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.

The Dream We Have May Not Be Ours to Realize

Today I was busy trying to be busy, trying to be a good mom by making it to mass to see my son read for three seconds of petitions. My four year old daughter always needs to use the facilities at mass. Today was no exception.

A friend offered to watch Paul and Regina so I could take Rita by myself and I stopped to watch the class of students aiding the set up of the soup kitchen. These were children with moderate disabilities, some of them non verbal. They were serving those who would come to eat because they had no other place to eat. They were doing meaningful work despite their disabilities, or perhaps because of their disabilities. If they had not been handicapped, they would be in regular classes learning history or algebra or wondering why they had to learn history or algebra and when was lunch?

Instead, they were setting the tables, adding napkins and flowers and notecards. I watched a young man pushing a cart. This could one day be my son, feeding the hungry. I thanked the teachers overseeing the students. Today, a dream I'd harbored was fulfilled not by me, but for me.

You see, when I was a doctoral student, I wanted to run a soup kitchen where the students with developmental delays served and cooked the food. I wanted the kids to do meaningful work that served others. I had served as a supervisor in graduate school at a "simulated workshop" where simulated work was done and hated it. I had watched students grow angry at not the menial nature of the work but the menial nature of their lives, of expectations.

"Who wants to grow up to be a maid?" a student Christina had said one day as she slapped down her book bag. I found I could only agree. Who wants to be a servant? It was then that I started pondering how to make vocational training as it was called, vocational learning (my term). “Who wants to serve?” was a much more compelling question in my mind.

Going back to the mass, we made it to hear my son say his part and I sat there feeling my heart plucked by the readings and the Mass and the ashes and the reality that the meek were feeding the hungry and how great it was, that even little ones like my son Paul might one day be able to act as Christ to others in the little way of setting a table or adding flowers.

The degree didn't happen and neither did the school I'd planned, but the vision of what I hoped did, without me. I just was blessed to see it and to recognize it realized today.

The Answer to Prayer is Always “Fish”

I've been reflecting on the means by which suffering can have or rather does have meaning, on the sorrowful mysteries.

Sometimes, you can see how suffering brings us closer to God, how it cracks open a community that was meant to be more than it is at the moment before the suffering begins. The community can be a family or a church or a school or a town or a nation or a people, but the suffering is a means of revealing the true relationships that were obscured by the world, by sin and by the false comforts.

I can get that far, and then I get afraid. That awareness is too much knowledge for me, unbearably intimate and overwhelming as it washes over, and I find I did not trust love, trust God enough to use these great pains and sufferings for good because I find the great pains and sufferings so very great.

It is only if we Trust God, that we can bear suffering and know it has meaning.
Next time I hope I will remember. He always give us "fish."

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The Answer to Prayer is Always “Fish”

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My Take On George Carlin's Death

I like George Carlin for the most part. I have always found him provocative, but not always honest. My biggest beef with the deceased? Whenever anyone complained about his jokes being offensive, he'd sideslip by explaining, "They're just words." To say they're just words is to deny the potency of their effect. If they were just words, and had no meaning save what the listener ascribed, anyone could be a writer or a comic or a playwright and make money because no one would be able to discern a good writer/creative genius from a bad one --because good and bad would be purely relative terms with no underpinning criteria.

Words do mean something. If they didn't, humor wouldn't have the effect it does. He understood the power of words, that's why his piece on the seven words you can't say is so very powerful. Someone who wrot lik thes wod b as gooder as someone who could express themselves without errors. Someone who messed up the punch line would be as successful as Jerry Seinfeild, as order of words would not matter, only that sounds issued forth. Indeed, chimps would be as successful at writing or stand up, as actual words would no longer be necessary.

Words matter. George knew it. But the common defense against criticism by anyone is "I didnt mean it or it didn't mean anything." As though intent or ascribed intent determines offense. While it is a convenient arguement, that's not the way truth or humor for that matter, works. Intent does not determine laughter. I meant for you to laugh --does not mean you must. Intent not to offend does not determine whether or not something is offensive. And George knew this. The seven words speech was designed to be both offensive and funny. It wouldn't be funny if it weren't also discussing the offensive.

What I have seen a lot of in recent internet discourse, is idea of the meeting between George Carlin and the Almighty. Those who liked his humor view God and George having a sit down and a few laughs maybe over a beer. Those who found him offensive, view George as having a bit of a warm seat.

Do I think George has been excluded from the realm of the Divine because he swore? No. Do I think he probably has some explaining to do...absoultely, but then, don't we all?

And do I think George is going to try pulling...they were only words up there? Probably not. Not with the Author of the Word. At least, not if he's as smart as I always thought he was...God has a sense of humor too. It explains apendixes, mosquitos and first dates. It explains George Carlin too. George will get his moment to feel as those who sometimes felt uncomfortable at his humor under the great mercy and justice and love of God.

God will probably explain how "just words" have an effect to George or at least require him to own up to actual reality. George will agree. Then they will have a few laughs, maybe over a beer.

George probably won't use those seven words though.