We're Going to Have to Wrestle With This...

Lots of people say, "I'm spiritual, not religious." and it is because they fail to see the connection between the physical actions (in the sacraments and ceremony) and the deeper reality these physical signs, symbols, gestures and prayers, reveal.  Faith without works is dead, as Saint James said. In the case of the Pennsylvania report detailing accusations, assaults, actual documentations and testimony covering several decades, involving 300 priests and over 1,000 children, we have case after case after case, of works without faith. 

That seems like it might be an overstatement, but the business of the Church seemed to triumph over the spiritual reality of the Church. There will be some who read the report, and because many of these documented abuses took place decades ago, clamor for everyone to move on.   However, these sins, and they were sins, and these crimes, and they were crimes, demand we wrestle with the reality, we are never free from the temptation to cut ourselves off from God, even when where we work, what we do, and all that surrounds us, even the words we must say, call out to God.   We can have everything and forfeit it for a want we can't have.  We can be living out our vocation, and fail the moment things become difficult.  We can fail by looking away, by pretending whatever we see, isn't that bad, or by pretending what we do in this circumstance, doesn't matter. 

We're part of the defense against the Gates of Hell because we are the Church.  Ergo, we must not be asleep in our spiritual lives.  To have acted and preyed upon so many, (1000 known), spiritual deadness must have abounded.   By what we do and what we fail to do, we will find ourselves saying, "Lord, Lord! When did we see you suffering?" and find ourselves spit out for our lukewarmness.   There's a lot of millstones to go around, for neglect, for institutional protectionism, and for actual assaults and failure to report, and profound indifference to the subsequent suffering. 

The error for each of us, is to will only to move forward, as if we can somehow discard sin like a skin.  It's an error of worldly thinking to think we could ever purge sin from our hearts.  Only God's grace can burn away our hardness of hearts, and forge the soft points that should be steel.   We cannot ever taste even a little of sin, for it's like we're all alcoholics, it's just the flavor of the liquor we're debating.    

The whole of the Church will have to perform a penance.  I propose a Year of Humility, both public and private, where we pray, fast and do reparations and alms giving.  We offer masses and shun feasts other than the Eucharist. We hold confessions every Friday from sun-up to sun-down and try to have 24-7 adoration staffed so every parishioner, every family performs a holy hour during the year, as part of the whole Church response to storm Heaven begging for grace, for healing for the victims, and yes, even for the perpetrators.   


As an institution and organization, there's a desire to move on, but we need to wrestle with this pain and it's going to be messy. It's going to hurt.   To begin to heal, we must first allow ourselves to examine this wound and be willing to enter into it.   

The one comfort I can give, is our faith is not based on the faith lives of men but from Christ.  He's with us, he's on the cross for us.  He invites us to enter into his suffering for the Church and we should.  If you want to read what else I've written about this subject, it's over at the National Catholic Register: The Wake Up Call We Need, and if you have a suggestion for further discussion on this matter, leave it in the com box.  

The Grand Jury's report is here. Read it. Weep. Pray. Fast, and weep again.

Over at the Register Today

with a piece I wish wasn't inspired by the news and real life.  It is a sin to be scandalized by sin. I'm not, but I'm still sad about it because the world needs more saints.  

Chapter Zero Sum Game

Somewhere out there, my high school math teachers, be they living or otherwise, are laughing.  

Today, they get revenge for all the times I daydreamed through class.

My son signed up for the S.A.T.  He's struggled to knuckle down and practice.  To help him commit, I've offered to suffer along side of him.  That's right. I'm taking practice S.A.T.s side by side.  It is not pretty.  

I've also told my son, we will be doing this for the indefinite future, until both of our scores go up.   We will take a practice test each night four nights of the week, and one day of the weekend, his father will bat clean up and probably destroy both of us in the process.  Like I said, it will be ugly.  Since the lad likes stats, we are posting our records but right now, after the first round, neither of us are boasting.  I skipped five and missed four out of twenty.   His score paralleled mine.   We both know, in layman's terms, we stunk up the place.  

