7 Quick Takes

1.  Happy Birthday to Me.  It's been a good week, complete with a completely indulgent trip to the bookstore with 120$ in gift cards to run amok spending.  Ahhhh.  A brand new stack of books on the dresser to read.  I feel sooooo much better, I'll go work on reading the book I already started, The Life of Pi.   Then I can tackle Dad is Fat, The Writing Life, Elegance of a Hedgehog, the latest by Terry Pratchett and The Night Circus. 

2.  Prayers for a friend's child who isn't a child, but who suffered a horrible accident this week and today, will lose his leg as  a result.  This is a hard thing for anyone to face, so I ask for all of you to pray for this young man, his sister, his parents, his friends, as they help him through this trial that will affect the rest of his life.   The family has the gift of faith, and they need their friends, both known and unknown, to pray for his healing.

3.  Today, I heard a young man playing a Cello as we walked from the bookstore, it is like the difference between a loaf of French bread you buy in a supermarket, and a loaf you find waiting for you at a bakery.  We forget in this age of saturated stimulation, the beauty of clean clear notes that are simply themselves.  May have to go plink on the piano a bit.  Then I will be reminded that all art is hard until it is easy. 

4. My daughter came in from a walk, she'd caught a boxer turtle.  Thus I spent the morning explaining why we were not going to own a reptile. My son caught some fireflies.  We could not keep them either.  I may have to stop encouraging them to go outside. 

5.  She can't read, but she knows the important things.   I had fallen asleep reading on the couch that always makes anyone who lies down on it fall asleep. She woke me by placing a can of cake frosting on my chest and saying, "Mommy?  I like chocolate."   I have only myself to blame. 

6. Yesterday, to celebrate the 4th of July, I put on some Kate Smith.  Didn't know God Bless America was arranged by George Gershwin.  My younger children gathered around just to listen, they got that this was something special. 

7.  Then I hit them with John Phillips Sousa, and I had a pantomime band going for an hour while we fixed dinner, listening to She's a Grand Old Flag, Stars and Stripes and the Washington Post. 

We topped it with barbecue, fireworks, looking for fireflies and constellations.  All in all, a perfect 4th of July.  I'd thought about writing a post about what we need to consider, discuss, fight and address in this country, but the 4th is a day for counting our blessings, all the rest of it can be tabled for another day, not as a means of ignoring our problems, but as a recognition that we are still, the freest people in the world, with the greatest opportunity, and a proud tradition of overcoming even our own worst impulses after trials. 

Lawn Chair Catechism

It can be hard to settle our minds on the idea of “cooperating with grace”.  How would you explain the Catholic doctrine on salvation to others?

It is easier to see in my life where I have in the past "cooperated with grace" than to explain how I might be doing it in the present.  At present, I am keenly aware of all the moments when I am NOT cooperating with grace, by omission, or by poor stewardship of time, or by refusing to do the more because I fear the labor will be more than I can bear.  I can know I cooperated with God's grace for example in Paul's existence, in the days leading up to Faith's birth, in all of my pregnancies. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with even a scintilla of the gentleness of Mary, but I came haltingly, grumbling, grousing, shuffling like a sulky child eventually to do God's will.  Grace is God's work in me to which I respond.  The kid who does what the father asks, even if initially he says no, is doing the Father's will.  I am that kid.  

What struck me in this chapter of Sherry Wendell's Forming Intentional Disciples, is that to be a disciple is to will to follow Christ, to put your hand to the plow and not look back.  You have to will to do the work. It is no longer an organic process you fall into, it is a deliberative choice to be set apart, and to act.  I am immediately struck with "How?" and "Where" and "What?" I don't know what God wants. He hasn't briefed me.  Then I am struck again.  Have I asked?  Am I listening to His answer?  I know I will know if I ask.  Am I afraid to ask? 

Yes.  To ask to be a disciple is to be asked again, "Do you know of the cup that I will drink? Can you drink of it?" and to say "Yes." again.   It is a timorous thing.  And yet, who should not want to ask for that drink? 

So I say yes again and hope God will show me quickly and push me on my way so I don't lose my nerve or look back or try to slip back into hoping the sacraments will complete the work in me that God has planned.  The sacraments can complete the work in me, but only if I will to be the work and the word to others.   I'm reminded of Flannery O'Connor's, "She thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quickly."  Cooperating with grace if one looks at today's readings, often requires the very urgent pulling of angels to prevent the sluggish soul from lingering in complacency or sin. 

So how do you cooperate with Grace? What does that entail? What does it mean and how do you know?  You read/study God's word. You look to integrate what God says in your life and your heart, and you stay close to the sacraments and trust.  You trust in He whom the wind and sea obey, that He will calm the storms in our hearts and even in our lives, that to be a disciple of Jesus, is to trust His friendship, to trust his judgment, to follow obediently even when the waters are rough and the temptation is to say, "Lord save us, we are perishing." 

I joked to my husband that to be a disciple is to be a Flying Walinda of faith.  He pointed out that they sometimes use a safety cable, this is harder and more incredible than walking across Niagara falls or the Grand Canyon, this is walking on water and moving mountains.   One has to follow Jesus to get in the boat to go into deep waters, and one has to really Trust Jesus beyond human comprehension, (grace) to get out of the boat.  

...and I didn't even get to the second question, how would I explain the Catholic doctrine of salvation to others...except I would say...Thank God for His Justice, Thank God for His Mercy.  Whatever He wills, is right even if I cannot see the why.  

Light in the Darkness Meme

The writer of Four Blessings Academy (who I met through Small Success Thursdays), created her own Internet meme, Light in the Darkness.  I like the idea. She put a post of a comedian she got to see in person as a gift for Mother's day.  You can join in at her blog.  

1.  Some weekends, it is hard to get to mass.  I mean you oversleep, you can't find shoes, there's a fight going on, someone started fixing breakfast and so the mass time scheduled keeps getting bumped back.  We were going to the 8:30, not everyone was up, how about the 9, same problem. How about 10:00?  Someone started showering and someone else went outside for a run.  How about 11:30?  Shoes...shoes...where are this kid's one pair of shoes...can we use any other kid's shoes....where are my shoes.... purse....purse...I don't need my purse...what time is it?  What are you doing eating lunch?   So we're going to the 1 o'clock.  I don't like the one. The car needs gas.  We're running late.  We ARE GOING  TO THE FIVE!  Everyone HEAR ME?????  WE ARE GOING TO THE FIVE!   We made it. And for a moment, it was perfect. But there was still a fundamental issue of trying to get all of them to realize that owing to individual impulses, today was spent primarily trying to get somewhere and being mightily thwarted.  

 When we came home... 

2. My husband directed everyone to the backyard.  There is a lot of strangle weed.  He directed us to pull on one vine in particular.  It took all 11 of us (Anna watched but Paul helped too), pulling as one, over and over again, to uproot the weed.  It was over 60 feet long.  But there was something to that 15 minutes of counting and pulling and slipping and ranting at the plant, counting to three and barking about cooperation and pulling and the like, it revealed a truth we'd been trying to drive home, that together, we could accomplish what alone, we could not.  

3.  Some sort of critter got into our garbage last night. I'd made cornbread and chicken for dinner.  This morning, there were drumstick bones and egg shells on the driveway for me to clean up. But the mystery of the moment remained. We'll never know which came first, the chicken...or the egg.