SENT TO BE

Google. Where Are You?

2012-01-18T11:33:00.000-06:00

Dear Senttobe friends,
I am still waiting for Google to fix my new posting problems. Until they do, it will be difficult to post. Please keep checking back!

2012-01-18T11:31:00.002-06:00

Still Working Out the Kinks

2012-01-09T13:58:00.001-06:00

Why I Love My Country

2011-11-24T21:04:00.001-06:00

Today we began the day like many other families -peeling potatoes, dicing apples, basting turkey and cleaning up the house. When our guests arrived we paused to say hello and then carried on with preparations. Making mashed potatoes and slicing turkey are always reserved for the last minute at our house so that we can enjoy them at their peak. I tend to think that mashed spuds are quite tasty a couple of hours after they come off the stove, but my purist husband and daughter hold out to the last minute.

After my husband announced that it was time to eat we did just that, with a great deal of thanks I might add, for the bountiful meal provided.

So it was a typical wonderfully Thanksgiving, with food, family and friends, and time to watch the Cowboys afterwards.

But after everyone left, pronouncing the day a success, we three sat down in the living room to watch Pumpkin Chunkin, a sport, or should I say a contest, that to me says " we are in America" .

Pumpkin Chunkin.

I had never heard of it until my more informed daughter and husband turned it on and settled right in. I mean, it's not as though I was planning anything special for the evening... but a show called Pumpkin Chunkin?

It is not a sport for the elite. And the participants are not highly trained athletes who listen to relaxing music as they pace about, preparing for their turn on the field. The game, or sport, call it what you will, takes place in a corn field and its premise is fairly simple-minded, as all good games are. If you can throw a pumpkin farther than anyone else you win. The variety of pumpkin- throwing machines, from trebuchets to air guns elevates the game from being a backyard Sunday afternoon sort of activity to something more serious. After all, these pumpkins travel three quarters of a mile. But it is what it is, a game that is all about throwing pumpkins as far as you can using a variety of instruments that won't destroy the pumpkin on lift-off. Simple and elegant. Something good minds can turn to without being corrupted by the effects of a culture gone to the dogs.

And perhaps most important of all, there is no one telling those pumpkin chunkers that they can't heave pumpkins to kingdom come.

America truly is the land of the free and the brave, the land of Pumpkin Chunkin, and I am proud to be a citizen. I am proud that we are not too sophisticated to want to throw pumpkins about, yet not so dumb that we can't design fairly good machines in our spare time that will throw the pumpkins long distances. Yes, I know that trebuchets have been around a long time, but I bet those French people in the Middle Ages never thought of using them to hurl pumpkins for fun. And air guns...now we are talking some sophisticated methodology.

Yup, I am proud to be an American, and even though I can't throw a pumpkin myself more than a foot or two, I will never eat pumpkin pie again without thinking of those who give up all their spare time to throw pumpkins so that the rest of us don't have to. We can just put up our feet, sit back and watch them do it.

Universal Call To Holiness

2011-11-21T10:40:00.001-06:00

Piano Lessons

2011-11-14T16:43:00.001-06:00

Erica, my talented third grade student, has very clear opinions about performance.

"I'd rather play at the mall than at a competition."

I hadn't thought about taking my students to the mall to perform; to me there is something slighty tacky about that whole idea. Especially since there is a constant stream of people walking around the piano stage, and the noise level is marginally below a roar.

But that could be why Erica prefers the option.

I'd be sad to have her playing ignored though. She has a lovely sensitive way of playing, though she is still a beginner.

It occured to me that trying to pray in church before a Mass, trying to recollect as the missal says we should do, is like playing the piano at the mall. People come in and take their seats all around you, some chatting, some rustling, some laughing. A few drop to their knees and pray silently. But the idea that someone, anyone, is trying to pray does not automatically suggest keeping quiet in their presence. We, the people who are praying are a part of the landscape, part of the ambience you might say, the way music in the mall is a part of the holiday atmosphere.

Given the choice, I too prefer mall- playing to a competition, but I'd so much rather have people stop and listen. And I would be greatly obliged if silence could be kept in church when I'm trying to pray. Better, I would love to know that everyone else was praying too, silently listening to the music drifting down from heaven, the songs of the angels into which our own heartfelt cries of thanksgiving are drawn and lifted back to the throne of grace.

I can see Erica's point. Playing at the mall, even to a few die- hard audience members is better than playing at a competition. And praying in church before Mass surrounded by only a few others at prayer is better than not being there at all. In fact I'd rather be there than anywhere else on Sunday. After all the angels and the saints are there praying with me.

Deo, dicamus gratias.

Life's Little Frustrations

2011-11-14T11:52:00.001-06:00

Dear gentle readers,

I am having difficulty posting lately. Still trying to work out why. I may have to close down this site and switch to a new one unless I can regain regular access to my own site!!

Prayers, please!

How to Succeed Without Really Trying

2011-11-03T21:05:00.002-05:00

I gather that the new I Phone 4 s may have some problems, but you can't beat it for entertainment value.

A secretary "asked" the phone the following question.
"What is the meaning of life?"
The phone responded, "I believe the best answer would be chocolate."

Sound's like a winning campaign slogan to me.

Be Not Afraid

2011-10-26T20:45:00.002-05:00

For all the people who are afraid for the future right now: Be Not Afraid. Trust in the Lord's mercy and care. He gives us people who are wise and knowledgeable and prayerful, but his guidance transcends all of us. Sometimes it's the incomprehensible we need to rely upon, the unthinkable solution which could only happen because it's from God.

Be not afraid.

Learning to Lose Control

2011-10-18T20:25:00.000-05:00

Why do people, good people, leave one parish and move on to another one?

In my protestant days it was a common enough occurrence. One pastor would leave and another would arrive who did not preach exciting enough sermons, or who lacked the charisma of the previous pastor. In one parish I served in southeastern Minnesota people inexplicably and sadly left when the pastor began inviting Hmong refugees to attend worship.

In a Catholic parish it seems to me that if the mass is rightly understood, there should be much less occasion to church hop. After all, the mass itself is the primary focus of one's church life.

Or it should be.

Leaving a parish, let's say, because there are plans to build a new chapel, somewhat smaller than the existing chapel seems to me to signal a less than fully developed notion of what attending and supporting a church really mean.

The same trust in God's wisdom and guiding light that Catholics are encouraged to nurture in their personal lives, apply equally to parish life. We are meant to trust that through the given organizational structures, the established committees, and the staff both lay and pastoral, God is working his purpose out, as the hymn says.

We can't each control every facet of church life nor should we.

In the Congregational, United Church of Christ every single decision is put to a vote. And I can report that people still leave when the votes don't go their way.

A more or less congregational way of doing things, one that strives to be democratic still requires trust and generosity from each member. And deep humility.

It can be hard to watch a group with new ideas come and make changes. It is hard when a new pastor makes changes. It is difficult to endure a church -wide decision to build or not to build, and be in the minority voting the other way.

But God asks that of us and really, it is so little.

What is left for us when a decision does not go our way? The presence of Jesus Christ in the mass; the love and mercy, the forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation; the washing away of sin and the new life poured out during the sacrament of baptism. How trivial our differences seem when held up in the light of what really matters, what really makes church CHURCH.

Terrible, sad events have taken place in Catholic parishes during the past decade, events which have left many Catholics shaken to the core. But the church goes on, and the faithful come to mass with hope and trust.

If we can survive scandal, surely we can survive a new chapel that looks different from the previous one. Surely we can survive a few hymns we don't care for, or the occasional indigestible homily. Surely we can survive different leadership styles, fresh ideas from young members, whatever it is that causes irritation. It is, I suppose a very minor form of martyrdom, a way of bravely carrying on in the face of obstacles. But the martyrs themselves died for our faith. All we are asked to do is die to ourselves now and then and in ways too insignificant to really matter.

After all we still have the Eucharist.

We are still the Catholic church. We are still blessed beyond our own limited imaginings.

And may God be praised for that.

Deo, dicamus gratias.

Piano Lessons

2011-10-12T21:17:00.001-05:00

"How was your four-day weekend?" I asked my very talented 7th grade student today.

"Well, I crammed as much relaxation into it as I could."

"Gee, that sounds almost stressful. What did you do?"

"Well, what adults don't realize is that kids have to learn how to relax. I slept a lot, watched a couple of movies, read some books, and I watched the Rangers. They are up by two games, by the way. Then just when I had finally relaxed I had to go back to school today."

"Oh. It sounds....like it went just fine.. let's play some Clementi now."

And he zipped into his Sonatina with astonishing sensitivity. I noticed that he didn't list piano practice as among his relaxation activities, but I forgave him. He clearly had practiced, and when he told me that the Clementi slow movements are his favorites, I knew that whether he is relaxing or not he will always appreciate good music.

Maybe it's the baseball playoffs that he has to learn to relax with?

My Religion is Loving Kindness

2011-10-11T19:25:00.004-05:00

"My religion is loving kindness."

I saw the bumper sticker as I was driving home from the paint store this afternoon in heavy traffic. I couldn't read the fine print, which may have mentioned another, more familiar affiliation. First Baptist? Bible Fellowship?

