The Blessed Mother Makes House Calls

She came for a visit this past June. You can read about it at the National Catholic Register.

Over at Catholicmom.com Today

I have a piece discussing inviting a Saint to walk with you in the coming year.  This past year, I helped contribute to the Catholic Mom Prayer Companion, a collection of 365 short reflections designed to give the reader a moment to catch her breath and pray.   Because the book is entitled, the Catholic Mom Prayer Companion, I thought it a great idea to have a companion for engaging in the year of prayer.  Hence, I suggested turning to Jen Fulwiller's Saint Generator. 

If you'd like to read the story over at Catholicmom.com, Walk with a Saint, it will explain what a Saint Generator is, and why you might want to give it a try.  It's fun.

As 2016 is winding down, I thought back and realized, I did make some of my goals this year.

1) I lost seven pounds.  I probably gained two back from the past two days of food, but it's still progress.   I also ran in two 5K's.

2) I read 12 books.  (One a month).  Working to make it two a month in the coming year.

3) Wrote 32 pieces that got published somewhere for pay. (A new high).  

4) Got a job.

Have a great time preparing for the new year, I'm going to make my annual overly ambitious list of things I want to do.

What are my goals for 2017?

1) Lose 10 more pounds.

2) Read 24 books.

3) Write 52 pieces that get published for pay.

4) Grow at my job.

5)  Learn a piece of music a month.  (It's to stretch me). 

6) Reconnect more with family and friends.

7)  Redevelop my prayer life.  (The Saint I got through the Saint Generator is planning to help me).

Have a great last day of 2016!

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Every Monday, you can hear Mark and me talk about things from a Catholic perspective. On this past Monday, we began delving into "Blessed Waiting," and discussions of how to God, all times are soon. It's only all of us with our limited understanding of time, that cannot recognize the everyday miracles of our own lives simply being.

Over at Aleteia Today

Hopefully, we'll both be healthier and holier. Thanks Peter.

Now, I have to fulfill my part of the deal.  

Purposely Veiled Beauty

Because I frequent Catholic sites, I see some of the dust ups that make other denominations say, "Look how they hate each other."  When we argue over how to receive, to the point of making the posture of piety a source of venial sin, we declare unclean what God created clean.

Recently, I became part of a discussion about whether or not women should be veiled when they enter the Church.  I've never worn a veil, nor have I ever felt pressure to do so.   I've known lovely women of faith who did, and equally compelling luminous witnesses to the faith who didn't.  I didn't see it as an indicator of anything but a preference as to how one would show reverence at mass.   I did not consider it to be proof of something much more than a personal devotion or method of showing humility.   The internet reaction was swift. "We veil things that are sacred."  was the argument, and it was only my pride that prevented me from being willing to submit myself to the adoption of the practice.

I'm a proud thing so I thought it's possible pride is blocking my understanding, but still disagreed.

I went to mass.  I saw a few women praying, wearing chapel veils.  I saw women praying whose heads were bare.  Were not all of us, men and women, made in His image, were not all of us, by our very creation, sacred?  Shouldn't all of us be wearing something over our heads?  I didn't want to have this imaginary argument in my head, but it was there just the same.

Then, the priest spoke about the upcoming Encyclical on the environment, and the need of all Catholics to care for their whole family, and that included our home, the home given to us for all of our past parents, the home where we raise our children; Earth.

I considered the fallen nature of the planet, and of its keepers.  The majesty of an oak is veiled in the acorn, and the beauty of a butterfly in the catepillar.   A star cannot show you all of its brilliance because of distance, and a shark cannot manifest its terrible beauty and strength without our falling into danger.  My mind drifted into the whimsical thought, if we were to see how we were intended to be before the fall, we would mistake ourselves because of our fallen nature, for God.   We cannot bear too much reality, too much of God revealed in the physical world, and so we receive Him in the accidents of the sacrament, in the form of bread and wine but not.  We crave the distance of a veil, to keep the sacred safe, whether by keeping ourselves at a distance, or keeping ourselves from seeing.

We are accidents of form, for our souls are us, and yet our souls are not fully revealed by how we look, but how we act.   The wearing of the veil reveals one form of devotion, but not necessarily the state of the soul wearing it, the same way a collection of prayer cards three inches thick may indicate something about a soul, but it does not necessarily reveal a deep prayer life, merely an obsessive one.

 My four year old daughter played with her stuffed kitten in the cry room and knows the mass drill.  "I'm blowing kisses to God." she said.   The veil between her soul and the world and God is much thinner than mine.

Then I met a woman whose nature and countenance told me she was luminous in her faith life.  She'd adopted a child with Down Syndrome, and had seven children of her own, two in the seminary.   A dear friend who's shared her faith story with me, introduced us.  Both are devout women of prayer with deeper interior lives than I can imagine, given my own Attention Deficit methods of prayer.

One wore a veil, the other did not.  Both were holy women and my friends. The words "Both And." resonated in my heart, for they struck the reality of how we should be, how we're called to be.  We are veiled accidents of form, and through our witness, we reveal the truer reality, truer than whether one wears a head covering or not, the "Both And" radical nature of God's love for us, and call of us to love Him.   Neither of these women drew attention through their attire, but through their presence and actions.   God bled through their souls into my ordinary distracted life.

I left the parking lot after mass and all I knew was, "That's Catholic."  

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."   

Time to Clean House and Make the Church Beautiful

It began because I'd put off housecleaning.  (It's bad for me spiritually to do this because then I get vexed by time constraints in addition to mess). I went to my two daughter's room and found a great disappointment. (Again another potential spiritual snare).  

I've been trying to help my daughters take on the responsibility of putting away their clothes. Sympathetic to the difficulty of the process, I'd sorted piles to let them put away underwear, pj's, shirts, pants and dresses, each in separate stacks.  I'd told them my expectation.  They seemed excited.  It didn't happen that afternoon.  

