Lawn Chair Catechism This Week

I have really loved doing this Lawn Chair Catechism, it's like the midweek jolt to my soul. "Wake up stupid! You're supposed to be doing something!!! Do you even know what that is you are supposed to be doing?"  I need a GPS with the step by step directions out of the driveway for my soul, every day.  Even though I've been trying to drive this route every day.  

Resurrection, Ascension, New Life, Adoption, and the Kingdom:  The Cross is not the end of the story.  Seekers can investigate the historical evidence for the reality of the resurrection.  Satisfied with that evidence, they can move on to asking, “What does this mean for me?”

In special education, there is a diagnosis called "learning disabilities" which is a general term for wherever along the process of seeing/hearing (visual disorder) interpreting (processing disorder/language issue) analyzing (associative disorder) responding (writing/speaking), the information gets stuck.  I think the soul gets stuck in the process along the way as well. 

Many of us hold the seed in our hearts, we have heard the resurrection story and we believe it.  We see/hear correctly.  But we might think it either impossible to get there (despair) or spend our lives wringing our hands over everything in a false attempt at perfection (also despair) making ourselves miserable and thinking this is what God wants. (form of gnosticism and scrupulosity mixed together, toxic spiritual cocktail).  It is why we need the gift of knowledge that Jesus ascended to prepare a place for us. He is anticipating us coming to him as his friends, as his guests, as his family.   He is preparing a room, it has already been set aside, we have to will to get there.  Predetermination is not in play here.  It is an invitation. He has invited us.  How we live determines our RSVP. 

To take on new life is to revision everything we do.  But we forget.  We forget often. I know I do.  So we need the reminders of the sacraments and scripture, of daily prayer and corporeal acts of mercy and the lives of the saints, sacramentals, all of it, to pound through to our heads and hearts, you're invited. Come to the table. Come to my heart.  Come.   

But we might still think, He can't mean me.  And if He does mean me?  What does that mean?

It means we've been adopted.  That's radical, we've been grafted into His family. At any celebration we want every guest to come. We want everyone at every reunion, even the crazy uncle who smokes and has tattoos. (I had one of those, he gave us quarters and told scary stories, he smelled of tobacco and was both fascinating and frightening at the same. He suffered from schizophrenia).  We need to recognize, for all our preening, we aren't that different from the crazy uncle.  We're still invited with all our faults, all our failings, all our sins.  

And that means, being the Kingdom here, not waiting until death.  Starting today.  If I smoked, it would be time for a cigarette to steady the nerves.  

The seeker thus comes to a final set of thresholds: Jesus asks me to follow him.  He forgives my sins.  I’m ready to drop the net and become a disciple.

For discussion:

In your own faith:

• Are you practiced in sharing the Gospel story? Have you ever heard it told especially well.  

Yes.  I've watched it lived out in the story of my parents, in their friends and in their care for their family, both immediate, extended and adopted.  They took in cousins. They took in crazy uncles. They took on other missions along the way.  It was never about them.  Even now, my mother goes every day to the home where my father receives 24-7 care. She brushes his teeth. She sits with him at meals. She brings him the Eucharist.  

My father for many years of my life, took me to church, made me say the rosary rather than talk or fight with my brothers, read to me from books I could not understand, like giving a novice a taste of fine wine.  I could not understand the highlights or the special nature of the drink, I drank anyway.   Now, he does not do these things, but I have seen him and he still lights up to receive. He holds in the deeper parts of his memory and fights through the Alzheimer's for bits of the rosary and to take communion.  His face lights up when he sees Mom, it is a form of "Hello." It is silent, but it is real.  

I know the Gospel story, I know how to splice moments into everyday life. My children are well practiced at rolling their eyes, not because I cite scripture or Christ's teachings, but because usually, when I get it nailed down, they agree, fold the resistance and life resumes. I know in my head always to ask,  "Is it right? Is it just? Is it kind?" before speaking and acting.  But I struggle with the living it out part. 

• How can you become more skilled at explaining and answering questions about the Gospel?  Prayer, reading, and practice.  Plus asking God to place me, to push me, to show me where he wants me to work, and then give me the will to do what he has placed before me, to not be distracted by all the things that so easily distract me.  My daughter came to me and said, "I'm hungry."  I said, "I'm writing. Let me finish this."  She said, "It's going to take a long time." and another daughter agreed, "It would." But when I tried to stay on task (this task), all hell broke lose. There were deer in the back yard which sent a child running at them, a toilet clogged and there was a fight of pecking order amongst two of the middles over a card game.  Everything seemed to spill over and I admittedly ran back to the comfort and safety and illusory control of the computer.  But the words, "I'm hungry." came back to me where I was sitting, so I got up again, and started to take care of things. 
• I thought I'd finished when a daughter came to me and said, "Mom, when are we going?" I'd forgotten about how yesterday I promised to take two or three of them to the mall for back to school shoe shopping.  Writing would have to be put off again.  The other day a writer asked in a forum, "How do you find time to write and how do you help your family understand?"  
• The reality is they aren't supposed to understand, they come first.  They have priority. It isn't easy. It isn't always fun, and I certainly don't always have the temperament to sublimate my desires to my vocation.  I come grudgingly to plunge the toilets and hound the child to pick up the toys he just tossed off the table, I come irritated to clean the dishes and fold the laundry and run the errands.  Absent grace I come annoyed to climb the stairs and wipe down the counters and do all that the daily life of a family demands.  But with grace, all these actions become better, become what they should be, acts of love.  
• So, the call has been given, and I have to serve.  It's a matter of not objecting to the nature of the service, which is where my ego, my sins, my desires wrestle with my soul and what is right.  Another daughter comes into the room. She is sick. I call the doctor to schedule an appointment.  "When are we going?" "Right now."  That is the answer.  It is always the answer.  

