1,300 Embraced Splinters

Over and over again, in everyday stuff and online, I find faces of despair.  People have much to be angry over, and they're hurt they have to wrestle with this pain when there's so much that needs tending too.  This great mess called life keeps getting somehow messier, and it's frustrating to people of good conscience, of good will, of good faith, to find themselves overwhelmed with the levels of stupidity, cruelty, indifference, clericalism, protectionism and self-indulgence and self delusion we're bombarded with on a daily basis. 

In the Church, people are taking their children from schools, and themselves from the pews, because the leaders/princes of the Church have shown themselves to be poor shepherds in one of the most primary of roles, and as such, it is legitimate to question, how good they are at shepherding in any of their other functions.  It seems, to the laity, the leadership of the Catholic Church does not yet grasp in its totality, how much damage they've created by their slow plodding approach to things in this situation. 

I'm reminded of this scene.

The faithful are the hasty hobbits.  They've said they'll address this in November.  It' rather like Treebeard's telling Merry, "We've just finished saying Good Morning." and Merry's terse response, "But it's nighttime already! You can't take forever." 

Elizabeth Scalia says as much in her very fine article here.  I second all she recommends.

People do feel put upon by the public calls for prayers and fasting when it does not seem those who perpetuated or aided and abetted or ignored these crimes/sins are doing much at all other than publicly wringing their hands.  However, what we are asked to do is still of great merit, not merely for their souls, but for our own. 

I would love for Bishop after Bishop, even those who are good ones, to say, I renounce, I resign, I will serve at the lowest position, and for them to do it.  We need to see something from the Bishops akin to this: 

Even if they've earned a spot on the team by their efforts, talents and service.   

They know the ways of the saints.  Saint Maximilian Kolbe said "Take me instead."  in the concentration camps.  If he could surrender a place of no comfort for a place of certain death for love of Christ, for love of the other, a father who cried out, how is it no bishops, no cardinals feel this same push of the Holy Spirit?  If they cannot see it, then what about us who can?

Well, if they don't, then, we who feel the pain of the fathers and mothers over their crushed children, and of the children who were so violated, we must say, "Take me instead." and that's why it's not wrong for the laity to pray and fast and offer penance.   We need to take on something, something which will cost us, something public and I do not know what it is, but since we see the pain, and we know the depth of it, it's not enough to howl "Do something."  If they don't get it, then it must be us who act. 

I go back to the report, there are over 1,000 victims.  There are over 300 priests.  So there should be a 1,300 day penance, if only to give some hint of action on the part of the laity and yes, we will do penance for the guilty, and penance in reparation for the damage done to the innocent. 

Yes.  But what do we do?   

1) Begin.  Write on your calendar today, Victim 1.  Writing it down, since we don't have the names, is a way of beginning.  

2) Offer a sacrifice of today, of something today for victim 1.   

3) Tomorrow, begin again, for victim 2. 

4) If you forget, begin again anyway. 

5) If you mess up, offer your foolish forgetfulness. 

6) Keep at it.  

For those who question, what good does sacrificial offerings do to the sufferings of the past, or of today, for the victims of the sufferings? 

Answer, more than we can understand. 

1) It acknowledges the reality of the injury done (something kept hidden for far too long).  

2) Spiritually, you become united with Christ by your sacrifice/atonement.  Christ suffered and died for each of us, we're not even doing much more than offering a splinter, but we can unite with Christ with that splinter.   

3) It might prompt you individually to more, because the Holy Spirit always starts with mustard seeds. 

The number of victims posted would take from today to Friday, May 21, 2021.  May 21st is a feast day in the Catholic Church, the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, instituted this year by Pope Francis. I didn't know that until I googled it, it seems providential, to pray for each of these little ones harmed by the church, to the Mother who birthed Christ, who loves the Church as none of us do, and who wants all of us home at the altar.   

7) When you get to day 1000, begin work on the alms giving and prayers for those who did or hid these acts.   Here, 

8) Give something away each day for 300 days. It can be time, it can be things, it can be money, but surrender something.   

9) Why?  

          a) Because these acts occurred over time, and so time is something that must be given in response. 

          b) Because the only way we won't be driven from the life of the Church even as we cling to the faith of it, is by willful obedience, and this is a discipline which will allow us to lead by example. 

          c) Because these priests, who did these things, they also held the Eucharist, they were consecrated to Our Lord, and God does not want any of his sheep lost, and they were/are lost.  We must be like the good shepherds to these lost shepherds with our prayers.  The prayers will not be wasted, (but I did put them after the victims because yes, I'm still annoyed and flawed and know we all need time to beat that down. Our prayers will be like the Lord's invitation to their souls, to respond to the feast.  We cannot save them, but we can participate in their salvation by our prayers.   We can imitate Christ's mercy on the cross which came before anyone asked or acknowledged what they'd done.   

