A Good Discourse in the Nation, How we Begin Again

 The first requirement in healing our nation, is to stop labeling ourselves as us and them, because we are one people, even if divided by politics, by religion, by income, by education, by race, by values, by experience and by background.  We are still, a people, and the first thing we must see, is that what we want from this country, is for everyone to hear and for everyone to feel they've been heard.  When people don't feel like they matter, or like their lives matter, they stop listening.  When people don't feel important, they stop caring.  When they don't think anyone will hear them, they get angry.  

Dismissal of anyone, is just that, a dismissal, and it's something that builds walls, something we don't want, that makes more discontent more likely.  It makes reactionary policy also more likely, which is the least likely to satisfy for anyone.  We need to find a way to reconnect across the digital, intellectual, political, economic and personal divide that's been expanding as a result of the nationalizing of every race, the politicizing of every issue, that precludes ever granting the presumption of good faith to anyone who doesn't already agree with whatever outcome we desire.   

A house divided does not stand, and I would say, as a country, at this point, we're on our knees.   

It will take statesmanship, it will take courage, and it will take humility and it will take work, to begin the process of restoration in our national dialogue.  Rather than having individual channels that cater to what we prefer, we need to find the people who are working on the problem, and willing to discuss what they hope, what they know, and where they agree, and be committed to working to find as much as possible that can be done.  There is a lot of work to be done, and less of it completed when everyone is competing to show how whoever isn't doing what we're doing, is failing at humanity.  Whenever we see someone else as less than, we are failing at humanity.  We need to be aspiring to something better, and somehow putting love where little or none is.   

A good discourse allows for listening as much as talking, for giving and forgiving, as much as asking and receiving.  We need to pray for all of us, to have receptive hearts for each other, even those with whom we disagree...and whoever we can think of that we would ask the question, "Even them?" "Even these?" the answer is...and it's hard to recognize, because it would be oh  so much easier if it weren't, "Yes, even these."  

"But they are lepers.  They are sinners.  They are tax collectors."  my brain says in some format, and I'm sure everyone's does..."They did X" and "X" is horrible, and was horrible, and will always be horrible.  However Christ forgave the most horrible of acts from the most horrible of places, and we cannot be more merciful than Christ.  

So if we want a better discourse, a better reality than the one we can all point to, from the beginning of fallen and ordinary time, then we must ask for the peace the world cannot give, and give it to the world.  It will fall on those who hear it, it will return to us on those who do not.   Be the words "Peace be with you," and peace will be with your spirit, even in the hardest of times and you will have "a good discourse," if not with those around you, always with God and that will be sufficient.  

Let us go and make our visit.  

The Churning of the Storm

Today, I think everyone who looks at the news or has endured this long seige of Covid-19, or who does any self examination about how we've failed as a nation to deliver the promise of freedom to be to a multitude of people through what we say and don't say, do and don't do, must feel like they are on the boat, with the storm swamping the deck on all sides.   "Lord, save us, we are perishing."

And Jesus seems to be fine sleeping.

We've tried doing this without Him, it's not working.   We've tried using the world's means of bringing about a Heavenly outcome, it's not working.  Politics and power is not the way.  Law and lawsuits are not the way. Policy is not the way. Procedure is not the way. Perception is not the way. Even actions alone are not the way.

 The only way is love.  Loving our neighbor. Loving our enemies. Loving those in our home. Loving those in our neighborhood. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving.   It means sacrifice, it means living day in and day out and letting yourself pour out day in and day out. 

It doesn't matter if there is a storm.  Love.   It doesn't matter if the storm is swamping the boat.  Love. It doesn't matter if no one knows. Love. It doesn't matter if no one else cares. Love. 

The churning of the storm is the world and sin and all the craziness that sin creates.  We all want the peace the world cannot give. 

When Jesus woke and calmed the storm, and the waves died down.  My daughter came in to my room to tell me about her attempt to work on her relationship with her sisters. She went to their room and said, "I don't always tell you, but I love you." and something of the storm of life ebbed.  I sat amazed at the results of faith, of love, of answered prayers. 

So to quote Saint Padre Pio, "Pray, hope and don't worry."  and get to the business of loving because the world needs more of it.

Some basic advice for Weathering the Storm in Place

How to avoid this unknown number of weeks becoming an ordeal and a trauma rather than a memory of simply a hard time.

1) Get up and get dressed. Make a list of things to do. Brainstorm with your family as to what they are.

2) Cook meals. Plan the meals.

