Don't Know if Thomas Merton would Appreciate Nick Fury But...

Discernment isn't easy for anyone, and I'm not different from anyone. 

My mind goes on a thousand glory trips, daydreaming about where I'll go, what I'll do and why.  You'd think by fifty-two I'd know the answers to some of this, but some of this, isn't happening and so it makes one pause and wonder...am I doing what I ought?  Am I doing what should be done, so that when I die, whenever that is, I can at the very least, imitate the words of one of my mentors though she knows it not, (Erma Bombeck) and say, "I used everything you gave me."

I'd want to tweak it a little and say, "I gave away all to be used." but you get the idea.

So the next step would be to consider, if I want to give it all away, what am I hording?

As I sit in my room typing, I could argue, I'm hording time...need the virtue of prudence. --doing what when in the right order.   

As I stare at myself, I could say, I've horded food...need the virtue of discipline, as I eat too much and too often. 

As I feel tired, I could say, I've overdone to try to hide from addressing either the need to not horde time or the need to not overeat.   (Being busy makes one think, one is doing things of worth, one has value). 

Being tired from being busy means one justifies overeating, because one needs energy to keep being overbusy).   It's a stupid vicious cycle that prevents any change.   I could hear Nick Fury telling me this...he used saltier language.

Note to self: Reading Thomas Merton's book No Man is an Island is having an effect on my thought pattern. 

Which leads me back to the question: How do I stop the cycle?  How do I stop hording time and stop hording food? 

In the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Will it"
How? Again, simple.
1) Do less.
2) Eat less.

I can hear the Yeahbuts in my brain and they are legion.  Yeah, but you have ten kids, of course you have too much to do...yeah, but you work from 5:45 am to midnight. You need energy.  There are more. I'm officially turnning down the volumne on them.  I still don't know what I'm doing.

My own reading tells me, you can't take something away without putting something in its place or you will simply rack yourselves over the coals for the lack.  So yes, these need to be paired back, so they become goods, and not excuses from good.  Make not doing, for approval, attention, etc. a sacrifice.  One may think, you are advocating sloth. I'm not. I'm not saying, don't do.  I'm saying I overdo. I overextend and as a result, "am anxious about many things."  and as we all know, I should "choose the better portion." 

So I'm going to start small, with the offering of an eight hour sleep each night for a week, and we'll see where that takes me, and with the offering of no afternoon snack (I'm awful about it) for this week.  "Again, we begin again." as Saint Benedict said. 

Am I still writing? Yes.  I'm still writing. Still submitting.  However the writing world is like that, sometimes it's feast, sometimes it's famine.  Sometimes it's busy, and sometimes it's maddenly silent.  I think the silence was intentional on God's part to get me to reflect and work harder not at doing more, but at recognizing where I need to do less.   I'd have steamrolled on if there were no reason to notice, if everything kept on as it was going. 

I'm still flailing about, but at least I have something of a plan...to sleep and to eat less, and keep inviting myself to think beyond whatever it is I have to do today...and to evaluate at the end of the day, did I do what should be done? Dry spells in writing, like dry spells in life, can bear fruitful thought. 

Still...I hope the dry spell ends soon.

Having So Much More to Give

There are moments when you discover the gifts of others in the midst of doing ordinary things that make one wonder, how did I miss this before now? How is it not obvious to everyone, how luminous this person is?

When a student gives a beautiful response to a question, or writes an amazing paper, or does the opposite of what one expects, (given past behavior), these are the moments that make teaching worth more than the pay of a CEO.  When I look at the teachers of the school where I work, I know they live for that moment, even the ones who pretend to be jaded, for the surprise of a mind awakened, a heart turned, a soul suddenly filled with fire, wanting to take on whatever the future brings. 

More than once while pursuing this career path, I've been asked, "Do I think I could handle it?" and thus it seems, I should answer this serious question.   My thoughts run the gamut from "Of course...to, why not?" but when I'm not being flippant about it, when I look at the reality of what is involved in the day in, day out of teaching, they are to me rather like parenting.

 I know three things:

I will have days when it is hard.
I will have days when it is harder,
and I will have days when I wonder how I could do anything else.