It won't be a Year of Mercy or a Year of Humility, because it will take three years, six months and three weeks plus a day to embrace the  1,300 splinters, by the people of the Church for the Church, out of love of Christ, and all those injured by this grievous wound, this great thorn.. 

That day will be March 17, 2022, the feast of Saint Patrick's, and a feast day marking the chasing out of the snakes from Ireland. I didn't know that either when I googled it.  So to me, feasting for the victims with the promise of Mary whose foot crushes the serpent, and with Saint Patrick, who chases the snakes away, is the proper response.  For me, it is too wonderful and too perfect a timing not to begin.

So let us begin.  

Over at the Register Today

Just in time for Mother's Day Week, a piece on how true love is revealed through sacrifice.

You Can't Not

If there's one thing I've learned over the course of two decades plus of parenting, is even though you long ago discarded the child monitor, you never turned it off.   If a child cries "Mom" in the middle of the night, you're up, you're out the door and searching for the kid in question faster than Superman.   It's part of the Mom DNA that gets encoded when you first see that "+" sign on the test, and only gets stronger as the child gets older.

What I've learned is it doesn't matter how old they get, they want the attention.  They want the bedtime story long after they know how to read.  They want to be phoned, to be sent valentine cards and care packages, hugs and their favorite dinner when they're home.  They want to be tucked in, to have the lights turned off for them, feet rubbed, and one on one time.  They want lunch out and an extra t-shirt, folded socks and hot cocoa with whipped cream.   They want infinitely, but what they most want, is time, presence from you.

The internet is full of pieces about what I'd write my 20 year younger self, and what I'd write is this and hope those who haven't yet run through all the years of their children's childhood (and that would include myself), would take it to heart.  Climb the steps. Read the story. Write the card.  Make the call.  These are not to-dos.  They are the flesh and bone to the words "I love you."  It doesn't look like much when it's happening and I know, you're tired. You've given.  You've done it during the day.  But those last few moments, before bedtime?  They're the ones remembered.  They reveal whether it's duty, or love.   Because they're done when there isn't much left, when you have other things you'd rather do, and the choice between you is them or you.   Love is based on sacrifice.  Sacrifice is service, done with a full heart, done even when it costs, especially when it costs.

So even if the phone call takes an hour and your schedule didn't have that time, you take the call.
The purpose of the schedule is to get things done.  The purpose of parenting, is to love.  The modern world constantly talks about balance, "me time" and all of that, but love is the opposite of "equalness."  Love always wants to give more, to do more, to pour out everything.  Love's never about equality, it's about wanting to lavish the other with more.   You use the last stamp and crank out a letter.  You climb the steps and read the one more story.  You nag about taking a shower, you brush their hair and make them change out of shorts when it's too cold and put on shoes even when it's hot.   You can't not. So I'd tell the younger me, and all the younger ones out there and all those not so young, the answer is always "You can't not."

Offer Up, Speak Up, Prayer Up

We know that the world is a mess and I know sometimes we tend to think "That's just the way it is."  The overwhelming nature of suffering and evil can lead one to shrug one's shoulders, because there is nothing we think we can do.

But if we think at all about what we know about human nature, what we love, what we seek, what we hope, we know the way the world should be, is a warmer lighter welcoming place than what we tacitly accept as we let the news of Iraq, Syria, the border of the United States, wash over us as simply the baseline of every day.  We haven't as Christians, adopted a strategy for dealing with evil, but it is time we should.  

Speak up.

Failing to speak is the equivalent of coming to accept that the trains run by our towns, and we will have to answer for our desires to remain uninvolved, to stay out of it.   It is lazy to think, "What could we do?" or "What can we do?" or "What good will my speaking out do?" It demands nothing, it risks nothing, and it allows one to pretend acting would mean nothing.   Rationalizing tepid comfort allows the evil to progress unhindered. 

The answer is, we must speak up, or evil flourishes in the silence, in our unwillingness to even raise the slightest hint of noise.  We can name evil evil, otherwise it pretends it isn't and people let it. 

The forced moving of Christians under threat of genocide is evil.  Beheading of journalists, of children, of anyone, crucifixion of people by these extremists, is evil.  Failing to name these acts and the sufferings caused by those who support/follow/act on behalf of ISIS as evil, is moral cowardice.  

Here are the web pages for the The White House, The United Nations,, The Senate and The House of Representatives, Catholic Relief Services and Samaritans Purse.  I don't know who else we should contact, but ask the Holy Spirit where to speak and who to speak to, and then get talking.   Get them to talk.  

Offer Up...
We can stand here with those far away, offering up the trivial petty small pains of an ordinary day for those for whom, there is right now no such luxury as normal and ordinary.   How?  By contacting your senators and leaders, by writing about it, by reading about it, by pondering what would we leave aside for our faith? What would we be willing to sacrifice and surrender?