3) Declare screen free time and reading time and outside time. and game time. Variety is key.

4) Tackle a project you've put off --like cleaning out a closet.

5) Exercise.

6) Group prayer, and private prayer.

7) Make sure everyone showers every night.

8) Have nail polish, face masks, etc. stuff you haven't used? Time to break them out.

9) Practice musical instruments/hobbies you've ignored.

10) Remember, the goal is not to either be exposed or expose others to the disease, so weeks without is a gift to your neighbors and your family.

Final rule? Stay clean, stay calm, be kind.

Over at the Register for the First Time in 2020!

Today, we must all appeal to Heaven for Peace on Earth.

Small Success Thursday

I started last week, I'm sticking with it.   Welcome back to another edition of Small Success Thursday. 

This week held within it, lovely moments like my daughter's acapello concert.   Here's the video.  (I'm boasting because well, I'm proud). 

It also held a quiet moment when I could only gasp.  On Tuesday, I'd misplaced my rosary. This rosary was given to me by my eldest daughter from her trip to Italy. It came from Padua, from the Shrine of Saint Anthony. It's beautiful. It's precious to me, and I tore apart my room looking.  I also looked in the car, turned my purse and my satchel inside out several times, and begged Saint Anthony to help me find it.  Frustrated and defeated, I took myself to adoration and prayed with a plastic rosary, and made my peace with the loss.   I found one rosary of mine (a purple crystal one), in the back of my car.  I found a silver and white one of mine, in a drawer.  I laughed, they were rosaries, just not that one. 

The next day, half way through work, I reached into my purse to fish out a dollar for a diet coke, and found the red velvet bag with the rosary inside of it, in my zippered pocket.  I'd turned the whole purse inside out. I'd gone through every pocket.  Saint Anthony, I owe you one.  I sat there shaking my head...because the thing was...to get me to pray the rosary, rather than worry about the nature of the beads. Yes, I still felt very happy to find it. 

The next small success came with my youngest daughter making a list of careers for herself including pet watcher, park ranger, artist, boss, taste tester for Tasty Cakes or Entenmann's, contestant on a game show, art teacher, movie maker and nun.   I'm saving the list. 

In the car, on the ride to school, we've worked on practicing gratitude.  We played a game of listing twelve blessings a person.  You couldn't repeat someone else's blessings.   It helped. 

Those are my big moments from the past week.   Hope you had a great week filled with small successes.   

Over at the Register

So I had all these doubts...but apparently last month I didn't feel so lacking in confidence. I forgot I wrote this piece in February over at the National Catholic Register on not hiding your light. It's a gentle reminder, (if only to me), if you haven't really started your Lent, you can today, and that our God is about our Joy, not our drudgery.

He doesn't want me discouraged, He wants me joyful.   That's a great comfort actually...because it's a call to joy...which is a willed response to reality.   It's not about getting rid of things, it's about being at peace with where you are and why you are wherever it is you are...

On that note, in the interest of peace of mind, I'm taking a break from Facebook for Lent.  I'll still link articles here and share them, but no commentary, no likes, no sharing of other stuff, no status updates, no lingering.   Thank you for understanding.   Happy Lent!

At the Register this Weekend

I think the world could use a few more of us going to have a heart to heart with God, so we could better read each others hearts and heal whatever it is that hurts.

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.

A Plea for All of Us to Pray for All of Us

The Catholic blogosphere is as diverse as the Church itself, with people who wrestle earnestly with issues both big and small, but who try always to be Catholic in their response to life and all the people living in it.  We aren't always successful.  Being like any family, we have fights, we fail, we forgive, we pull away, we mess up.  However only when we have our right and left hands together, can we be fully in prayer, fully seamless, fully the Universal Church we are all called to be.

Above all, we want this world which is God's gift to all of us, to go on, allowing future generations to discover Christ both in the sacraments and in each other, in service and in prayer.  That can only happen if the people here now, work for peace, both in our own hearts, and in the world.   As part of the overly talkative patient wing of the hospital for sinners, who believe part of our vocation, is both to learn and educate about the Catholic faith, it is time we came together in prayer. In the core of each Catholic, I know there is more than a mustard seed of faith, waiting for us to ask. I also know, harder things require more than mere prayer and faith, but atonement, for some demons do not go out except by prayer and fasting. We have a world full of unrest even absent the current sabre rattling in North Korea, and we need to get to the work of being the Body of Christ to others.  We can only do that by being deliberate in seeking grace.  Who doesn't want more genuine peace and grace in the friendships in their lives, both online and in real life?