Or did it mean just what it said? My religion is loving kindness, therefore I don't belong to any church or fellowship.

I did wonder if the bumper sticker owner knew that loving kindness is generally regarded as a Christian trait. Or maybe it's not anymore. Maybe loving kindness is simply a desire to be lovingly kind, and if so I guess it's a beginning.

What serious Christians understand though, is that loving kindness is difficult to offer to everyone, under all circumstances. For example, what does loving kindness mean when, say, your car bumper comes into contact with a Ford F110, and the driver of the Ford is carrying no insurance and gives you false contact information, all the while he is smiling ingratiatingly and telling you how sorry he is that he failed to yield the right of way?

The church, in her great wisdom, understands these dilemmas and offers teaching, prayer time, adoration, the Holy Eucharist all as encouragement and help for one's attempt to live in a loving way. And, perhaps even more to the point, she offers the sacrament of Reconciliation for the many occasions when loving kindness takes a back seat to snippy sarcasm, angry retorts, and pie in the face. Or worse.

My religion is about loving kindness, in a way, but it mostly comes from God and to the extent that I offer loving kindness it is the work of the Holy Spirit.

But I can't quarrel with loving kindness as a goal. As I said, it's a start. We could all do with more loving kindness in the world and less deception, rudeness, calumny and boorish behavior.

The Holy Withdrawn

2011-10-07T07:55:00.000-05:00

This is a wonderful telling of life as a Norbertine. Plus, the music is lovely!

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

2011-10-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

From a brillant mind, a great commencement speech.

On Learning How to Receive

2011-10-03T21:35:00.001-05:00

I cancelled my piano lessons today, picked up our daughter from school and drove down to SMU this afternoon in time to hear my husband deliver his inaugural lecture as the new occupier of the Lehman Chair, an event that surely would have baffled Mr. and Mrs. Lehman had they been present. It is likely that the Methodist Lehmans, back in the 1920s never imagined their gift would one day support a talk about Mary as the model for theologians, certainly not at an event carrying their name at Southern Methodist University.

It was a moving occasion. For from Mary my husband has learned that sustained reflection, indeed prayer, centered around any given theological topic is the pathway outlined by Mary who herself took things and pondered them in her heart. From prayer that first listens and attends to what God has done comes theology.

It has been a cliche among psychologists to assert that various forms of unhappiness stem from an inability to "receive", a notion that has more often irritated me than illumined me.

But applied to the proper of course of theology it has a certain force.

Mary received , indeed she showed humanity how to receive more than any person before or since has done. "Let it be to me according to your word"; fiat. I hear you God and I take you at your word, every inch of me, body and soul.

It's when we fail to receive God's holy word in it's entirety that we cripple ourselves theologically. For then we attempt to substitute reason, argument, emotion, experience or tradition for those parts of God's word that we can't hear or accept, that we can't receive. The astonishing fact of Mary's virginity becomes a source of embarrassment that needs to be explained away , and eventually Mary is covered with tissue paper and put away in a box. The cross itself is a stumbling block because it is too bloody and a risen Jesus is substituted, one with outstretched arms who will welcome everyone, no questions asked , the Lord who needn't help with redemptive suffering because if we just focus on the joy we won't need to worry too much about that whole suffering thing.

Theology, Catholic theology, begins with God, all of God who has been revealed, and it continues with hands outstretched or folded to receive and to ponder what has been offered.

From Mary we learn how to receive and from Mary we learn how to do theology.

The Methodists in the audience today were perhaps not aware that October is Mary's month in the church.

But for those of us who are aware, it was a fitting beginning to a month of tribute to our Mother. Yes it was financed by the Methodist Lehmans, but I don't doubt that Mary in her own way is sheltering them, receiving them into her care as she receives all of us. "Fiat. Let it be to me according toyour word."

Ave Maria, gratias plena.

Restarting the Engine

2011-10-01T20:17:00.002-05:00

Sent to Be has been under construction. Well, really, the whole project has been under review. I am finding that the spiritual life can cower behind its public face; words seem to shrink from being glowing indicators of living truths to shadows and mimes, always less than what is meant or understood by the writer.

Perhaps the fault lies with me. This blog, born on a whim, has always been a bit slap dash. Will more thought make it better? I am not sure. There are so many ways in which the interior life resists description, not least of which is a desire for privacy. And a sense that noone else really cares about the interior life of an average sort of blogging Catholic.

But doubts and inadequacy aside, Sent to Be will soldier on for now. Somehow, the post lineup has gotten out of order. Old posts are showing up like postcards from the back of an untidy drawer that has been rearranged.

I expect new ones will soon take their places.

For now, we go forward into October, with Padre Pio's remembrance behind us and St. Francis' coming soon.

May the saints be with you.

Deo, dicamus gratias!

Eeyore's Gift

2010-07-08T06:00:00.004-05:00

Eeyore walked all round Tigger one way, and then turned and walked all round him the other way.
"What did you say it was?" he asked.
"Tigger."
"Ah!" said Eeyore.
"He's just come," explained Piglet.
"Ah!" said Eeyore again.
He thought for a long time and then said:
"When is he going?"
Pooh explained to Eeyore that Tigger was a great friend of Christopher Robin's, who had come to stay in the Forest, and Piglet explained to Tigger that he mustn't mind what Eeyore said because he was always gloomy; and Eeyore explained to Piglet that, on the contrary, he was feeling particularly cheerful this morning; and Tigger explained to anybody who was listening that he hadn't had any breakfast yet.
"I knew there was something," said Pooh.
"Tiggers always eat thistles, so that is why we came to see you, Eeyore."
"Don't mention it, Pooh."
"Oh, Eeyore, I didn't mean that I didn't want to see you---"
"Quite--quite. But your new stripey friend--naturally he wants his breakfast. What did you say his name was?"
"Tigger."
"Then come this way, Tigger."
Eeyore led the way to the most thistly-looking patch of thistles that ever was, and waved a hoof at it.
"A little patch I was keeping for my birthday," he said; "but, after all, what are birthdays? Here today and gone tomorrow. Help yourself Tigger."

I was raised on Winnie the Pooh. My father used to read the stories aloud to us at bedtime and was particularly good at using a different voice for each character. He nailed Eeyore, who has always been to me one of the funniest characters in fiction.

Which is a good thing, because I have known and worked with a few Eeyores in real life.

What is hilarious in a children's story is sometimes trying in real life. Real life Eeyores have a way of driving me to adoration and/or confession, which may well be why God allows them to make appearances in my life like the occasional jalapeno pepper accidentally bitten and swallowed whole. Not as memorable as a habanero, but memorable enough.

I am still working on the special knack some have, the knack of not allowing irritating people to get under their skin. Our pastor, for example, has a delightful way of coping with gloomy utterances. "He would like you to think that" he will say, with a twinkle in his eye, when he hears that someone has complained about being too busy, too overworked , to take his allotted vacation time.

Of course, we should feel sorry for habitually gloomy Eeyores. It can't be much fun to see only the negative side of things. I attended a retreat a few years ago, my first silent retreat. On the last day of the retreat, I sat down for lunch at a table occupied by only one other woman, and she was wearing an aggrieved expression.

"The food this week has been awful" she whispered.

I looked up, startled that she was breaking the "no talking" rule. Having gained my attention, she went on in angry whispers about how much money she had paid, and look what they were dishing up.

I had been more or less enjoying the food. And the silence. So I smiled and went on quietly eating. But I did wonder if the entire retreat experience had been a positive one for her, and if not, how she coped with it all. Silent retreats are supposed to be opportunities for prayer, and as such are meant to be uplifting.

Eeyore does have his moments of contentment. On his birthday we find him standing by a stream looking at himself in the water, and finding nothing good in the image staring back at him. Then Pooh arrives and Eeyore says, famously,

"Good morning, Pooh Bear, ...if it is a good morning,.. which I doubt."

By the end of the day, and after a series of misadventures during which Pooh and Piglet try unsuccessfully to bring presents to Eeyore whole and intact, Eeyore surprisingly feels grateful for the imperfect offerings.

Picking up a ruined balloon and dropping it carefully into an empty honey pot, Eeyore demonstrates that his balloon fits perfectly into his pot.

As the story closes, Eeyore "was taking the balloon out and putting it back again, as happy as could be..."

You never know. Which is why I suppose that in the end it is always better to reserve judgment on even the gloomiest and most subtly sarcastic Eeyores. After all, they might surprise you.

The woman who hated the food at our retreat might have after all enjoyed other aspects of her experience.

The overworked employee might have gone on vacation after all and found that things did not fall apart in his absence.

I'm still trying to be upbeat around my Eeyores when I encounter them. But until I develop just the right tone, and the right attitude to go with it, I might just as well resolve to attend adoration, pray the rosary and try to let God work in and through me.

Or maybe I should just try singing a song, as Pooh once did when Eeyore had stumped him.

"That's right," said Eeyore. "Sing. Umpty-tiddly, umpty-too. Here we go gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."

"I am," said Pooh.

"Some can," said Eeyore.

OK, I am officially throwing in the towel. I'm going to adoration.

