The Church as Mother

Today is the solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, apostles. As I read the entry for the feast in Divine Intimacy by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen I was struck by two oft-repeated quotes: "He cannot have God as Father who does not have the Church for Mother" (St. Cyprian, † 258) and the dying words of St. Teresa of Jesus, reformer of my Carmelite order: "I am a daughter of the Church."

I don't feel like I'm going far out on a limb to say that in this generation, we are undergoing a shift in what it means in lived experience, and subsequently in Christian understanding, to have the Church for Mother. At the time and context that Fr. Gabriel wrote (as a Carmelite priest and academic in Rome in the 1940s), one gets the distinct flavor that to have the Church for Mother involves being a faithful, fully-initiated member of the Roman Catholic Church. And he is not wrong.

The Second Vatican Council had not yet happened, but when it did, it also did not pronounce Fr. Gabriel wrong is his view. But it certainly did bid faithful, fully-initiated Roman Catholics to lift up their eyes and take in a broader view of what it means, that we do not have God as Father who do not have the Church for Mother.

If we understand "church" as a juridical, political term that specializes in the observable external conditions that result in belonging, we miss dimensions of the words Father and Mother. I am a mother. My older child entered our family through the legal process of adoption, after he had called me Mama for three years. My younger child grew within me in the natural way. When the midwife handed her to me, her gaze penetrated mine with a knowing that was expanding, not new. Interestingly, we had finalized my son's adoption 15 hours before the midwife handed me my daughter. Legally, in one 24-hour period, I suddenly was the mother of two children. Strip away the growth dynamic, the nurturing, the bonding, the healing, the life of the matter, and this legal statement is what you are left with.

Drop a newborn and an almost four year old child into a new juridical arrangement with strangers (who may or may not have the wherewithall to provide for their human needs), and what do you have?

You have the the vision of the Church that the Second Vatican Council saw was in urgent need of expansion. It calls us to take a deeper look at what happens when being a faithful, fully-initiated Roman Catholic goes right.

There is a community where the love of God is made manifest. The truth of the gospel is spoken. We are told from Divine Revelation the truth about who we are, about who God is, about how sin is the cause of our brokenness, about how God's love is the cause of our salvation, about Jesus as the price of our redemption, about His act of love and obedience that opens heaven and that calls all people to follow Him and to share in His mission to announce this plan of salvation. The very dynamism of the gospel preached and responded to creates missional communities. And miraculously, because the source of these communities is the one life of God there is unity as each is united with the Lord who calls and empowers and sends and is preached. Those who have answered the call of Jesus share the call. They reproduce. There is a life dynamic. It nurtures, bonds, heals. This is why we call the Church our Mother when God is our Father. We receive new life.

Roman Catholics who get uptight about juridical belonging tend to have forgotten or ignored the life-giving dynamics of the Church's maternal nature to their own detriment, and the detriment of those they affect. It's a messy process for uptightness to decompress, recognize its own need, acknowledge the need of others. It's a death to self that can feel like the world, safety, right and good being destroyed before one's very eyes. But in truth, it is salvation. It is the love of God breaking through. It will be messy. Motherhood is messy. Family life is messy. Messy is necessary for real life and healing, and varying levels of messy can all be endured.

Enough of "failure to thrive" Christians. Enough of orphaned believers weighed by a sense of lacking belonging, siblings, nurture. Enough of harsh, one-sided law lovers.

I am a daughter of the Church. I draw my life from her. Let us drink deeply from the purity of Christ so that His living water wells us within us for the salvation of all.

Graces, Math, Practice and Delight

I'm not one given to sentimentality, particularly not about things like thankfulness on Thanksgiving. Reality is good, but I often find sentimentality is more in touch with creativity than reality.

So here's my take on what I am thankful for today.

The other day I experienced something that I could recognize as clearly a gift of grace. There was a situation that was not unlike other situations I've been in in past months and years that has caused me grief, bitterness, pain and turmoil. But on this recent occasion, it came and I was ok. I greeted it with acceptance, and there wasn't the slightest bit of pain involved. In fact, I had a smiling feeling of delight precisely because I recognized the grace involved in this. I was happy in facing this difficulty.

A day or so passed, and I admired this little experience. Ah, how good God is to me. I'm making progress. Indeed.

And then out of the blue, in a setting I didn't at all expect, there were comments innocently made to me that cut me down to the heart. Ouch.

Oh, wait. This is just like that other thing I was just so happy about. Ok, take a deep breath, and go to the same place. I managed.

Then there was another situation where I was already prepared for it to be rough. I was not disappointed. But dang, all of a sudden I realize that the same principle is in play here as in that graced victory the other day. No wonder I've never liked it. The pummel came like a slow, swinging pendulum. Again. Again. Again.

Sigh.

There's nothing at all wrong with delighting in evidence of grace working, because it is the gift of God. But there's everything wrong with sucking on the sweetness of being a location of God's grace working. Yay me. It's going so well for me now. I'm so, you know... where it's at.

It reminds me of my daughter's approach to learning math. She will dutifully sit with me, attend, and while I work with her, she will grasp a concept. Her face will beam. "Ok, now you do this same thing on this two-page exercise, all in different ways."

Wait. What?

"Oh, and this is a skill that you'll be using over and over and in combination with much more complicated skills for the rest of your life."

Crap. It's not fun anymore.

Well, guess what my dear. It's lovely for you to find it fun, but the need really is that it becomes second nature to you, so that you have the skill to do this automatically and use it in situations where math, or virtue, is actually called for and needed. Because that's the whole point of learning. It forms you, and you master it. And so you are more fully human in this one little way. Oh, and there are hundreds and hundreds of these little bits for you to learn. Some will come easily and stay with you, and some you'll probably have to do some little mental gymnastic to accomplish for the rest of your life.

Let the delight of your soul simply be looking at your Lord and loving Him. Let everything bring you back to Him, lest you get stuck in even the most lovely bit of creation or the most wonderful effect of grace.

Those Parents Who Brought Their Toddlers to Confession Today

I didn't know them, but then again even if they weren't visitors from another parish I am a little bit out of the parents-of-toddlers loop. We parked at about the same time, and right away I realized I needn't rush to beat them into the confession line, since they were going to be unpacking out of the car for awhile. Dad came inside the church by himself, but several minutes later it seems the fascination of everything outside, in the bathroom, and in the narthex had worn off, because eventually one little boy face poked through the door. He saw the holy water font and dove for it like a winning layup. I broke into a laughing smile. He was obviously excited about holy water.

Eventually he came running past me straight into the arms of his Dad, and then I saw a woman enter with a slightly older boy in tow, and she was mouthing "Sorry" to him.

What ensued included those very whispered verbal tours of all the beautiful things in the church that most Catholic parents have probably done. I overheard one bit about the Divine Mercy picture. Dad and Mom were explaining bits of how everything reminds us of how God loves us. Little boy #1 was asking insightful questions about why the picture had light in certain places. (Specifically, he meant around Jesus' head and his hand extended in blessing. But He asked not, "why is it painted gold there" but "why is there light coming from it." This boy saw it the way it was intended to be seen.)