How?

We do not have worldly power, but we have something much greater.  We have the King of Peace, and we have His blessed mother, the sacraments and the saints. So I am asking all Catholic bloggers everywhere, at the Reporter and the Register, at Aleteia and Crux, Catholicmom and Catholic Digest, Catholic columnists both independent and syndicated, new and established.  Calling all writers from America and the Catholic Stand, at Patheos, New Advent, Big Pulpit and the Catholic Conspiracy, Church Militant and anywhere they may be found, to ask their readers to consider praying and fasting this Friday, August 11th, for peace in this world, on the internet, in families, and between nations. Joyce said of the Catholic Church, "Here comes everybody." Well, we need everybody.

 Jesus told us to ask and we shall receive, seek and we shall find, and that collectively, we should be able to mustard up a mustard seed, and maybe transform a mountain of problems into molehills.  

How to participate:
1) Decide you will dedicate this Friday to penance and prayer and fasting for peace in our hearts and across the world.
2) Offer a fasting of a particular kind for the whole day; something which you either treasure, or which you know is a barrier to your own prayer life. It can be something as familiar as diet coke or Facebook, it can be refraining from snark, it can be meat, it can be your phone or television or anything which you surrender for 24 hours, as a gift in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.
3) Invite others, both in real life and online to do the same, and write your own post of why and what.  We are all small. We are all at the very least, half of mustard seeds, but together, we can move mountains.

If you don't know what to do, here are a few ideas:
30. Pray for all our leaders, and all those in power.  Spend time with the Blessed Mother, asking her intercession in their hearts.
29.  Figure out what you cling to, what you have made an idol or an addiction, and ask all of Heaven to help you let go.
28. Read the life of a saint.
27.  Review and renew your baptismal vows and confirmation promises.
26. Read the daily readings to your family at the dinner table.
25. Make a gift of yourself to your family today. Following the wisdom of Saint Therese of Lisieux, picking up pins for love.
24. Watch or listen to a podcast on Forgiveness.  Fr. John Ricardo's talks on this matter are excellent.
23. Call your pastor, ask what the Parish needs you to do.
22. Do an examination of conscience from your earliest memory to now, and ask for wisdom and guidance from the Holy Spirit.
21. Pray for the souls in purgatory, arrange to offer a mass.
20.  Fast.  Pray for peace each time you remember, you're hungry.
19.  Smile at each person you encounter, and whisper a prayer in your heart for each person you see.
18.  Spend time with your children, playing on their level.
17.  Invite someone to join you for mass.
16.  Offer your unique talents as a gift to your local pregnancy center or soup kitchen or parish, or a neighbor in need.  Set it up as an ongoing
15.  Invite someone you know could use a friend, out to lunch. Listen.
14.  Read the catechism on Just War.
13.  Venerate a relic. Ask for the saint's intercession.
12. Make a pilgrimage to a local chapel or shrine.
11. Begin the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary.
10. Go to adoration for an hour.
9. Divine Mercy Chaplet
8. Spend some time reading the Psalms.
7. Donate clothing to a local shelter.
6. Go to mass.
5. Pray a family rosary.
4. Give alms.
3. Make a confession.
2. Read some of the writings of the Doctors of the Church.
1. Perform one of the Spiritual or Corporeal Acts of Mercy.

There are as many ways to fast or give alms or make atonement as there are saints, and with all of us, we should hit all of them.   The goal is peace, of the kind we can only ask for, the only kind worth receiving.   Let's get to work.

New Piece at the Register

It began as an intellectual response to a fellow writer's lament at rage being all the rage these days, it resulted in a piece over at the National Catholic Register.

Today, over at the National Catholic Register

Sooner or later, my kids will learn everything is grist for the mill. At that point, they might possibly stop quarreling in the car over the radio or the temperature or which seat they got, if only to ensure I don't use such incidents as a source of inspiration. Today's feature? Make peace with your brother.

Time to get to Work

The shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and of Philando Castile and of the five officers in Dallas?  All of these executions were obscene acts of evil.

I spent the day in transit to a wedding, but know social media exploded with respect to these acts, all of which bring to the public conscious the need to really look at ourselves and have an honest discussion about what we want as a nation, and what we don't.

Here's what I know.

There is a disproportionate level of incarceration, stops, arrests, charges and abuses of people of color by law enforcement, and we as a nation have to recognize that level of systemic abuse of power breeds nothing other than resentment.  

