inside baseball of the writing life.  It helped me get back in the saddle about submitting.

One of the big issues for writers is isolation, which is why when writers get together and talk shop, time falls away.  For one of the fastest hours on the internet, start checking out Connecting the Dots every day at five o'clock.  Rod Bennett will be back Wednesday as Mark's co-host.  I'd also recommend listening to one of Rod's talks: Four Witnesses Brought Me Home.

I'm honored to be in such company.

Link up!

Monday's Podcast with Mark Shea over at Connecting the Dots focused on encouragement. We also punned and talked about when God decides to pull back the veil in response to the cry of our hearts.   Wish I could have thought of a good pun in response, but I promise you, it's a great one worthy of preserving in internet amber.

It's an odd thing, I'm quicker on the keyboard than on the spot, so when the lead teacher asked me to give an example of verbal irony, I couldn't think of one, I got tongue tied.  She said, "Very good."

I'd love to say it was intentional, so let's go with that...

Wow! This Just in....

I didn't know this piece got published until I began my book keeping for January. Over at Aleteia, there's a piece about learning to "Be not afraid," when it comes to letting my son Paul grow up. I love the title, That Time when the Holy Spirit Hit Me Right Upside the Head.   Live Action News also asked for a reprint of the piece, the Happiest Most Pro-Life Story.  

Also, today Mark Shea and I had a blast talking on Connecting the Dots about the philosophical/moral error of Either/Or when it comes to addressing human need.   We also talk about snow, G.K. Chesterton, mention the interview of Bishop Robert Barron on the Rubin Report and the Superbowl.  Like I said, it was a blast.  

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Mark Shea is loads of fun to pal around with on the internet, and on the radio through the internet. When he invites S.C. the editor of Eye of the Tiber, a great Catholic Satire site, it's even more merriment as we pun, discuss satire, discuss writing and laugh an awful lot over at Connecting the Dots! 

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

The Podcast for Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea, and guest Matt Swain is up for your listening pleasure. (I'm there too).  

We discuss amongst other things, fifteen days dedicated to Prayer for Christian Unity.  We tend to think such things might involve platittudes or what you would find on the back of a car bumper.  The reality is much more about being authentic witnesses to Christ with all people, and discovering we are both our brother's keepers, and they are ours.   We have far more which unites us (say performing the corporeal and spiritual acts of mercy), than divides.

It isn't an act of betrayal of the faith to see in the faiths of others, a genuine devotion and zeal, and a divine spark of curiosity about both how we are to live now, and who we want to know forever. Laced in the hearts of every person, is a desire to be loved and not merely liked or tolerated.  We want to be embraced as the sons and daughters of the King, to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant," when we're finished with all of this, and to know when someone else heard us, saw us, worked with us, shared bread with us, they saw in our joyful witness, something of Divine love.  Matt Swain is working with the Coming Home Network to invite all people of Christian persuation to pray for a greater understanding amongst the faith denominations about the who we all worship, and how we are to treat each other.  If you're interested in finding out more, Here's where to go. Tell them Sherry sent you...

Two-Fer Thursday

I know, it is all grace and we are blessed.  I know it so deeply in my bones, we've made "We are blessed" the theme of this year.   My poor little blog, the new year has not been kind.  Here's my link to Catholicmom.com for this week's Small Success Thursday and here's the podcast for Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea!  We are blessed.  I'll try to do better.

I'm trying to carve out time to write, it's just everything seems to need equal time these days; work, the kids, the house, everything! It means everything gets a fraction of the time it deserves and I always feel I've short changed whatever I've given a fraction and whatever I haven't given even that little.  It is hard not to always feel fractured, because I'm only giving fractions.  

It occurred to me, that was the problem. I felt dissatisfied with the giving, because I wasn't giving enough.   If I gave all to each, I would no longer feel I wasn't giving enough.  That contradictory thought somehow consoled me and felt true.  Give all, and I won't feel fractured, give all and I won't feel like I'm short changing anything or anyone.

Connecting the Dots Podcast

Yesterday's podcast with Mark Shea was about influences, people who helped form who we are and why.   We looked into what makes us, ourselves.  We talk about books, people, witnesses living and deceased, the gospels, and those people we never knew the names of, who taught us things we still hold onto, so many years afterwards.

Monday's Work

If you missed the talk on Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea on Monday, not to fear, the link for that talk with Tom Hoopes and Mark Shea, talking about Tom's book, What Pope Francis Really Said, is right here. 

I have this book on Kindle and I'm breezing through it, not because it doesn't address things deeply, but because it's written in an easy style, and goes over the ways in which what Pope Francis said things and how they were interpreted, and how they were meant.  It's worth your time.

If you hang around to the 4th quarter of the program, you even get to hear my Yoda immitation.

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Every Monday, you can hear Mark and me talk about things from a Catholic perspective. On this past Monday, we began delving into "Blessed Waiting," and discussions of how to God, all times are soon. It's only all of us with our limited understanding of time, that cannot recognize the everyday miracles of our own lives simply being.

I know...I know...I'm behind my own times...

Okay...I feel like I'm repeating last week's post.   On Monday, I talked with Mark Shea on Connecting the Dots. On Tuesday, I found out a piece ran on Aleteia regarding family lore in November.

Add in Small Success Thursday and my poor blog had no love this week.  Will I do better next week?  I'll try.

I promise, I'll try.