I Miss Everyone

 Yesterday, I took my youngest four to a makeshift Drive-in Movie put on at our parish.  

They enjoyed it but what I discovered is, nine months of quarantine have made me jumpy.  Every time someone came by the car to see if we wnated to buy popcorn or just say, "Hi." because people do that, and it used to be ordinary, I'd feel anxious afterwards.   Not because I thought I'd get Covid-19, but because being isolated this long, warps the spirit, and I hadn't realized how warped my own had become. 

I do worry about Covid-19 though, because there is so much that needs doing in this family, for my husband and me.  We can wipe things down and limit our going out, but there's just the reality, it's a scary thing.  It sounds cowardly to be frightened of life, I've never been before and I don't want to be now.  Every cough makes everyone worry.  Every symptom other than fine, alarms.  We've become triggered to worry, to presume the worst, and to view everything as a potential threat.  I hate it.  It's wrong. 

I am tired of this damn quarantine.  I am tired of not seeing people's full faces. I am not advocating being dumb, but I am admitting, I am tired.   I need the more of Everyone.   I miss the more of everyone.  My mom, my brothers and sister, my inlaws, friends from across the country, all the ordinary contact that came within the course of a year, hasn't happened this year.   Busyness kept that from being too keen an ache most of the time, but when they'd come to visit, or we'd go there, I'd be reminded, this is more what should be happening.  

Now even those reminders are missing, and it is like food without salt, dull and missing what should be full of flavor.   Now even being busy doesn't prevent the missing --and I know that is a good thing.  I am grateful for all this stollen time with my husband and my adult children who otherwise would be off being busy themselves.   We wouldn't notice the time passing or the distance being created but it would be there.   So there are gifts with this time of trial, even here. 

It's just, I miss everyone. I'm wanting something of normal of being able to connect to return --and hoping with that return, we'll return to something better than what was normal; that we won't leave kind words unsaid, or put off lunches or visits or letters or phone calls; that we'll check in on each other willfully, because we love them, rather than just at holidays or when we're not busy.   I hope we'll learn, I'll learn, to not let things that shouldn't consume whole swaths of time, take over, that we as a whole, and I in particular, will cease being anxious about many things and choose the better portion with all time we've been alloted.  

I know this much, we'll be at the next Drive-in Movie offered, to remind myself not to forget. 

Five Things I've Learned from this Time of Online Learning

1) Teaching via proxy is hard, because teaching is not merely data mastered or skills repeated, but connection. Connection is most easily formed when we experience it via relationship. We can open cookbooks and read recipes, we can watch videos and practice techniques, but there’s something to working with a master, that makes mastering a skill more. The same is true with any other subject. In many subjects, in most subjects, learning comes easier with others in the mix. Children all across the country are aching for that more, that mix.

Think of the most moving examples of Zoom effectiveness we’ve seen; the orchestras and choirs. They revealed connectedness between individuals, working to one end, the production of a finished piece. Perhaps we need to require all those students to use their phones and connect with each other as a way of helping each other on, sharing their gifts, and the push and pull that normally takes place in the classroom. Perhaps we need to give the opportunity for that more by our being with them and bringing them out of isolation via the demands of instruction. We've become the facilitators of community or must be.

2) There is a difference between learning and working and that difference is measured in enthusiasm toward the subject itself. My son with Down Syndrome loves his math class where they are using calculators to facilitate number recognition. He’s mastered it sufficiently to recognize the code we use on the television and order himself Monster’s University and Scoob! before I realized he knew how to rent a movie. In reading class, they’re doing a chapter book one chapter a day, and he sits for the reading, but the quizzes indicate, he’s just putting in the time. The difference was illustrated to me, $3.99 at a time.

3) We are made for community, and anything short of it, is Folger's Crystals. We know it’s not butter. The Zoom meetings help my younger ones, as do the phone calls and Facetimes, but it’s not what we want. The other day, I drove to Jiffy Lube to get service and sit in my car while it happened and the mechanic in a mask engaged me in a long conversation about teaching, about the summer and Corona. Leaving from the appointment, I felt oddly refreshed and realized, we pine for conversation, for incidental encounters, for community and all three of these things are limited by the nature of staying at home and all the precautions we must take to keep everyone everyone loves safe.