We also have to remember,  most cops don't make the news.  Most desire to protect and to serve, Most cops offer their lives on a daily basis, dealing with the hard reality that people do act badly, people do break the law, people do sometimes do those horrible things that make the news and need to be stopped.  It is not a disconnect to say black lives matter or to also say, blue lives matter.

The reality is always both and.   Neither should be ignored.  Both should be addressed.  Both must be if we want something other than what we have.

But being a ring side observer to the actual incidents, it's only human that we want to do something.  The temptation is to either rage or cry or to pray, but the reality is, we have to do more than feel, more than symbolically gesture.  We must somehow stand and speak and help make things happen so that these sort of things stop happening.  

So now you're wondering, what?  What do I do.

Blessed Mother Teresa was asked, "How can I change the world?"  She answered, "The best thing you can do is go home and love your family."  and she meant it.   I view our whole world as our family, and we've done a poor job of loving many of them.

Today, the best thing any of us can do is to go and be kind to every person we encounter and then, to keep doing it tomorrow, and every day after, until the violence of this week becomes something unthinkable for everyone, always.

Pray for peace, work for peace by being a source of peace to all you encounter.  We've watched, but the sideline times are over if we want a less angry world.   Time to get to work.

How Do We Do This?

It's a question that bites at four in the morning, when you just went to the kitchen for some water and discovered your teen asleep at the computer, having pulled the high school equivalent of an all nighter.  You send her down to bed.  The seven year old comes down the stairs, thinking it's breakfast time.  You send him back up.  The next day there is a parent teacher conference and a basketball practice which runs late, and a presentation at ten which two of your children are in, and who will feel crushed if no one shows.  You go.  There is a pile of a laundry in your room because you took everything out of your drawers looking for your daughter's pair of white pants which she insisted were missing, but which she found in her drawers after you'd done the damage.

My five year old slumps on the floor, demanding food and entertainment.  My ten year old chafes at being told to take a shower.  She doesn't have anything red, white or blue that's clean for the show, so I fish through the laundry, while my husband drives the two to their school, and the overtired teen who missed the bus to hers.  He stops and gets our daughter a shirt while I'm at home doing pony tails and trying to brush long hair without snagging, for she snarls when there are snarls in her hair.

And I know I'm not the only one feeling the crush of things.  My sister's family is rocked by my niece who broke her arm so badly, it will need surgery.  My mom needed care at the start of October. Fall has been hard.  The fall is hard.   Being fallen, harder still.

So what do we do? How do we do this? How do we keep doing this?

It is a choice, gnash or sing, weep or pray, growl or read.

Sunday, we took a late date night to see the latest James Bond film. We forced it into the schedule, because it wouldn't happen any other way.  The next day, I put out table cloths and Thanksgiving decorations and we had apple pie. There's only one way to fight chaos and stress, and the pain and nuisances of this life, with deliberate kindness, delight, service and beauty.  

The Blessed Mother did not scream at the crowd for mutilating her son.  She did not rage at the injustice or the cruelty of it all, and she had cause.  I just have nuisance value.  To prove the point, the nurse called from the elementary, to let me know Paul's eye is red, and he might have pink eye. I felt the sting of it, even though I know my sister is dealing with far more vexing medical issues.  I can understand how we are to respond.  I do not respond that way...also,  my four year old does not want to go back into the car.   She slumps onto the floor, rump in the air and says, "This is boring. I'm so bored.  I don't want to do this."

How do we do this?  I bribe her with mini-muffins, clapping hands and a song.  By recognizing we are always in a fight against time, against all the paper cuts and bigger wounds of the world.   This morning, my ten year old came down the stairs with a case of the grumps.  Her father hugged her until it melted away.   We have to keep remembering, to try again and together, with flowers and light, table cloths and books, hugs and games, kind words and second chances, we will make today, and all the days that come after, memories of light, and not one long scratchy dull fall of frustration.

But it is tempting to fall into that way of thinking, so God keeps sending reminders through other people.

Today, I went to Veteran's day at my children's school.  They sang songs. They asked the men and women to stand and be recognized. The principal asked them to speak.  The kids clapped, they recited a poem, and all children who had family still serving, were asked to stand.   Two boys stood for their father.  At the end of the school ceremony, when we'd clapped and sang and saluted the Veterans, a special guest arrived, and these two boys saw their father in the flesh for the first time in a year.   There wasn't a dry eye in the auditorium.  Here was a reminder that all of the pain and nuisance of life, is fleeting, this is what remains eternal.