Right now, there is the ice bucket challenge for ALS. Only someone living under a rock does not know about this trending method of providing a jovial moment  on the internet for a charity, but here is a different challenge, would that it became viral.   

Today, offer up a drink at dinner.  Be thirsty.  Why?  Because fasting and prayer matter, and offering up a little something for those who have nothing, has meaning, even if the world thinks otherwise.  No one will see that you aren't having a drink. You can't post not drinking or show it in a picture.  It won't even make a good tweet.   It won't make sense except in the context of solidarity with those who suffer.  The Beattitudes say, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice...they shall be satisfied.   So be thirsty.  

You'll know it though, with everything in you, because you'll want a drink, and that will remind you of everyone who doesn't have anything, because they had to leave everything, just to hold onto the one thing we take for granted in this country, their faith.   We will be thirsty for the less real water, because those not here, were willing to be thirsty for the life giving water which flows from Christ.   And every time you think as you eat your dinner, "I'm thirsty,"  smile.   Ours is a terribly tiny sacrifice, but it should be a gift willingly given. 

Prayer Up...

Remember when all hell seemed to be breaking loose in Syria and Libya and Pope Francis asked for people to pray and fast for peace back in 2013 and the knots which seemed intractable for a time, loosened, and the war which seemed inevitable, abated.  It seems to have returned.
 44"Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.45"Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation."  Matthew 12:45


And so the demons have returned, worse than the first.  No one can think the acts we've witnessed in recent days are not demonic. The acts we've seen harken to September 11th, to the bombings in other countries on the anniversary, and worse.   

And as we all know, some demons can only be evicted with prayer and fasting.  So offer a Hail Mary, a decade, a rosary, a chaplet, an hour of adoration, a mass, time with scripture, with your family.  Every scrap of prayer is counted in Heaven against the darkness we inflict upon each other, by what we do and don't do, and helps bring about the healing of the world.  And man, does this world need healing.  Everyone in this country has a 3 day weekend before them, so no one can say, I didn't have time.  Now, it becomes a choice.  

If we want justice, pray for peace.  Time to make this Labor Day weekend, one remembered for more than Bar-b-cue, beaches and baseball.   

Giving Up Fat for Lent

It was a funny day, this Ash Wednesday.  After having written a piece for Catholic Digest,  40 Ways for 40 Days,  I sat there on Fat Tuesday wondering, what am I going to do for Lent?  I tried on different suggestions from prior Lents, from prior attempts at prayer discipline, nothing seemed to resonate, "Yes."

Then I remembered a conversation with my sister, the more Marian of the two of us, wherein she discussed trying to avoid butter for Lent, as a way of not allowing "Richness" or "Fat" in her fasting on Friday.  I sat there thinking guiltily about how I don't mind fasting from meat, as we have pancakes or pasta or cheese pizza and wondering if my meatless alternatives weren't in some way, not fasts at all.  After all, I'd regularly dispatched my husband for a Friday night run to a favorite Cajun place for seafood gumbo and felt positively virtuous eating all that okra goodness.  I tried to push off her words, but it wasn't the food, it was the purpose or way of approaching food that needed slimming.   

Fat is a biblical sign of joy, and something I really understood!   But I was looking to go into this Lent to make my spiritual life less fat, more fit, more full.  I wanted to really fast.  Many years, I've been unable to do so, owing to pregnancy or diet restrictions that resulted from pregnancy or nursing.  My discipline towards food is very slack, as the scale will testify.   I needed to learn how to be filled without being over full of that which did not satisfy. 

I considered banning fast foods, but there were times when this would be not feasible owing to our large family's schedule.   I considered fasting from fried or from chocolate which felt honestly 4th grade even though I knew it would be hard for me, I knew diet coke couldn't go, if only because having a mom asleep at the wheel and crabby when she's awake was a non starter. Was I making excuses?  Yes and no.  I was looking for the resolution that echoed "Yes." in my heart. 

My younger sister's words kept coming back to me.  Giving up the "Fat" of my life.  What was fat in my life, besides to some degree, myself?  Yeah, butter, cheese, olive oil, ice cream...but there were other forms of fat too; letting the kids watch TV, letting myself surf the net, eating on impulse, credit card budgets, ignoring schedules, routines, all sorts of things that needed trimming, restraint.  It fit.  There was simply too much fat in my life that needed exercising. 

As soon as I decided I would give up the "Fat" in my life, I felt both at peace. "Yes. This is it." and the instant panic plague of "You won't be able to do it, you'll forget. You'll get slack." Yes. That would be a problem, part of the fat we are talking about, part of what we are seeking to reduce.  

My son brought me a cheese stick.  Normally, if it's been peeled and presented, I eat it.  This time, I gave it back.  He ate it.  Feeling momentarily smug, I then went to the kitchen where I found the discarded half of the cheese stick.  Throwing it out, I sighed.  This would be hard.   My two year old came in and handed me a "dum dum" lollipop.  She'd unwrapped it and everything.  "Eat it Mom." she beamed.  "Fun." 