The reality is, like it is for all these teachers, and all these students,  we all have so much more to give, and our zeal and talent and efforts fluctuate with the seasons and needs of our lives.  I want however, the opportunity to try.   I'm sifting through the landscape because I also know, I tend to want to give...and thus for me, the question is should I.  I think that's what this Lent for me is about...getting quieter, listening more, and allowing myself to be uncomfortable with not yet knowing, and searching for the answer to it. 

My initial answer is yes.  I can.  My secondary answer is...I will do what I find I am allowed, and trust that gift, be it what I do now, or something else, is something I can and should do. 

I didn't know I could raise ten children until I had to raise ten children.  Much of my life has been discovering the limits I placed on myself were just that, limits, and that those limits remained until I believed they could be challenged.  My own eldest daughter constantly shows me through her force of will, how much can be accomplished by forging one's own will into a thing of iron. I keep thinking, hers couldn't get stronger...yet it continues to be further forged.

So what does it mean about the writing?  Not a thing.  I'm a big believer in the both and, as opposed to the either/or, and I need writing, whether to focus my thoughts on parenting or anything else. In writing, like parenting, like teaching, like everything, there's always more to give, it's just a question of should we give it, and will we.   We all have so much more to offer than we know. 

The Dog Caught the Car

Over the past two weeks, I interviewed several times.  Today, I learned I got the job.  My first reaction?  Something between severe brain freeze and joy.

I shall be teaching writing composition to high school students.

All my experience, passion, schooling and past blend perfectly to get this job.  All of that now counts for squat.

Now, we start over with a blank page.

How do you write a book?  The same way you run a marathon or teach a class.  You study, you plan, you train and you go at it, day in and day out.  Only yesterday I walked around an empty house thinking, "Now what?"  

The now what has been answered.

My son did call me and laugh. "You didn't last one week without them."
I know.  I know my motto for my tomb stone is "She tried hard." but the one I live by, is "I'm the dog that caught the car."

One day, I must learn to stop chasing these things.

There Isn't a Home

In the arena of America politics, there isn't a home where as a Catholic, I can feel comfortable.  I know good earnest noble intelligent caring people across the political spectrum. I know some who say, here is your home, because you oppose this...insert issue A. They are correct, I oppose issue A. It is insufficient reason. I know others who say come over here, it is obvious you don't belong over there. We have issue B and C.  It doesn't matter. If my faith is the determinative factor on voting and not ideology, then neither party deserves my support.  I cannot reject half of my values to affirm one, or ignore that one for the same reason.  I can't.  Not if I want to hold true to any of my faith.  Not one pinch of incense for either false god.

Neither candidate should hold power. Neither is a good decision, only a negative decision. Whether for Trump or Hillary, I can't give my assent without being tarred by the muck each candidate has chosen to embrace.  I cannot support either candidate if giving such support results in having to pretend corrupt isn't corrupt, evil isn't evil, incompetent isn't incompetent, and ignorant isn't ignorant. To support either is to somehow contort one's values and shoehorn them into the slipper for either R or D.  For me, neither shoe fits.

These candidates are real people with serious character flaws. I concede, one of these two damaged souls will win but not with my help. Today, I reject both parties and their proposed candidates.  I have never not voted, but I don't think in good faith I can assent to either ever. To me, they are both Barabbas. They are both something other than good, and the position of President is something that ought not to be given to one of these two least kind, least selfless, least ethical, least honest or generous candidates to enter the public arena in a long time.

To those who say, "No! You'll waste your vote."  No.  I am holding my vote.  It is not something someone is guaranteed because of their party.  It is something that must be earned.  No one has done anything to earn my trust, let alone my vote.

Why do I say there is no good choice?  It is not because I despair of good in this world or in people. I know I am not the only one who knows many on both sides of the political spectrum.   I know I am not the only one to be able to name names of people with R's and D's affiliated to their voting record that are to a person, decent, kind, thoughtful, diligent, people of good character.  I imagine most are trying to make the best of a situation they did not choose and do not want.

When I look at the fruits of pledging fealty to either side, both candidates demand too many compromises.   Anyone who doesn't fit one's political template is thus exiled to the political equivalent of Hell, for having thought otherwise.  Modern politics seems to thrive on this sort of instant US THEM, US GOOD, THEM EVIL sort of nonsense. This sort of rigid dismissal of all who think otherwise must be rejected.