Summer in Stolen Minutes

For best effect of reading this piece, please click the song and let it begin playing while you read...

This past Sunday marked the end of free time. Everyone would return to school the next day. Two still needed hair cuts, I hadn't found the locker shelf and we kept forgetting to purchase a protractor, but otherwise, everyone knew we were ready. School would dictate the next nine months. Colleges would be picked, records made, grades that marked where one would go the next year, and show whether we had a blip last semester, or a problem we had to face. 

But we wanted one more plunge into the pool of possibilities, so my husband fired up the grill. The kids donned swim suits and we spent the day drinking coke from a bottle, eating ice cream on cones, and playing whiffle ball while dodging the teens armed with water pistols. No one worried about calories or sun screen or mosquitos. We willed ourselves through the day, with the stereo blasting the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett, eating fresh tomato salad.  I cut big slices of watermelon for everyone. 

When everyone showered and the last of the teeth were brushed, I found my husband testing out his father's day present for the first time. The hammock on a stand had become something of a joke, a thing we'd meant to get to, but never did. He'd been away that weekend visiting his own dad, the rings didn't fit and when we finally got the replacements, it just hadn't become a priority to set up. 

Now, laying under the fan on the screened deck, strands of favorite songs playing, the very air screamed, why have you waited? What kind of madness have you held onto that you could not want to just experience rest? And we lay there long beyond the normal dutiful "I'm testing it out" time, pulling into our hearts, the immeasurable gold of Summer, unplanned, unstructured, unintentional stillness.

Happy 4th of July

Happy July 4th!  

Today's a day one should take out the Declaration of Independence and read all of it to be reminded why we celebrate today, that the beginnings of our nation, was an address of grievances from an oppressive and overreaching state.  Some may argue, perhaps we turned a teapot's worth of difference into a tempest, but the result was a nation created to represent, and seek to represent an ideal. 

We haven't always lived up to that, and we've had vigorous and even bloody debate at time as to what it meant to be in this nation, but the goal of all people in this nation, regardless of race, gender, economics or politics, has been to somehow move the nation itself toward being a closer approximation of that ideal articulated in the self evident truths stated by Thomas Jefferson.  

I do not agree with all my nation does in my name, or with my treasures, or through its policies, but that does not make me any less a patriot than anyone else who holds this nation dearer than any other on earth.   We have much to be thankful for, even as we have much work to do, if this nation is to remain a city on the hill.    

If civil war was fought in ten thousand places, then civil union of this nation must take place in 100 million places, in the homes of every citizen, and on the internet.  To be one nation, we will have to seek and find the things which bind us together, rather than deal always with what pulls us apart.  

As long as we see any others as merely other...You're a democrat, You're a republican, You're white, You're any other race, you're immigrant, you're poor, you're rich, you're educated, you're not, you're....whatever it is that isn't me, we will continue to have friction and distrust.  Seeing beyond the convenient labels society or politics or current fashion likes to ascribe, will take an act of the will and a generous heart.   

Enjoy the fireworks, remember what they represent, actual battles fought, by actual Americans, not always for the noblest of meanings, but sacrificial none the less.  One of our greatest presidents understood, even those who fought against us for something that was wrong, consecrated the land with their blood and their sacrifice.   A reminder: 

 

Happy 4th.   

Offer Up, Speak Up, Prayer Up

We know that the world is a mess and I know sometimes we tend to think "That's just the way it is."  The overwhelming nature of suffering and evil can lead one to shrug one's shoulders, because there is nothing we think we can do.

But if we think at all about what we know about human nature, what we love, what we seek, what we hope, we know the way the world should be, is a warmer lighter welcoming place than what we tacitly accept as we let the news of Iraq, Syria, the border of the United States, wash over us as simply the baseline of every day.  We haven't as Christians, adopted a strategy for dealing with evil, but it is time we should.  

Speak up.

Failing to speak is the equivalent of coming to accept that the trains run by our towns, and we will have to answer for our desires to remain uninvolved, to stay out of it.   It is lazy to think, "What could we do?" or "What can we do?" or "What good will my speaking out do?" It demands nothing, it risks nothing, and it allows one to pretend acting would mean nothing.   Rationalizing tepid comfort allows the evil to progress unhindered. 

The answer is, we must speak up, or evil flourishes in the silence, in our unwillingness to even raise the slightest hint of noise.  We can name evil evil, otherwise it pretends it isn't and people let it. 