I took the treat. She sat in my lap, content that each of us had a sucker.  It was still fasting and it was still feasting.  It was not fat, it was "trans" fat. (I know).   I laughed, and just like that, found myself looking forward to the next 39 days of surrendering the unhealthy fats of life. 

Happy Ash Wednesday!
    

Who Wants a World of Hurt?

No one no one no one no one no one ever wants to be rejected.  No one wants to be thought clueless, uniformed, lazy, stupid or unthinking.  We're human. We want to be in the in crowd.  We want to belong.  We certainly don't want to be written off or dismissed or ignored.

So right now, being Catholic means you probably don't want to talk about the current push for same sex marriage.  We'd honestly rather fold socks, clean out the fridge, paint the stoop, schedule a root canal, wait on hold with insurance, clean the bathrooms and deal with the I.R.S. rather than talk about this subject because we know the only way we don't get clobbered by the politically correct police is to parrot the I'm cool with that line, or be invisible, silent.  

Not a way to witness. But who wants the pain?   Then there's that nagging, "Take up your cross and follow me."  and that "denying one's self bit." and the recognition that not saying what is Truth is the equivalent of being part of the "in" crowd that went along all the way to the cross, not out of love.  The in crowd chose Barabbas.  The in crowd shouted "Crucify Him."  Being outside of the in crowd feels very very unsafe and it is, by the world's standards, but it is the only safe place, if one looks at this through Catholic sensibilities. 

How to explain being against gay marriage, when opposition has been painted as homophobic, bigoted, self righteous, angry, hateful, limited, old fashioned, unrealistic and unfair?  Why do I have to explain this at all?  Because it keeps popping up. 

Because my children will have to live in this world. 

And if I want them to understand and believe what is taught about marriage in our Catholic faith, I'd better be able to do better than stammer if I want it to be part of their hearts.  I have to compete with the 1000 little moral vipers that whisper every day, through songs, through movies, through television, through commericals and all the DJ commentary in between, all sex is permissible, all behavior is licit, there are no limits and that what they do with their bodies affects no one.     Here, have a Yaz pill.  Hit the radio, the Katy Perry song about a threesome is on.  Sounds like a party. 

It is easier to explain with other sexual sins.  Pornography for instance, hurts the person in the shot, the viewer, the producer, the purchaser, and anyone who comes into contact with the image.  It is a permanent exposure that thanks to the Internet, will live forever.  It is the transformation of the beautiful and the intimate, into the base and impersonal.  Most people can get that pornography exploits and destroys natural relationships, natural intimacy, and injures all involved.  What if all sexual sin is about the removing of the sacred, either by eliminating the relationship/intimacy or the sacrificial nature of the act itself (giving to other, open to life, part of a permanent commitment to the soul of the other)?  It is a frame of reference that demands sacrifice no matter who you are.  Single? Chaste in heart and body.  Married? Open to life and faithful forever.   Neither path is easy.  "This is hard, who can accept it?"  I believe the followers of Christ asked.  (And I would agree, it is indeed, difficult).  Are you going to leave me too?  is the next question.   No... 

But I was still afraid.  So I tabled the blog post and went to bed. 

Today, I was running behind in everything. It was a mass day at school and one child couldn't find his shoes, another his tie, a third didn't like her mass shirt. The fourth needed me to button hers, (she had it inside out and backward).  Lunches were thrown together.  Somebody's sleeve was missing a button. Two people didn't bring their band instruments.  One forgot their lunch.  Someone left a coat. I noted in the window, three needed hair cuts.  The laundry still loomed on the couch and the crazed rabid mother search for a tie and shoes and the like had revealed that at least three sets of drawers needed to be reorganized. 

I felt overwhelmed as I stopped for gas and noted the car needed to be cleaned out.  Rummaging for 4 quarters, I began the task of cleaning out the van.  Time was not my friend. I'd been late to the elementary school Thanksgiving Breakfast and discovered I only had one shot on my camera.  I had 20 minutes to make it to my youngest son's Thanksgiving party.  The problems of explaining to two children who were asking questions about same sex marriage, about Catholicism, and about what it meant, also crowded my head.  My cowardice of not writing also sat there saying, "You should have." and my own brain screamed back, "Are you nuts?" Cleaning and mentally fatigued, the phrase "Fantastically inadequate." came to mind.  It fit my mood, it fit my feelings about God's trust in me to raise these people, to manage them, to get from point A to point B on time, in faith development and in actual life.

The radio plays the mass every day at 10. I'd left it on in an attempt to quiet my own mood, but so far, it had only succeeded in sharpening those feelings, echoing what my heart was screaming about how unprepared I was as the first reading from Revelations talked about being prepared. I was the poster child for unprepared and at least today, so were my children.  I feel I feel I feel...Fantastically inadequate! 

