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."  

Spambot Saturday 4/22/09 Offering

The Scrutiny of Jelly Beans


This year, the real Easter egg hunt began before April 12th, as shoppers scoured the local pharmacies, grocery stores and bulk warehouses for what have apparently become the latest scarce commodity in these economic hard times; jelly beans. Now normally, no one cares one wit about these rainbow colored sugar gel confections. Oh sure, they enjoyed popularity under President Reagan when Jelly Bellies were all the rage and a brief renaissance via Harry Potter’s Every Flavor Beans, but ultimately, they remain the third stringer in the candy world of Easter baskets.

This year, there weren’t any to be found despite multiple stops. I know it wasn’t just me, as I heard several other parents asking the store staff and calling out, as if they needed to summon these candies by name. Jelly beans were missing. The parents looked lost as they gazed at row after unhelpful row of pure chocolate candies. Jelly beans allowed one to stomach giving one’s offspring as much candy as Easter baskets provide without feeling totally indulgent. They’d get candy but one could be sure, they wouldn’t eat all of it. One adult summed it up perfectly, “No jelly beans…How could it be Easter?”

Leaving aside the lack of theological connections between rainbow colored peanut shaped licorice and the salvation of all our souls, I had to agree.

Those little colored jewels are life savers for when it’s ten o’clock at night and frankly, the Energizer Easter bunny needs a nap. Pour those suckers into the plastic eggies and boom, you’re done. Even better, they come in bulk, and thus multiple eggs can be filled in a short period of time. This is why the rabbit invented jelly beans. He had to get around the world in one night with no elves, no reindeer, he was both the UPS delivery guy and the truck itself. The poor creature needed to streamline if he was going to get to everyone.

Now I know perfectly well why those classic candies aren’t in the stores or on the shelves. It’s a conspiracy and I blame the children. While all kids love finding the eggs, jelly beans rank somewhere above lima beans but not by much. They’d stashed the bags somewhere behind tax software so that parents wouldn’t find them or be in a buying mood when they saw them. I went through the alternatives in my head. We could still fill the eggs.

Some would have money. Some could have chocolate or even malted milk eggs and Cadbury crèmes. I saw bubble gum eggs for sale, but consider that too adventurous. There may be parents out there who don’t mind cutting a lot of hair after Sunday mass, but I am not one of them. I was pining for the beans myself, not for eating mind you, I wanted my filler. But the absence of them made me recognize the reality of the life of a jelly bean.

Check any Easter basket two days post Sunday. You’ll find the foil remains of the bunny and no small number of wrappers from the malt, chocolate and marshmallow eggs. Beneath the green stringy grass, lurks at least a quarter cup of jelly beans of all assorted flavors.

Then, the sorting begins.

Three days after Easter, the yellow, red and pink ones have disappeared. By day five, the need for a sugar fix is still insufficient temptation to venture a bite at those black ones, though the purple, green and orange ones have all been sampled. Eventually, experimentation takes the place of voluntary eating, with jelly bean tooth pick statues, microwaved beans and dissected candy being amongst the most memorable alternatives.

As I lamented the loss of this bulk content piece from the children’s Easter baskets, there was a run in the store on marshmallow peeps. As I grabbed one of the last six packs of yellow chicks, a fellow mother had her hand on the bag. There was a brief tug-a-war, but I surrendered when she said, “Let my Peeple go.” It's Easter and you have to let these sort of things pass over.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Witch Costume Will We Wear?

I love Halloween.  I make no bones about it.  I start thinking about it as soon as we get half way through September.  We have lots of costumes so that's never a problem though I've been known to work hard with a kid to craft "the costume" when they're inspired.  I love it when they're excited and when they're excited, I just can't help myself and we wind up going over the top. 

My husband also loves it.  He buys pumpkins almost every grocery stop. We carve them all.  We don't get many trick-o-treaters but it doesn't matter. We always buy candy. We always have lights on, and we always hope for more. Even if no one comes,  we have a blast anyway.  Even our youngest son last year got into the act and knows it is coming. He's planning on repeating his role as a dinosaur.  We celebrate it as a night of imagination and silliness and whimsy.  No shirkers, not even the one who thinks he's too cool and doesn't really dig sweet stuff.

However, there are those who would say that anyone who goes about saying Happy Halloween is deserving of a good chastening and to be horsewhipped by twizzlers and made to watch bible cartoons until they beg for forgiveness.  They claim that every year it becomes more depraved, more sugary, more a means of introducing the innocent to the occult, not to mention processed corn sugary nut added in many cases cheap chocolate goodness, than a time of letting children be whimsical and explore the dangerous world of imagination. 