I'd reminded them the next morning. At 11 today, I went upstairs.  The piles have been picked over, with whatever is left, semi-destroyed.  I felt thwarted.  I felt annoyed. I felt angry.  I'd made it so simple.  They couldn't do this? Not even this?  I also felt that familiar near occasion of sin resting on my shoulder, pointing at the mess, at the casual indifference of my children to requests, to authority, to do what I'd asked.  The growl threatened to get a serious harangue going in my brain.  But I told myself, they're children. They're children, we will keep working on it and next time, I will stand and direct them to do this while I watch, to establish the expectation. I put way what was there because there's a fresh bumper crop of laundry coming this afternoon so the lesson will get taught. 


And I wondered if God ever sighs as He lays out things so simply, and still we miss the mark.  Love one another as I've loved you.  Pretty simple.  And he gives us time.  And still, after all the signs and wonders, after being fed and fed and fed, after answering prayers, after providing miracles, we're still at square one, not doing it, not paying attention to the fact we're not doing it, messing up what He laid out so neatly to make it easy, because we're busy not caring about the task or the request or the authority.  

It got me to thinking about recognized saints, people who stopped, who listened, who worked to obey, and thus trusted God's authority over their lives in a way the rest of us don't.  How many were there? The thought teased until I began a google search.  There are many conflicting sources.  One says, over 10,000.   A very thoughtful piece over at Catholic Exchange puts the probably total at somewhere between 810 and 920 which means in the whole history of the world, in the history of Catholicism, less than 1000 people have really really really paid attention.   

Not a good number.  But it made me feel a bit better about my daughters running through the laundry piles like so many fallen leaves.   The Church can't get more than 920 of  the 107,602,707,791 ever born to be saints, of which currently 1.1 billion are Catholic!  Granted, there are more that we do not know, but if there are currently  over 7.2 billion people and we make up a 7th, then I think we have an obligation to try and get that known witness number up.  

My thoughts returned to my own children as I collected papers scattered in several rooms.  The grades were inconsistent.  We're planning a family meeting, to discuss goals and how to meet them.  Several of my children have the brains to make honor roll, but they're not pushing themselves to do the harder extra work necessary to get more than what their sheer talent can manage.   We're going to talk strategies, desires, end objectives.  Not because they have to make honor roll, but because they should put their hearts into their one job they must do as children, become educated.   

Perhaps the Church needs to talk to its children about making honor roll, because that's a job we're supposed to not simply aspire to, but must seek if we are to truly live.   I don't know about you, but I'd like to see the year 2014 as the year of the surge in saints that started a century of saints.  The Church is supposed to be the full means by which we receive salvation, the method by which we may become saints.  But too long, we've lived as a Church as the Cubs or Notre Dame, coasting on past glory, content to continue just playing every year, rather than create a luminous present and eternity.  

What does it mean?

It's time to wean ourselves from milk and learn to eat meat, to be grown up in faith and in life, and to say daily the scariest best prayer I can think of, "Please Lord, let it be done to me according to your will, and let me know it."  We have to copy Mary's fiat, body, mind and soul, and live it.  The theme this year for our prayer life is "Make the Church Beautiful."  That includes the hearth, the home, the individuals, helping them discern their talents and flourish, bringing them to be better witnesses in this life, of the fuller life.

I'm going back upstairs now to clean up the house, and prepare the home for the meeting tonight.  I intend to set an agenda, and end with people signing contracts about what they are going to do.  We're going to meet again the following Friday to follow up on how the first week went.   I'll let you know.  

Lawn Chair Catechism

 

The St. Catherine of Siena Institute has a primary mission of helping parishioners uncover and begin to use their charisms.  The discernment process may yield unsettling results:

After working with tens of thousands of Catholics in the discernment process, we have noticed something important: Not all charisms are welcomed and valued at the parish level.  This is almost never intentional or bad-willed, but it hampers the work of the Kingdom all the same.
. . . Which charisms are we not likely to welcome? The charisms primarily aimed at starting new initiatives, evangelizing and proclaiming Christ, forming disciples and apostles, and freedom for unusual ministry and prophetic change.

An essential ministry is the formation of small faith groups by those with the gift of “pastoring”. The last thing new disciples need is to feel isolated and alone within their parish.

For discussion:

In your own faith:

• How would you describe what your spiritual gifts are (or might be)?

What are my spiritual gifts. This is a hard question because it's much much easier to list my spiritual flaws.  I know them.  I know my gifts too but it's easier to talk about the warts than the beauty.  Spiritual gifts...humor, easy friendship, enthusiasm, intellect and kindness.   I also pray, so I'm willing and even sometimes, obedient. 

• In what ways could you evangelize or disciple others using those gifts? 

Leave the house and get involved.  It's a reality.  I have as of late, withdrawn from life outside of our home.  Part of it is logistics.  Raising ten children and maintaining their home takes time, energy, effort.   It means I can do less outside the realm of my house.  Part of it is my children are young, so they also are semi-house bound.  Paul is 4, Anna is 2. Both are not potty trained. There are simply limits.  And I have stopped in the past few years, seeking to go past them.  Writing this, I admit I don't like limits, but I have allowed the dull ordinariness of everyday to wear away at my willingness to push past them.  The domestic life of serving them does lead to a sort of passivity that is perhaps, unhealthy if I would be a disciple.  I am a lesser mother and follower for having allowed this, because I've let myself use sloth as a reasonable excuse to be less.

Being inside the house, being on the computer, it is safe to be Catholic. I can witness all day on my little patch of cyberspace, it does very little, it demands even less.   Witnessing is physical, tangible, touchable.  Witnessing requires that one see and be seen.  Words without actions are empty. Living inside a controlled environment of my own making, it is easy to not deliberately do harm, but it is equally almost impossible to enact good.  