And then the words broke through all of that junk, words whispered to my heart, "Perhaps Sherry, it's time to stop paying so much attention to what you feel."  and I flashed to Mary receiving the news she would be the mother of Christ. She didn't list all her anxieties, all the reasonable reasons why this was impossible or it was not a good idea or how hard life could/would be, she didn't give even voice to any of her feelings.  She said, "Let it be done to me."   To have a Marian heart is not to spend so much thought, feeling and energy on one's own mind, but to serve those around you, to surrender.  I'd been caught up in my own feelings, rather than trying to address the reality. The car was clean and my mood considerably lighter.

So I begin again.   We are called to love, we are called to holiness.  Everything else is immaterial.   No nation, no laws, no policies, no trends, no television, no popular people are supposed to alter that course.  

How do we witness?   How do I explain how we are to be, act, believe in a world that denies all of it as merely a flavor or opinion?  

By starting with what is beautiful, true and knowable.  

Dear Children,

The issue of same sex marriage, is the challenge to our faith in this age.  It is a hard cross to bear, and a harder truth to witness. But I suspect every age, every person has felt that hard pull and thought theirs was the hardest to face.   

God practically shouts at us from the scripture, from creation, from everyone around us, first and foremost, to be present.  To Wake Up!  Sin lulls the soul to sleep, sating the body, blinding the intellect, dulling the heart. Demand less, expect less, do less, love less, care less.    

There are tons of people out there who will tell you God isn't interested in what you do in the bedroom.  It is a goofy argument designed to turn the God who is Love into a harsh Peeping Tom.  But here's the thing.  God invented sex.   God created us male and female.  Even more shockingly, God has a plan for each and every one of us.  And whatever that plan is, there is one thing it does not involve:  Sin.   Sin divorces us from others and from God.  Sin serves itself.  Sin is intolerant of anything other than itself.  Sin always begets more sin.  Sin always corrodes.  Sin always corrupts.  Sin always isolates.  "And we wept precious, to be so alone." 

The only thing that saves us from this vicious insane awful cycle of self deception and self indulgence and self authoring, is love, God's grace evident in the world and in others, and sometimes, simply by itself, pouring into the soul when nothing else can reach so deeply.  God can break through the sin  --see Saint Paul, Saint Augustin, Saint Francis, Saint Peter, Saint Martha, Saint Mary Magdalen, etc, but when He does, the soul involved (in all these cases) radically alters their life (removing sin).  You can shortcut the process by avoiding the pitfalls all together, but only by your own free choice.  

To understand what is beautiful and intimate and of infinite value about marriage, one must first acknowledge there is something intimate, beautiful and infinite within the confines of marriage, the vow to be permanently present to one soul as a window through which God may be permanently present to that soul. For those of us not fully awake in our faith, the sacrament of marriage, and the subsequent children is one of the ways God breaks into our hearts to grow them bigger.  It is why the Catholic Church cannot sanction same sex marriage anymore than it can sanction artificial birth control. It is not open to life. It is not what God intended as we understand it from sacred scriptures.   We couldn't imagine not loving these children we receive, but we couldn't imagine loving anyone that much before.  To a person, we suffer from a fallen imagination, we cannot comprehend loving as God loves until face to face and struck by love and all its overwhelmingness.  Sacramental marriage marks the beginning of waking up to the adult plan we've not yet begun to comprehend, how we are to witness. 


Your heart is to be cherished and preserved for God, and whomever God deems should be entrusted with your heart.  Your body also, likewise is designed and created and even imagined in God's plan, for a single other soul, to grow that person's soul, and those you will touch by your relationship and your children.   Love is always based on sacrifice, on self denial, on eternity, on generosity, on kindness, on mercy, on truth.  It always reflects all of these things.  It also is always rooted in trust in the one who is Love.  

There is more, much more to tell on this, and I will keep working on it, but know we will always love you no matter what, and what we want most for you, is not popularity or all A's or accolades or scholarships, but true friends and a holy life.   Both are possible, but only through self sacrifice. 
I won't promise a world without hurt, but I will promise a world filled with grace. 

Love you, Mom

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.

Make Sure You Make Time for Me

It's the motto of every woman's magazine article that ever was.  It's the demand of every commercial that stumps for yogurt, birth control, a gym or a cup of coffee.  "Me." "Time for me." "Me time." as if all those other minutes are selfless and as such, this little oasis must be carved out of the world to ensure sanity.  As always, the world has it backwards.  These little emotional get aways are in addition to the theoretical mandatory 55 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes reading, and 8 hours of sleep that we're all supposed to get every day. Weren't those me moments too?  How much is the daily recommended amount of time we're supposed to spend on others? It isn't that people don't need sometimes the silence of isolation to think or to rejuvenate or to organize, but who loses during that "me time?"  Whoever the you is, in your life.   What does me time really mean? 