Whatever that is, it's not American or Catholic, or even sensible. It's not healthy for anyone to presume to reading other people's hearts when we cannot even see each other's faces.     We are all more than politics, or we're supposed to be, and to be Catholic, we even have to see those we consider our enemies, as made in the likeness of God, and worthy of dignity, worthy of love.  It's too easy to give into snark, to vitriol, to declaring the other side willfully ignorant or deliberately evil.   It allows us to dismiss whole swaths of others and feel smug in doing so.

We are a diverse nation, with multiple reasons for our decisions, both pragmatic and ideological, social and personal, ethic based and steeped in history. By our very ordinary acts of everyday civility, and the peaceful transition of power from administration to administration, all of us prove, our great capacity for tolerance, our great capacity for diversity of thought, our ability to coexist despite what the political parties believe.

So while I don't have any faith or trust in the candidates, I do still hold great hope in the promise and reality of the everyday R's and D's.  I'm thinking they would probably prefer to skip both conventions, go to a local watering hole and complain about the candidate they got stuck with for this go around.

We'll survive whoever wins, because we are bigger than any one candidate.  Politics would have us always believe this is the critical juncture, (regardless of the year) where utopia or doomsday is around the corner.   I reject the damning despair and false hope presented.  The universe will go on, as it should, and it will the results of all of our efforts in the every day that determine whether we become a better nation or not.

It is Always Too Soon

My favorite professor from college, Jeanne Rodes, died last night in her sleep.  She'd fallen the day before.  I've written about her husband, who died November 25, 2014. His story tells a lot of hers, as all good real romances do.

I miss her.  It's that simple.  It makes it hard to think, let alone open a vein.

She was someone who lit a fire in me though I didn't know it.

When I met her, I did think, "I want to be like her!"  Then I thought, "What a crazy idea!" However, with her seven children, her infectious zeal for literature, her command of a quick thought and an obvious warm heart, I fell in love.  It was irresistible. I saw her speaking before us, talking to students and being both clear headed and unfailingly kind and I wanted that.  It was a luminous witness and the beginnings of a friendship that spanned 28 years.

One of our most memorable moments was a fight.

I went to see her during my 10 year college reunion. I'd brought my youngest of then three children (6 month old) with me. Fresh from two years of school working toward a doctorate, my head full of smug gobbledygook, I espoused what I thought was important jargon about epistimology and paradigm shifts and she looked at me and said, "KNOCK IT OFF!"

I felt hurt. I thought I'd joined the academic club. I thought I sounded smart, sophisticated, nuanced. I tried again.  She told me to stop it.  "Just stop." It hadn't, but the air in the restaurant felt chilly in that moment.

Sitting down at Haggar College Center's cafe at Saint Mary's, she shook her head.

"That doesn't sound like you.  That sounds like a bad warped version of you that I wouldn't want to eat lunch with." She ordered an ice tea and either an egg or tuna sandwich, I don't remember.  "The real you is much more interesting."  I ordered  a diet coke and hot dog,  and juggled my daughter who played with the silverware.  Impulsively, I gave my baby girl a kiss on the head.  

"That's the real you."   Jeanne pointed at me holding my daughter.
She saw me pull back. I didn't want that to be the real me.  I didn't want to be just a mom.  It felt smaller.  The reality was, it wasn't the role, but the me who hadn't yet grown up into the role yet.  I'd been hiding from the role via graduate school. Hiding from the stretch marks of motherhood.

Jeanne knew it.

Getting me to hear that reality took the rest of lunch, which wasn't as much fun as I wanted it to be, but was what real friends do.  They tell you when you're missing the mark.  They guide you to the better you.  The doctoral program was a way of holding something for me.  Jeanne didn't convince me not to go to graduate school.  She didn't lecture or dismiss my dreams or criticize my parenting or even my life decisions. She just didn't let me pretend there wasn't a cost, and made me think about the costs, the now costs and future costs.

Jeanne didn't let me stay comfortable in a bubble of pride and self oriented feeling of somehow deserving this cocoon from my own life's reality, without knowing  the price would be not seeing my own children grow up.