The forced moving of Christians under threat of genocide is evil.  Beheading of journalists, of children, of anyone, crucifixion of people by these extremists, is evil.  Failing to name these acts and the sufferings caused by those who support/follow/act on behalf of ISIS as evil, is moral cowardice.  

Here are the web pages for the The White House, The United Nations,, The Senate and The House of Representatives, Catholic Relief Services and Samaritans Purse.  I don't know who else we should contact, but ask the Holy Spirit where to speak and who to speak to, and then get talking.   Get them to talk.  

Offer Up...
We can stand here with those far away, offering up the trivial petty small pains of an ordinary day for those for whom, there is right now no such luxury as normal and ordinary.   How?  By contacting your senators and leaders, by writing about it, by reading about it, by pondering what would we leave aside for our faith? What would we be willing to sacrifice and surrender?

Right now, there is the ice bucket challenge for ALS. Only someone living under a rock does not know about this trending method of providing a jovial moment  on the internet for a charity, but here is a different challenge, would that it became viral.   

Today, offer up a drink at dinner.  Be thirsty.  Why?  Because fasting and prayer matter, and offering up a little something for those who have nothing, has meaning, even if the world thinks otherwise.  No one will see that you aren't having a drink. You can't post not drinking or show it in a picture.  It won't even make a good tweet.   It won't make sense except in the context of solidarity with those who suffer.  The Beattitudes say, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice...they shall be satisfied.   So be thirsty.  

You'll know it though, with everything in you, because you'll want a drink, and that will remind you of everyone who doesn't have anything, because they had to leave everything, just to hold onto the one thing we take for granted in this country, their faith.   We will be thirsty for the less real water, because those not here, were willing to be thirsty for the life giving water which flows from Christ.   And every time you think as you eat your dinner, "I'm thirsty,"  smile.   Ours is a terribly tiny sacrifice, but it should be a gift willingly given. 

Prayer Up...

Remember when all hell seemed to be breaking loose in Syria and Libya and Pope Francis asked for people to pray and fast for peace back in 2013 and the knots which seemed intractable for a time, loosened, and the war which seemed inevitable, abated.  It seems to have returned.
 44"Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.45"Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation."  Matthew 12:45


And so the demons have returned, worse than the first.  No one can think the acts we've witnessed in recent days are not demonic. The acts we've seen harken to September 11th, to the bombings in other countries on the anniversary, and worse.   

And as we all know, some demons can only be evicted with prayer and fasting.  So offer a Hail Mary, a decade, a rosary, a chaplet, an hour of adoration, a mass, time with scripture, with your family.  Every scrap of prayer is counted in Heaven against the darkness we inflict upon each other, by what we do and don't do, and helps bring about the healing of the world.  And man, does this world need healing.  Everyone in this country has a 3 day weekend before them, so no one can say, I didn't have time.  Now, it becomes a choice.  

If we want justice, pray for peace.  Time to make this Labor Day weekend, one remembered for more than Bar-b-cue, beaches and baseball.   

Why I wrote Pray for Peace as a Facebook Status the Other Day

Feeling pensive today. Probably going to get me into trouble.  

This week, I've had fewer children at home, which gave me time to do something I don't often get to do. I read the news.  And I posted "Pray for peace, pray for peace, pray for peace."  Someone asked afterwards, why in particular. 

Everything I read made me think of the quote. "War is upon us, whether we will it or not," as Aragon says.   The world feels topsy-turvy when the paper and the internet news sites frame the officials of Iran as reasonable for stating the obvious danger of ISIS in Iraq, and seem more morally solid than the United States.

But when I read deeper into the news, it is the same fight over again.  Iraq is ruled by Shi'te elite.  Iran also is run and ruled by Shi'te also known as Shia and Shiites (from what I could research).    The insurgence is Sunni.  It is a vicious cruel new chapter in the civil war between the Sunni and the Shia, one which will destroy anything we've done over since March 20 of 2003, and reveals the true complexity of this situation.  

The Shi'te cooperated with the US from the get go, ergo we deem them the good guys.  The Sunni followers are the largest Islamic sect.   Iran offering to help, is also Shi'te, Sunnis in Iran are not allowed to build mosques and has numerous restrictions on those who practice a Sunni as opposed to Shia form of Islam.   Abuses and attacts on this minority in Iran (9%) are common place.  So when Iran offers to help fend off the rising militancy of the Sunni in its neighbor Iraq, it's not exactly out of neighborly goodness or feeling shocked at the atrocities those engaged in ruthless rounding up and shooting of policemen, border troops, bombs of military buildings and government offices and public executions and beheadings.  It's a both and situation.  As the  al Qaeda backed leader of the insurgency chillingly boasted, "I'll see you in New York." 