"Go away because I'm sick of serving you?" "Get out of here because I don't want to give the emotional investment you need right now?"  We're not supposed to seek "Me time." We're supposed to serve summa --all.  We're supposed to wash the feet. We're supposed to pour out our lives like blood and water, to empty everything, to surrender everything.  And no matter how often we might have done it, or how easy we might think it is, sometimes it's not just hard; it's excrutiating.

A life of love is a life of sacrifice and it isn't just little things like coffee breaks and uninterrupted writing and reading of good books or watching a favorite television show, it is 1000 sublimations in a day, getting up before we want to, foregoing a shower, fixing food for others, unloading the dishwasher and reloading, making the bed forgotten, turning off the lights and emptying the trash including the apple core and hidden pudding cup and 10 foils from chocolate kisses.  It is not going out in the evening because a child needs to talk, it is not talking when a child needs to talk.  It is reading one more bed time story and holding a baby that only wants to be held for hours and hours and hours. 

It is running the errand to Target and to Walmart and then to Michael's on Sunday night (to allow for a project that got forgotten) to be finished.  It is reading with the same enthusiasm for the 1 billionth time, Green Eggs and Ham and Harry Potter and those deadly summary of the plot line by line Disney books that you bought back when you could get suckered into those 1 cent book clubs.   Dreams of degrees and being world famous don't die overnight. There isn't a moment when we say, "Die dream..Die!"  because it isn't a death, it isn't an abandonment, it is a surrender of the self.  Surrendering of the self is a perpetual struggle.  Telling yourself "This will have to wait." because they won't doesn't mean it doesn't sting, doesn't mean it doesn't tempt, doesn't mean it doesn't remind one's self that this is a sacrifice, this is a gift.  Further, the battle has to be won again and again and again because the ego doesn't like taking no for an answer.  

Surrender of what one wants begins with marriage, with falling in love.  That surrender continues and it extends and grows as a marriage grows, and as a family begins.  The radical sublimation of the woman's body to another is a mirror of what the soul, all souls, are supposed to orient themselves towards becoming.  Every cell in a woman's body goes into overdrive trying to protect and feed and nourish the baby, even allowing for the depleting of calcium from one's teeth to make sure the new bones grow.  Nothing is withheld even if the mind and heart of the mother is not yet fully on board. 

Then we see that little face and wonder how we could ever love so much, how we could bear not looking at him or her, how we could bear not holding them, how our hearts could bear so much love and not burst for joy.  Time stops for a moment, when the heart and mind finally catch up to the body that has just delivered everything that it had.   The rest of life is learning to reorient all three towards that perpetual complete surrender and the battles of appetites and prior selfish habits to reassert themselves.  It is ugly, halting, clumsy and fierce.  Even when we think we've reached a moment, we haven't.  We've just come to a momentary plateau.  More surrender is in the works.  There is always more to give, always more to surrender, always less we could demand for ourselves.  Absent love, it would all be drudgery and frustration.  Love changes everything. Love makes even the most meaningless of tasks --like laundry and dishes and diapers, meaningful, because it makes those acts gifts of time, of attention, of sublimation of self.

This isn't to say that a life so ordered won't be filled with feasts or epic moments of sheer awesomeness, only that we aren't called to make our lives such that they read like an Epic or a Resume of the beautiful, successful and accomplished.   We're called to live for others, to be successful at creating beauty, to accomplish the beatitudes today and every day, and that if fully embraced, leaves no "me time," only time for others, and a cup brim filled of memories of the daily labors of love.

Thoughts on Birth Control

This past weekend the administration came forth with it's final policy which will require all employers with very few exceptions to provide free of co-pays, deductibles or other contributions, prescription birth control for those who wish it.  Catholic hospitals, universities and other charitable organizations that perform their corporeal acts of mercy as an outreach of their faith, shall not be exempted. 

In other words, it does not matter if you morally object, you can worship as you like, just don't practice it in real life.   Don't integrate your faith into every corner of your hearth and home and business or livelihood, keep your religion on Sunday only, safe and locked up inside the church walls.  Don't let it change how you live, how you buy, how you conduct business.   Don't worry that your taxes pay for more war now, or for abortion abroad, or for Planned Parenthood to play around with it's books so as to continue lobbying for more money to continue killing.  After all, you're just funding all these things, you aren't using them. 

Our ancestors in faith went into fire and Colosseums filled with lions for less.  We're being asked to erode our own faith in thimbles.  Deny this small fragment of the cross, and everyone will get along. Cover up the pictures of the Cross and take down the crucifix so everyone is comfortable. God will understand. Our God is a loving God, ergo, if we fudge on this or that, it won't matter.  These are just details and God isn't interested in the details. 

There are two great ways to Hell, deliberate choice and indifferent sloth. Either we plunge in the boiling water or we allow the water to gradually reach a boil; in both scenarios, we are scalded.