4) Expectations don’t need to be low. They merely need to be clear. Yes, students and families are stressed as never before, but school and academics provide an anchor that isn’t there otherwise, of ordinariness in an extraordinary time. Students need the component of consistency academics give to a world that seems increasingly unpredictable. What students learn now in this time away from the classrooms may be the most important lessons we teach –that we care, that we’re here for them, and that we want them to challenge themselves even when the world is challenging.

5) Education is as much about connection as it is about introducing them to new thoughts. Everyone shares something of a common bond, as we all have been affected by the stay at home orders of our communities. We can teach about the importance of communities –the need for good civil leadership and laws, philosophies and principles, (government), the need for good health and hygiene systems (science and p.e and health), the consequences of supply and demand capitalism and finances and the interpretation of statistics (math, economics, more complex math), and the necessity of the arts. For what are we all starved for in this long isolation? Entertainment. We want beauty, we want art, we want comedy, we want escape from the boredom, we want the catharsis of story; (Yes, English and Art and Music and Theatre) which are of course, all my loves.

Everything is grist for the mill of the craft of teaching, and right now, giving students the gifts of these subjects we love. Our biggest task, is somehow conveying our love of those subjects through Zooms, slides and phone calls. Ultimately, our whole task as educators, is to keep strengthening the bonds of community forged through class and the classroom, whether virtual or actual, by what we do.

At the Register Today

With a piece alternatively titled, Lessons learned at a Parish Picnic. 

What does it Mean to be a Catholic Blogger?

Having lived in the blogosphere since 2007, I've come to know and frequent many a Catholic blog.  Different writers focus on different elements of the Catholic Church, but I have to admit, I love them all and seek them out.  I like Catholic and Enjoying it, Bad Catholic, the National Catholic Register, The Anchoress, Barefoot and Pregnant, Lisa Hendey, Danielle Bean, Just Another Catholic Pondering, I Have to Sit Down, The Curt Jester, The Ironic Catholic, Creative Minority Report, Acts of the Apostasy, Such a Pretty Catholic Bubble, mothering spirit, Happy Catholic, The Catholic Vote, in the Light of the Law, the Crescat, Aggie Catholics, And Sometimes Tea,...there are more but I can't think of them right now.  Honestly, I don't want to leave anyone out but I am, because there are so many more.

Within the Catholic Blogosphere, as in all other places, there are disparate points of view, those who miss Pope Benedict and those who love the current Pope Francis, and those who like both.  There are those who love the mass said in the vernacular, and those who prefer the Latin version.  There are those who delve into deep political issues, and those who focus on the spiritual challenges and benefits of parenting, and others who keep on top of today's issues politically and socially that pose more than a theoretical question to those who wish to be faithful to the Catholic Church.   What unites all of these disparate voices, is a love of the Church, of the Eucharist, of Christ living in their lives. 

What divides us is everything else. 

Recently, my own words were used as a means to insult a blogger I highly respect.  I felt horrified. Then I saw the Crescat being declared something less than Catholic by a few followers on Twitter, and my friend Patrick being mocked as more Catholic than the Pope for daring to voice he struggles with those who see nothing troubling in the multiple mixed messages coming from the Vatican.  In short, we are being reminded constantly of what divides us.  We should remember who delights in dividing us, and what his objective is throughout all of history.  

I received an email question, "What does it mean to be a Catholic blogger?" and the answer has weighed on my mind.

It remains for me, an interesting question. I didn't plan to be a Catholic blogger. I happen to write. I started a blog. I am Catholic, so I filter the world through my Catholic faith, and thus I became a Catholic blogger.  But if we were to say come together as a Catholic blogger symposium to discuss what does it mean, what would our answer be?

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I'd love to read others' responses to the question.  

For me, it means to write Catholic, I must be Catholic.  How is the tricky part.  I came up with my own parameters for being a Catholic blogger. 

1) try to always speak truthfully about what I think and to be as knowledgeable as possible when I discuss things that are outside of my general realm of expertise.

2)  use charity and seek to examine issues --and present a Catholic perspective on say politics, touch stone issues of the day, or things that may be of singular interest to those who are also Catholic --how to pray in a busy plugged in world, what the Gospel says to me as a mom, wife, person today, prayer life, how to grow it, what my children teach me about being pro-life, what they teach me about being less selfish.

3) have the grace of generosity to share what I love, and to promote whenever I find something beautiful, wise, joyous or fun. I don't know that I have a Niche in the Catholic Blogosphere, I'm a just a sometimes off key voice in the choir.