Math and I remain to this day, sworn enemies.  We aren't even on speaking terms.  Yet here I am, rediscovering formulas I didn't remember the first time around they were presented.   Every time I open a test, I'm reminded of my own high school experience and asking for tutoring in math.  "We'll start at chapter 1."  I spent the bulk of the weekend arguing we should start at Chapter Five, since that was the one we were taking a test on, but I didn't win the argument.   I think my dad in viewing my scores today would say, "I rest my case."

I'll still argue the point.  

After that S.A.T. mess, I think perhaps, "We'll start at Chapter Zero."

To Get to Easter

I am a two decade plus veteran mother.  Enduring twenty-two years of diapers, weathering five adolescents so far, I figure, I've seen enough to not be worn down by the capacity of children to surprise.

I was as wrong as a rookie who claims they'll potty train their two year old over the weekend during Christmas break.   I was as wrong as the mother who boasts of how her kids show remarkable good judgment.  That's the kids' cue to riffle through the tool box and emerge with duct tape, a gooey paint brush and a hammer, leaving Mom to discern, what fire do I put out first?

Today, I cleaned up the upstairs.  No problem, but the rooms seemed oddly spartan, not as many toys as I normally find on a Monday.  I thought, they're getting older, they're picking up after themselves.  Why I indulged this naive fantasy, I'll never know.  The triumph of hope over experience.

I patrolled the main floor and again, it wasn't horrid.

Normally, I do two floors and quit.  But I thought, I'd try to finish the job, and it was then, I learned, where all the toys went. Every...single...toy.

Every bin in the basement also has been dumped.  I mean, you can walk the basement and never touch the ground, owing to the clutter. Even the basketball hoop and the vacuum cleaner have been knocked over, and all since Saturday, because Saturday, I was downstairs, I didn't see this.   This...this is new.

Fight or flight.  I left the basement, but the image of the mess wouldn't leave.  It made me mad.
I was set to work myself into a mother of all lathers over my offspring, and then I remembered a friend of mine, who is clinging each moment, to the twins she carries.   It is a condition very rare, and possibly fatal to both children.  The girls are only 22 weeks, so every second more in the womb brings them closer to being able to thrive outside the womb, and every second is equally fraught with the possibility of death.  This family needs prayers for a miracle, of the twins somehow thriving, somehow enduring up past the threshold for survival.  They need to at the very least, get to Easter.   That's my prayer.  Suddenly, getting worked up over a really big --and it is obnoxiously so, don't get me wrong, mess in the basement seems like a colossal waste of everyone's time.

So please, pray today for my friend and her children.  Pray for them to make it to Easter, and if you come across a galactic style  kid induced mess  or hassle from life that could only come as a form of redemptive punishment for your sins, remember, there are far heavier crosses out there.   

It may take me until Easter to get the basement into order, I hope my friend gets to pick up after her twins one day, for someone else. 

And Now the Not News

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Miley.

By now, the whole world knows this Disney Princess has chosen to out Gaga gaga, both in dress and style. I'd add substance but I'm not sure we've got enough to qualify in either case.  Both recall Madonna, the performer who for all her flash and dance, revealed herself to have the "heart and soul of a cash register." That description is a remembered one from some scribe back in the 80's opining about the material girl who aped Marilyn Monroe. I googled but couldn't find the exact quote to give full credit. However, the point remains that all three of these women were in the business of selling music as sex and sex as music and themselves as the icon of both.  It's just that Miley only recently jumped into the sharknado.  She's doing what she can to ensure everyone forgets Hanna Montana.  She is Sandra Dee of Grease at the end of the movie, because she wants to be popular and current and she, like so many of her generation, is both bored with her life as is, and desperate to be relevant.  

Then again, this was the Music awards so is the surprise that she was so lewd or that it was her?  What gives me hope, is that apparently, the entertainment world can still be shocked.   Here you have people who thrive on creating buzz, whose whole world is get your name known, your brand known, your face known, get people to talk about you you you you you you you.  Here, a young woman has taken that challenge to heart.

This is the lesson of Hollywood, of the Vanity Business that is Stardom for Stardom's sake.