Our society is demanding we acknowledge our faith less and less.  Don't quibble or speak up when people live together or use the pill or even flinch when sex is glorified in all ways but that which glorifies on television and online.  Say nothing. Get along.  It's not you so it doesn't matter.  We are being taught to care less and less, to love less and less, to do less and less, even for those around us we love.  You don't really need to go to church. You don't really need to pray. You don't really need to believe that the Eucharist is fully Christ fully present.  God won't be mad or unhappy with you if you use birth control, live together, have affairs, watch pornography, have an addiction or in some way let something else be more dominant in your life than Him.  He's not hung up on the sacraments.  It's a caustic eroding voice that constantly whispers in one way or another, God doesn't care what you do. 

The thing is, if God doesn't care what you do, then God doesn't care about you personally.  An all loving God would care more about what you do than your mother or father, and I care profoundly about what my kids do and don't do, what they say and don't say, what they think and don't think, and I hope I steer them towards good things, things that will bring them joy, fulfillment, beauty and truth. God has to care more than me, ergo, there is nothing we do that God doesn't care about more.

God knows how souls grow or shrink.  At some point on the road of shrugging one's shoulders about what one ought to be engaged in doing, the soul gets mad and then the decision becomes wilful.  It is then we are in greatest peril.  When we declare to God, "I don't care." what we're really saying is, "I don't want to care.  So I'm choosing not to." The serpent knows we are lazy and desirous of always choosing the easier seemingly softer path.  So he whispers to us that we can do less. We can love less.  That we will love more if we have fewer to love.  And that we will still be loved --that is true, but the reality is that we will recognize that love in action less if we act with less love in our lives.

We are fallen, so we always get things backwards when it comes to thinking like God. We always think we can outfox Him or come up with a legal argument that will be irrefutable.  It is proof of our pride that we perpetually delude ourselves into thinking either God doesn't care or God can be bemused into giving us a mulligan on parts of our lives.   I know there are people who will say, this is no big deal.  People work at all kinds of jobs and pay into their insurance plans which fund abortions and prescription drugs, sex changes and sterilizations.  The federal government demanding that there be no exceptions is no biggie. 

It is a biggie.  We're not supposed to quietly accept the corroding of our souls or the undermining of our values at our institutions or in our families.  We're supposed to speak out, to remind those in power, those making the decisions, that this is wrong, that this injures, that this prevents us from living fully our lives according to the religion we hold true.  To those who shrug, next time, the recommendations will probably demand abortion be covered as well.  Little sin, little indifference, leads to bigger sin, bigger wrongs.  This world will never become better or less wrong if we keep allowing little sins and little sins and little sins by our silence.  This world will not become less broken by acquiescing to get along.  Appeasement never works, in political policy or the soul. 

The goal is genuine peace, and that only comes from self sacrifice, selfless love, and being willing to hold onto the whole heart, the whole cross, the whole Eucharist.  Loving God first means everything else is secondary, and that includes Caesar. 

Breathe In, Breathe Out.

My Dad has the same response whenever I call stressed out by the "To-Do" list. "What do you have to do today?" He'll ask.

I'll start rattling off my list. And he'll say "No." interrupting my litany. "No, breathe in,(and he would take a deep breath), breathe out." and he'll exhale. If I protest "But this time..." he will keep saying it until I stop and begin breathing instead of being overwhelmed.

But there are times when I forget to do this, sometimes multiple times per day, per hour...okay, even per minute, because the tasks number can be in the double digits on any given day.

Having five daughters and four sons, I've started to think about how I can present this life I've chosen such that they aren't scared away from it (parenthood in general) by the level of labor involved on a daily basis. I don't want our children discouraged before they reach maturity (by the daunting prospects of what adulthood involves) from seeking to become the persons they should be. The moments when I've let the "Joyful mask" of parenthood drop, may not injure my children, but I do worry because I've heard many a grown child of a large family declare they saw how hard Mom and Dad worked and voted "No." to having even one child.

I have to hope more of their cumulative experience is laced with love than otherwise, and that the labor part is viewed as simply par for the course regardless of one's life vocation. Everyone has to clean their rooms, do laundry, wash dishes and make decisions about schedules. It's just a part of everything that is. Their father does all he does out of love for our family and so do I. This is what must be if we would love them well. This is the minimum, the baseline, the oxygen in the room.

If Love requires sacrifice and all service is joy then all of parenting, even the messy tedious frustrating repetitive parts are also service and therefore joy and sacrifice and therefore Love. It is love that turns the tedium into the washing of the feet. It is love that makes the fact that we are often the first up and last to bed, more like the last serving the first. Hopefully, the kids will feel saturated with the atmosphere of this home and not suffocated.