Mercies Without End

2010-06-27T21:07:00.005-05:00

On Saturday, we attended a Mass at Christ the King parish. The mass was offered to Jose Maria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. Bishop Kevin Farrell presided and preached with a dignity that could not mask his passion for the central tenets held by this remarkable man. The music was exquisite, the interior of the building lovely, and all told it was a glorious morning.  Because it was the 5th anniversary of our coming into the church, the mass had a particular significance for us, which we later remarked upon around the dinner table with friends.

Our new auxiliary was there, the priest who received us at St. Rita parish, and with him were two more couples, all converts with only one exception.

Converts, I have remarked before, seem to be an exceptionally joy filled group. True to form the evening exuded love for the church, for the graces bestowed on all of us, however unworthy, and it saw a great deal of hilarity thrown in as well.

I recalled for Bishop Mark the moment during our first meeting when he asked if I could accept that women in the Catholic church are not ordained as priests. He wanted to be sure, he said, that I would be content with what we were about to do.

"I never looked back" I told him last night. Not once.

I attribute that particular grace to Pope John Paul II. He was dying during the period when we began attending mass regularly, yet watching the televised news coverage devoted to lengthy reviews of his life, and devouring every bit of it, he became a powerful figure for me. I had had only the vaguest notion of who he was and who he had been during his long pontificate. When his death was announced I remember shedding tears, though mine had been such a fleeting acquaintance.

On the day we entered into the fullness of the Catholic church, I was given a book by our spiritual advisor, called "The Private Prayers of Pope John Paul II."

These are some of the words I read there.

Truly each one, with his unique and singular personal history, is called by name, to bring his own particular contribution to the coming of the Kingdom of God. No talent, no matter how small is to be left hidden or left unutilized.

Christifideles Laici, 56.

Finally, our times require a serious commitment to holiness. The spiritual needs of the present world are immense! It is almost frightening to look at the infinite forests of buildings in a modern metropolis, inhabited by countless numbers of people. How will we be able to reach all these people and lead them to Christ?
The certainty that we merely instruments of grace comes to our aid: acting in the individual soul is God himself, with his love and mercy.
Our true, lifelong commitment must be to personal sanctification, so that we may be fit and efficacious instruments of grace.
The truest and most sincere wish I have for you is just this:
"Become holy and soon be saints!"

St. Pio V Parish, October 28, 1979

Today I am struck by the way these words resonate with the life and work of Jose Maria Escriva. On the back cover of the booklet we used during mass on Saturday, I found this description of the Saint's life and work.

"On October 2, 1928, in Madrid, by divine inspiration he founded Opus Dei, which has opened up a new way for the faithful to sanctify themselves in the midst of the world, through the practice of their ordinary work and in the fulfillment if their personal, family, and social duties."

Divine providence has seen fit to guide me, along with my husband and daughter along the pathway marked out by these two great men, the pathway revealed by our Lord himself. This path asks us to be holy, each one of us. It does not use position in the church, ordination or otherwise as the measure for how we ought to live. Holiness is a loss of self for the greater glory of God.

To discover by grace that a life that seeks holiness is everything  we could ever need or desire, is also to understand the church's teaching on the priesthood.   Holy orders are not a right. They are one way to live a life of holiness, a way offered by God to a few men.

God in his loving care for each of us does not give less to the non-ordained, or less to women. On the contrary he offers, as the hymn says, blessings without number, mercies without end.

Did I ever think twice about leaving behind protestant ministry?

Not once. For I have truly received mercies without end. And they are all I need.

At our mass of reception five years ago, we sang for the opening hymn, a hymn I had never heard before. Today it is one of my very favorites and says everything my heart speaks as a Catholic. It is the hymn I posted just recently, O God Beyond All Praising.

Here it is again, this time in it's orchestral form.

On Being Cheap

2010-06-12T11:01:00.002-05:00

"Verna Oller was a proud cheapskate to the very end of her 98 years -- and the children of Long Beach, Wash., will forever be grateful.

Oller, who cut her own hair, bought only thrift store clothes and refused to purchase even shoelaces, parlayed her tightness with a dollar into an act of generosity that the country is quickly learning about. The sassy former fish filleter amassed $4.5 million through savvy stock picks -- and she donated all of it to her town so it could build the swimming pool she never had as a kid. She also had some left over for scholarships and teaching grants."

Verna Oller, little old lady and secret stock picker, leaves small town $4.5 million

A cheapskate? Is it really so cheap to buy your clothes at a thrift store? I recently bought two cotton shower curtains, one for $3.00, and one for $5.00 at Marshall's, made of  designer fabric.    I plan to use them to make slipcovers for two parsons chairs in my dining room. No one will know the fabric began in the form of shower curtains unless I tell them.

My daughter cuts my husband' s hair with a set of tools she bought for him at another low-cost store. I will admit that occasionally I trim him up afterwards, or send him up the street to Barber Rick, who isn't a whole lot better than we are. The big difference Barber Rick can boast is the "razor vac" he designed and built. It is essentially an electric trimmer with a hose attached which sucks up the hair trimmings before they fall to the floor. My husband  says it is like being barbered by an  old Chevy; his ears ring whenever he leaves Barber Rick's establishment. Apparently Barber Rick was considering adding a muffler to the device, which would make the whole experience more up-scale, to be sure.

Ok, so we don't have a hose that sucks up hair, but we do have a towel we spread on the floor.

When we were kids my Dad, who grew up during the Depression, used to make glue by melting a tin can over the stove. I have inherited his creatively frugal ways, and I use them for a reason.

People around the world have much, much less than we have. They need our help. People in this country have less than we do. We owe it to them to spend less on ourselves and give away more.   People shop at  garage sales in our neighborhood , carefully  checking  the cost of a used shirt or an old rusting child's bicycle.

When our neighborhood decided that we should all have garage sales on the same day, once a year, as a way to keep out "the undesirables" who come our way looking for sales, I threw a fit. And then decided to have sales frequently. (Although I haven't actually held many, because we donate a lot to the trucks who come around   looking for free clothes.)

Have we become such intrepid consumers of things we don't need, that shopping at used clothing stores, and cutting our own hair is a sign of being cheap?

Most of the hairstylists around here charge anywhere from $30.00 to $50.00 for a simple shampoo and cut. Extras, like color and perms. costs a great deal more.

Is there a special place in heaven for the people who had great hair while they were alive?

OK, I'm finished ranting.

Now, it's time to go make those chair covers, which I promise to photograph and post here when I'm finished. Call me a cheapskate, but I promise they will look great!

On Learning To Be a Catholic

2010-05-18T19:20:00.007-05:00

I wonder sometimes if cradle Catholics fully understand what we converts go through as we begin dipping our toes into Catholic waters. In our case, when we finally made the decision to stop attending our Protestant place of worship, and we attended the nearest Catholic parish for Mass for the first time, it was slightly uncomfortable.

In the first place, most good Catholics know the mass liturgy by heart, and use the worship aid sparingly if at all. The worship sheet usually contains the Psalm response, which is helpful, and the page numbers for the hymns.

I didn't know the liturgy, other than the Creed and the Lord's prayer when we began our wonderful Catholic adventure.

I didn't even know that you can follow along in the front of hymn book, or bring along a missal if you are unsure of things.

It's hard to explain just how strange it all was at first, even though it was also exhilarating. The kneeling came easily; I loved the humility I saw being expressed by eight or nine hundred people all kneeling during the Eucharistic prayer. I loved observing the outstretched hands or the upturned faces as each member received, one by one, the body and blood of Christ.

I wasn't sure when to make the sign of the cross. I didn't know to bow my head as we recited the incarnatus est during the creed. As for genuflections...I was afraid I would fall down and not be able to get up again.

It reminded me of my first day as a camp counsellor at Camp Chimney Corners. The staff, mostly college students, had arrived a week prior to the opening of camp for orientation. After a long and fairly chilly day in the refreshingly cool Berkshires, we were all ready for hot showers before retiring to our cabins.

The showers were rather rustic, being outdoors and consisting of wooden partitions with no roof, sited on a cement pad, with individual shower heads in each "stall". By the end of the summer I found it quite wonderful to shower in the moonlight with an occasional owl off in the distance to keep us company, but that first evening was more a matter of waiting for a turn to let the abundant hot water warm up shivering limbs.

There was in fact plenty of hot water. The difficulty was that in order to get the hot water to run, you had to hold on to a chain. As soon as you let go of the chain, the water stopped. I quickly grasped the essential task, and held on with my right hand, allowing the hot water to flow down. Then I paused. I reached for my shampoo bottle with my left hand, and could not for the life of me figure out how to open it and wash my hair with only one hand. I tried biting the cap with my teeth, but to no avail. And I really did not want to let go of the chain and stop the flow of hot soothing water!

But, seeing no way around it, I let go, soaped up, and then pulled the chain and rinsed off. Well, it was camp after all.

It was a night or two later, while showering again, that I noticed the nail in the wall.

Oh...that's how it was done. You attached the chain to the nail, and then you could have both hands free.

Another hurdle crossed.

By the time I learned when to make the sign of the cross during Mass (by watching everyone else) and when to bow during the creed, (my husband pointed that out) I had also figured out that most people did not in fact genuflect, and I could relax and not worry about tripping over myself.

I am not one to suggest that becoming a Catholic can be reduced to learning the appropriate gestures and rituals...far from it. But a lack of familiarity with such things does give pause to someone previously steeped in a different tradition.