To awaken other souls to beauty, to life, to God, requires I reveal beauty, life, God to others.   God will do the rest, but He wants (not needs), and He knows I need and even in the deeper parts of me, want to do just this, to reveal beauty, life and God to others. Our world needs the fullness of all of our imaginations and hearts infused into everything, which requires we do the dangerous thing of going out our doors.   I have to be willing to be an unsafe soul, secure in the reality that we were always in danger of being devoured by the world, that we are called to be witnesses to the beauty that is beyond the world and cannot be devoured, and that we will be safe and secure and loved, not from or by the world, but for all eternity by the one who is Beauty, is Truth, is Love.

Then I wondered, am I feeling sorry for myself?  (Probably a bit).  Am I being overly harsh on myself?  My 4 year old son Paul had the answer.  He ran out of the house, still in his pj's, no shoes, because the outside beckoned.   Bringing him back inside, I promised, we'll get back out there after we're dressed.   But the message was clear, get out there. You don't have to be so prepared, just go out the door.  Forget your walking stick.   You're going on an adventure. 

Living a Luminous Life or What I learned from Watching Zombie Movies...

If we want to see darkness, all we need do is turn on the news. Even our entertainment seems to reveal a fascination and awareness that there is a gathering dark.  Our movies are full of monsters and apocalypses, of all that is good and green being destroyed and burned in favor of the uniformity of creatures consumed by the need to consume, stripped all of beauty, all of individuality and capacity for charity.  There are the predators (the destroyers of the world) and the prey (the not yet consumed and ever yet dwindling group of increasingly vulnerable people).

Our entertainment reveals our fears and what our rational minds don't want to deal with directly; that we fear a great damn of restraint somehow bursting onto our domestic tranquility and destroying everything in its wake.  We do not know what holds back that great appetite. We do not name it though we recognize some of its markers in morality and law.

Neither do we recognize the monsters and their origin, though our creations betray that our subconscious knows.  All of our monsters are undead, demonic, soulless.  All of our monsters seek to turn us into undead,animated but not alive, demonic, soulless.  Ergo, we know even if we do not say, where these monsters come from and why we fear them even as we tell ourselves, they aren't real.  We live in a fallen world, and in a fallen world, the only way to salvation, is the cross and the graces that come from embracing said cross. The only way to participate in the cross, is to be like the one who died on the cross to others, to be salt and light in a tasteless and dark world.

How do we do that when so much of our day is spent on things that just eat time, like errands and emails, laundry and dishes, oil changes and bills, phone messages and waiting for repairmen?  We have to be good stewards of all of our gifts, starting with the gift of time.  The first thing the heroes who hope to survive do, is buy some time to think, to plan, to recover and assess.  They shed everything that isn't important or necessary. I need to be a better steward of my time, and to shed what is not important or necessary.

Honoring Sunday is a second task I've decided to take to heart.  It used to be the day I caught up on everything, so every other day could be easier, but that just meant Sunday was harder than every other day. We are called to be joyful witnesses.  It is hard to be joyful if you're exhausted, ergo, Sunday is necessary if we are to live luminous lives.    It is supposed to be a day of rest, so now we are setting into motion the idea of tidying up on Saturday as a family, so that Sunday is only a willed day. We will go to mass, we will do things together, to rest from the week of work.

There comes a point where the hero loses hope if he goes on too long.  He becomes weary and needs to stop.  The oasis point where he discovers he is no longer alone is necessary to gear up for the final battle.  Our culture does not value leisure. It views play as a means to an end (fitness for example).  It is not that fitness is not a good goal, but it is not why one should play, one should play to experience the joy and freedom that is play.  We will cook on the BBQ or garden or read or write or watch baseball or play cards, but we will be playing on Sunday. We will pray and play, allowing ourselves to rest and recoup and thus be a witness of lighter hearts for the world.

It's a dangerous thing going out your door.  We'd all like to think that somehow our corner of the shire, of the world is safe from whatever it is that is outside, that is out there, but the reality in every good horror film, is that the evil that stalks always comes where you think you are finally safe.  This is a theological battle as well, thus you cannot be content to stay where you are, you must always move further in, further on, you must always learn more, pray more, love more, do more and still hold to the gifts of time as precious and prayer, rest, others and play as necessary. To be a hero in these films, you cannot remove yourself from the world, you cannot despair and you cannot succumb, you must rise, you must continue and you must hope that when a new day comes it will shine out the clearer.  You'll appreciate it more, because you know what could have been and what isn't.

Part of why I wrote this post is that I read a piece by Father Dwight Longnecker, Why I'm Scared.  And I thought, he amongst others who are feeling the weight of the world in light of recent events, needed a reminder that being a light to the world, however luminous, is not easy, but it is necessary.  If you're going to be the hero in this movie, you should recognize, you're going to be scared. You're going to be hunted. You're going to need to keep going anyway.  All of these people, even the ones who write wrong and hateful things in the com boxes, they need to be saved from the disease of sin too.  Since he used the story of I am Legend as his example, I could point out, (SPOILER ALERT), in the end, Legend's self sacrifice allows the woman and child to escape to a safe house with the cure that will eventually help restore those possessed by the disease and allow them to reclaim their humanity lost all this time.   Pray. Rest. Play. Plan.  Act.

So be not afraid.  In the end, we win.

Lawn Chair Catechism Week 3

Over at Catholicmom.com, you can participate in  the third session of Lawn Chair Catechism, using Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus, by Sherry Weddell (Our Sunday Visitor, 2012).  I downloaded it and am enjoying her easy reading style that still drills down to the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, i.e. to have an actual daily working intimate conversation/relationship with God.

