My News!

My blog has been here since 2007.  I've tried relocating to Wordpress back when all the cool kids did it, but I couldn't figure out how to export it, so it stayed here.  I longed for someone to see my blog and think, "Hey, she's funny.  We should get her." That didn't happen...

Now, I am being considered as a draft pick for two places --not enough to start a bidding war mind you, but it's flattering to be called upon.  Sort of like being picked in Red Rover...when you're a kid, or finding your name on the list after tryouts.   

The Catholic Conspiracy has asked me to join them. I've been a fan of many of their writers for years. 

 So I found myself surprised and pleased to discover,..the perenial b-teamer, bench warmer has been picked.   

I know in recent years B-teams fell out of favor and out of fashion.  I still have the yellow ribbon from placing fifth (there were seven runners but two quit) and the itty-bitty sports patch from my long and storied history on the sports equivalent of the island of misfit toys from those halcyon days.  I also have the psychological scars that came with it, where my first thougth on being picked is...you must have run out of everybody else. 

    I think of this scene and think, "I'm the magazine."  

Except it's not true. The Blogosphere has fallen out of favor, but those who persist, both love it and are willing to work at improving for the sheer joy of improving --it is the halmark of the hopeful b-teamer, to always seek to try, and to ignore the experts and those who trend, because your heart is there and the rest of you, will grow into it if you just keep at it.   B-teamers persist despite reality. 

 It's one of our most endearing traits...keeps us from becoming tragic. 

The move is being prepped, but I'm not sure yet when it will take place. 
Can't wait for my team jacket.     

In the meantime, I'm feel like dancing.   

Thinking of going as Donna for Halloween even if there is no trick-or-treating.  Why?  Because we'll need the silliness of it all if there isn't.  

 
 

Sunday Musings...Getting Ready for Ash Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1,300 Embraced Splinters

Over and over again, in everyday stuff and online, I find faces of despair.  People have much to be angry over, and they're hurt they have to wrestle with this pain when there's so much that needs tending too.  This great mess called life keeps getting somehow messier, and it's frustrating to people of good conscience, of good will, of good faith, to find themselves overwhelmed with the levels of stupidity, cruelty, indifference, clericalism, protectionism and self-indulgence and self delusion we're bombarded with on a daily basis. 

In the Church, people are taking their children from schools, and themselves from the pews, because the leaders/princes of the Church have shown themselves to be poor shepherds in one of the most primary of roles, and as such, it is legitimate to question, how good they are at shepherding in any of their other functions.  It seems, to the laity, the leadership of the Catholic Church does not yet grasp in its totality, how much damage they've created by their slow plodding approach to things in this situation. 

I'm reminded of this scene.

The faithful are the hasty hobbits.  They've said they'll address this in November.  It' rather like Treebeard's telling Merry, "We've just finished saying Good Morning." and Merry's terse response, "But it's nighttime already! You can't take forever." 

Elizabeth Scalia says as much in her very fine article here.  I second all she recommends.

People do feel put upon by the public calls for prayers and fasting when it does not seem those who perpetuated or aided and abetted or ignored these crimes/sins are doing much at all other than publicly wringing their hands.  However, what we are asked to do is still of great merit, not merely for their souls, but for our own. 

I would love for Bishop after Bishop, even those who are good ones, to say, I renounce, I resign, I will serve at the lowest position, and for them to do it.  We need to see something from the Bishops akin to this: 

Even if they've earned a spot on the team by their efforts, talents and service.   

They know the ways of the saints.  Saint Maximilian Kolbe said "Take me instead."  in the concentration camps.  If he could surrender a place of no comfort for a place of certain death for love of Christ, for love of the other, a father who cried out, how is it no bishops, no cardinals feel this same push of the Holy Spirit?  If they cannot see it, then what about us who can?

Well, if they don't, then, we who feel the pain of the fathers and mothers over their crushed children, and of the children who were so violated, we must say, "Take me instead." and that's why it's not wrong for the laity to pray and fast and offer penance.   We need to take on something, something which will cost us, something public and I do not know what it is, but since we see the pain, and we know the depth of it, it's not enough to howl "Do something."  If they don't get it, then it must be us who act. 

I go back to the report, there are over 1,000 victims.  There are over 300 priests.  So there should be a 1,300 day penance, if only to give some hint of action on the part of the laity and yes, we will do penance for the guilty, and penance in reparation for the damage done to the innocent. 

Yes.  But what do we do?   

1) Begin.  Write on your calendar today, Victim 1.  Writing it down, since we don't have the names, is a way of beginning.  

2) Offer a sacrifice of today, of something today for victim 1.   

3) Tomorrow, begin again, for victim 2. 

4) If you forget, begin again anyway. 

5) If you mess up, offer your foolish forgetfulness. 

6) Keep at it.  

For those who question, what good does sacrificial offerings do to the sufferings of the past, or of today, for the victims of the sufferings? 

Answer, more than we can understand. 

1) It acknowledges the reality of the injury done (something kept hidden for far too long).  

2) Spiritually, you become united with Christ by your sacrifice/atonement.  Christ suffered and died for each of us, we're not even doing much more than offering a splinter, but we can unite with Christ with that splinter.   

3) It might prompt you individually to more, because the Holy Spirit always starts with mustard seeds. 

The number of victims posted would take from today to Friday, May 21, 2021.  May 21st is a feast day in the Catholic Church, the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, instituted this year by Pope Francis. I didn't know that until I googled it, it seems providential, to pray for each of these little ones harmed by the church, to the Mother who birthed Christ, who loves the Church as none of us do, and who wants all of us home at the altar.   

7) When you get to day 1000, begin work on the alms giving and prayers for those who did or hid these acts.   Here, 

8) Give something away each day for 300 days. It can be time, it can be things, it can be money, but surrender something.   

9) Why?  

          a) Because these acts occurred over time, and so time is something that must be given in response. 

          b) Because the only way we won't be driven from the life of the Church even as we cling to the faith of it, is by willful obedience, and this is a discipline which will allow us to lead by example. 

          c) Because these priests, who did these things, they also held the Eucharist, they were consecrated to Our Lord, and God does not want any of his sheep lost, and they were/are lost.  We must be like the good shepherds to these lost shepherds with our prayers.  The prayers will not be wasted, (but I did put them after the victims because yes, I'm still annoyed and flawed and know we all need time to beat that down. Our prayers will be like the Lord's invitation to their souls, to respond to the feast.  We cannot save them, but we can participate in their salvation by our prayers.   We can imitate Christ's mercy on the cross which came before anyone asked or acknowledged what they'd done.   

It won't be a Year of Mercy or a Year of Humility, because it will take three years, six months and three weeks plus a day to embrace the  1,300 splinters, by the people of the Church for the Church, out of love of Christ, and all those injured by this grievous wound, this great thorn.. 

That day will be March 17, 2022, the feast of Saint Patrick's, and a feast day marking the chasing out of the snakes from Ireland. I didn't know that either when I googled it.  So to me, feasting for the victims with the promise of Mary whose foot crushes the serpent, and with Saint Patrick, who chases the snakes away, is the proper response.  For me, it is too wonderful and too perfect a timing not to begin.

So let us begin.