Which may not be a bad thing.

It is the "otherness" of Catholicism that is so attractive, the world previously unknown and unexplored that lies before a newcomer and seems to beckon continually, inviting converts into one new experience after another. It is a constant series of surprises at first, each one more delightful than the last. It is daily Mass, and the Easter Vigil Mass, then the season of Easter punctuated by sprinkling water and a renewal of baptismal vows; the daily calendar of saints and blesseds, feasts and solemnities; the statues and medals; the rosary and the devotion to Mary; lighted candles everywhere, adoration and prayer in the real presence of Jesus. I am still experiencing and discovering, and I see no sign that the end is in sight.

Learning how to take an outdoor shower for an entire summer, and indeed the other camp experiences, learning to sleep at night with a bandanna sprinkled with a smelly substance called "Fly Dope" to keep the mosquitoes away, being comfortable with a resident bat the girls adopted and named Igor, hiking eight miles in the rain and then setting up camp along side a lake, these were all new and inviting experiences also in their own way.

But the still on-going season of discovering the Catholic Church is by far the richest and most rewarding one I have ever known. It is always in the end a discovery of truth, of things sacred, divine, holy. I suppose it is the difference between driving in a car across America, and riding in a rocket ship into outer space toward infinity and beyond!

Here's to the Catholic Church, to her new members as well as her long-time faithful. May we all continue together on the journey of discovery, the road that leads us closer to God.

Deo gratias!

The Princess at The Piano

2010-05-15T10:15:00.006-05:00

Last week a princess came for a piano lesson. She wore her tiara throughout the lesson, and of course played beautifully, as a princess should! She is a gifted child musically who is able to sight read her songs and read the words accompanying them at the same time! She sings on pitch and spends her playtime humming and singing almost without pause.

This six year old has been diagnosed with Crohn's disease. She will need more than ordinary support to carry her through the coming years as she and her family adjust to her condition. A tiara is one of her responses now; in coming days who knows what it may take. Her gift of music may help. Certainly prayer will be her mainstay. She will need to take what God has given her and celebrate it all, Crohn's and music, and a great deal more. If she can one day talk about the "gift of Crohn's" she will have arrived at a place of intense spiritual maturity.

I heard, about a year ago, a woman named Gianna Jessen talk about the gift,--yes the gift !-- of her Cerebral Palsy. She was burned with acid in her mother's womb during a failed abortion and now experiences some difficulty with her limbs as a result. But her reliance on God and her acceptance of who she is are astonishing and humbling. Hers is a voice that children with Crohn's and other difficult diseases need to hear.

I believe that this young child is one of God's many gifts to me. In my prayer she becomes a focus of needs far greater than mine. She also helps me to remember that any sort of talent is precious in the eyes of God, but in the end is not enough to rely upon. It is easy to forget that praise for a beautiful performance only lasts for a speck of time compared with the love of God which sustains us for a lifetime and more.

Please join me in praying for my student princess and for all children with serious needs.

Another Litany of the Saints

2010-05-13T15:13:00.001-05:00

Here's another version. I like them both! What do ya'll think?

The Litany of the Saints

2010-05-13T15:07:00.002-05:00

The Litany of the Saints is one of my favorite chants in the Catholic Church. It always moves me, any day of the week, for any occasion. When words fail, these will do!

Ave Maria

2010-05-11T19:03:00.002-05:00

For Mary in her month of May, a newer composition sung by choral experts!

Love That Does Not Measure

2010-05-11T17:54:00.004-05:00

My daughter attached a quotation from Mother Teresa to the top of my computer screen. It was one of those wonderful gestures twelve year old daughters will do from time to time.

The quote reads, "Intense love does not measure, it just gives."

I would like to think that Annie was telling me she recognizes the love I do give her, rather than hinting I ought to be more unsparing!

Of course we are all called to love with intensity, to love our God, the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the ever-present counsellor, the Holy Spirit.

We express that love when we love as parents, as mothers and fathers.

The mothers who, this past Sunday, gave up their morning for church and singing and the opportunity to sit in the choir with their beloved children, are a special group who know how to love without measure.

I am always awe-struck by their presence and by their love. And their music was gorgeous.

We love in individual instances it seems, those occasions when we are called to do something more than our friends might be doing, something for the sake of our children. We love with gestures and actions that seem insignificant compared to the daily labor of Mother Teresa, for example, yet at the end of our days, those individual instances will add up to a lifetime of love if we allow ourselves that calling.

There is such beauty in the photo above, those mothers and sons and daughters, because of where they all are and why they are there.

As we sang together at Mass in one of the anthems, so might we pray each day:

Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te.

On Sunday it was a special mother and child Mother's Day Mass, tomorrow it might be a packed lunch for school and a load of laundry, a change of kitty litter and a screen repair.

"Oh Lord, help us not to measure but to keep on giving."

Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te.

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T19:55:00.004-05:00

My day has been spent directing our Mother's Day Moms and Kids Choir, a wonderful choir with 80 voices that sang at Mass. This afternoon, my daughter and I hosted a bridal shower. So, not too much pampering has occured here at our house, but it has been a day to remember and reflect upon for some time to come. More on all this later. For now, God's blessings on all of you!

Happy Saturday!

2010-05-08T10:57:00.000-05:00

I love these! Happy Saturday!

When All Else Fails

2010-05-07T09:54:00.018-05:00

There is no question that being a kid can be tough. Homework has to be completed and then turned in (that's often the harder task around our house), rules have to be followed, expectations of parents and teachers have to be met. What's a kid to do with all this pressure?

Many years ago, in a small town in Pennsylvania, I can remember facing a difficult choice.

Mom had worked things out so that all eight children could be fed and bathed and put to bed every night with the least amount of fuss possible. Sandwiches for school lunches were made in a sort of assembly line, with slices of Wonder bread laid out in two rows. One parent slapped on the butter and the other parent added a slice of American cheese, the sandwiches were put into waxed paper and dropped into brown paper bags along with a box of raisins, and voila, lunch for school was ready.

Baths were a matter of allowing us, often in pairs, to dip in and out, with a scrub here and there, towel off and get into flannel pj.s made by Grandma in graduated sizes.

Everyone had the same bedtime, 7:00 or 7:30, regardless of their age so that one parent could read one set of bedtime stories, usually from Old Mother Westwind, and be done for the evening.

As I said, I faced one particular difficulty. I loathed the lunches my parents packed on their assembly line and could never quite finish one during lunch period in the school cafeteria. A cafeteria, by the way that did not in those days offer hot lunches. My teachers, having lived through the Depression, were not about to let children waste food by throwing any of it away. All left-overs had to be neatly packed up into the brown paper bags and taken home every afternoon at 3:00.

This would not have been difficult but for the fact that my parents also had a rule. No lunch food could be returned uneaten from school.

So I faced a choice. Would I risk my parent's displeasure or my teacher's? I talked it over with my best friend while walking home one day. Gretchen, an Irish Catholic from a similarly large family pointed out that it was mainly a matter of consequences. Was it going to be worse to stay after school, the usual punishment for offenses large and small, or be disciplined in some unforeseen way by my parents? What if my parents sent the same partially uneaten sandwich to school again the next day?

Horrors.

We stopped on the bridge that spanned the Tidioute Creek (or The Crick, as the locals called it) and contemplated the problem. Suddenly, without having to think more than a few seconds, we looked at each other, smiled, and then took out the contents of the brown paper bag and tossed them into the creek.

Problem solved.

This proved to be such a handy solution, we took to stopping every day to deposit the remains of lunch, so that by the end of the school year there must have been a flotilla of cheese sandwiches making their way downstream toward the Allegheny River.

Creative children will always find a way!

I am not sure what lesson to draw from this story other than the obvious; some flexibility is required when adults place demands on their kids. If a child simply can't swallow a cheese sandwich, the sandwich will end up in the creek somewhere, or the dumpster, or traded for someone else's peanut butter.

Parents, you see, don't always win, and I suppose that is a good thing. As long as children don't hurt themselves it is probably wise to allow them to deal with being between a rock and a hard place from time to time. Though I am not one to encourage deception. I suppose I would rather know from my daughter now if she is taking any evasive action, so that we can work it out together. But my instinct tells me that there are things I don't know.

Do I really want to know?

Hmmm...I'm not sure.

Choral Singing At Its Best

2010-05-06T08:23:00.003-05:00

I'm still under the weather with bronchitis, so blogging will be light.
How 'bout this for an uplift? Thanks again to the Anchoress, who finds great things.

Gracias

2010-05-05T09:57:00.002-05:00

Sheesh...I wish everyone could see this. It's beautiful.
Thanks to The Deacon's Bench for posting it.

The Pause That Refreshes

2010-05-05T08:27:00.003-05:00

The Anchoress outdid herself with this posting . Since I'm less than perfectly healthy today, I will pass on the treat without further comment!

When Daughters Become Mothers

2010-05-04T10:02:00.006-05:00

Being a new blogger myself, I haven't given enough attention on these pages to links with other great blogs.

Today, though I want to remedy that situation by sending you all to Theology of the Body, where you will read a lovely reflection written by a daughter about her mother.