These are terrorists, racing through Iraq, killing people and taking over cities.  They are militarized and obviously organized and armed with bombs, guns and a fierce and calloused will. 

And it is beginning again, as the United States is quietly sending  Iraq and I love the term, "300 military advisors." according to the New York Times.   There isn't a shining right answer, but like in math, there are an infinite number of wrong ones.  One of which is doing nothing, another of which is thinking we know everything.  I do not envy anyone in leadership right now.  I'm praying for them.

 We're going to have to decide how to act as a country, we know what is being done is wrong, rather than merely react to what happens.   If past is prologue, we will ignore until we get hurt, and then it has to really hurt, at which point, we will overreact in response.  I'm hoping we've learned something from history. Evil must always be opposed, or it spreads.  The question is how to oppose evil. 

That's why I wrote:  Pray for peace. Pray for peace. Pray for Peace.     

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. 

Walking on Hard Boiled Egg Shell Psyches

"Why did we get lollipops Mom?" my daughter asked.  We'd just come from the drive thru at the bank and the teller and I go way back, (5 kids ago) and so she always loads my canister up with the deposit slip and enough suckers for each of my kiddos.  

"It's just nice." I answered.

"It is just nice." she responded. "It's not my birthday or Christmas or Easter or anything." she added.  Then she turned to her baby sister who was enjoying this sweet on a stick for the very first time, her eyes shining with discovery and happiness at the sticky sugary goodness.  "Sometimes, we get lollipops for no reason." she explained.  Apparently, our youngest child is merely visiting our family, sort of shadowing and my next oldest girl is in charge of closing the deal.  Stick with us, sometimes you get candy is a selling point.  Babygirl nodded. She was I think willing to agree with anything at the moment, especially if it meant the possibility of getting another cherry lollipop. 

We live in a brave new world, where dissent from popular opinion, be it political or spiritual can get you virtually tarred and feathered if your tweet, blog, Facebook status, comment or email falls upon unfriendly eyes.   The instant you out yourself as being the political stripe opposite of what is currently trending, prepare for a thousand righteous stone throwing responses, all equally sure that not only are you an ignorant fool for postulating something other than what popular consensus deems correct, you are a malicious ignorant fool that deserves heaping piles of scorn by people who will at the same time bemoan the lack of civility of society today in their next postings. 

Society cannot continue if our first, last and only response is to throw stones and congratulate ourselves afterwards on our clever stone throwing, our reasonableness, our thoughtfulness about our own positions in things political, societal, cultural and moral.  Society will dissolve if we can only get along if everyone agrees on everything.  Our circles of agreement will get smaller and smaller and eventually, we will find ourselves on the outside of someone's circle, and the stones will fly.   The only way we stop this, is to opt not to, even when we think things are justifiable, when we think we're not only right but that thinking any other way would be mere posturing or ignorance or willful malice,  put down the rocks. We have to opt for mercy even if we think the recipient doesn't deserve it.  Because honestly, none of us do. 

Because one day, we'll be the one hoping, mercy shall be ours.  Some day, we'll hope to get mercy for no reason, because we'll have no reason that warrants it. 

The alternative is we shall be dominated by whoever has power and can shame the most forcefully, whoever can throw the stones hardest.  And no matter who you are, one day, that won't be you.  We can create a world in which not only do you have to earn any lollipops, you probably won't, but it won't be nearly as sweet, happy or fun.    

Love Opens All Doors

Back when I was a graduate student, I took a great course on policy making which focused on systems of understanding, the lenses we put on when we view a problem and those we may never remove that may prevent us from seeing solutions.  One of her best quotes that stayed with me was a cautionary reminder to all who live around DC, not to allow the political lens to dominate, because it would mean we would never trust the motivation of anyone; we would devalue all decisions as calculated self interest chess moves.  She did not want a class full of cynics who knew the meaning of everything and the value of nothing. 

I also took a class on Epistimologies, required of all students.  It articulated the concept that there were "Ways of knowing," unique to the shared experiences of cultural/historical/physical groups: white and African American, male and female, hetero-sexual, homosexual, and that how one integrated the responses of the world around one, was filtered through this "Way of Knowing."  This class troubled me greatly because of the subsequent premise I will now put forth: If there are ways of knowing that one cannot access because one cannot be part of a set --one cannot change race, and at the time, one could not change gender, then there are "Ways of Ignorance" so to speak. 