There is a need, a desperate need in this world for deliberate silliness and joy that is not juvenile but rather, child like. Halloween allows for that explosion of creativity in expression, in carving, in costumes, in the celebration of everyone's play and pretend. Though it puts many a calorie on my hip and has never put a dollar in my pocket, indeed it takes many but I gladly give them, I say God bless it.  

So when this year, those who view Halloween as a doorway to all things grave made it such that my kids cannot be witches at the October 31st parade, my brain temporarily jerked into a rebellious mode.  I am not normally a rabble rouser, I normally get things and try to go along.  However, this stance is akin to handing out toothbrushes if you're not a dentist by trade.  The idea needs to be t.p'd.  But since it can't, since it has been decided, I can only register my protest through cleverness and/or out and out defiance.  

I do not wish my children to learn to be disrespectful, however....even the most modest of my children wasn't taking this without a grain of salt and touch of derision.  They recognize that this is play and pretend and not real.  I trired to explain but it's hard when one's own heart isn't in it. Eventually, I just can't.  "I don't think this will lead to the occult.  I presume our weekly mass, daily prayers, Catholic school years, constant talking to you all about an integrated Catholic life and the example your father and I have presented with our lives and our friends and our family are sufficient to the task and won't be undone by a day of pretending to be vampires, ghosts and witches. I trust that we are forming your hearts and minds well enough to withstand the assault of costumes and candy, whimsy and silliness." 

"Yeah Mom...blah blah blah."  "So, we really can't be witches?"
"No witches."
The car was silent for a moment...only a moment.
"No witches.  What about wizards?" One asked.  "I'm going as a werewolf. They didn't say that was against the rules." another volunteered.
"Can I go as Glinda of the Wizard of Oz? She's a good witch." a third chimed in.

My oldest called from college.  Filled in on the latest news, he who had played Giles Corey in Arthur Miller's play suggested going as the cast of The Crucible. 

My first thoughts had run to Wendy, Samantha, Sabrina and Hermione.  Clearly none of us were taking this well.  None of us wanted to follow the spirit let alone the letter of the law. There were all sorts of arguements about why if not Witches, were fairies or elves or orcs or gobblins or superheroes that might be darker allowed?  What about fairy tale villians and Disney villians and supervillians? What about Starwars and StarTrek, mummies and zombies, or just plain monsters like vampires and Frankenstein?  What was the line? What moved the line? Where would the line stop? They could feel the options of costumes shrinking before them and it bothered them.  We'd stopped at the comic store for one girl to get a t-shirt. 

Then it hit me.  "We should go as interogatives." I got a lot of blank looks.
"Who." "What." "How." "Where." "Why" and "Which."   There were evil grins all around by those who got it and the obligatory explantion to those who didn't.  They suggested going as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I got treated to a chorus of "Sand Witch!" "Sand  Witch"  I smiled. 

PB&J might be a great protest, since that is also banned due to allergies.

What will a day of going as parts of speech lead to? One shudders to imagine...but then, I believe that's how we come to have these sorts of over scrupulous rules about holidays, by being afraid to let imagination occasionally run free.  

Halloween Hangover

Some kids can eat one or two pieces of Halloween candy a day to stretch it out until Christmas. Other kids impulsively eat all the good stuff the first and second night and spend the next week grumbling as they fish through the dregs of their stash to find and tolerate non-descript toffees. For the second group of people, of which I am one, making November 1st a holiday is the equivalent of fall back day light savings time. We need it!

November 1st should always be a day off, in deference to parents and children alike. Both groups suffer from the toxic combination of excessive sugar, marathon like scheduling, back to back party festivities and lack of sleep on October 31st. Even my toddler has a whiff of stale air about her, like she’s spent the day in a bus station. Getting dressed in normal clothing seems anti-climactic. No amount of caffine or morning chocolate or orange juice can compete with the brain coma brought on by too many Twix bars and Goo Goo Clusters the night before. Moving heavy equipment or for that matter,operating simple machines remains possibly unsafe. Until such time as the November 1st vacation extention becomes universally accepted, here is a worthwhile alternative to consider.

Faced with the social pressures of a major kid holiday, the Johnsons from our old neighborhood showed true class and restraint, the likes of which I've never exhibited. It seems their four year old fell asleep around six on Halloween and could not be roused. Unfazed by this turn of events, they settled down for a relaxing evening dinner, punctuated only by parents juggling flashlights, costumes and shepherding groups of children for trick or treating.

November 1st arrived. Her daughter woke up refreshed and happy. “Are we going trick or treating?” She asked. “Tonight honey.” Her mom replied.

That evening, the Johnsons dressed up with their daughter and knocked on doors, explaining as they went. The neighborhood parents were only too happy to provide the kid with some treats from their own kids’ Halloween stash, and the idea of Halloween week was born. They became neighbors to know, having shown charm, humility and wisdom about Holidays, children and parenting all in a single blow.

Wonder what they do for Thanksgiving?