4) Write about what is important to me. Catholic faith is in the minute --the grain of wheat, the single cell embryo, the consecrated host, and in the cosmic, the ocean, the stars, the great yes of Mary, the depth of God's mercy, it is in the air we breathe if we but notice, and all of creation begs us to pay attention.

Interested in doing this? There isn't a club or secret decoder pin unless you join Jimmy Akin's email list (which I recommend by the way).

Simply begin. You might start by introducing us to yourself, writing your faith journey ---to the extent you feel comfortable, if you have a journey you think others should hear, or with questions if that is your strength, or with scripture and pondering it, and inviting others to join, or with current events and how one might view it.

More professionally, I recommend joining the Catholic Writer's Guild and regularly browsing and submitting to Kevin Knight's New Advent and The Big Pulpit.  The former is a good networking group of writers/editors/bloggers/authors/speakers, and the later are the Catholic Drudge Reports of Catholic bloggers. I've had the grace to be linked by both sites on occasion.
  
Catholic blogging is all about being a cyber evangelist and cyber witness to the internet world, and must be done with all the intellect, creativity, joy and craft you can give, plus a dose of humor helps.
Find your voice by talking about what interests you.   Let me know what your blog link is, and I'll send it around to other Catholic bloggers I know.  As it turns out, I know a lot of them.

Good luck and God Speed.  P.S. If you answer the question on your blog, leave a link in the comment section.  I'll post a live link at the end of the body of this post as a result.

Blogs who commented here or on Facebook or answered the question.

Franciscan Mom
The Catholic Book Blogger
Such a Pretty Bubble
Equipping Catholic Families
And Sometimes Tea
Catholic and Enjoying it!
The Catholic Review
Marilyn Rodrigues
Fruitful Momma Blog
Deny the Cat

I hope more participate, and now I have more Catholic blogs to visit.  Clapping hands in joy like the Catholic blog junkie I am. 

Why I Took On the Fall Festival

"Sherry, you're nuts but in a nice kind of way." a friend said who agreed to provide baked goodies for tomorrow. I get that a lot.

So I thought, given that the event will happen and things have finally slowed down a bit, I'd explain how it is that a mother of nine took on planning a festival for 400 or hopefully, a lot more.

In 2008, I learned I was pregnant with our ninth child and honestly sat for a month and a half asking God why again, rather than giving thanks. It wasn't my proudest moment as a human being, let alone a mother.

Then we found out our youngest had Down’s Syndrome and nine children seemed suddenly like a walk in the park by comparison with facing an unknown "permanent" as one woman called it, handicapping condition. We were offered unbearable options. Then we learned our son in addition to everything else, had a heart condition that would need a major operation to correct some time after birth. Suddenly Down’s Syndrome seemed a cakewalk to staring down open heart surgery on a newborn. As I said at the time, any sentence containing the words "needs open heart surgery" in it, was a bad sentence.

So we progressed through the pregnancy but it was hard. There was a quiet in my mind that wasn't a happy quiet or a peaceful one. I knew I needed to reenter the world. The principal of our school talked of needing a chair for the Fall Festival and I felt as if a rope had been tossed with which to pull myself out of my dark heart full of feelings so I grabbed on tight.

Last year, the Fall Festival was wonderful and amazing and funny. The only person who used the first aid was me, and that was to lie down and rest, being ten days post-partum. This year, approaching it without the aid of Percocet or compulsory naps, it's a bit more daunting but that same rope has kept me discovering new people and pushed me to be more open to the community that demands all of us be cracked open, the Church.

To set this feast for all who attend the school and all who use the parish is a great privilege and to know all the men and women who have put in the hours to help bring it to being is also a great honor. I only hope it succeeds enough to further the cause of the school and secure a spot as a tradition that will grow and grow until it becomes a generational experience of being part of Saint Martin's.

The Fall Festival is a rare opportunity for the families of this school and Parish to come together to play. I hope it is a time when all of the faculty, staff, parents, children and parishioners can forget themselves in the timelessness of simple games and good food in good company and next year, I hope we can expand it so it goes until 4. Then we could all clean up and close with a bilingual mass.

Because all of these people are united beyond the barriers of school/parish, immigrant/citizen, English speaking and other, in our stewardship of our families and by our love of what the whole Parish is about, the Eucharist, our Faith, our Church.

So that's why. And yes, I also love it so I'm a bit crazy, but in a good sort of way.