Moments later little boy #1 and little boy #2 were sent a few feet away, a specific place for children in the church, still within eyeshot (Though not my eyeshot. I was taking it all in by hearing.) Within moments, there was a bump on the arm of Littler Boy. Weeping ensued, which seemed to trigger some type of innate memory of all suffering and woe that has occurred since the dawn of time, and it was all mourned once again. Both parents went to give comfort, to console, to quiet.

And I understand why they did that, of course. Just like I understand why they whispered their lessons about the sacramental items around the church. It is part being good parents, and it is part their cortisol levels going through the roof as they worry about What Others Will Think. In fact, I could feel their cortisol levels rise.

But it ministered to me to simply hear a child honestly wail over his bumped arm. Healthy children don't hide when they are hurt. They cry, let it out, and then it conjures up My, I'm actually a bit hungry, and tired, and frustrated too. And I was there at confession because I was going to tell Jesus where I hurt, too. I really needed to unload it all on Him, at least as much as I could identify. It was good to have company and have someone show me how to just naturally let it out. And to find solace in Mother Church and Jesus.

And then, as Mom escorted the boys back out to the narthex again until her turn came, I overheard the Older Boy commenting that he had actually bumped his head, too. He was not going to let Little Brother be the one getting all the consolation. He wanted in on it, too. See, even for him, one vulnerable expression of pain triggered his own needs to the surface, too.

So, dear parents that I don't know, thanks for bringing those two boys to confession today. They were anointed for ministry at their baptism, and don't you doubt for a minute that they are living it out. Thanks for teaching them, for making them aware of Beauty in the church. Please keep doing it, and always teach them beyond what you think their years can hold, because that's where kids typically are, anyway.

And I hope your cortisol levels are ok.

A Few Thoughts on Fasting and Parental Authoriity

The second thing on my mind about Friday's day of fasting is this matter of a check-up, a little moment of reckoning, where my handling of parental authority is concerned.

Becoming a parent is a little bit like becoming a child all over again, or at least it was for me. There's the newness, the excitement, the ease in recognizing the sacredness of it all. But there is also the cluelessness, the hardheadedess, the perfectionism, the heeding of any voice that sounds remotely authoritative. There is so much we have to learn, especially if we did not spend our youth caring for an assortment of babies and children.

Learners though we must be, parents also have authority.

Yesterday as I was walking I witnessed a doe carefully checking out the road before she and her fawn quickly shot across it to the woods on the opposite side. Somehow, the intelligent instinct she demonstrated reminded me of that fact that holy authority must not only lead, but follow. The parent out in front is all the child sees, but that parent must operate not only by knowledge, wisdom and that famous parental "instinct," but also by consciously following the grace of God, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the example of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said that worldly leaders lord it over their subjects, but that it must not be that way with His followers. We lord it over others when we mistake ourselves as the ultimate and others as essentially unequal to us.

So in this fast I feel called to lay my call of authority in my children's lives down before God, to remember again that I follow Him, that He (not my comfort or my ego) is my ultimate desire for myself and for them. I can do what I can do, and I cannot do what I cannot do. And 99.9% of the time, I'm a bit murky on exactly what falls into which of those two categories. That's why I must follow.

Whose Responsibility is My Happiness?

Earlier this week, a friend of mine shared the article "10 Things Happy Families Do Differently." The picture with it caught my eye, and I was in a browsy mood, so I checked it out.

One particular statement from this article has stayed with me since I read it: "Everyone takes responsibility for their own happiness."

Now, I'm not usually one who gets a lot of out people's pithy lists of tips for how to make life all better. And my response to this was not along the lines of "Gee, thanks. I'll try that." But seeing this concept expressed in just this way in this context some something of a little naru hodo moment for me.

Two memories stood out as I've thought about this. The first involved the formation of my sense about where happiness comes from. And the fact that, in this formation, happiness was a commodity for other people. This happiness was supposed to come from me.

Oh, I would never have explicitly articulated it this way in my earlier years, but growing up in a post-alcoholic-divorced home taught me that it was my job to make the people around me happy. (Or stated conversely, everyone's unhappiness was my fault.) I decided that the easiest way for me to try to bring happiness was to "not bother anyone" and so I perfected my ability to lay no burden on others. Still, of course, others weren't happy. My eventual conclusion: my mere existence was the problem.

It never really entered into my calculations, this notion of where my happiness was supposed to come from.

The second memory involved my children when they were very small. On one particular night a common bedtime scene was being played out where my tired daughter was crying over some tiny nothing, consuming all my ability to be present to her and calm her so she could go to sleep. At that moment, my son entered her room, seemingly totally oblivious to the emotional drama unfolding, and asked me to intervene with some need of his that involved something like finding just the right lego to make his creation look just right. I can still see exactly where I was when this thought formulated inside me. It was sarcastic at first, but the reality of what I said impacted me shortly thereafter : "Boy, I wish I could consider my needs so dang important that I could overlook everything around me to get them met!"

My son did nothing wrong; he merely had no sense of timing (at age 5 or 6 or whatever). I, on the other hand, had a gut instinct that needs and desires are always supposed to be sacrificed on the pyre of someone else's issues.

In 1993, right after I came into the Church, I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group. In one of the many gift shops I saw what struck me as the most beautiful t-shirt I had ever seen. I literally gasped as I said, "Oh, I want one of those!" Now, this is not a normal comment coming from me because I don't care about shopping and care even less about "stuff." It was the beauty of the metallic gold embellishments that made me exclaim this in something like awe. I'll never forget an older woman from my group saying to me, "Well, you just go ahead and get it, then." I think I triggered something in her maternal heart that prompted her to "give me permission" to buy it. I did, and I still have it. Perhaps it is telling that this was an unusually memorable experience from my earlier days of seeing and pursuing something that brought me spontaneous happiness. I don't remember making choices like this on any regular basis until recent years.

Pursuing my own happiness used to leave me with a sense of guilt. If it was my job to get out of everyone's way so they could be happy, being as small and non-existent as possible, well, it didn't make sense for me to be filled up and big with happiness. Geez, the more I write about this the more diabolical it sounds.

Each person has the vocation, the duty, and the need to pursue happiness, beatitude, God. It is true that no one finds it alone, in isolation from others. But I am responsible for my pursuit of God, and you are responsible for yours. I am not responsible for yours, although mine actually can inspire yours, and yours, mine.

Of course children need adult wisdom to learn what will mess up their pursuit of happiness. Or better put, children and adults need biblical and saintly wisdom to learn how to pursue true happiness. Without it, we end up indulging ourselves with idolatry and filling ourselves up with not-god, at the expense of other things and/or objectified people whom we appoint to be god to us and make us happy. It ain't gonna happen. Nothing other than God satisfies the quest for happiness. Yes, created things can help us; we require their help. But idolatry not only leaves us unfulfilled, it actually empties us of whatever happiness we have found.

Personal responsibility for happiness means that I seek truth, beauty and goodness with all my heart, through every aspect of my life, and that I open my entire life to interact with the One I find. Yeah, I imagine if everyone in a family did that it would make for a happy life together indeed.

Trust is the Beginning

As I was working with my daughter on her math lesson the other day, she taught me about a stumbling block on a spiritual level that I've experienced and watched others struggle with too.