• Are you comfortable talking with others about your relationship with God? Yes.  Most of the time.  I'm not sure if it is because I'm comfortable talking, or I'm comfortable having a relationship with God, or comfortable talking about God because it might be a means of not actually talking with God, talking about Him. 

• Would you say that you’re a “normal” Catholic using the criteria outlined? What was the criteria? Here's what was laid out on the homepage of Catholicmom.com:
•   . . It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be excited Christian activists.
• . . . It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be knowledgeable of their faith, the Scriptures, the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church, and the history of the Church.
• . . . It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to have fellowship of other committed lay Catholics available to them, to encourage, nurture, and discern as they attempt to follow Jesus.

• So...am I a "normal" Catholic. 
• Criteria #1  I think I am naturally preset as enthusiastic, but again, that may be me being me and not me being about God, but about myself. It is a struggle for me to recognize it is not all about me. Thus it is important that I have lots of other people to pay attention to in my daily life. But I can also use them as a shield to hide from having a conversation with God, and thus avoid Him by being with people as well (under the argument of duty), as well as via my own tendency to be self absorbed.   I am enthusiastic to be Catholic, I'm not sure I am a Christian activist yet.
• Criteria #2  This is a subject I am working on improving. I've read Kreeft's Catholic Christianity --an excellent readable easily digestible version of the catechism and several saint's works and the Magnificat daily when I can find my copy.  But the more I read, the more I realize that I am a rank amateurs' amateur.  I was put off on the History of the Church by a History of the Church teacher, not because of the subject but the person.  Now, I don't know where I would start, but I do know, it is a weakness in the armor of my faith.  I am still a baby jedi of the faith.
• Criteria #3 Do feel this is an area I am working on constantly. When I went to the Parish picnic, I was struck by all these people of faith, working so hard to live it out, and how glad I was to be counted in their company, and how much I very much want this fellowship in my life. Probably need to formalize some of this though. 
• I look at the criteria and recognize the flaw for me in all criteria I examined, is the same, an organic response --that of a child to stimuli, rather than that of an adult, and to be an adult in faith, I'm going to have to will some of this into being by cooperating with God's grace (ah, there's the rub) and surrendering my will to do otherwise. 
• This is not to say I do not have some grasp of my faith, only that I need to knuckle down and do the work of engaging God and others through that relationship.  I need to hold that moment in the mass that is my favorite: after the Eucharist, when everyone is with Jesus, all of us bringing our crosses, our prayers, our whole lives to the altar, all of us asking for the yoke to be easier, or the grace to bear what we must, and then, I need to mindfully go out and serve.    

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. 

God's Quirky Sense of Things, See you in 2013

Back before college at the beach, my favorite place in the world, sitting on the deck, patting my dog and talking with my dad, I prayed a big prayer, though I didn't know it at the time. College felt alien and I worried I would be as lonely there as I had been in high school and middle. The lurking...what if it's me? doubt wouldn't let me go. I asked for someone to love me...just for me.

I met the man I would marry three days into school.  I'd also prayed to have lots of people who would always love me.  I would argue ten kids equals a lot.   Now God knows I got the joke long before even kid five, but rest were His equivalent of a rim shot. 

The scripture "Ask and you shall receive" direct from Christ has always held great comfort to me.  I've also always known when a prayer has been answered, because it is accompanied by "laughter."
So when prayer is hard for me, usually, my sense of humor is off as well.   It is a good gut check for me.

There was a series of weeks when our family was running perpetually late...to everything. 

Frustrated after multiple missings of good things, I prayed to God to help me find a way to get us where we needed to go before we were expected. 

God knows I'm a writer. I'm always hoping/pitching/writing stories to get published.    God's not subtle with me, but then He knows absent blunt instruction, I'm clueless. So the week after my prayer, I got asked to write a humor piece on getting to mass on time.

I could hear God laughing as I typed.   We'll be there I promised.  And things got better.  You could say we paid more attention to the clock or I implemented the tips I'd written, but the reality is things got easier, and it wasn't fully us that made it so. 

This past two years, I've said a rosary, faithfully, every day.  Then, after Christmas, it became very difficult.  I'd get through a decade, two, forget which decade I was on, fall asleep during, start over, it has been a stumbling bumpy path of trying to will through the prayer. It wasn't because I was sad or angry or scared or frustrated or even busy.  It was simply the prayer muscles seemed to have become gimpy, distractable, undisciplined.  

Around the same point, writing became excruciating as well, a laborious task that lacked humor.  I thought it was merely the many tasks of Christmas and the fact that my laptop fried.  But all the stories seem dried up.  I know they are there, locked in a well of my brain somewhere and I can think of 16 different cute/amusing/sweet/crafty/clever type events that came from having all ten home over the holidays, but they don't coalesce into a coherent whole.  All the half and third and fifth decades don't equal a rosary and all the little quirks and cute moments don't equal a story.  Both the prayerful and the creative parts of my brain feel locked.  

I have two paths.  Beat my head against this wall. (It has always worked before, I'm remarkably oblivious to the pain when I set my self up this way but I've been doing that for about a month).   Stop and listen to what it is that God wants.  Since the prayer theme this year was "Be Still and Know I am Here" I'm guessing I should probably go with the later. I'm counting on God to be rather direct about this, big Neon sign can't miss it if you tried kind of notice. 

Immediately the panic bird of my brain says, "But Sherry, if you stop writing, you're not a writer. You've worked hard to craft a following of 133 people (Hi 133 followers), and have a modestly successful blog.  You've even got Google ads up to $40.00 --they don't pay until you get to $100.00, but last year you were at $14.75!  You have close to 200 hits a day.  If you don't put things up, that will stop! 

But I'm going to trust on this one. 