It was a discernment luncheon.  She knew the process of dying to the self I'd yet to fully allow myself to do.  She also knew the better outcome possible and sat with me and we ate and talked and talked, even ordering dessert so as to not have to leave.

We sat in the parlor and laughed well past the lunch hour. I cannot remember anything of what was said, except to say at some point, whatever it was I held onto, fell off.    Graduate school would fall that autumn.

My real memory of the rest of that day was the echoes of our laughter bouncing off the walls of the student center to the ceiling. Before we went our separate ways, she took some time to talk to my baby girl.  She said she hoped one day she would go to Saint Mary's.  This fall, my daughter, that daughter, is.

We've had other visits, other luncheons since then, and the hallmark of all of them, is the whole conversation, the entire visit is like dessert.  Each memory holds the echo of laughing; laughing until we cry; crying because the joy and the laughter can't quite capture or cover everything we've talked about, or how much we're trying to cram into a few hour visit or phone call.

It is always too soon to say good bye, but I do know, when we get to see each other again, there won't be a need to cram everything in because the feast will go on forever.   So for her life, for her friendship, for the luncheons, for the talks, for all she's given, for all she still gives, for all I miss and all I remember and all I don't,  I thank God for her.

Thank you my friend.  I miss you.

Good Friday and Divine Mercy

This past week, we've seen what a merciless mob can do.  At Garissa University College campus in Kenya on Holy Thursday, masked terrorists separated Christians from Muslims, and shot one hundred and fifty dead while wounding another seventy.

2015 years ago on another Holy Thursday, people gathered before Pilate and demanded an innocent man be put to death by shouting, "Crucify him."

In 2015, people saw a news clip about a pizza restaurant in a small town in Indiana, and a twitter storm of outrage over people saying they wouldn't cater a same sex wedding forced the business to close perhaps forever.   

There are those who think Christianity is no longer tolerable unless it abandoned the tenets the world deems untenable.  These reactions come from those who think certain teachings out moded and thus in need of being discarded, and from those who feel tired of being meek and gentle and  inviting to the world around us.  The world doesn't care about us, it's time to fight!  

I've seen both reactions. My answer to them is, look at the cross.  The answer to each of these moments, is what happens today, Good Friday.  

However you depict the reality of the crucifixion, one thing remains clear. Jesus didn't fight the cross, He willed to allow the cross to happen.  Jesus didn't abandon a single of the people he came to save, he wept for those who might refuse.  He didn't summon a legion of angels to smite the soldiers who crucified him or the men who scourged him, he didn't return the slander and calumny of the court and those who envied him with threats or boasts or even a defense.  He offered himself to his creation, as a full gift.   

He even worked a miracle of an answered prayer to the pharisee who said, "Come down off that cross that we may believe."  and three days later, He did.  Who is to say that the man who spoke those words to Christ, didn't come to see, Jesus did exactly what he asked, and thus turn his heart toward God?   

My facebook feed started with this beautiful quote: "Nothing is more beautiful than mercy. Mercy can’t be given to someone who deserves it. Mercy is greater than judgment. Any sinner can judge, but it takes a believer to be willing to forgive. Bless your enemies, don't talk about them. If you can do something nice for them, do it. Pray for them." -J. Meyer

I'd never heard of J. Meyer, but I googled her and found her story revealed this quote to be a lived reality. She'd forgiven the person who abused her as a child, and in that forgiveness, found sublime grace.   

Still pondering as I saw other less gentle reminders of why we need Good Friday, outrage, anger, wrath and smugness on my internet feed, I found this achingly beautiful story that once again proves the strongest response to evil, every time, is mercy.

Is it more merciful to bake the cake or to not? It depends upon the discernment, the why one opts to bake or not.  Is it more merciful to stand your ground or shake the dust from your feet and find another store? Again, discernment of the heart.  How am I loving my neighbor as myself? Am I being merciful?  If the answer is no, rethink.

Put another way, can a gay baker refuse to make a cake for a Westboro Baptist Church reception?  I would say, "Yes."  

Can the Catholic florist refuse to supply flowers to Planned Parenthood?  "Yes."  