The truth is simple: The goal of being taught is learning, that is, to grasp in practical terms the truth or skill we are being taught so we can turn around and use the skill or apply the truth.

And as I sat there explaining "part one plus part two equals whole; whole minus part one equals part two; whole minus part two equals part one" to my daughter, she assured me "Yeah, yeah, I get it. That's easy. 7+4=11; 11-4=7; 11-7=4." I worked through some slightly more complicated exercises with her, and as long as I was working with her, she got it.

But the structure of her lessons moves her from my teaching, to working together, to her working independently. And when she came to that step, I saw it. She asked me questions, but they weren't related to understanding the concept. They were relational-fishing questions. She was focused relationally, wanting to make sure I was still with her.

But exactly that became her place of insecurity: "Are you really here with me?" In order to master the skill, she had to know, to decide, in her gut that I am there and give herself to "part + part = whole." Otherwise, anything she would accomplish with math would be scraps of work, not learning.

And when I saw that, I saw so much of my own history with God. To be trained by God as effective builders of His kingdom, to work with Him in mission, we have to have it settled that He is with us. He is for us. We have to trust His love.

Joyce Meyer used to do this bit that drove home the point of accepting God's role in our relationship. She'd sit in a chair, and then say "So, what if someone came up to me and told me to sit down when I'm already sitting?" And she'd flail around trying to "sit more" in the chair. The point is, if you are positionally related to the chair (or to God) and then you start to question and doubt the basic fact and try to see if you can make it "more true" by "trying harder," well, it just gets impossibly silly. When you are sitting and someone tells you to sit, you assert the fact: I'm already seated. You do not give in to insecurity that questions the fact.

And yet this is a snare that grabs so many. We spend all our energy trying to get God to prove that He is listening, prove that He loves us, prove that we are good enough for Him.... all because we lack faith. God tells us that He is love (1 Jn. 4:8), that He loves the world and everyone in it (Jn. 3:16), and that He will never reject anyone who comes to Him (Jn. 6:37). These are the facts. We need to stop doubting them, and believe. We have to trust His love. We have to do business with God on His terms.

So many people believe it while they feel it, and when something happens to challenge their feeling, they lose "faith." Instead of losing faith, they need to be choosing faith.

Because to be trained by God we have to have it settled that He is with us. Then and only then do we even hear what He is trying to teach us when He is with us. He is teaching us skills and giving us experiences that He means for us to reproduce in love and service to others. But we have to grasp some basic things before our hearts are free to apply them to the real world with wisdom, as God desires us to.

God loves us, and He wants us to be firm in knowing it. But He also wants to teach us, because God loves everyone, and He calls us to take His love to others. And He wants not only to teach us, but for us to bring His love to others, once we get the skill He has desired to form in us.

Once a soul trusts Jesus, this is the trajectory on which He sends it.

The Power of Managing a Household Well

There have been a few themes clunking around in my head like stuff you keep in your trunk and keep telling yourself, every time you take a sharp corner, you are going finally unload it so you don't have to keep listening to it.

And pretty much it boils down to how parents are supposed to get sanctified by raising their children. It is just a slight variant on saying we are sanctified by fulfilling our duty. Those who are not married or are married without children are in no way exempt from this kind of sanctification, although I admit that it possibly might be harder to see and carry out duty.

But I do have children, so to dig into my own reality I have to write about it that way.

And I keep coming back to those passages like 1 Tim. 3:4 where Paul says a bishop needs to manage his household well. (You can read elsewhere about the history of married priests and bishops in the Church. That's not my concern here.)

Managing a household well is constitutes being a channel of grace for one's family, and this is no small thing. If having been a child is not reminder enough, I am reminded constantly by my children's behavior that their eyes take in all my day-to-day behavior: the good, the bad, the ugly. They are their own persons, to be sure, but I am communicating to them a certain standard of "normal." They know what they can reasonably expect from me. And that will shape them until something more powerful comes along to shape them differently.

Some of the safest-feeling times I can remember as a child (and they did not flow thick) were when I would come into the kitchen in the early evening and find my mom cleaning up. I'm sure that she didn't do it because she loved in any more than I do it because I love it, but her work made me feel secure. I see the same thing in my daughter. When I am working, she will contentedly do whatever she is doing. Especially when she was younger, when I would be reading emails or Facebook posts, she would be far more restless. She could sense that I wasn't really spending that time for her.

But there's more to managing a household than being this kind of grace-channel. There is also my own sacrifice and pruning. Just recently I realized I needed to put more effort into making family meals a more attractive and stress-free service for everyone. So I made a meal plan, and we all benefited and enjoyed dinner more. And then, lo and behold, I had a schedule change that really made having that thing in place not just nice, but a sanity saver. This is how God teaches me the wisdom in following His inspirations. God prunes us and asks things of us for our own good.

I have also found it a "pruning" for me to take the time to teach my kids to do things for themselves and to serve the rest of the family. It sometimes suits my choleric nature to just plow through doing everything myself. But this short-changes my kids, and in the end can frustrate me. I also have to have the humility to patiently instruct my husband about some things, because it is simply better emotional hygiene for me. I realize that my needs are not about me lording it over others or insisting that everyone pull his weight. My needs are the signals for me to provide the training that others really need from me so that everyone can be happy together.

There is also a layer in all of the hidden work I do that is prayer and sacrifice offered for others. There are so many times when taking that next step in front of me in my duty is just so much not what I feel like doing. And yet, it is there. When I choose it because it is an act of service and love, I can (and do) offer that movement of my will as intercession for the salvation of souls and the conversion of sinners. That is why I make that daily offering in the morning, uniting my day and all that it in it to the desires of God. My work isn't about priding myself on being a perfect homemaker, but about humbling myself to offer prayer that is so quickly forgotten, even by myself.

And in the midst of this way of living, God teaches me, guides me, speaks to me in real-life ways. I am a slow learner, but I learn wisdom this slow way.

And that is exactly how St. Paul is saying bishops are supposed to learn to shepherd God's people.

I will never be a bishop, but this is also how God teaches me to have spiritual wisdom to minister to others. No textbook courses or gnostic wisdom. It is about living daily life, doing dishes and laundry, and interacting with children who very gradually develop maturity. Along the way, they forget their times tables, they chronically leave their belongings strewn everywhere, they have a hard time managing all of their emotions, they ask hard questions, they talk endlessly about things in which I barely know how to be interested, and they need to be trained to work and express care about others. And I am called to respond with love, patience, wisdom, attentiveness, and all the other virtues that get shown up in me as so very lacking. So I fall on my knees and beg God for help.

That's exactly how it is supposed to work, for moms and bishops.


This is what power in the Church looks like and where it comes from. It is not a power that makes any sense to the world.

Confessions of an Evolving Unschooler

So, my kids are really in for it. Who am I kidding -- I'm really in for it.