God gave me the talent, God gives me the will.  God will give me the words, or not.  It's that simple.  So I'm taking a two week break from the blog, I'm disciplining myself that it will be two weeks, which doesn't seem like a lot, but to a blogger, it is an eternity.  I'm also going to allow myself to try a simpler prayer like the Chaplet in the meantime, and hope the Rosary comes easier.
     

A Little Story

Everyone knows the story of Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem and being unable to find a place to stay.  Everyone thinks they'd recognize the dire need of a husband with his wife, heavy with child.  However, we need only look back to the poor mother who lost her two sons in the water of Hurricane Sandy to see, we are frightened creatures who often shut doors we should not.  Yes, all of us are just as capable of saying, "there is no room at the inn."

How do I know? 

This past week, we lost a baby at what would have been 8 weeks.   Honestly, I'd spent the first three weeks of knowing saying to God, "You've Got to be Kidding!"  I'm 46!  We have no room in the van.  We have a large house but there's no room in the house!  I tried playing kid tetris, shuffling children in the bedrooms.  I didn't want to wrap around the idea that our lives would be reordered yet again, that at least three more years of diapers loomed.   Taxes, college, carseats... it wasn't my most generous moment as a woman of faith or a mother. 

But I was very grateful for the gift of the wisdom and teachings of our Church.  That let me march forward, take my vitamin, schedule the appointment with the doctor and go on with life.  I'd come around I told myself.  And every once in a while, there was a bounce in my step, a giggle under my words as I managed the brood and their needs.  But also every once in a while, there was the feeling of the bite of the world.  "I'm overwhelmed." I told God.  "I know we're supposed to love in abundance and be lavish and generous and open to life like you...." but then my voice would crack in my head, "I'm not you!"  and the world felt very dark indeed.  I kept opening and shutting the door in my heart even as I held the child in my womb.  I would have to wedge it open.  

God was very humorous, "So Sherry, ten was fine but eleven too many?"  "Okay."  (It was hard to argue).  But it was still only duty, not a joyful one.   I'd be fighting this for a while I could tell despite many resolutions in my head to not fight.  And then I felt honestly, rather lost.  This was not a happy place to be, to know that my will was fighting even as I obeyed.  There was never a danger to this baby, she was always coming, but then Tuesday, I saw her. 

Her heart was slow....like mine.

I was miscarrying.   Suddenly every step, every heart beat forward was one step away from a healthy child, to a dying one.  Suddenly, I was willing her to stay alive, begging her to stay.  I've had two other miscarriages, but this one hit harder than the other two or maybe like labor pains, I've forgotten. It's probably a mixture of both.

Like any mother who must walk to the end of a miscarriage, I felt all the crazy unfamiliar hard musings. We hadn't even told anyone yet.  How to explain a loss we hadn't yet pronounced as a gift? Sadness...I held her but not as fully in my heart. We should have screamed about her to the world. We should have celebrated her while she was here! There was shame over the twinge of relief that the part of me that didn't want more, didn't have more...embarrassment at not wanting more of God's heart in my life....and hurt at the real knowledge that when the knock came to my door. I didn't answer, or at least not well.  Guilt --could I have done something or not done something to keep this one here? 

Wednesday I took my son to basketball practice and went to the adoration chapel to clear my head, to cry, to complain, to pray the baby would be okay, that somehow, this would all just be a blip, a hiccup in the pregnancy.  I didn't get to make that prayer.  I fell asleep. Three times. (It's warm, it's quiet, it's peaceful and as a dear priest told me, if you fall asleep in Adoration, you're just like the apostles, and perhaps God knew you needed the rest).  As I was preparing to leave to go back to the gym, I found a guide for adoration I'd never seen.  Reading it, I felt like I'd somehow missed what I was supposed to do in Adoration...rather like how I missed what to do during this pregnancy.  

Then Thursday, I went back to the doctors.  The baby did not have  a heart rate anymore.  She was smaller than she'd been on Tuesday.  I could see the difference.  I remember seeing the screen with her heart rate on it, and knowing then, the heart rate was wrong before they'd said anything.   The dramatic in me likes to think she died when I was sleeping in Adoration, that even broken and failing, I'd brought her to where she should be.   And in doing so, she did the same for me.  

I can't promise my heart will remain a stable stable for the rest of my life, but for only 8 weeks, she was a masterful instructor in the purpose of Advent.  I'll remember her, and therefore her lessons. We are to be a people waiting in joyful hope.  That is how life and being pregnant should be, a source of light and warmth in a thorny cold dark world of business and tasks and difficulty.   We told our children. We told our parents.  We named the baby, Kateri Joy, Katie Joy for short.   It fits her, it fits the season we are about to celebrate and I think her name is musical.  One of my daughters liked it so much, she said she'd name her daughter the same.  She has never voiced the idea that she would have children before. 

When we get to Heaven, we will be asked, "How many did you bring?" like the servants who were to invest the talents and multiply the Master's fortunes.  I now have another lobbyist in Heaven to get all of us there.   She's an expert at wedging open the doors of hearts. 

P.S. The perfect P.S, her due date was July 14th, it is apparently, Saint Kateri's feast day...I just found that out.

Why Fast?

Every year the Catholic high schools in our area have students collect canned goods for the local food pantries.  Every year they also have the students engage in a day of fasting.  They get a cup or so of rice and water.  Every year I hear the same litany of questions/gripes/complaints. 

"If we have to fast, how is it a sacrifice?"
     "Are you complaining?"
"Yes."
      "It is not easy even though they do it for you?"
"Yes."
      "Then it is a sacrifice." 

Or this one: "What is the point of my not eating?  It's not like it gives someone else food. It doesn't make them less hungry." 

"You get to understand that while you are temporarily put out, others have this ache without end."