Can people agree to disagree in a civil society?  They must, in order to have a civil society.

Should the rejected person go out, enlist a twitter mob to rain down social media wrath on someone who speaks out of turn?  "No."  

Should the reporter or the coach or any of the other people who acted in haste and passion but wrongly, be destroyed by the same sort of electronic vendetta mob but from the other side?  "No."

Everybody put down the damn rocks. God desires mercy, not sacrifice.  

Today is the start of the Divine Mercy Novena.  If nothing else, the passion of Spy Wednesday, Holy Thursday and Good Friday, as lived out then and now reveals how much we need to pray for mercy.  So pray for all those in power, all those affected on any side of the issue, pray for all who try to live out their faith life, and for those who advocate for same sex marriage.  Pray for mercy, divine mercy, on all comers.   Pray for mercy, Divine Mercy, on all of us, for we do not deserve it.   

Tithe Me Your Time

Okay, I admit it. The death of lappie (my laptop) has curbed my capacity to write greatly.  It's not that I don't have paper, pencil or even access to the computer, but my best work came when I could sit at the machine in the kitchen and still monitor all of life. The computer room is offset, all of life cannot be monitored from that spot, so it's my spot a lot less.  You'd think with only one home, I'd have more time, but somehow, I have less.  It explains to me why people wonder how I can manage with ten. When I had only one, I didn't have any time to myself either. So I'm sitting today, looking at a blank page that somehow has become a means of walking into the dessert of my prayer life.

It's my point in dessert of Lent when I discover what I always discover, what I keep being led out into the wasteland to find, all the ways in which I put me first.  I never liked "Dim your lights," because that would put others first.  I never wanted to be defined as "Just a mom." when that is obviously the most important job I've been given by God with respect to these people. I've wanted something apart, something for me.

But I know, you can't serve two masters and you really can't serve God if you serve yourself first.

All my writing reflects me.
All the time spent writing, is mine.

It isn't that writing is good or bad, it is how it is used, is it a witness of a faith life, or is it Pharasitical response to life? "Look at me I have ten kids, I pray, I write about praying.  Holy me."

I can't say it's either or neither, I'd say it's both and.  

Blogging is about getting people to read, so there is a component of attention getting by the nature of the format.  I like to talk.  Listening...not so good.   Writing allows me to talk without the pesky problem of listening except to the internal voice, "Does this ring true?"  

Sometimes writing takes me deeper into the vocation of wife and mother.  Sometimes, it strokes my ego.  What I don't know, is how to separate the wheat from the chaff in my writing.  So I've let them grow up together, and what is good will be harvested, and what is bad, hopefully will not burn up the internet as it is burned.  

I didn't plan for this to be the case. This is a humor blog. I liked writing humor. It's fun, it's fast, it gets a hit, people share it and it makes them smile.  It's the equivalent of a chocolate chip cookie without the calories. It is what I always intended this blog to be, but it's become something different.  (As writing often does), it's become a log both of memories, and of funny stories, and of those moments when I'm willing to bleed on the page.  Despite being the most shared and successful of pieces, I don't like bleeding on the page because it's not as easy as humor.  Bleeding requires I reveal small moments, fears, worries, pain.  Who wants to read that?  Turn on the news. You will get fears, worries, pain.  I want to be light, so I make light of those fears, worries and pain as a way of fighting. 

I also do it because if I don't, it's easier to be less happy, easier to get overwhelmed.

The biggest issue for me, is the breaking point, the moment when I don't want to serve.  It happens on Saturday when there is a mess everywhere and everyone else is playing while I'm cleaning.  It happens when I get to the five o'clock witching hour and dinner's not even an idea, it happens when we've done the bed time routine, we've done everything right and still, I'm playing which kid will get out of bed this time? after ten in the evening.   When I'm tired, when I feel I've given, when I get to the point that I'm out of wine and they're whining, and I forget the next step.  

Pray. Ask for help.   

How can I be this stupid?  Easy.  I keep thinking it's me that's running this show.  I'm responsible. I'm Mom.  Except what I have to remember is, I'm the hands in this Domestic Church, but Jesus is to be at the heart of it. Motherhood is my vocation, but I've spent twenty-two years always asking God, "Are you sure you want me doing this?" in some way, and then proposing, "Because I could do this...I'm good at this.." and picking some distraction like ohh look, a gym. I'll work out all the time, healthy and oh, I'll read while I work out or pray so it will be a double good.  No?   Oh look, a computer. I'll write for You...how about that?"   

