The Churning of the Storm

Today, I think everyone who looks at the news or has endured this long seige of Covid-19, or who does any self examination about how we've failed as a nation to deliver the promise of freedom to be to a multitude of people through what we say and don't say, do and don't do, must feel like they are on the boat, with the storm swamping the deck on all sides.   "Lord, save us, we are perishing."

And Jesus seems to be fine sleeping.

We've tried doing this without Him, it's not working.   We've tried using the world's means of bringing about a Heavenly outcome, it's not working.  Politics and power is not the way.  Law and lawsuits are not the way. Policy is not the way. Procedure is not the way. Perception is not the way. Even actions alone are not the way.

 The only way is love.  Loving our neighbor. Loving our enemies. Loving those in our home. Loving those in our neighborhood. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving. Loving.   It means sacrifice, it means living day in and day out and letting yourself pour out day in and day out. 

It doesn't matter if there is a storm.  Love.   It doesn't matter if the storm is swamping the boat.  Love. It doesn't matter if no one knows. Love. It doesn't matter if no one else cares. Love. 

The churning of the storm is the world and sin and all the craziness that sin creates.  We all want the peace the world cannot give. 

When Jesus woke and calmed the storm, and the waves died down.  My daughter came in to my room to tell me about her attempt to work on her relationship with her sisters. She went to their room and said, "I don't always tell you, but I love you." and something of the storm of life ebbed.  I sat amazed at the results of faith, of love, of answered prayers. 

So to quote Saint Padre Pio, "Pray, hope and don't worry."  and get to the business of loving because the world needs more of it.

Sunday Write Up

Today I slept in, marshalled the power of the birthday week and got everybody to clean for two-to-three hours.  HOURS.  My house is in shock. 

During that time, I found treasures.  Books we'd missed, socks, shoes, movies, magic cards, coins, markers, it's a wonder we can do anything around this house given what I found but the big treasure was a rosary I'd been missing for four months --like pre-Covid-19. I was certain I'd lost it somewhere at work, and yet, it was here in the basement. I'd been in the basement cleaning. I'd worked on that area, and found it now.  Don't ask me how because I really don't know other than this past weekend I really prayed to Saint Anthony and explained to him how much I wanted to find this rosary and how much I missed it. 

Here it was. 

Now I'd been struggling with saying the Rosary. Sometimes I'm a champ at it, but the last two weeks, it's been very little or none.  On Saturday, when doing research, there was the hint in a quote about staying close to His mother.   That night in the petitions at mass, again Mary was mentioned, with the reminder to pray with her, and ask her intercession.  So seeing the rosary here, felt like a directive. 

So you'd think it would be easy right?  No.  But as I sat there going over the beads, it came to me, that our wills are sufficient, because I can opt to do the wrong thing countless times, effortlessly because I will it, ergo, if I willed otherwise, I should likewise be able to do it effortlessly.  Nope.  Because will and desire are two different things.  I desire to eat a Klondike bar, but my will fights against it because I know I don't need to eat such things. My will and desire are not alligned.  My will and my reason are not alligned.  My will and my mind are not alligned.  I pushed through but it took effort until it didn't.   That will be true tomorrow too I know. 

When I finished, I spent some time saying thank you to the Saint.  Thank you thank you thank you.   The trouble for the poor saint is my constant thinking around the problem.  Hey Saint Anthony, could you help me find a way to allign everything so it isn't so hard to do this?   I can almost see him shaking his head.   I added, "Please Saint Anthony, don't lose patience with me. Thanks for the rosary."

Sifting through my thoughts...to find where they go

I have tried for mamy years to write things.  I learned to write with poetry, with literary devices that popped the sentences and made them rush out onto the page like confetti and explosions. I was and probably still am to some extent, a Pinkie Pie Catholic --in love with the feasts, with the beauty, with the promise of connection, with all the aching glory of what the mass is.  I desire community, I crave fellowship.

Loving all things Catholic, I found my favorite spots...the daily mass, certain columnists, and a few podcasts that always seemed to be filling rather than full.  I wrote for various places, trying to find a home and lamenting as a writer, of being a b-teamer, because I didn't quite fit any particular slot.

Mommy blogger?  Yes, but more a humor writer.

Mom of a kid with special needs? Well yes, but he's not the sole focus of our lives.

Prayerful person? Well yes.  I pray.  I know God answers. I often know what the answer is.  But that's all a gift, and not my merit or my capacity, it is merely, God invites us to pray, and we pray and we do what we can with God pouring into us the grace to do it better than we could on our own.

Saints? I love them. Not an expert by any stretch on any particular one though I have my favorites.

I wrote and still write like I prepare dinner --competently but with no particular specialty and sometimes without all the ingredients, time, care or success as others.

In recent weeks, life in the bigger world has thrust its biggness onto all of us, and we're called to respond.  Now all the stuff from before, as important as it seemed to me, as fun, or as wonderful as it might even have been, feels like "so much straw."  Like everything before was a warm up, an apprenticeship, and now, the real work begins. 

As Catholics, we can't bubble wrap our lives away from what is, in order to sustain ourselves comfortably.  That's dismissing the crowd to go fend for themselves.  It's saying Catholicism is okay for when it fit into the mold, but when I don't, it's wrong.  That's not following the faith, that's being a mostly agreeable person who actually fancies themselves a better pope than the pope. 

So what does it mean for writing now?  I'm not sure except I'm being pushed, and that's hard because I can still reflexively write the stuff I've done, but it's not something I should do.  The reality of being a Catholic is recognizing there are seasons to each mission, and just as none of my children are toddlers or even young children anymore, that season of life is over.  There will be different fruits in the season to come. 

So what season am I in?  Don't know that yet either, just not what it was.  I still want the fellowship I once felt across the internet with countless voices, but it isn't there anymore.  There are factions, divided by those who love and hate Pope Francis, by politics, by policy, by the mass, by masks, by how we hold the Eucharist and how we say the Our Father, by everything and anything.  We spend a million words on what divides us and why everyone else is wrong.   It's a funny thing to me, because when we do any examination, it's never what the other person is doing wrong, it's what we've done wrong...so I sit there thinking of all that binds us --the same Body and Blood of Christ, the same Holy Spirit, the same desire for living the Faith, and wonder how these individual fiefdoms could crop up like bad weeds to choke the life out of everything.  How do I help reduce the weeds? 

 Begin creating community, breathing on the embers.  Remind everyone of the more that sustains us, the real, as opposed to the personal preferred.  We've been obsessing over the wrapping and not the gift.   I don't know what it means in terms of writing, I only know what it doesn't.  It doesn't mean safe.

It means being willing to lose when you write what is true.

I sat wondering if I'd been an artificial sweetener to the Catholic media, rather than what I should be and I still don't have a full answer to that, only that I wrote what I believed at the time, and that what is, needs to be better than what it is.