 I've heard similar rants against mandatory volunteer work, where the requirement in their minds, undermines the spirit or true purpose of the act itself.   Now I know it is the contrary nature of children to fight and chafe at limits, at lessons, at lectures.  I see the eyes roll when I launch into the "Sometimes not having helps you be grateful for what you do have...bit." All the reasonable reasons in the world do not penetrate the mind or heart if the mind or heart are more set on being annoyed. 

But the deeper question of why fast flitted about and kept resurfacing.  Why fast? Of what good is denying one's self a good or at the very least, a neutral item?  How does that affect the soul?  How is it a prayer?  How is it important to God? Why is it important to God?  

I'll start with why fast? Is it important for Catholics? 

Yes.  It is important. It is a vehicle of prayer that reminds one all day of the sacrifice.  Mindfulness is something a full belly or sated appetite ignores.  We are much more sleepy in our thoughts and words if our stomach is full. Fasting can take all forms, but it is always about self denial.  It brings us closer to the virtue of humility, because our wants are not paramount. 

How does fasting work?  We live in a world of plenty, which is also filled with invisible want.  Denying our own visible wants, allows us to see better, the invisible needs around us.  Our vision becomes clearer.  I could point out that in scripture, every time fasting is prescribed and tried, grace overflows.  Who does not need overflowing grace? 

We understand boycotts for justice, we understand Gandhi's hunger strike.  If we can understand these worldly fastings to address worldly issues, we can comprehend fasting for others. If we understand fasting before receiving the Eucharist, then we can understand fasting in ordinary time as a means of making ourselves less attached to that which is not the Eucharist.  We fast to grow our own souls, while becoming mindful of those tangible constant blessings we take for granted every day and the lack of them in others' lives. 

So now we come to the means/spirit of fasting.  If fasting is involuntary, is it still a means of grace? Yes.  All suffering, voluntary and otherwise, is a path to grace.  The issue is being open to that grace. Being fallen creatures, we constantly shut the doors of our hearts to grace, our ears to wisdom, our lives to miracles because it is much easier to stay angry, stay fearful, stay annoyed, stay focused on our own pain, our own lives, our own troubles.  We do not understand how much good would come from being willing to suffer even the slightest of inconveniences to our lives, and we endure such trivial nuisances with poor spirit.  You should hear me when I can't find one of my kid's shoes and we were running on time up until then. 

But there is this image of fasting which denies reality.We understand setting ourselves during a diet, setting the will to refuse things which will sabotage our progress. This does not mean we don't crave or don't want or don't sometimes complain/rant about the lack.  Holiness is not the absence of want in our heart, it is the soul being willing to override that want, even as it wrestles with the wanting.   Fasting is a training of the soul to be more capable of enduring want.   Fasting involves allowing one's self to endure want, even when it would be soooooo much more comfortable/pleasant in the moment, to indulge or submit.  

Finally, Jesus fasted. If the Son of God understood the need not to be ruled by the appetites of the body in order to do battle with powers and principalities, then why do we not get that being lesser beings, we would need to do this more, not less.

Knowing the Signs*

It begins in the morning, sometimes before one even gets out of bed. Where others are reaching for their I-pad or kindle or in Luddite cases, turning on the television or radio, this person is different.  This person is addicted. This person needs help. This person starts praying (that's right) praying before feet hit the floor. 

Sure you're thinking, it's just a ritual. It's just route stuff.  And that admittedly is how it starts.  A Hail Mary here.  A prayer card there. But it escalates. Each prayer pushes the person towards more prayer such that variety becomes a necessity.  The addicted person now has a player's deck worth of special novenas, prayers for intentions and a whole host of saints.  They've got a rosary stashed in the car and a prayer table and start arranging the schedule to go to adoration or even a second mass during the week.  Their addiction is now interrupting the day.  It has become routine. Sure they're multi-tasking, saying a decade while folding laundry, reading the scripture while on the treadmill or listening to a Catholic radio host while running errands, but it's 24-7. 

But the effects of constantly talking to God and the saints don't end with simply keeping the mind and heart occupied, it starts to interfere with other things like watching sit-coms, listening to politics or surfing the net.  Even Facebook status is affected.  Soon, the poor soul is so obsessed, they lapse into the Divine Mercy Chaplet automatically at 3 o'clock and they don't even need a brochure.   They integrate God into every facet of their lives such that it is inescapable.

But you can intervene.  You can help.  You can talk politics with them or food or sports. Anything but feeding their obsession with God.  It might work.  And if it doesn't and you've tried every worldly thing you could think of, you could always...just say a prayer for them. 

*Inspired by The Crescat, a fellow Catholic blogger who specializes in hifreakin' hilarity and satire, but who is taking a break from blogging. Enjoy your sabbatical. We'll keep the internet warm for you.

Be Still my Heart, or at least, Be Quiet, My Brain

Every year, we pick a spiritual theme and this year, it is "Be Still and Know that I am."  You would think this would lead to an obvious pilgrimage to visit the Blessed Sacrament. I won't deny I'd fully intended that this be a weekly regimen. 

Then life happened.  And we got to August and I'd not made it to adoration once.  "How can you know I am if you will never ever be still?"  I could hear God smiling, bemused at my frantic attempt to get through the laundry, the chores of the day, helping with math, solving fights, running errands.  Here I was flailing away and feeling like less and less was getting done, less and less was mattering, and much of what I did do, was without a sense of peace that I thought would come from the Rosary, from serving my family, from trying to do what I ought, rather than what I wanted.  I had to ask, did I really want it if I put it off so much? 

But the opportunity kept quietly insisting that I consider it, like a wound that needs tending.  It pulsed. 
I drove by where there was 24/7 adoration.   It kept reminding me.  Every time I went out. 

My writing started drying up.  Everything felt stale.  My prayer life felt rather like a diet that wasn't working. I was eating right, exercising, not losing weight.  What more do you want God? I asked. 
And I knew.  You can keep beating your head against a spiritual wall, or you can go. 