It's a reflection we all ought to try as we mature and see our parents through the eyes of adulthood.

For my part, I can say that my own mother who gave birth to eight lively, intelligent and very opinionated children, had untold patience, care and love for all of us. She let us all go on to lead the lives we thought we
were meant to live, never holding on too tightly. What seemed to be criticisms at the time now appear for what they were: her attempts to mold us into loving, sensitive, and selfless adults.

Mom called us to high standards of frugality when her budget required that "we tighten our belts this month". She believed that a camping trip was an invigorating alternative to resort vacations. On those long road trips from Pennsylvania to Prince Edward Island , crammed into our station wagon with camping gear and essential clothing only, she led games of "I Packed My Trunk", and "Hinky Pinky" and many, many songs. When we were old enough we even sang in four part harmony, a feat not many families can boast.

Somehow Mom found money in the budget for all eight of us to have piano lessons, and she or my dad drove us 25 miles so we could take them. We all took turns practicing on an old upright piano they had acquired and painted white.

I don't imagine it was always easy to live on a pastor's salary, or for that matter to be a pastor's wife. But she entered into the heart and soul of each parish, accompanying my dad on his pastoral visits whenever it was helpful, going to meetings, and living with the occasional comments from parishioners about "all those electric lights on over at the manse". She made the wise decision to pay the electric bill herself, rather than listen to any more complaining about the "house that was lit up like a Christmas tree."

Mom and Dad are enjoying their retirement now and resting from their years of labor. They watch their children from a distance as we each attempt to raise our own sons and daughters, and they rarely offer advice. But their lives of sacrifice and good humor, and always giving more than they received have made their mark. And for that I am truly grateful.

The Color Blue

2010-05-04T06:00:00.007-05:00

During our first year of being Catholic, I sang for awhile in a parish choir. Our Director had the idea that we could present to the congregation a "Choral Motet Rosary".

It was a beautiful notion. The music we prepared allowed for meditation in between each decade. The Hail Marys were chanted by a small group of men holding rosaries. The congregation was invited to chant as well, while kneeling and praying with their own rosaries.

At our last rehearsal prior to the event the assistant director mentioned in an off-hand way, "Wear your black and white."

Behind me in the fourth row an elderly woman muttered in response,

"We ought to be wearing blue."

And she wore blue.

It was news to me at the time that blue is a color often associated with Mary.

As is red.

I did some brief research and found that blue is the color of an empress in early Byzantine iconography, and red is also the color associated with royalty. Sometimes images of Mary show her wearing both colors.

In some northern renaissance representations, red points to the passion and the suffering Mary will undergo at the foot of the cross.

Though the colors are lovely, I also love the purity and serenity of Mary when she is carved from white material.

In any color I will find Mary as dear as she already is, and it's nice to understand what her colors can mean.

And I might wear blue in her honor from time to time too.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

The Church That Father Stan Built

2010-05-02T13:30:00.003-05:00

In June of 2007, a priest from the state of Tamil Nadu, in South India, arrived in Dallas to serve in the parish community of All Saints. Father Stan, as we now know him, was taking a sabbatical leave from the diocese of Kumbakonam, where he had primarily served since his ordination in 1980. Leaving behind the joys and the challenges of daily pastoral work in his poor, rural parishes, Fr. Stan came to find refreshment and a new perspective in the Dallas Diocese.

In some ways the contrasts he discovered couldn't be more marked. Where Father Stan had small churches with no pews, worshippers sitting and kneeling on the floor during mass, in Dallas he found a large church, pews filled to overflowing with relatively well- to- do people at multiple masses every weekend.

Where Father Stan had one housekeeper, and a sacristan to aid him, in Dallas he is part of a large staff. In addition the parish has many willing volunteers who see it as their lay vocation to serve the church in a variety of ways.

From a Diocese where Hindu temples dominate and Christians make up only 6% of the population (compared to India's national average of 2% Christian) he found a Catholic Diocese thriving in the midst of many Christian churches, overall roughly 50% of the population Christian, with some 38% identifying themselves as Catholic.

In the end it may be the differences in demographics that will tell the biggest tale as Father Stan returns home to India later this June and reflects on his three years among us.

As Father Stan explained, when missionaries sought converts in South India, it was often the poorest people who responded. Due to India's caste system, in addition to being poor, these people of the Sudra class were at the lower end of the social heap as well.

The top of the heap, India's Brahmins , are mostly not converted for the simple reason that they have always been the Hindu priestly class.

Between the Brahman Hindu caste and the Sudra, Christians also can be found in the two middle classes. Father Stan and the people he grew up with were from these middle groups, mostly farmers, people well-respected in their agricultural villages.

While the caste system is officially on the wane in India, in rural villages old customs remain. Father Stan recounts that until as recently as 30 years ago, a Sudra could not be ordained a priest because no parish would have accepted him.

Today, members of different castes still sit in their "section" of a church, especially if the church is built in the old cruciform plan. They will eat together as a group at a church function, but outside church gatherings, they may not even eat at the same event.

Pastorally, this is challenging for India's priests.

In his typically quiet and unassuming way, though, Father Stan told of a change of heart that occurred while he was the priest of Our Lady of Lourdes parish.

The one hundred and fifty year old building he and his parishioners were using was only large enough to hold a small percentage of the 5000 people seeking mass on a regular basis. It was clear that a new building had to be built, and so Father Stan undertook a building campaign.

Realizing that the old style of separation into castes at Mass could not continue, he planned to build the new church not in the shape of a cross, which by its nature offered convenient sections for each group to occupy, but in a simple rectangle.

Father Stan recalls that when people got wind of the plans for the new church's design, they announced that this church could not be built.

"Where will we sit?"

Father Stan encouraged them not to worry about such things, explaining that there would be plenty of room in the building, and seating would sort itself out. The idea of putting up barriers to section people off was broached, but Father Stan again reminded them that they needed to get the building up and running, and seating could be managed at a later point.

As he talks about this, Father Stan points out that it is no small matter to placate people whose way of doing things is deeply embedded in the social fabric of India. All priests in India realize that the ideal of one body in Jesus Christ is not being met as long as the caste system remains in place. But undoing it is a huge pastoral problem. Priests learn to be patient with the system even while they try to undo it.

The new Our Lady of Lourdes church was built and blessed by the Bishop, and predictably, the lower caste loved it. The upper castes were not enthusiastic.

But through God's grace and the kind patience of Father Stan, people came to accept the arrangement. It is possible today at our Lady of Lourdes to sit wherever one chooses.

Of course Father Stan points out, outside of church his parishioners still separate in the old way.

To know Father Stan is to know a gentle, loving and spiritual man. It is also to know a priest for whom the advice "preach the Gospel daily and occasionally use words" is most wonderfully lived.

Not having the patience or the loving trust that Father Stan has, I cannot imagine myself ever doing what he did. The longer I ponder this miracle, the more I realize that it took some very special pastoral gifts for him to have overcome in Our Lady of Lourdes Church centuries of custom.

Do his parishioners realize that they are embodying in a very new and special way the unity of the body of Christ as they mix together under one roof in the name of Jesus Christ? Surely they sense the movement toward genuine Christian living as they sit and kneel behind and in front of and next to people from other classes.

Father Stan has many accomplishments to his credit, two masters degrees from the "Greg" in Rome, the position of Rector of the Minor Seminary in his Diocese.

But his greatest achievement may well be the church that he built in a poor and rural part of South India, the church shaped as a rectangle where everyone now sits together. It is called Our Lady of Lourdes Church, though in my mind it will always be the Church That Father Stan Built.

St. Joseph Pray For Us

2010-05-01T11:52:00.008-05:00

"What must Joseph have been, how grace must have worked through him, that he should have been able to fulfill this task of the human upbringing of the Son of God. For Jesus must have resembled Joseph: in his way of working, in the features of his character, in his way of speaking. Jesus' realism, his eye for detail, the way he sat at table and broke bread, his preference for using everyday situations to give doctrine--all this reflects his childhood and the influence of Joseph.
"It is not possible to ignore this sublime mystery: Jesus, who is man, who speaks with the accent of a particular district of Israel, who resembles a carpenter called Joseph, is the Son of God."

Josemaria Escriva, Christ is Passing By, 1974.

I have mentioned before that Joseph had not been a part of my devotional life prior to becoming Catholic. Even today I am just beginning to learn about this great saint, a saint second only to Mary.

The hiddenness of Joseph, which is his most obvious trait I suppose, is also what attracts me to devotion to him. It is to the Mary shrines that I am first drawn once inside a church, and yet Joseph is the patron of the church. The Joseph shrines support and complement the beautiful statues of Mary with their lit candles emitting a warm light. It is Joseph who nurtures the existence of the church, in the way of so many who labor behind the scenes to make something happen for which others will have the more visible responsibility. Candles burn at the St Joseph statues also, but at least in our eucharistic chapel at All Saints, they never seem to outshine the Mary statue for pride of place.

Remaining behind the scenes is an under- appreciated role in our culture, it often seems to me. I certainly have had to learn its value.

I can still vividly recall an incident from childhood when my small- town seventh grade class performed a play that I had written and directed. Our class teacher at the end of the performance announced that the play had been written and directed by "the Seventh Grade", so as not to leave anyone out! I was mortified. But it was a good lesson and I am much more content to remain anonymous than I once was.