Sometimes, the air is too rich for me, like when I still am telling people go to bed at 10 when they've decided they want to come down and put a picture in their backpack and when we had to get up at 4 a.m. to turn off the lights my daughter turned on before going back to sleep because she didn't want to have a nightmare. (Three). But seeing all of them sleeping as I do the bed check or all sitting at the ice cream parlor eating cones or all cascading out of the car talking about whatever, is like a fresh cool spring breeze. Oxygen saturating me.

Even one less set of dishes to do at my table feels oddly empty. On days when my oldest stays late for play practice the dinner feels incomplete. The oxygen in the room is thinner.

Hopefully we will have poured enough love and presence into their experiences such that the home always feels like a place filled with fresh air, where they will want to breathe in deep.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Simple.

Baring Space Bars Except in Space

There are times when you can brown bag it, and times when one should hand one’s spouse a five spot and a kiss to cover everything. Learning when this domestic advisory rule applies is part of the early marriage process. That my husband willingly still submits to my meals at noontime is testimony of his endearing devotion to me, but in my defense, we were saving for a house at the time and this fell under the unseasoned wife rubric of “reasonable sacrifice.”

Once a week trips to the store meant usually limping to the weekend by Thursday. Early in our marriage, as part of an agreed upon plan to cut expenses, we declared a ban on fast food and no purchased lunches. Because my husband was running a bit late that morning, I gallantly offered to make his lunch. I felt very wifely. We were a team, working to scrounge like ants for a bigger place, the American dream, a home of our own. I would do my part by eliminating his need to go out during the day and buy food.

In fatter financial times, this mid day consisted of a sandwich, some crackers or chips, a piece of fruit, a few sodas, a napkin and something sweet. Cobbling together something so he could work through the noon hour when the refrigerator, closet and pantry all showed signs of being mostly bare, would require creative thinking. However, that day I learned that even thrift must sometimes give way to function, and that good intentions without the proper plan lead to the lunch from hell.

First, there was the sandwich. I’d found two ends of two different loaves of bread, one a cheap white, the other, multi-grain wheat with nuts; neither was full sized. Not having any lunch meats of any kind, I scraped the inside edges of the peanut butter and applied raspberry seedless sugar free jam liberally. Then things began to fall apart. The box of triscuits resembled the dregs of a shredded wheat cereal box. What I thought was a jar of pickles turned out to be jalapenos. Most sensible people would abandon the quest at this point, but self reflection is something I tend to experience after I complete a task, not prior.

A bag filled with rejected apricots, raisins and one dried pineapple wedge from a nature hike qualified as the fruit. The vegetable storage yielded a few mini-carrots that lacked the vibrant orange color most people expect in such vegetables for a zip lock. With nary a diet soda in sight, I plopped the one coke and a frozen water bottle in his bag hoping the unhealthiness of one would be canceled out by the other. I’d made a sandwich, a snack, a side and provided two drinks. As sad as the offering was, it still could be considered a lunch if I foraged a dessert.

Frantically scanning the shelves, there were no crackers, no chocolate bars tucked in the freezer for emergency purposes, no microwavable popcorn or lone abandoned granola bars to be found. Then, I spotted something. Granted, it wasn’t normal fare and it had been sitting for a good six months in the closet after its purchase but the date was still good. Impulsively, I popped it in the bag. Who could resist the lure of freeze dried Neapolitan ice cream bars from our last trip to the Air and Space museum?

In the halls of fame of bad wife moves, giving your husband a stale slightly crushed space bar for lunch ranks only marginally above infidelity, but I was too flush from the success of my hunter/gather adventure to recognize this before I kissed him good bye for the day.

Four hours later, the phone rang.
“Hey Sher?”
“Yes Love?” I answered.

“Remember how when we lived in New York you used to walk over to the bakery on Bleeker street and buy Semolina braided bread while it was still warm and then go to the Grand Union and get a stick of butter, and then to the butcher for half a pound of baloney and the Chinese grocer for a tomato from the vine?”

“Yes. We called those sometimes better than ...”
“Sandwiches, yes! Remember how romantic I thought it was that you would walk all over Greenwich Village just to fix me lunch?”

We sat on the phone the way married people sometimes do when they don’t have anything to say but don’t want to hang up.
“Sher?”
“Yes?”

“About the dessert.”
"How was it?"
"You think there might be a reason that particular souvenir hadn't been eaten in six months?"
"Maybe."
"Do you like freeze dried anything?" I sat there thinking about the fact that freeze dried ice cream tastes slightly worse than the smell of styrofoam peanuts.
"Oops." I said.

Bemused, he issued a husbandly edict no human could disagree with, “No space bars in lunch bags unless accompanied by the ambiance of being in an actual shuttle orbiting the earth.”

Seeing as I almost always like to squeeze in the last word, I issued a corollary: in a true marriage, even when all you have is space bars for lunch, you can still “feel the love.”

It’s just nicer to be on the giving side of that meal.