So today, after dropping off my oldest at his job, I told myself, give yourself 20 minutes.  Immediately, my brain came up with three different other tasks that needed to be done.  I shunted them aside. My brain suggested I go back home and help with the math, get the kids and take them berry picking, clear out the computer room, plan our anniversary...after all, didn't I say a daily rosary? Didn't I read the Magnificat?  Wasn't my prayer life already full?  How was it going to make any difference? 

I drove through the parking lot the wrong way (as if that isn't symbolic enough).  I parked. I called home to check on my two teens that were serving breakfast.  All was quiet.  I'd run out of excuses. 

I'd love to tell you I had this great spiritual awakening, but it was more like a, "What took you so long?" moment.  And I cried and prayed for all my family and wondered why it had taken so much, why it had been such a struggle, to simply come and sit?   There was a temptation to say the rosary, but I didn't want to be busy before God, so I refused my desire to get some of my to do list done. This was be still and know time, not rosary time.   Sitting before our Lord, I felt bothered that I'd been so bothered, troubled that I'd considered coming such trouble.  All I could mutter was a "I'm sorry, I've been away."  and over and over again, "Jesus, I love you." It was a warm calm place to be, the very opposite of much of my life with the twists and turns that ten different personalities can generate. 

When I left, I promised, it would be fewer than 8 months before the next time.  "Be still and know that I am."  can't happen if I don't visit.   Now God's working on the...couldn't you stay an hour?  

Catholic Survival Guide for Today and Everyday

If you read the headlines, watch the news or just go on Facebook in the Catholic blogosphere (admittedly my favorite place to hang), you know that the administration's HHS policy has long tentacles, and that it is an assault on religious liberties for the government to tell religious institutions that they must violate their creed and consciences or face heavy fines.  Catholics in particular have been put on notice, we have a year to discern how to engage in civil disobedience or get the rule changed.

So what does this mean?  Does it mean the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, Saint Mary's College and all Catholic universities, high schools, elementary schools and hospitals, charities and outreach programs that employ people must then cease to provide health insurance, inflating the rolls of the uninsured into the millions?

Does it mean the Catholic Church cannot provide coverage for retirees who have served in good faith for decades and who now need that help to manage existing health needs?  Does it mean people will be paid more so they can then purchase insurance themselves?  Will this simply mean people now have to individually purchase products which provide these products deemed illicit (contraception/sterilization/abortion pills)? How will individuals being forced to purchase things as part of a bundled package be less in violation of one's faith values? 

 There has to be another way to turn the other cheek, to simply not provide what the government demands, but remain true to being a source of light and hope to the world in word and deed.  Perhaps it is time to create a Catholic insurance company to provide for those who wish to be fully faithful? Or are we in a deeper problem than we recognize? Will they even allow that?  I suspect not.

 I don't know, but I hear the faint cry of lions. Think it is Cassandra calls to the Trojans? Perhaps these concerns will go unheard, but then the Trojans didn't listen either. 

What will Civil Disobedience look like?   I don't know. But we'd best be prepared.

As such, if we have to go and fight our government to allow for our Faith to be lived out in our daily lives, in home and work, we need to be ready. What does every Catholic need to be prepared?

1) Get to mass. The weekly obligation always existed, but many of us dismissed this as an option.  It's necessary. More necessary than the 3,000 mile oil change.   We need to celebrate the mass because it is where our identity as Catholics comes from, and the word and the Eucharist provide spiritual strength, grace, Christ himself as strengthening for the trials of our lives, both outside and internal.

2) Get to a Doctor.  I don't mean your local physician.  I mean now is the time to go bone up on the giants that helped pound out in words, what it is we believe and why we believe.  There are 35+ to choose from; they are a means of deepening what may have become simply habit.  There is a list here.

3) Talk to your Mother.  Yes. I mean Mary.  Pray the rosary...daily.  You've got a commute. It's a great way to relieve the stress of traffic.   You've got troubles, Mary listens.  You've got people to pray for, Mary intercedes.  You've got things to be thankful for, Mary smiles.   The rosary is one of the most potent weapons we have in this battle that is always ongoing. 

4) Avail yourself of the sacrament of Reconciliation regularly.  Being free from sin allows you to see more clearly, to understand more as God understands.  It allows you to love better those you are called to love. 

5) Open the bible.  Discover your heritage.  The Old Testament and the New are waiting, they are treasures that can develop and deepen your understanding of all that is.  I recommend the Psalms.

6) Spend an hour in adoration.  Once a week, can you give an hour?  We are supposed to chose the better part, and that means sitting at the foot of Jesus.  It's hard.  It's contemplative prayer. 

7) Fast.  Give up a little something every day. It can be different every day, no computer, no diet coke, no chocolate, no fast food.  Surrender one of your go to appetites each day as a gift, as a form of prayer, as a sublimation of one's self. 

8) Live out your faith in your deeds. In what you do and don't do.  It includes all of that feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, caring for the sick, and praying for the deceased and also praying for one's enemies and using charity in thought and deed and word. St. Francis's words, "Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." have to be lived.  And no, it's not easy.

9) Seek the help of the experts, the all stars, the Saints. They aren't just patrons for specific petitions, they're guides to Christ.  All of them have wisdom about how we're supposed to live, how we're supposed to respond to trials, and what these trials have to teach us.  

10) Be of great cheer about all of this, it's going to be a full life. 



 

Fasting, Fighting and Finishing the Rosary

So, I took a break.  I'd love to tell you I fasted all day, but it didn't happen.  I checked twice during the day, once because my daughter asked me to email her teacher.  The other time, was both habit and wilful ignoring of my prior plan. 