We are homeschoolers. Geez, I hate that term. I used to say that we are unschoolers, which some people understand and most don't. Let's just leave it at this: I don't send my kids to a school. We learn without it. Now, I suppose I might scandalize my UnschoolingCatholic friends with this (then again, I know they are a great bunch of women who don't scandalize easily, plus I highly doubt any of you are still reading this blog since I've pretty much dropped off the face of the UC group in the last few years), but we are moving steadily away from true-blue unschooling. I've always been about finding what best serves my chidren's needs, and really I think that's more what the intention of unschooling is (unless one just really wants to grind an ideological ax, and yes there are people who groove on that sort of thing).

I found a few years back that my son was complaining to me about his academic formation. Specifically some of his friends were calling him stupid and spoiled because he didn't spend as much time on schoolwork as they did. My son took this to heart. Now, it doesn't help that most of my son's friends are older than he is, and some of them really delight in demonstrating at every possible turn how smart they are. But while he could read far beyond what would be considered normal for his age, he could barely add single digit numbers without counting on his fingers.

Well last year I (gasp) bought him a math textbook. And with great effort on both of our parts, he went from 0 to 60 mph in about nine months. He also really got a kick out of telling his friends "I can't play now; I have to do my Latin."

Now he is 11, and I informed him that this year I will be expecting a lot more from him.

In a way, I have been waiting since his toddlerhood for him to be 11. It is such a great full-speed-ahead age, and such a perfect age to not be in school, fighting for one's life against the social shark-infested waters.

And then there's my daughter who is as smart as a whip but tries very hard not to let on. She has an amazing capacity to memorize, and she is so dutiful. She's a girl, for crying out loud. The child's academic world is made for her.

So, I've announced that we are going to move full steam ahead, doing all sorts of not-very-unschoolish looking things. We are going to master some great skills. We're going to study and learn so much.

Can you hear me salivating?

And I'm in for it.

See, I love learning, and of course all of the stuff my kids are learning right now is very simple to me. My very big problem, I admit, is that I do not know how to patiently come alongside someone who is learning. I think I should coach football, because my style is more the push-and-yell-and-challenge style. Think! Use that brain! Stop being lazy! Do it over again! Go, go, go!

My son, I think, needs this. I know God matched me correctly with the children He gave me, but I fear I will crush my daughter, and I know I am capable of deeply frustrating my son, too. I need to take breaks to go off and do push-ups or something, because I get my choleric dander up and I just lose my ability to be patient and understanding and encouraging. I love working hard, and probably my primary way of bonding with my kids (or anyone) is to work hard with them. But there's a big difference between working hard with someone and dragging them along by their hair. Unless, of course, I hit a snag of depression, and then I say "Oh, hell, go watch a movie, I'm going to lay in bed today." I suppose this will eventually (if it hasn't already) leave the impression on my kids that if I'm pushing them it's because I'm happy. Hopefully that will balance out whatever other psychosis I impress on them.

And hopefully the years of personal formation I did with the ideology of unschooling will keep me from going really bonkers on them and forgetting that learning is everywhere and always. And I do already know deeply that they are more important than their performance and grades. I haven't completely lost it!

So, ask me in a few months how it's going.

On second thought, mind your own business.

Advent 2011, Morning Prayer, and Feasting

I love Advent. A handful of years ago I really had no better clue than a church-going 8-year-old might why celebrating Advent was significant, but in recent years, the Lord has expanded my heart to hold more and more. This year I feel like I have taken a quantum leap, not so much in "understanding" Advent as being inside it, experiencing it, if that makes any sense to you. And this leap has been facilitated to a great extent by regularly joining some of my neighbors to pray morning prayer.

Here's how I can explain it. I've shared in another place about my conversion to Catholicism which had its apex at a Christmas Eve midnight Mass. I liken it to being invited to a huge banquet. The first year, all I could do was walk in the room and look at the banquet with my mouth hanging open in shock. The next few years, I came in and stood quietly in the back of the room. Year by year, in celebrating the banquet that is the feast of the Nativity, I was seated, pulled up a plate, ate some of the food, looked around at the other guests, began chatting, enjoying, and really celebrating. Even exploding with joy.

This year the image that fills my heart, largely growing out of my experience of praying the Liturgy of the Hours in community, is that I am witnessing, am in on, all of the feast's preparations. I see the prayers, the longing, the penances, the sacrifices, the seeds sown by God in and through His Church, that made that banquet something that I could "see," something that I could walk in on in shock 20 years ago. I realize that prayer that has been ascending through His Church for the salvation of my soul. I realize the gift that other Christians have given to me, someone nameless and unknown to them. The love, the longing, the sacrifices of others called down God's graces onto me.

Suddenly I feel myself as if in a kitchen buzzing with cooks and surrounded by mounds of potatoes and flour, raw meat, and ingredients of every sort. Advent is about the preparation of a feast of grace for the world, the poor, starving world. And picking up those potatoes to peel makes me want to weep with gratitude for being not only among those God feeds, but among those called to feed others with His life. None of this belongs to me. It is lavished on us by our Father who generously provides even for those who can only gape at Him in disbelief in return.

I've prayed the Liturgy of the Hours on and off for those 20 years. A breviary was the first thing I purchased after deciding to become a Catholic on December 26, 1991. But I've not regularly prayed it in community. For me, this is an incredible grace that surpasses anything about aesthetics. Our particular group was often made up largely of children. That probably sounds romantic to those of you who are not currently parenting children. Children teach adults so much about ourselves: one day one might say something spiritually profound, and the next might slap the one sitting next to him or be obnoxious in some other way. If we cannot see that until we learn to accept the Lord's discipline, we are all like this (only usually in more restrained, socially-polished ways that hide our obnoxiousness and suppress our profundity) then I think we never grow beyond a sterile sort of community experience where everyone is more concerned about being nice than being holy. Community life teaches us that we need each other and challenges pride which would have us believe we are better off standing alone, or with a group of me-clones. I cannot say why this community experience has been such a huge grace for me, other than to say that praying this way is simply God's will.

Here we are during one of our first gatherings.
My heartfelt gratitude to Keith and Iwona Major for opening their home and their family prayer time to all who gathered.

On the Duties of our State of Life

Written by St. Claude de la Colombière (1641-1682)

"The good order of things in the world depends upon the fidelity with which each one performs the duties of his state in life. All disorder originates in negligence upon this point. What a grand thing it would be if everyone acquitted himself of his duties! It is, perhaps, the thing that is most neglected even among pious people, indeed probably more often among those than among others. Yet people do not accuse themselves of it. Charles V said to his confessor: 'I accuse myself of the sins of Charles, not of those of the Emperor.'

"More souls are lost for this reason than for any other. Half are damned for not having performed the duties of their state, the other half because others have neglected their duties with regard to them. The duties of one's state take precedence of private duties: for instance, a magistrate must not consider relationship or friendship. Public good must prevail over private good. Jesus Christ, who came into this world to teach us and save us, did not think of his Mother when it was a question of his office as Redeemer: he looked upon others only in so far as they concerned this work of Redemption. Those who cooperated with him are his brothers; those to whom his Precious Blood gives new life are his children; his Mother is she who is perfectly submissive to the will of his Father.

"A man who neglects the duties of his state is a discordant voice in the harmony of the world, no matter what else he does. Those we are faithful to all other duties often neglect these; those who do not omit them perform them negligently or through human motives and self-interest. This is not fulfilling their duty.