I'll be back after I take two to the mall and the other daughter to the doctor's.  

Lawn Chair Catechism Week Two

I'm enjoying the reflective component of participating in Lawn Chair Catechism.  You can participate too, even if you don't get Sherry Wendell's book,  Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus, (Our Sunday Visitor, 2012).

This exercise is designed for both the individual called to discipleship, and the parish at large, but since I cannot speak for my parish, I am only a member, I will focus on the individual component.

Have you always been Catholic? Yes. Catholic school, grade, high, college and even graduate school.  It helped. 

How did the instruction and mentoring you received help you – or prevent you – from having a personal relationship with God? My mom and dad permeated my life with Catholicism. It wasn't until I left home --like really no longer being immersed in a community that reminded me of my faith, that I got a bit lost, but I did get a bit lost, i.e. becoming a 2x a month visitor...3 during the high seasons, not quite recognizing what I was losing while knowing I was losing something all the same.  I did however acquire the habit of regular prayer from my folks and the many examples of God answering "yes."

If you were raised in a Catholic home, are your family members all still Catholic?

Most are steeped in their faith.  I don't feel I should speculate or discuss a faith story that is not my own. I do know, what makes us followers of Christ is a sense 1) that we know God is and that 2) He is profoundly interested in our lives, in our happiness. 

How do we come to know the first fact and thus the second?

In my own life, it was the efficacy of prayer. I knew we prayed. I prayed for certain things. I also understood or had the grace of knowing when my prayers had been answered, yes, no, wait.  God was not a genii, but He remained present in all things, I couldn't miss Him. 

Having parents that prayed, that went to mass more than weekly, that told us to pray whenever we had a problem no matter how seemingly hard/small, as part of the process and who would ask if we were still grousing, "Did you pray?" helped.  So prayer. Daily talks and walks with God, no matter the method, Dad's favorite was the rosary, Mom read the daily readings or went to mass, helped instill prayer as a first response to all things such that my own kids roll their eyes when I say the same thing.   Even though they also swear that I have Saint Anthony on speed dial given his response to my requests. 

How do we know He is profoundly interested in our lives? For me, it is the daily readings of scripture, that seem always when I need it, to speak directly to whatever it is that is going on in my life.  You would think I'd know and be used to coming to the mass or the readings and finding God's words written just for me by now. But I am always shocked to the core when the gospel or psalm or the songs line up to explain to me whatever it is I am pondering and how immediate the understanding is, almost before thinking, as if these words or thoughts were always written on my heart, I just had not read them yet.  

How do I teach this to the next generation?  This is the challenge of every parent. 

We're taking them to mass. We pray daily. They hear the stories of our faith struggles.  I'm hoping, all this witness sticks.  I do worry that sometimes, they only see the duty and not the joy, or that they don't recognize that this is joy when they feel overwhelmed by the level of craziness of our everyday.  When this worry tempts me to become anxious, I use the rosary as my lifeline to talk to God and discover all the things I've been carrying around. Petitioning with each Hail Mary, I feel very confident laying everything at Mary's feet, the big and the little stuff. 

But ultimately, some of my strongest memories of childhood come from having a family, even an extended family, that would go to mass together and then feast on a regular basis.  Sundays at mass and then a meal with cousins and uncles and aunts and friends, fried chicken and eggs benedict and bacon, grits and tamales.  This was a ritual.  Mass mattered, it mattered to the whole family, the tall and the small. 

And it wasn't just my family. Sundays at the Newman center where my parents volunteered as retreat coordinators, with the college students who said mass and played guitar and talked about Who am I, Who am I in relation to others and Who am I in relation to God...or that's what my brain remembers from the posters they'd make when I was allowed to tag along and listen and draw pictures illustrating whatever they said.  My drawings had probably more bunnies and rainbows than they talked about, but the substance despite going over my head, sunk in eventually.  Mass was central. Mass mattered.  Mass was the essence of our faith. 

So what do we do to be disciples...pray, witness, and feast on the Eucharist, and afterwards with each other.  Sounds like a fun way to live.