Evening came and my second son and I had been butting heads.  This is not news, it's not out of the ordinary, he frequently figures out how to agitate and then proceeds until everyone is irritated.  Sometimes, it seems a sport to him.  He'd managed to spend the afternoon playing sibling ping pong, sending me multiple crying or irritated "Mommmm...he's bothering me." type messages from most of his brothers and sisters.  I'd tried talkings, separating, taking a walk myself, sending him outside, calling my mom.  It felt hard, tiring, futile.  What am I doing?  Do I have to keep doing it?  What else can I do?

So I'm on my knees transfering the laundry, wondering how to manage all these persons, chain praying my rosary, as is often my habit, having paired the spiritual task of saying it daily with the everyday must do chore of folding.   How can I do this Mary? I'm begging her for answers, hoping she'll solve this for me because frankly, I know I don't want to solve it, I want to be annoyed and use irritation and lectures and I know that won't work.   I also know I'll get mad that it doesn't work just like it hasn't worked before, and that it will end in bad words and bad feelings.  I don't want that so I make dinner.  I deliberately make his favorite dinner. 

It doesn't work.

The squabbles continue. 

Attempting to reestablish control, I divide and dress half for bed, ordering the others to their homework or other assignments that must be done.  The television is put on by someone.  It is Harry Potter.  They all gravitate to the screen and I capitulate.  There's no gas left in the tank and I'm starting to feel sick.

Some time after the movie starts, I started having a spasm of coughing, my face turned red.  I know it scared my son.   I assured him I was fine but he knew my history, he knew of my vocal cords, of my thin airway, and of my bad reactions to colds.  His voice betrayed his worry, his fear when my coughing got loud.  I took some medicine and tried to brush it off but promised to call his dad if it persisted.  Half an hour later, the cough returned and my second son ordered me to lie down.  He brought me ice water.  He asked, "Have you prayed today?"  I indicated that I still hadn't finished my rosary.  He told me to pray in my head and he began at once.  Sitting there on the couch, watching my 12 year old son pray the rosary and fold towels to start the Herculean task of what I hadn't finished, both in prayer and for the domestic needs of the family, my eyes brimmed with tears.

Mary had answered in that gorgeous way that only the Blessed Mother can. 

When he finished, he came over and gave me a hug and rubbed my feet for a bit and I was able to help fine tune the folding, finish up and hug him good night.  I marvel that I could feel anything but overwhelming love for this child, it is heartbreakingly wonderful and I try to let the whole moment fill my heart, to store it and keep it for the next time I'm tempted to respond too quickly.

It is a beautiful and rare thing to hear one's son pray.  

Silenced by Noise

What we do we become, what we think, we act upon, what we believe, we profess in our everyday actions, thoughts and words.  So...what happens when we engage in silence? It depends upon if the silence is to shut people out, or if it is to invite others including God, in. 

My mind is a busy noisy stupid thing.  It runs from the profound like the sentence above, to the utterly mundane like the theme song of "My Little Pony" because my kids watch it, to the drab --today we need to go to the drycleaner, schedule carpet cleaning, fold and I need to check my calendar.  But what it rarely is, is quiet.  If I get quiet in the mind, it is a bit alarming even to me.  Silence usually equals sleep.

So the fact that my head has been lapsing into quiet, seeking quiet, was brought into contrast this weekend by the amount of activity and noise that surrounded us.  When I got to the last event on Sunday, a swimming party, there were lots of people around.  Being in the presence of others almost immediately makes me happy.  I so want to join in.  But my social skills are gregarious and still despite 45 years, a bit over the top.  Being in the presence of ten people to manage, that noisy clutziness gets muted because then the focus is other oriented.  But absent the crush of that many others, I get loud and sometimes talk when I should listen and I know I can amuse, but what I want is friends. 

Talking with the women, one of them said, "If she ever felt overwhelmed by her schedule, she would just think of me." and I felt the chasm, the distance between us which I never sought, which seems insurmountable.  I was just trying to tell about the craziness of this particular weekend.  It happened to be tremendously full.  But the story had become a barrier which left me muted the rest of the party, wondering how to become friends with all these lovely people who had fresh eyes because this was their first or their only.  I wanted their stories, their take on things, because I did not want to miss any of the bright shiny penny moments of my own and that might happen if I allowed myself to become jaded. 

It's a known fact, I talk too much. Even blogging is a form of monologuing.  Even route prayer.  I let the words fill up my mind and as such, I crowd out others.  It's not that God can't work on me through this, but He wants more and that more can only come if I am stiller.  So today, is an internet silence day.  I'll check back tomorrow.  I'm sure if I let myself listen, there will be lots of stories to hear. 

Small Success Thursday

I'd written this beautiful piece and Blogger sent it into oblivion.  Bleah.

However, it is Thursday and thus we review the week to see how far we've come, to plan for where we wish to go, and to recognize that bit by bit, doing little things with great love, brings us closer to being the people we are called to be.

This week:

1) The Fall Festival was a great success and there were moments of sheer joy watching parents faces mirror their childrens at this event.  It must be something of what Heaven feels like, to see those expressions and feel seized with joy at the prospect of being so surrounded by happiness.

2) Worked out sort of, using the Wii Fit two days, push ups and sit ups the rest.  Will try to get more serious about this in the upcoming week.

3) Went to confession and to mass on St. Francis' feast day.  It's also a special family feast day, as it would be my first niece's 11th birthday.

4) Got asked to write a piece for the local Catholic paper. I'll link it if it gets published!

Now for the new feature, the This Week I'll:
1) Throw a birthday party for 25 kindergartners on Sunday
2) Try to improve my feeble exercise program
3) Work on Helen --actually put new words into it. 

Now it's your turn! (Thursday is my daughter's actual birthday so I won't be able to visit your blogs until late this evening but I can't wait to see what you've been up to this week).