"In choosing a state of life, the human advantages are considered but not the duties. It is impossible to neglect these duties without injuring others, and as God has their interests at heart even more than his own, such neglect is very dangerous.

"People would consider it strange for a man to become a religious without knowing to what he was going to bind himself. But what of a secular who has been married for twenty years, or who has held some responsible post in his profession, without knowing the duties these states of life entail.

"Sins of omission on this point are easily committed. They are hardly noticed, and consequently reparation is rarely made for them. These are sins that are committed by doing nothing; sins that do not consist in bad actions but which are often the consequence of some good work.

"By neglecting your duties, you condemn both yourself and others to punishment: others because you do not teach them their duty and make them fulfill it; and yourself because you do not fulfill your own. The less wicked will be damned for what they have done; the most wicked for what they have omitted to do."

The Purity of a Child

I love to observe children's unabashed sentiments of friendship. My son is a popular, outgoing boy that everyone seems to love to be around. I've witnessed boys debating one another about which one of them was my son's best friend. And the disappointment on the face and in the voice of a boy who comes to our house to play, only to learn that my son is at someone else's house playing, tugs at the heart. The way my children will beg to spend more time with their friends and vice versa -- it's all so free and uncalculated. If I listen closely I hear a yearning in innocence for communion that makes my own soul glow in mystery.

What happens when we cease to be children? Or is it just me? Was it just me? I'm not entirely sure I was ever a child in the way I'm thinking about it here.

When we grow and mature, we become aware of more of what we were made for. And yes, it is communion. Profound communion. Mature hormones kick in to tell us we are made for a type of communion in which we give ourselves completely to one who is able to receive us completely, and we are meant to spiritually and physically reproduce ourselves in this world. Those drives can perfect us, and they can muck us up seriously, as well. We can become calculating. The pain of disappointment can become too much to bear, or feel, so we can start to push them down and divert ourselves from what we are made for.

But hold it. Kids can do that, too. I did. But just today I witnessed that purity I wrote about earlier -- that pure longing for friendship expressed by a child. Purity is possible, just like deformation is.

We're made for more than sex, more than marriage. The only one we can give ourselves to completely and the only one who is able to receive us completely is the One who made us, the One who holds us in life. We are made for God, for union, for unity with Him through the absorption of ourselves in Him, which makes us most perfectly the unique individuals we were created to be, free from calculations, from self-conceit.

But God has gone and created this as a sacramental universe. He comes to us, not despising created means, but embracing them, employing creation to woo us, to show us His face, to pour His grace upon us: the Incarnation.

Which is why I can look at the child at my door and feel my heart bursting with the mystery of God present with us, calling me to Himself.

Each Catholic, Called to be a Missionary

I respect my son as an extremely reliable barometer in my life. He is very good at picking up on things and allowing me to become aware of them when I otherwise probably would not, at least no where near as quickly.

So when as a family we were going through our little Q&A catechism, and I read a question in the section on Sacraments about whether the Church is necessary for salvation, an alarm went off in me with his answer. At first he adamantly said No. Because, he said, what about all those people who don't have the Church, who don't have Sacraments. Surely God wants them to have a chance to be saved, too!

My alarm wasn't first and foremost about the gap in my son's understanding. Good heavens, we all have those. My alarm was that I saw clearly that he was reflecting back to me the lived experience of Catholics that he has experienced. He has been very blessed in the community with which we live. It has great riches and vibrancy, and he has many spiritual opportunities that are not so easily had in other areas of the country. For example, we have Franciscan University of Steubenville in our backyard and often go to hear outstanding speakers who come here. My son has heard many admonitions: to pray, to serve, to help the poor, to speak out for justice, to defend truth, to give one's life to God, to embrace one's vocation. But apparently he has not so often heard it emphasized that each Catholic is obligated to participate in the missionary endeavor of the Church by preaching the truth and explicitly leading people to embrace Her Sacraments. In other words, we act like the eternal salvation of the souls of others has absolutely nothing to do with us, our witness, with preaching, with the Church.

If the Church is not missionary, then what is it? A feel-good club for us? One of many generic service organizations by which humanitarian good is done, if you happen to like the brand we offer?

Then today I read this article on Catholic.org: Church Exists to Evangelize! Pope Calls every Catholic to Become a Missionary. The New Evangelization is no new idea. But I am so grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for sounding this call again. Especially in the West, and in the United States, this is a radical call, meaning it is one that takes us back down to the root of who we are. Evangelizing is not synonymous with obnoxiously arguing or manipulating or venting our religious spleen on unwitting victims. Evangelization is the fruit of conversion and penance and the following of God's call. It is not a program we can implement. I think of it in terms of living a healthy marriage relationship. Programs don't work where relationships must lead, but systematic teaching can be of assistance to us to discover common pitfalls that harm our relationships. I believe that one of these common pitfalls that stop us from evangelizing is the religious relativism that says as long as people are good, it doesn't really matter what they believe. Another pitfall is that of fundamentalism that says if you don't know all of the answers according to the book, there's no way you are good. Catholics are squeezed by both into staying in the pews, praying, and hoping that all those seekers of truth who want to become Catholics somehow wander in the right direction and find us.

The answer seems simple enough: Fall in love with Jesus Christ, give Him all your life, then follow where He leads. He's going to lead you to His People, and He's going to send you out to love others with a message written into your life. Live that life!! There are specific truths, and they make people deeply happy and free. Be deeply happy and free, and others will see and want this too.

I can't help but think of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute which helps people discern and employ their spiritual gifts, so that they can understand God's call to them. On their blog, they also share lots of good information about the state of Christianity in the world that should shake us out of our pew-sitting ways to realize God doesn't have another normative plan for the salvation of the world but us.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.

Of Bicycles and Resurrection

This week I had an experience that leaves me in awe at the One who orchestrates my life. I couldn't dream this stuff up or try really hard to suck a good lesson out of a bad turn. This is the real thing.

On Wednesday afternoon, my daughter went outside to ride her bike. We bought this pink Disney princess bike in the early spring at a thrift shop in town, and though she had never ridden before, it quickly became one of her delights. She could take herself places! Her friend down the street has a purple Disney princess bike, and riding together was how they came to be friends.

But Wednesday, her bike was nowhere to be found. Not on our porch, not in the yard, not left on the sidewalk or in front of a neighbor's house. I knew she had ridden it the day before, and I know she has an excellent memory and thrives on the routine of putting things like this back roughly where they belong. We looked at her friend's house down the street; did she leave it there and they tucked it onto their porch? No. I asked the neighbor boy who was mowing their lawn, Did you see Felicity's bike from when she was here yesterday? No. It was nowhere. After I pronounced the sad conclusion to my daughter that someone obviously took it, I found her with her head sadly hanging down, crying her little eyes out.

I held her, and I cried too. But along with my tears I became very angry.

I took a whole hour to calm down (we had a previous engagement which we followed through on, though we were late) and then to select printable language before posting on Facebook the question: What kind of a shameless SOB steals a little girl's bicycle?