You will be forgotten if you do not make people notice you.  You lack the beauty, grace, capacity to get people to notice you, so you must be more than you.  Cue airbrush, hair weaves, botox, facelifts, radical diets, insane outfits, etc. etc. etc.  You cannot be normal if you want to be noticed.  You cannot be you if you want to be a star. You must be something other, because you as is, is not star worthy, is not enough.

This is the messsage drilled into every model, every singer, every performer's head, that whoever they are, they are inadequate want-a-bes, until they are a star, then, they are it, however that "itness" is fragile, it is not a secure orbit.  The stars become inadequate once they age, then they become hasbeens.

Come to think of it, it was the message of Hanna Montana too.  She couldn't be both the singer and herself, they had to be two different people to allow for a normal life.   However eventually, the lure of fame and desire to be affirmed in all things won out and she disclosed her identity, so that she could be just the pop star.   Now we add hard core to the formula.  Hard core being the in case of emergency, push this red button means of restarting yourself in the Hollywood world.

The message over and over again for years, "You will not be loved, you will only be used." left a scar.
We saw that scar gyrating on the stage --or read about it.

Our nature requires love.  If we cannot be loved, we will be hungry, we will seek to fill that hole with something.  Miley had everything and she was still full of need.  Perpetually we see it, child to adult celebrities do not understand need. They've never had to cope with needing. No need to list the Disney divas that have fallen before her.  They all share the same inability to cope with anything other than the unreal world of fame, and the hardness of that unreal world not satisfying. That sort of profound isolation and lack of connection, to themselves and anyone else, must be unbearable.   The pattern of these women indicates, it eventually leads to fleeing --Madonna away from the spotlight for years, or destruction a.la. Lindsay Lohan.

One could almost see the crazed thinking that went into this decision.  The something she needed must be something outside of what she had. She has everything, but she still needs, so she must need MORE, more fame, more notice.  How to get more?  This need is awful.  I need it to be fixed fast! How to get the MORE fast?

The child star became the porn poll dancer, everything real burnt away in favor of something other than the self, something of a naked mask that is caked in stage makeup and eyeliner and spandex.  It is a cartoonish almost demonic re-envisioning of the performer that she was, self loathing even as it self promoted.  It was foolish and it succeeded.  She has more.  People are talking about her, about her performance, about her transformation, about her act and actions.   All press is good press if fame is the goal.  Infamy works as well as anything.  It worked for Madonna and Lady Gaga...and sadly, for Miley too.  Today.  

But this sort of need is never fed by More of the wrong thing.  So Miley will try again, to capture that moreness that made her start down this road in the first place.  Worse for her, one day, she will try everything she can think of and that moreness will still not fill what is wrong.  Some day, someone will out Miley Miley, for the same reasons she outdid Lady Gaga, and she will wonder, when she grew old and why? And there will be a great emptiness that howls far louder in her heart than any buzz she won from the other night.  

Reflections on Camping*

It is five am.  But we went to sleep by 10.

The camp site was hardened crushed gravel and dirt.  But it wasn't uncrushed gravel. 

Your sleeping bag is great, but it is still cold. 

My Achilles' tendon is still barking at me, and will be for days to come, but the three Advil I took last night helped, i think, though my back disagrees.  Totally disagrees.

A few raindrops are falling, but the birds are singing. 

Ah the magnificently contradictory joys of sleeping in a tent outdoors.

Wish you were here.  If only to help me stand up.  And thank you for the great gift of time with your puppy dog son.    Or so that I could kill you. 

Definitely kill you.  If only I could move.

*Marriage kept lively by surprise sign ups for Cub Scout overnights. 

There Will Be Joy in Mudville

Last night, we went on a date to a sports bar for dinner.  We watched the Nats limp through 4 innings where they gradually gave up enough runs to whittle a 6-0 lead down to 1 in the fifth and final game of the playoff.  Driving home, we listened on  the radio.  We are still sick with the knowledge the Nationals ended their season in a painful 9-7 loss to the Cardinals.   The O's also had their run for the World Series destroyed by the Yankees this dark Friday.   To watch and love baseball is to know at any moment, it may be glorious and also, at any moment, your heart shall be broken.   It is part of the "of course it's hard. That's what makes it great." zen poetry of this sport. 