Perhaps Joseph doesn't teach us that anonymity is always a good; certainly Catholics should expect to be given credit where credit is due. Yet, receiving credit is never the chief goal of any activity that is truly God centered. Paul , in particular , has a habit of reminding us to give the glory due to God.

Joseph labored for his family, quietly, silently in terms of any public record available, and with a devotion to God that must have been deep and abiding. He made it possible for Jesus and Mary to live a reasonably secure existence, with food on the table and a roof over their heads. As Josemaria Escriva reminds us, he must have taught Jesus to be unafraid of conflict, to be direct and without pretense.

This way of being a father is a wonderful role for today's fathers, and a reminder that what counts in fatherhood is not dependent on one's economic success, beyond earning what is necessary for the family, or likewise dependent on other public achievements.

For all of us who labor in a variety of ways, small and insignificant or burdened with responsibility, St. Joseph pray for us! As we reflect on our life and it's meaning, guide us to contentment with what God has planned for us, and show us that every action we perform in God's name gives dignity and meaning to our efforts.

Hail Mary

2010-04-29T20:35:00.003-05:00

My daughter and I went out this evening to buy a flowering plant for her to take to school tomorrow. Her class will be creating a Mary garden, a perfectly lovely activity for sixth grade.

Since May is Mary's month I will be posting off and on on things Marian.

As a preview, here is a short video from Love To Be Catholic.

Come Again?

2010-04-26T08:40:00.002-05:00

Thanks go to First Things, where I found this Monday morning bit of cheer.

Piano Lessons

2010-04-23T08:57:00.003-05:00

"Sam, did you practice this week?"

"Well, no, I FORGOT! And, my brother keeps annoying me."

"Do you think your brother gets in your way when you are trying to practice because he kind of admires you and he wants to be like you?"

"Well, I do know more about paleontology than he does, lots more."

"Shall we make up a song about your favorite dinosaur that you could practice playing at home?"

And we did...though Sam couldn't remember how to spell the title (he is going to look it up at home.)

Now that we have his arm-pits unstuck and he has a song about his favorite thing in the whole world, maybe, just maybe he will remember to practice!

Another first grade girl walked into her lesson waving her assignment notebook.

"Someone put stars and scribbles in my book and it wasn't me!"

"Stars and scribbles? May I see?"

"There, stars and a lot of scribbles. I don't scribble so it can't have been me."

"Oh, I see, those are daffodils and stems."

"How can you tell?"

"Well, I think I was doodling during your last lesson."

Silence.

"Oh.....I still think they are stars and scribbles."

Michael, an eleven year old student, is preparing for his school talent show which is coming up in May.

"Do you want to hear my songs?"

"Sure, what are you going to play?"

"Well, I have put together a medley of four songs. Three are ragtime and the last one is Ode to Joy, because it's so joyful!"

Now, there's a medley for you!

Easter at Dartmouth College

2010-04-22T08:25:00.002-05:00

For a refreshing look at what the Dartmouth College community did this Easter, take a look! We have a special fondness for college faith communities in our house; my husband was baptized while a student. There is more going on at colleges these days than meets the eye.

Pray for college chaplains!

Dominican Province of St. Joseph Easter at Dartmouth College Blog op-stjoseph.org

Joy: Dominican Sisters of Mary

2010-04-21T09:42:00.002-05:00

I love these Sisters. And they play soccer too!

Be Who You Are: The Visitation Sisters

2010-04-21T09:21:00.002-05:00

I love learning about religious orders.. This video of the Visitation Sisters is simple and sweet.

Our Joe

2010-04-20T11:16:00.008-05:00

I have always been a low-key person in almost every respect. Friends are greeted with a nickname, and are welcomed with a minimum of fuss in the sartorial department. And quite honestly, our best friends are the ones who make almost nothing of their accomplishments.

Years ago, a brilliant, youngish Dominican friar taught my husband how to use the breviary. We were Protestant at the time, but the prayers of the Catholic Church were very appealing.

We visited Joe from time to time in Washington D.C.. One year he welcomed us into his home, the House of Studies, for a few days just prior to Christmas. The three of us went out to see a Muppet movie, eat some afgan. food and enjoy the snowflakes that were falling in Northwest D.C.

A few years later, we went back again, this time with our newly adopted daughter and Joe took us to the zoo.

On each visit, our familiarity with the Catholic Church increased, and so too our comfort level with what seemed at the time to be strange practices... praying the rosary, kneeling during worship...things that no good protestant from my background had ever encountered.

When we made the decision to come into the Catholic Curch, it was Joe I contacted.

It did cross my mind that I might have to start calling him Father Joe, but no, he was still Joe as he gently and joyfully told us how to proceed.

The fact that he was calling from Rome did not seem overly important to me at the time. I was, after all, used to international calls.

After we entered the church and began to learn some nuts and bolts of how things are done, I realized that Joe had a religious name, Augustine. Some of his protestant friends called him Joe Gus, in deference to his "other" name.

I still called him Joe.

At some point I learned about the dicasteries in Rome, among them the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith, and realized that Joe worked there as a, what was it, an undersecretary? Someone named Ratzinger had been his boss before he became Pope.

Joe? Our Joe? This was the guy whom I had called in Rome and he had returned my call? Joe Gus?

You just never know. Humility hides greatness, if you are looking for certain kinds of greatness...position, fame, stature. But humility reveals another kind of greatness if you have the eyes to see. Patience, kindness, good humor, a love for the Muppets.

Our Joe has taught me a lot about the church.

Here he is in his latest role.

Oh, and now my daughter calls him "Archbishop Joe."

Dominican Province of St. Joseph Easter in Rome Blog op-stjoseph.org

Fiat

2010-04-20T09:50:00.009-05:00

Two words that tend to scare non-Catholics are adoration and obedience. I would be the first to admit that they scare Catholics also.

As a young college graduate I joined a Congregational Church in Portland, Maine where I was drafted to lead the Adult Discussion Group. I don't remember a lot about our discussions, but I will never forget the day we talked about how to be good stewards of our resources.

"I hate the words sacrifice and obedience; don't talk to me about making sacrifices just because we are Christians!"

This young mother vented and then withdrew from the discussion altogether. Nothing we could say eased her discomfort with any sort of demands being placed upon her that she herself did not generate. Obedience was in her mind the equivalent of childish behavior; it took away her freedom to think and make her own decisions. If the world was beginning to overflow its landfills, it was up to her to decide whether that mattered, whether she would reduce, reuse or recycle. And the ten commandments? They were there in the background but they did not require anything so hard-nosed as obedience.

Most Catholics I have met are not so entrenched in their own way of thinking and doing. Just to be Catholic, especially these days, calls for a sort of public declaration that rules, standards for behaviour, the will of God, are more important than individual opinion.

Yet many Catholics do withhold small parts of themselves from the teachings of the church. Complete, unfettered obedience is a tremendous act of humility that never comes easily to those of us who still long to share with Adam and Eve in the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

"The holy People of God shares also in Christ's prophetic office: it spreads abroad a living witness to him, especially by a life of faith and love and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips praising his name...The People unfailingly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgment, and applies it more fully in daily life." (Lumen Gentium, 12.)

"The people unfailingly adheres to this faith"...there's the rub.

Still, it's a beautiful call to us, and one which is life-giving. I suspect that it is a long - term goal rather than a given for most of us, but how wonderful to have as a goal such humility, such love for Christ and the church that his directions for life are valued above our own.

It is the antithesis of the position held by my long-ago companion in the faith in Maine. And it is the antithesis of our own desires to the extent that we do not fully embrace life with its accompanying shedding of all means to prevent life from occurring. The antithesis to our desire to remarry without the blessing of the church. The antithesis to a reception of Holy Communion without first having examined the soul and made a confession. The antithesis to every human act that is not worthy of the calling God has issued to us.

To be obedient is to love God more than we love ourselves, and that is an act of pure adoration.

There is the other word that offends. Adoration.

At a staff meeting in my former Episcopal church the members of the staff decried adoration as idol worship. "It amounts to worshipping a wafer more than God." "It is evil." "It is Catholic." Well, they got the last one right.

To adore is to place God first, nothing more, nothing less. It is the supreme act of a humble heart.

I wrote in an earlier blog post about my experience praying the Lord's prayer during adoration. The Lord's prayer is a sublime prayer of adoration, linking obedience (thy kingdom come, thy will be done) to the hallowing of God's name. It frees each of us to come to Christ present in the monstrance with outstretched hands and open hearts.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And a life that carries that attitude of faith out from the reservation chapel into the world is a holy life, a life dedicated to God.

Would that we could each find that perfect union of obedience and adoration, as Mary found it.

Fiat...let it be done to me according to your will.

The Perpendicular Pronoun

2010-04-15T14:25:00.005-05:00

"...for God has granted to man a dignity which is near to divine (Ps 8:5-6). In every child which is born and in every person who lives or dies we see the image of God's glory. We celebrate this glory in every human being, a sign of the living God, an icon of Jesus Christ." (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae , #84.)