Truth be told, I did not realize until this morning how much of a impact this event had on my soul. I was ripping mad at the selfish whim of whomever it was who didn't care about the tears and heartbreak of a 5-year-old. Even if a girl young enough to ride it was walking through the neighborhood without someone with the brains to tell her not to walk off with other people's things, surely eventually an adult would notice the acquisition and demand it be returned to its rightful owner. That's simply justice. Everyone understands you don't steal from children. Right? Then why the &%$(! did this happen?!

Compounding matters of course is the fact that my husband is still out of a job and we are pinching our pennies tighter than this penny-pincher ever has before. Simply going down to WalMart and buying a new one was right out of the question. That's reality, and that's fine. But it sure added to the sting.

I had been bearing up under the stress of unemployment acceptably well. We've had some set backs and unforeseen expenses during this time, but at this point in my life I'd be an idiot if I doubted God's constant presence and fully loving, aware concern for every need we have. But to be honest, after this bike episode I began to lose it. I tend to lose it rather quietly and internally, and the soft spot for the enemy attack has to do with very basic drives for staying alive, for example, the desire for food and water. I simply lose interest. And after the weight of this bike episode sank into me, I quickly began to suffer the physical consequences.

I'm saying all this from hindsight, because the episode is now resolved. But I did also quickly rally to address those physical consequences. So I was feeling pretty good physically, when last night, as I was bringing my daughter downstairs from her bath, I was shocked to see her bicycle laying on our lawn. We both saw it together, we were both shocked together, and her bed time was shot as she was now far too excited to lay down. I thought of what my husband had said: Let's give it a few days. Maybe it will turn up.

Yeah, right. This morning I couldn't help but think of a song our choir sang at Easter time with the line: "The dead do not rise." Isn't this exactly what the disciples thought? What any sane person would think? Why hope? Why delude yourself with vain dreams of things working out? Either get cynical or get crushed: The dead do not rise, and little girls do not have things restored to them that were stolen.

Ok, take a deep breath and dive down into this with me. But first let me tell you what happened with the bike. My daughter had gone to the next-door neighbor's house on Tuesday and they decided to play dolls with it inside the house. This neighbor girl is nearly 10 and had no problem bringing the bike in, but apparently Felicity forgot all about it when she came back home. Even though I'd inquired with that neighbor, no one thought to check inside the basement, where they'd taken it. My son then returned it, muddy from his transport, and left it sprawled out on the lawn, looking like it had been dumped. He told me all about this a few hours after we discovered it.

Let me tell you something else. A year ago, if the bike would have disappeared without a trace, I would have been incapable of the type of anger I felt Wednesday. I would have thought things like "easy come, easy go" or "well, it's only a bike" or "I'm sure whoever took it had some reason, some problem to explain why." I wouldn't have been able to look at my daughter's tears and simply say "This is wrong! Stealing from children is wrong!"

But last year, crescendoing in the fall, I experienced something else that had a profound impact on me. God reached down into my heart, into an area in my heart that had gotten locked away until He found a particular person to whom He could give the key. The key had to be in a musical shape, and in that part of my heart I confronted many things I had lost, had thought were stolen from me, had thought were dead, never to rise again. My father figured largely into all of that, his presence, his meaning in my life. There are many parallels there to a bike that was missing, but not stolen. But even deeper than all that I found locked away another piece of my own humanity. In the bedrock of my soul God corrected me, and healed in me, a sense of justice toward myself. He taught me that it is no longer acceptable for me to think: "It's only me. It doesn't matter."

And this bike episode has taught me that the change in me is real, solid, complete.

I have spent a couple hours this morning with eyes wet with tears of joy. I'm grateful to have had this test case that in the end was nothing more than a misunderstanding. I'm grateful that God once again shows Himself as the faithful orchestrator of reality that is more complicated than fiction. I'm grateful for the "fire drill" that teaches me again to be vigilant about caring for my own physical needs. I'm grateful for the people God gives me to show His face and sound His voice.

As a friend said last night: Life is good. God is great.

Snapping Into Focus

I've written of late about the flurry of activity I've been in not just recently, but in a more extended sense as well, this rush of change that has been my life in the last year. I was anticipating throughout April the nice, uncluttered calendar I found when I turned the page to May.

Little did I know how different it would be, complete with my husband home more often (which is wonderful) because he is looking for a new job (which has its definite downside). It was a cherry-on-the-whipped-cream kind of touch for me to eat way too much wheat-based cake last weekend and simultaneously forgot my daily dose of 5-HTP, which about as silly as me going out driving without my glasses on. Sometimes moments like that can get downright ugly for me, but in this case somehow it all mushed together to produce a sort of snapping into focus moment for me.

And what I mean by that is I see things I've seen before, but suddenly they look outlined in thick black magic marker. This is important. Pay attention over here.

One of those directives for me is time spent in Scripture. Today I started reading Jeremiah. In just the opening verses, I was struck by the fact that the book starts with the prophet recalling when the word of the Lord began coming to him, and when it culminated: the exile. There is a plan in life that God unfolds to us, sometimes by announcing the whole kit and kaboodle right from the start, when none of it makes sense or is even imaginable. Then time passes, and finally there's some sense of what at least some of it meant. And we still look back on Jeremiah's prophecy today and still unpack it. And it all started where everything God does starts: dealing with the personal relationship between God and (in this case) Jeremiah. Don't say you're too young. Go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you.

So this tells me I don't have to understand "all the reasons" why I have certain needs, why my children have the personalities they do, why I have certain people and situations in my life. Life isn't about understanding why. It's about engaging the what, obedient to the reality. The why does and will make complete and perfect sense; of that I am absolutely sure. God doesn't play with us. We might even get a glimpse or a rough idea of the meaning while we still live. Great! But not vital.

So what snaps into focus are obvious things that have become more than abstract ideas. For one, the primary time focus of my life is the formation of my children. Not should be, is, regardless of how I handle my part. I realize that so many of the things that have stretched my heart of late are the ways that God reaches them through the stuff of my life. For another, my primary form of prayer and sacrifice and penance is domestic life. Again, a complete no-brainer, but it is so easy to just say "yeah, it's my vocation, blah blah blah" and not find any real, lived meaning in laundry, cleaning, cooking, building lego creations and serving in the community.

And there are things more difficult to articulate. The people who surround and intersect with my life are a far different crowd than they were, say, five years ago. That is to say, there was no crowd five years ago. I've said to lots of people over the last few months that my natural comfort zone is in the back of a closet, with the door closed, with a book (maybe a hymnal) and a flashlight. I'd probably have to include a computer to be honest. People can be bewildering and overwhelming to me, because I'm an absorber; much time in the course of my relationships with people is spent simply taking them in. Others are quick to size up a situation, and sometimes that serves everyone very well. I have to do lots of taking in, and I may never get around to sizing up, and sometimes that doesn't serve me well at all. But what snaps into focus for me is what I ultimately desire for people, the beckoning from God that grows in my heart, as I take them in: heaven, healing, Jesus, conversion. All four (and more) say the one thing in my vocabulary. This is where that domestic prayer and sacrifice and penance come in. This is the breath of my day. As I allow the love of God to flow into my heart, through my heart to the people in my life, there is that moment of meeting, and then as I allow my love to be lifted back up to Him with them in it, imploring the one thing God desires for them, this is the breath of my day, if breathe I do.