However this morning, my husband explained why this particular loss has more cosmic consequences than that beltway residents now must face only the perpetually disappointing Redskins and the dull soul sucking pain of election year politics:

My fellow baseball fans,

Seven hours removed from the disaster of the Nats' historic collapse at the hands of the Cards, and the O's anemic loss in New York, I have reached a conclusion:

Perhaps when the the Yankees meet to do battle in St. Louis in what will prove to be a fateful Game 7, the Mayans will finally be proven correct.

After 512 innings of improbable comebacks, 350 hits by heretofore unknown journeyman, 75 over -the-wall game saving catches, and 43 combined home runs between Ibanez and Descalso, the last man on the Yankees' bench, Alex Rodriguez, finally gets into the game, not as the highest paid hitter in history, but as a pitcher trying hold the Bronx Bombers' 1 run lead.

As A-Roid angrily strides toward the mound to face David Freese, the New Madrid fault line finally ruptures, sucking not only Busch Stadium but the entire planet into a black hole as every last ounce of the Earth's luck will have finally run out.

Wait 'til next year. If there is one.

Five Questions...Maybe Six...

I keep thinking of doing a 24 hours in my day type entry in this blog but every time I’ve considered the possibility, I’ve quite honestly lost my nerve. The trick to comedy is never to reveal everything, always have a joke in spare. I admit, my reserve of jokes have as of late, run a bit thin. SAHM’s, writers, whatever you may be, you can’t pour out if nothing is being poured in. So I’ve embarked on a quest to replenish my stories and my spirit to allow this blog to continue.

One should also recognize that good comedy is modeled out of pain and suffering. I haven’t been suffering as of late enough for my art apparently. Though I admit I thought when toddler 1 and toddler II took out the giant sized rewards bag of M&m’s for pottying and dumped them on the hard wood floors and went stomping, I thought I just might be feeling pain then.

When my daughter in kindergarten came home with a report card that said she didn’t know her numbers up to 20, we began doing drills. For some reason, the number fifteen appears to be something of a mental stumbling block for her. Even saying fifteen fifteen times in a row did not institute recall. Tucking her in at the end of the day, she apologized to me for not remembering the number. I said, “Which number?” She said, “I don’t know.”

There are days when treading water is all one can do, and today was one of those days. My son was caught up in a book and missed his bus stop by several miles. He called to be rescued. I had just unloaded the car.

The toddlers found a squirt bottle of body wash and sprayed the bathroom shower and tub while I was feeding the baby. I had just cleaned the bathroom.

They then played car with the laundry baskets. This meant dumping the contents of the laundry baskets. I had just folded the laundry.

That primal scream you sensed around noon today, it was me.

When things get this rough, all I have left that I can do is pray. God gets a lot of “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think so. No.” I never win these arguments with the Almighty.

Then my daughter got in the car and talked about how her social studies teacher said it cost $250,000.00 to raise a kid from birth to age 21. I point out that technically, I’m off the hook three years earlier than that as she’s legally an adult at 18. I figured that probably saves me a minimum the area of $160,000.00. She counters that she hasn’t cost that much so far, and asks where’s the 90K to date?

I told her I’m a below average kind of parent.

The day to day momwork sometimes becomes so oppressive sometimes that I can forget to have fun. So I resolved earlier this year to have each of my kids ask a question when they came home from school to help: “Did you read? Did you write? Did you exercise? Did you play the piano? Did you pray? Did you play?”

Usually, on a good day, I managed to execute a yes for three of these questions.
And so the day goes on and I help with homework, I take kids to baseball, I bring dinner to the practice so we can eat. We sit and wait for the day to end. Tucking in each of my overwhelming blessings, my son asks me if I played today. Yes I did. I played pool and shot a good round, and when my daughter was doing push-ups at basketball practice, I showed her up by matching her push up for push up, with better form.

As such, I’m going to add the question, "Did you show off?"

And see how many days I can go with the answer being “Yes.”

for more modest humor, and some that shows off better, try www.humor-blogs.com!