My husband recently suggested that I slow down in my blog posting, lest I run out of stories. His comment sparked a train of thought that has been on-going since then: Why am I so inclined to tell stories, and is story- telling the best way to accomplish what I have set out to do?

It seems to me lately that stories are what I posses, they are the coin of my realm, and to the extent that they reveal some small part of God and his church, they are worth sharing. The difficulty is that so often, they seem to involve what Sir Humphrey Appleby, in "Yes, Prime Minister", once called the "perpendicular pronoun."

This blog was never meant to be a reason to talk about myself. In fact , lest you think it comes at all easily, I tell stories only because I hope and pray that they are in essence about someone else, or some point that is not me-centered.

Someone I know once said "people write their best about things they know the best", or words to that effect. This is true, at least in my case.

My fund of stories comes from interactions I have with people; relatives, friends, strangers who stray into my life and leave an impression. Sometimes the impressions are fleeting, often more long-lasting. If they serve as "points of light" then I want to share them.

Mostly, these stories are about life, life in tiny increments. They are about people who do small things that, in the hands of God, leave great impressions. Mustard seeds that God turns into giant oaks.

Please forgive, then, the use of the perpendicular pronoun. Think of it only as a point of entry into a bigger, more glorious world, a world in which we are all, as the psalm says, fearfully and wonderfully made. A world in which our interactions are more than the I, and the you, but a we so large it includes the saints,the angels and our Lord himself.

Unwelcome Guests

2010-04-13T08:18:00.009-05:00

We had a visitor on our patio last night, a moth so large it could have been a bat. After some web checking, we think it was a Polyphemus.

Our Polyphemus didn't stay long, but we are nevertheless reminded that the insect population is wonderfully varied. Personally, I enjoy these creatures as long as they remain outdoors.

My daughter joins me in believing strongly that large moths, bats and all types of lizards should live outside the house. Inside, cats and humans are acceptable. Dogs would be too if we had the room. I have even stretched to hampsters, fish, and snails. But there I draw the line.

Ok, a hermit crab or two. But that's all. I MEAN IT!

Rats will never become pets in my house.

Never.

Regina Caeli

2010-04-13T07:50:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Deacon Greg for this morning greeting. It's lovely. And I am a sucker for bells.

Christ Our Light

2010-04-12T12:42:00.015-05:00

During the early moments of the great Easter Vigil, while the new Christ candle is being carried into a darkened church, a solo voice intones "Christ our light" three times. Then beginning with the Christ candle and spreading from person to person, the tapers held by each worshipper are lit until the faces of every man and woman, every child, the celebrant and deacons, altar servers and choir, are lit by the light of Christ.

This year I carried that moment with me throughout the first week of Easter, that visible expression of a new life, a life brought to us out of a violent and hate-filled death , a life overflowing with the opportunity to be close to Christ, to live in his kingdom, the kingdom of unlimited possibilities for joy.

I tried to explain the meaning of the Vigil to my R.E. class, none of whom have ever attended one.

In the beginning, the earth was without form and void, Genesis tells us, and out of nothing God brought everything we know as life; birds, fish, animals of all kinds, trees, vegetation, and humanity, a miraculous creation of beings given capabilities far beyond those of the birds and the fish and the animals.

And then something happened to humanity, to God's precious creatures. We call it sin, and its effect was to create within human hearts another formless void, a place where God the loving creator was not wanted.

God bent down, breaking through infinite time and space, to be with his creatures on earth, in time, in human form, to live and dwell among us in Jesus his son. Our human hearts, still in darkness, could not receive him. And so we killed him, the very one who had given us life in the beginning.

But God was not finished. Out of death he brought life, Christ's life, and offered it again to his creatures, saying he still loved us so much that he could not abandon us to our own worst selves. He brought us his light, the light of Christ, so that we would have a comforting presence, a guiding hand, a loving Father to see us through until the end of our mortal days and then beyond.

Christ our light!

Of course, I also told them about the adult baptisms and confirmations, and the way everyone gathers around the baptismal font to watch each person who is asking to be baptized kneel in the font, dressed in white. Then the priest pours the waters of baptism on each bowed head.

I talked about the litany of saints, one of my favorite elements of the Vigil. In fact, I love the litany whenever we sing it.

And I offered them this: if there is one liturgy to experience in the Catholic church, it is the Easter Vigil because it contains everything about our faith from the beginning right up to the present moment. It is the Catholic faith in miniature.

Christ our light!

I have always loved candlelight. When I pray at home for any length of time I light candles. They warm and enliven and always, always remind me of what I carry deep within my heart: Christ our light, the divine presence who gives joy and hope and promises a future.

Christ our light!

Thanks be to God!

My England

2010-04-09T20:44:00.005-05:00

While growing up, I was introduced to England, the land of my forebears, through the usual channels of literature and television. I committed to memory parts of the prologue to the Canterbury tales, read Shakespeare and watched Masterpiece Theater on Sunday nights.

It wasn't until I spent a year studying at Manchester College in Oxford, that I experienced for myself a bit of England in all its glorious richness.

Manchester College was (and still is I imagine) partly a training college for Unitarian pastors, partly a college for average British students, as well as a college for American students seeking a year of abroad study. Today it is affiliated with the University in Oxford, though when it was founded it was a separate institution for "dissenters". When I studied there I had the best of both worlds open to me, the lectures, the old Oxford architecture, the history apparent everywhere that told tales of past glories and sad division. And then there were the students at Manchester, many of whom represented the dissident past, the English Unitarians, a part of history about which I knew almost nothing. (It would have been even more fun had I known some Catholics in Oxford, those other dissident folk who were so famously martyred for their beliefs in England, but I don't recall meeting a single Catholic that year.)

I loved the Unitarians I met in England. They revealed to me the England I still carry around with me now in memory. I got to know them through my friend Penny, a woman who was studying to be a Unitarian minister.

On weekends Penny was assigned to various Unitarian parishes in the surrounding Cotswold villages where she would preach and lead worship services. She took me along with her to fill in as the accompanist at these churches. Ever ready for an adventure, I went out with her on several occasions in her small car that was always seemingly on the verge of breakdown. When we arrived at whatever village was hosting us for the morning or evening, we were invariably fed a bountiful tea, a pure delight to a young American. The vast array of baked goods was memorable.

Then followed the worship service. Penny and I would take a few minutes to survey the church, and I would examine the musical instrument available, usually a piano or a harmonium. I had never played a harmonium before, but I got the hang of it. The trick is to pump the pedals continuously so that air can flow through to the bellows and keep the sound going. Stop pumping and the tones will die away.

I don't remember any of the hymns we sang, or their texts, probably because playing an old harmonium in a damp church takes a good bit of concentration. But I do remember Mrs. Heywood.

Mrs. Heywood, one of the many obviously committed Unitarians present, older and without personal diffidence or timidity, invariably sat in the back of the church. This was quite possibly because of the style and size of her hats, which, had they been in front of others would have blocked their view entirely.

Mrs. Heywood had a large voice to match her tastes in hats, and she sang with complete confidence. She especially loved to hold onto high notes, so much so that I would be forced to pedal away furiously trying to sustain these long notes until Mrs. Heywood was ready to move on to the next musical phrase. There was no arguing with Mrs. Heywood, no moving the music forward unless she was ready to move also.

Afterwards, the ever-present sandwiches would re-appear, and tea would be on again. Mrs. Heywood would join in with the others, Penny would say a final prayer, and another Sunday would come to a close.

There was no pretense in these Sunday gatherings, no attempt at fashion other than Mrs. Heywood's hats, no intense conversation in the manner of serious undergraduates over their elevenses, nothing but friendly give and take among a fairly elderly group of people. I don't remember anything religious ever being discussed. It was civilized, warm and enormously comforting to a young student away from home for a year.

In the end, my year in England will remain in memory a year of self -discovery and study, to be sure, but it will also be the year during which I made the choice to spend part of my weekends volunteering in churches and hanging around with people like Penny and Mrs. Heywood, and many other kind souls. I made the decision to attend seminary myself only two or three years after that year. While I finally left Protestant ministry behind, I have never left the love for church in all its sorts and conditions. I don't know what were the beliefs of all those Unitarians I met, and it probably doesn't matter. They certainly didn't lead me astray in any way. As with many good church people, it was their kindness, their hospitality, their obvious love for their church that has remained with me.

It will not always be the Catholic Church that brings us into union with Christ, though it will be within the Catholic Church that the fullness of the faith is located. In my case it was several different churches that played a role before I found my home in Catholicism. I am thankful to Penny and Mrs. Heywood and the other English Unitarians who set me on my adult path toward serving the church. They will always be for me, as much as Shakespeare, Blake or Dorothy Sayers, my England!

Easter Sunday: Dinner With Friends

2010-04-05T16:56:00.006-05:00

Place some ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, asparagus, strawberries and chocolate cake on the table, raise your glasses to the cry "Christ is Risen" , then add plenty of spirited conversation about church matters and you have a very Catholic Easter Dinner. Our dinner with friends was perhaps more spirited than usual, not because of the news beat being pounded by the secular press, but because right at home in our parish we had a controversy brewing. People with strong opinions, too little sleep due to the late hour of the previous night's Easter Vigil, and a deep commitment to the church are bound to raise their voices in what my aunt used to call a brawl around the dinner table. It was a good-natured brawl, though there were undercurrents. One might even say it was a festive brawl, flowers and champagne mimosas in abundance.