This is what matters, and this is really all that matters. Everything is brought into order around that which matters.

Integrity and Liberty

Once again today I heard a homily that was particularly striking. I wish I knew the priest's name to credit him properly; if anyone who reads happens to have been at the Noon Mass at Franciscan University, perhaps you could clue me in.

There were actually two separate points that he made that struck me. One pertained to the matter of integrity. He talked about a testimony given in his parish where this man spoke of how he was given an urgent desire to break out of a prayer life that amounted to empty, meaningless ritual. That really piqued my curiosity, because oddly enough it was that very desire that ignited my search that ultimately led me out of the charismatic fellowship to which I belonged, into the Catholic Church. That desire was a key catalyst, even though it seems ironic, because "empty, meaningless ritual" was something I, at that time, strongly associated with Catholic worship, not the "free, spontaneous" style I was experiencing. But why then did it begin to seem so "same," so empty? It hadn't, always. What did it mean?

This priest went on to explain exactly how one breaks out of empty, meaningless prayer. (And I would add that I think "prayer" can be used in a very broad sense here, to encompass just about anything in life that is an expression of one's soul.) He said we break of it when every part of our lives is connected with every other part of our lives, and all of it is drawing its life from Christ. This is integrity. So how I pray, what I eat, how I treat my husband and children, how I think about political questions, how I manage money and my time -- none of these things gets a separate compartment that is yanked out from the rest, and all draws its life from Christ. That's the aim of integrity.

Though what he said sounded great, at first the connection between vital prayer and personal integrity was not blatantly obvious to me. But as I swished it around some more, I saw the wisdom in what he said. If prayer, or my duties, or my job, or my parenting, or my whatever starts to feel like a dry chore, could it be that there is some area in which I am either not conscious of drawing my life from Christ, or I simply am not doing it, apart from subjective awareness? So the need is either for obedience, that is for adherence to Christ, or for awakening of my consciousness to see Christ's presence. The need is for integrity. The need is for all of me to get on the same page as the Lord. In my case in the past moment I referenced, my need was to seek out what page the Lord was actually on before I could obey Him there. And what a surprise that was.

The second point that struck me was nearly an aside in the homily, though it fits with this notion of integrity as I'm thinking about it now. He commented that when people's hearts are far from God, they need lots of laws. Perhaps "need" here is two-edged: there is both the objective need for behavior to be reigned in for safety of self and others, and "need" is also a felt need. People feel lost and so they feel the need for more and more laws and rules to give them a sense of security, identity and direction.

I see this reality playing out in both parenting and politics in ways that I think are more similar than dissimilar. Because all of life is about the human desire for God expressed, wrestled with, nurtured, denied, and/or celebrated, laws of the State or rules of the family have everything to do with our relationship with God. I don't think it is accurate to say that a 3-year-old's heart is far from God, but her intellect has not matured to the point where she can freely access and choose from all the options of the world what is best for her. She needs someone to provide the goods, and then offer her toast or fruit, pink pants or orange skirt. She needs to learn to freely choose from options, and this in turn nurtures her ability to freely respond to all the choices in her life. The grace of Christ can make its gentle presence felt in this process, and virtue can develop.

But what if the tutor of freedom is overpowered by the taskmaster of laws? You must do this, you must do that, you have no choice, and don't bother to understand why you are doing it. One possible response to this taskmaster is rebellion: I will have my way; I don't care what you say. Another possibility is compliance: Ok, I'm not allowed. Just keep telling me what to do. I was very sad when I overheard a grown woman (a mother of a newborn) tell someone recently "I was told I wasn't allowed to have kids." A heart dominated by rebellion or compliance provides fertile ground for the development of slavery, not freedom and virtue.

Government (and the parent) does have a proper role to play in protecting the goods of life, property, defending from fraud, that sort of thing. But I believe there is a degree to which government (and parents) can deaden the conscience's yearning for God by the imposition of too many restrictions and rules that have nothing to do with justice. We have enough of a propensity for feeling lost due to our sin; I don't believe we need it compounded by accepting a cultural load that chants in a hopeless, constant drone "Our hearts are far from God... our hearts are far from God..." We human beings desperately need mentors; we need to see love in the faces of others in our lives who are showing us how to live. Parents generally know this, even if we don't always practice it. Rules and laws are a poor substitute for a person who teaches us how to live, or how to succeed in our trade or business.

I think because I personally have been far more influenced by the tendency to comply with any silly thing that is demanded of me, I see the liberty movement as one necessary wheel on a bicycle. (Maybe it is my bicycle, and yours operates differently. I can dig that.) I want others with this need to awaken to the reality that excessive rules, regulations, taxations, punishment schedules and centralized control in government and society can lead to a demeaning and erosion of human dignity. But this can become nothing more than I will have my way; I don't care what you say if the other wheel is not also in place: our hearts are only truly free when we are drawing our life from Christ. The liberty movement is like an alert, waking people up to remember the dignity for which they were created, which is the ability to choose the good freely. But no political system or thought can give that ability. It comes from Christ alone. We cannot buy goods of society with human dignity as the price, and we must protest when that bargain is proposed. But the only way to keep a culture or a nation from devolving into totalitarianism is to evangelize, bringing Christ to the hearts of all.

He alone brings healing, integrity, wholeness, meaning, vitality, and freedom.

Paradigm Revelation

Yesterday I had an experience that was one of those revealing myself to myself moments. Maybe if I put it more precisely I would say it was a moment of seeing a paradigm in my life and realizing the extent to which this paradigm is not shared by all others.

It's a parenting story. My family was out in a public place with which we are all fairly familiar. The need arose for some of us to be in different locations in this place, and then it became clear that other people for whom we were waiting would need directions so we could meet them. We nominated my son to wait near the entrance to give this direction, because there were no employees (and indeed, few other people at all) for anyone to ask . He was about a 30 second walk from where the rest of us were. In a few minutes, an employee marched my son back into the room where we were. She had a disgusted look on her face and asked if this boy belonged with us. I explained the task we had given him, and she walked out.

My son looked at me and whispered, "See Mom, no one trusts me."

Later, the security guard with whom we'd chatted plenty beforehand, and who seemed far more intent on being friendly than worried, explained that this woman had been fearful that someone would kidnap our son. I talked with him a bit about this, and it was then that this paradigm difference started sinking in.

I realized several things. First of all, I know my son better than anyone. I know the freedom and the independence that he fights me for constantly, and I have a very good sense of his limitations. If anything, I overestimate how limited he is and don't trust him enough. But I also know his fears, his physical capabilities to defend himself and inflict pain, and the reaches of his common sense, which are considerable for his age. We've been over how to deal with people who spell even the remotest sense of danger, and I've seen his reaction in other situations. Standing in a hallway in a public place is not something that had me worried for him.