The whole construct of a way of knowing indicates that this sort of knowledge is insular, secretive, and unknowable by those not in the protected class.  Ergo, the ignorance of others of that way of knowing is not born of malice, but of an unreachable reality, and the chipping away at it can only happen if 1) the non member comes to believe there is a way of knowing that he/she is incapable of comprehending 2) then acknowledges the legitimacy of the unknowable reality and 3) acquiesces to whatever truths thus revealed as being truth that cannot be known except in an incidental and secondary manner.  Suffering, in deed, all of experience becomes unsharable, empathy virtually impossible, sympathy, a pandering attempt to pretend to understand what one cannot by definition comprehend because one hasn't shared the experience. You can only peek through the keyhole of the class, bridging the gap is on a person by person basis and it is never more than partial.  The doors cannot be thrown open to all.

Put together, we have the cautionary tale of not wearing a single lens to view all of life that by definition distrusts all human beings motivations and the secondary premise that knowledge and experience are not truly sharable because language is insufficient to convey the reality; what one person means by something is not what another means by the same words, ergo we cannot actually really reach each other if our worlds are too disparate; my way of knowing cannot be yours.  We cannot really share our stories or connect them beyond the fringe edges.

That may seem to be putting it too strongly, but I did not see that there was a parameter one could not deliberately insert to make one's self more insular.  The ways of knowing the world are not limited by one's gender and race, there's faith, politics, background, level of education, age, marital status, income, I could think of countless ways to dissect and parse reality to make one's own life less accessible to others; to make reality more singular and unsharable.

Additionally, the arguments put forth in this class did not seem to consider access to new ways of knowledge to be something one could aspire to having, we could only understand the patterns and lens as articulated from an internal member.  Creating insurmountable mental walls around classes seemed to me a short hop skip and a jump from creating insurmountable mental walls around individuals, so that we could become unreachable frozen in our hurt and own private hell. 

In this day and age, there is a great temptation to presume that whatever our situation, our pain, our cross, our cares, whatever our personal baggage is, that it is somehow singular and therefore unique; that no one can actually heal whatever it is because no one other than us, fully comprehends the nature of our suffering and it is unfixable. It is part of the consequence of having a culture that cherishes and promotes a belief in epistimologies, and these dictate our experiences are unsharable, unconnected and alien to each other, and that all truth that we hold transcends our own experience is fiction developed by our own epistemological blind spots. The culture of the world gambles on our embracing in our egoistic manner, the uniqueness of our understanding of our suffering, and likewise sinful blindness to others as proof of our incapacity to comprehend anything beyond our own experience. It is designed to drive us both into insatiable wrath at a world that cannot understand us, and ultimate despair because our own world is so injured and irreparable.  It is a small wonder that we now are a Prozac nation, seeking a pill to make all the pain we think no one else is experiencing, go away so we can be normal and non suffering like all the other people out there in the world.  Why if it is our nature to be like no one else, do we cry out desperately to  be like everyone else?  Answer, we are not aliens.  We are not other.  We are everybody else and ourselves, and our experiences however diverse in nature, are not that diverse in feeling.

The truth is that the world is suffering, big and little, global and singular, for the 1 and the 99% and the pain of it is inescapable by any means but grace.  It is filled with papercuts and snarky comments, pains that are physical and ones that preoccupy one's whole mind all day for weeks on end. Dullness and desire for wanting for those who never know want and want that drives one to dullness if want is all one knows. There are wolves everywhere that rip at our spirits, and winds that cut fingers and faces when we just wish for once, it would be easier.   It would be easier if we believed we weren't the only ones being stalked by the wolves, houdned by fear or pain, if we recognized that everything that is and isn't, comes with a choice of how we respond, and that the choices we face today and now are not so different from those faced 1000 or 4000 years ago, or from those 1000 or 4000 years from now; to love or not, to forgive, or not, to help or not, to do or not, to add to the beauty or curse the ugliness, these are our choices, not fight or flight, but create feast or stay starving.  Rest or stay running ragged.  Pray or stay anxious. 

For Catholics, the Catholic lens is supposed to be in place of our eyes, so that we see with the eyes of Christ first, rather than through a political lens or a capitalist or American or feminist or what have you. For Catholics, the lens is that Our God understands all, and loves us all, understanding intimately the all that is us, even our sin, even our private sufferings, and that the only true way of knowing is a way of loving. It is the only way that opens all doors.

Editor's Note: Not sure why I needed to write all of this but it hounded me all morning and now I can let it go.