God in His mercy keeps firmly placing me here and saying, "Here are the people I want you to shape.  Here are the people I want you to love.  Tithe me your time Sherry."   

Sablogital

I'm taking a break from blogging to discern what I should do with writing, to make sure what I am doing is not a pursuit of the ego.  Time is the one commodity a stay at home mom has, so I need to spend it well.  It has become harder and harder both to carve out time for words and to find words worth pulling out of the air.  Dry spells in writing happen, but they mean something.

The rule in writing is to write through the writer's block. This isn't writer's block. I do have that, but this feels different. This is a moment to breathe and figure out, what is the purpose of this blog?

It long since stopped being a humor place though I can occasionally spin out a funny bit.   It isn't helping me write my second book or promote the first.  It isn't helping me submit columns to places that pay.  Now a days, it isn't even helping me make sure I write. 

So what is it?  It has been a means of keeping the stories of what happens here in our home, but even that is limited.  My teens have a right not to have their adolescence preserved beyond momentary snapshots and stories.  More of my children are children than toddlers these days, so the stories have grown more personal, more complex, and I do not want my family as a reality television show.  

Is that putting your family under a bushel basket?  With ten? Not possible to be discreet in anything.  Any story I write reveals the reality.   Any errand we run reveals the reality.  Anyone who sees our car, knows the reality. 

So I'm not giving a date when the blog will return, because I don't know the answer.  I'll just say, thanks for reading.  Thanks for being here.  Check back, say "Hi." and thanks. 

Reflections on the Retiring of Pope Benedict XVIth

Yesterday, I was sad.  I felt thrown back to sophomore year in high school. I'd heard endlessly about how great the English class was junior year for those who got in the honor's class.  I worked hard to get a coveted spot.  Next year, the teacher who made the class so awesome, retired.  And here is the me, stuck in a harder class than perhaps I am capable of managing, wondering what to do. 

Then as now, the reality is the subject should be the focus, not the faculty.  Pope Benedict XVIth knows this and dimly, back then, I did too.  I still missed the teacher I'd heard all the great stories about, I still wished I could have had a chance to experience his class. But I did fall in love with the subject and that is what mattered. We did get to experience Pope Benedict's class, he is still pointing even in retirement away from himself, to the true subject of His life, of all of our lives, to that which matters.

 In this year of Faith, the Pope gives us by his decision, a lesson in the lost art of discernment; seeking the quiet of mind to listen to God.  Not something we're used to in this day and age of checking email and cell phones and 24-7 news crawl across the bottom of a screen.  We do not seek silence or allow for the quiet of the natural world in our every day life.  Even those out running, are plugged in to earphones.  We keep ourselves constantly carbonated caffinated stimulated distracted and multi-tasked, we never have time to simply pray.  We never have time to stop and give God more than a twitter's worth of time.  That level of business leads to being anxious about many things. 

I think, we are frightened by the change that allowing God in, even for a second, would bring to our lives.  Hearing and obeying the command to go out into the deep to lower our nets, we would return to the shore changed forever.  We would stop and fall on our knees, like the shepherds, like the Kings, like Peter. 

So I am still sad, because I have loved this pope.  I saw him celebrate mass in Washington DC.  I've read some of his writings and found them clear, thoughtful, moving and grace saturated.  The years have not been kind and neither has the world.  Part of me wants an Ironman Pope, but there are plenty of great players in Cooperstown who aren't Cal Ripken.  Pope Benedict's ministry was always more to pull us to be internal, to compel us to contemplate, to pray.  Retiring to pray, he surrenders the chair of Peter, the power, trappings, prestige, pulpit, all of it, because all of it is not what he is about, he is about prayer, about seeking a deeper relationship with Christ for himself and for all of us.  We cannot do that if we are so busy with our lives, we will not stop, even if our jobs in our lives, are about the business of the Church.  However in the end, I'm okay with this ending, because it points to where our eyes should be, on only God.