But under all these parental judgment calls is a deeper paradigm. I realized that the way we live assumes that people are to be served, not feared. Now, I know that lots of people reading this would start into the "oh, but what about... and don't you see this on the news... and you can't trust people..." and blah blah blah. But just this morning I read again Mt. 10:28 "Do not fear the one who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul." That is not a mere suggestion from the Lord, that is a command. There is a reasonable and virtuous sense of caution we need to form in our children and in ourselves, because let's face it, all people are dangerous because all people sin. But either we walk in trust in our Lord and live, or we curl up into the fetal position and retreat from the big bad world. Either I act as if sin is the ultimate power of the universe, or Love is. Perfect love casts out fear, though it never casts out reason. Ultimately, reason is to live in conformity to our Lord Jesus Christ, "who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

The difficulty that my son faces as we live this paradigm which I has silently formed in our family culture is generally that others want to instill fear in him. He encounters this at times even at church when he, not sharing my need and desire to attend daily Mass, will, with my blessing, sit in the narthex or gathering space and read a book. He says that well-meaning people will sometimes tell him he needs to go back by his Mom. Even though no one is afraid of physical danger there, my son feels fear of the social pressure of conforming to what these strangers or acquaintances expect of him. I've even suggested that I could give him a note saying "My Mom gives me permission to read here."

I know people are well-meaning, and I do appreciate their concern. I prayed this morning for that woman who looked at me disgustedly, because I'm sure she's had experiences that justify her fears to her, and she only wanted to protect him from what she feared. I suppose it does not happen readily that people look at a child and gain courage. I think that might be unfortunate.

Desire

Yesterday I had a very valuable conversation with my son. I'm going to be circumspect here, so as to respect the privacy of that conversation and my son's trust, but it was one of those exchanges that we have ever so often where I find myself giving myself just the spiritual counsel I need to hear by responding to what he says to me. The cry of his heart really is just the same as the cry of my heart. The only difference is that our hearts are of different maturities. The need is the same, however.

He is of an age (namely, 8) where learning is taking a curve in his life. He is thinking a lot about his purpose in life and the desires in his heart. As we talked it became clear that he has a very strong and very dear desire in his heart that faces a certain danger. His desire currently is stuck in a cloak of impossibility. I don't use the word impossibility in the sense of "extreme difficulty or extreme unlikelihood," I mean flat out impossible. His very real desire is stuck inside something that just cannot be. I was able to impress on him that this impossible something was actually a symbol of something that is possible in many ways, and I know that it is one of those ways that his soul is waiting to discover. I emphasized this because I saw he felt pressure to abandon his desire, focusing on the impossibility instead of on the ultimate meaning his heart was really yearning for, and settling for some kind of a "managed" existence with desire mutated or rooted out. No way, I told him. You hold on to that desire with all you've got.

I can relate so strongly. I could sometimes ask right along with him "Why does God give me these desires in my heart if they are so impossible?" And I know that just as I told him, I have to keep asking God "If this desire is impossible to fulfill in the way I am thinking of it, then what does it really mean? What is Your desire that is being expressed in my heart? How do I understand it, and what do I do about it? How do I stay with you and with this desire?"

These are our pressing Advent questions. We can know, trust and believe that Emmanuel will come to us, but we can't foresee exactly all of the details, all of the proceedings of how He comes. We can long. We can watch. We can wait, looking, even hurting with the anticipation. Somehow it is this that prepares us to welcome, to see, the revelation when He comes.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Random Blatherings of an INTP Woman

One of the topics I love reading about is personality types, especially the Myers-Briggs types. I consistently test as an INTP. Not-so-oddly-enough, I have discovered that a couple people who tend to read this blog, and whose blogs I tend to read, are also INTPs. But I have found it estimated that only somewhere between 1-4% of the population fall in this particular type, so there must be some sort of gravitational pull factor going on there.

Last night I was perusing a few websites on the subject which I had not read previously and found once again that all of the examples given of famous INTPs were men. Funny, that. I remember as a kid -- a Protestant kid at that -- thinking that I would really like to be a monk, or at least live with monks. Now, I believe I have actually gotten very comfortable with the fact that I am indeed a woman, but in some ways my brain still resonates a bit more happily with most men than with many women. Funny, that.

So today I watched the movie Daddy Daycare with my son at his request. It's the one where a non-swearing Eddie Murphy and his friends open a daycare after losing a job. It's filled with stereotypical the-way-men-parent-in-the-21st-century scenarios, and it's a cute movie and all. Throughout the day I couldn't help thinking of several ways that I could relate to these Daddies in my own parenting journey. It was cute how they gave copies of their mission statement to 3-and 4-year-olds on their first day of business, and sat down to go over it point by point (asking for a volunteer to read). It's pretty lame, but in spirit at least I could actually relate.

Anyway, I am grateful for the work of Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. It really and truly fascinates me to see how people differ in basic personality hard wiring. What an amazing idea God had to create one human race with so much variation in the details. Sometimes we are drawn by the ways someone else is just like us; we feel understood. Sometimes we are fascinated by someone who is quite opposite us in some way; we feel completed. It is interesting to me to notice temperament differences within my family and to learn more about people this way.

Yeah, ok, so you can tell I am an introverted thinker, huh? Some people like browsing through craft stores to look for pretty decorative ideas. (This would be my daughter.) I prefer browsing through lovely ideas and picking out the ones that I think I could really do something with!

What Experiences do you Want?

My son often comes out with questions or comments that tip me off-balance for a moment, in a good way, I mean. This morning on the way home from Mass he asked me, "Mom, what experience would you most like to have?" I knew what he was driving at, and I knew that an answer like "the salvation of the world" wouldn't cut it for him. It would have to be a real experience; something he would be able to see. I really had to think about this, and allow myself into that part of my heart that holds my desires. It's not until he asks me something like this that I'm able to realize how little I live within my desires. So I told him I'd like to gather my friends together to sing, at my friend Suzanne's house. (That's so I wouldn't have to clean my own! Just kidding.)

I was still meditating on that when he told me what his for top desired experiences are: to get married, to own his own computer, to play with his friends, and to sing.

And he's been singing all day about a sweetheart named Cotton Candy: "When I kiss you, you just melt! And if I lick you, you turn into sugar -- my sugar!" (We recently won a candy gift basket at a Chinese Auction, in case you are wondering.)

How many fewer smiles I would have without my son.

The Philosophy of Liberty

I've watched this video several times recently. It fascinates me on many levels. In the political realm, it sums up my inclinations quite well. But it equally well sums up my parenting inclinations and my educational inclinations. It always seems to me that having a concisely articulated summary of key points allows me to focus and live truth in a way that frees me from getting clogged up by conflicting emotions and rationalizations.

However, while this video addresses justice in human interrelations, it does not make anything explicit about where our lives come from. And for some, I suppose, this question may not loom hugely obvious in the mind: Did I make myself? My answer to this is an obvious No, of course I did not make myself. The life I have as mine is a gift, just as the life each other person has is a gift. So, this video can say that the first principle of Liberty is that I own my life, and it is true. However, it is also true that my life is a gift, given by my Creator. To me, the lack of this connection being made explicit is not a difficulty. In fact, to me, it makes the fact more plain because it actually causes me to think of the question.

So, this is a very useful tool for me to meditate on how to live in justice, and in charity, (for can you separate them?) with other people. And that's just something I need to spend a lot of time meditating on these days.