It had to do with whether under any circumstances a lay person can offer a "reflection" in the place of a homily at Mass. And what a homily is versus a reflection. And what the role of women is in the church and , well, you can imagine the rest.At one point it was my turn to defend the role of the clergy in the pulpit, convert that I am, and to explain why I, a former pastor do not mind the fact that I cannot and should not be ordained a priest. I suppose I have earned the right to speak about this issue since I have been "on the other side." Though I don't believe it is my previous experience of twenty years that directs my thinking. It is simply the beauty of the Catholic position.

Catholicism asks us to be more than we think we can be, or know ourselves to be; it asks us to scale heights of virtue and self -sacrifice that the culture around us may never require or dare to consider.

Instead of simply writing checks for charity we are asked to see Jesus in the poor among us: the odd person who comes into a church meeting and asks for money to get on a bus, the woman holding up a sign asking for help on the edge of a shopping center, stifling a yawn because she is weary from so much poverty, the teenager with no shoes who walks quietly into a restaurant and sits down waiting for someone to help her find a meal.

Instead of cultivating relationships that are convenient and give us mere pleasure, we are asked to put aside our needs and look for joy. Joy in chastity, in love that endures, in prayerful self-giving.

Instead of locating happiness in endless parties, and trivial distractions, we are offered the Holy Spirit whose unseen presence fills us with the wine of contentment.

Instead of self- fulfilment we are led to lose ourselves, relying not on our own fixed notions of who we are, but opening ourselves up to who God knows we are.

Instead of the ordinary we are offered the holy.

In the light of holiness, all the issues we talked over at dinner reduce to one: not my will, but thy will be done. To live that prayer every day is to climb the Mt. Everest of virtue and faith. And of course we never do that on our own.The Catholic faith holds out grace as the daily means to live lives we could not otherwise live. It is the grace of the risen Lord in whom we live and have our being. As our Easter dinner conversation demonstrated, we are , each one of us, at a different point on the path to holiness. And so we talk and share opinions, and feelings, and disappointments, and we argue about interpretations. But the amazing truth is that God is there anyway.

The church does not permit women to be ordained to holy orders, or to preach. That is only a problem if it is viewed from a place which says, my will, not your will, my Lord. A call to the priesthood is not after all a personal life choice, but a very particular calling from God. No one of us can manufacture it, man or woman.

Once we are free to say with Mary, fiat, we are free to lose ourselves in the beautiful calling to holiness which belongs to each one of us. And quite frankly, the road to holiness gives me quite enough to do and be. It is truly all I need. And for that I am grateful.

The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed!

Easter Day

2010-04-04T12:31:00.002-05:00

May the joys of Easter be yours.

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Holy Saturday: Let Us Live In Expectation

2010-04-03T08:15:00.002-05:00

Good Friday is the day of our greatest hope, matured on the Cross when Jesus dies, taking his last breath, crying out in a loud voice: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:36). Handing over his existence "given" to the hands of the Father, he knows that his death becomes the rising-point of life, as his seed in the earth must break itself that the plant might grow: "If the grain of wheat falls to the ground and not die, it remains alone; if it does die, it will produce much fruit" (Jn 12:24). Jesus is the grain of wheat fallen to the ground, spent, broken, dead, and through this he's able to bear fruit. From the day in which raised, the Cross, that appears as the sign of abandonment, solitude, failure, becomes a new impetus: from the depths of death rises the promise of eternal life. On the Cross already shines the victorious splendor of the dawn of Easter Day.

In the silence of this night, in the silence that encases Holy Saturday, touched by the unconfined love of God, let us live in expectation of the dawn of the Third Day, the dawn of the victory of the love of God, the dawn of light that allows the eyes of the heart to see, in a new way, life, difficulties, suffering. Our failures, our disappointments, our bitterness that seems to mark the fall of everyone, are illuminated by hope. The act of love of the Cross confirmed by the Father and the blazing light of the Resurrection wraps around and transforms everything: from betrayal can grow friendship, from denial, pardon; from hatred, love.

Pope Benedict XVI

Please see Whispers in the Loggia for more.

Let us all live in the expectation that our every hope is met in the Risen Lord.

Simon Of Cyrene; Gift To the Suffering

2010-04-02T10:24:00.003-05:00

If there is one figure who stands out for me during the reading of the Passion narrative, it is Simon, the man who was compelled to help carry the cross of Jesus. Upon his shoulders was placed a burden he had not planned to carry, a weight that was perhaps previously unknown to him. We don't know his inner thoughts as he received the heavy cross and together with Jesus dragged it, stumbling perhaps, toward Golgatha. But we do know that Jesus was there beside him. This must have been transformative.

Of all the teachings of the church, the one we will turn to in our worst moments may well be this one: when we unite our suffering with the suffering of Jesus we will find our burden transformed, shared, made bearable, and at the same time made meaningful in a way we could not have imagined. To unite with Jesus in suffering and pain is to find a purpose in what otherwise seems to be senseless. It is to participate in some way with the great drama of redemption.

But it is not easy. I tend to have dark moments before I can agree to the cross, moments when a heavy despairing darkness wraps around me. "Lord Jesus, help me." And then our Lord, who carried upon his shoulders the cross of every pain and burden comes to me. I have never known the public trial and humiliation he knew, never endured the sheer physical pain he endured , and still he says "I will carry your cross with you." In my own weakness, it may be a period of time before I can pray the words with Jesus, "Not my will, but thine be done."

"Offer it up" is the old Catholic saying. Offer to Jesus every minor irritation, hurt, annoyance or sorrow, so that when the time comes for great crashing waves of grief and pain we will instinctively offer to unite with Jesus what we could not otherwise bear. And there, inexplicably, we will find a measure of peace, even joy.

Simon of Cyrene teaches that when we suffer we meet Jesus; he teaches us to walk with Jesus on the path of pain. He shows us that we can walk with Jesus all the way to Golgatha, to our own death if necessary, without walking alone, and never senselessly to the extent that we freely unite our will with that of our Lord's. For that is what walking with Jesus truly means. Simon's action was an acceptance of God's will for himself, and thus a joining together with Jesus in the inevitable pain of carrying that large wooden beam .

May God be praised for Simon of Cyrene and for allowing us to find meaning in our suffering.

Fiat, Adimpleatur

May the most just, the most lovable,
and the most high Will of God be done,
be fulfilled, be praised and exalted
in all things forever.

Amen.

The Mourners

2010-04-02T08:18:00.002-05:00

I came across a link to an art exhibition currently in New York City, but coming to Dallas in October. It is called "The Mourners"; its figures are from a tomb in Dijon. I have visited this tomb and am delighted to know that we will be able to see these moving figures here in Dallas.

You can visit the site here:

The Mourners

Lamentation

2010-04-01T11:32:00.001-05:00

The Splendor of Spring

2010-03-31T08:50:00.000-05:00

Holy Wednesday

2010-03-31T08:38:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading two pieces from my daily round of the blogs, and combined they offer a way forward in this Holy Week of woes. The woes, mind you, come from outside the church as well as within. We all still grieve about crimes committed by priests. Though, as context, when I was a protestant pastor, our national office had a desk piled high with accusations of similar crimes. No church of any stripe has been immune from abusive clergy. But to have the attention of the national media so intently focused on the Catholic Church , and the Murphy case, while being at the same time uninformed regarding facts and procedures, is unbearably sad. Mostly it is sad because the souls of these writers seem to be separated from a loving God and a beautiful church. A church which could take them and enfold them in her arms and give them lives of grace instead of lives of hate. Sad too because of the souls who read their words and are then discouraged from drawing nearer to the redemption and glory found in our church.

That is why these two pieces, combined, offer a corrective, a balance and the wings of hope for us as we journey toward the cross.

First, linked by Whispers, some writing from Thea Bowman.

Then, a calm instructive piece written by Jimmy Aiken which clarifies all the misunderstandings contained in the NYT articles.

Read them both and then go forward toward the glory of the Triduum.

Birthday Greetings

2010-03-30T09:39:00.002-05:00

Taylor Marshall (no relation) is celebrating his birthday.
Happy Birthday Taylor!
You can all send him your greetings at his blog, Canterbury Tales.

God Hung Among Thieves

2010-03-30T08:37:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a retreat that is intended to follow one direction takes a different path. Because of the sad attacks on the Catholic Church and more specifically on the Pope, my prayers and intentions have for now shifted. Mine is still very much a Holy Week walk; but the cross we are carrying as church has taken on an inescapable form. All of us, the members of the Catholic Church, carry this cross together. To distance ourselves from this cross would be to echo the denials of Peter. When our Pope is attacked, we are attacked, and so we must pray with renewed fervor for the Pope, and for ourselves, the body of Christ. And equally we must pray for the the New York Times and other media outlets who are so blinded by prejudice and ignorance they cannot now seemingly tell the difference between the truth and calumny.

Below, a quote which is making the rounds of the blogosphere:

“To be connected with the church is to be associated with scoundrels, warmongers, fakes, child-molesters, murderers, adulterers and hypocrites of every description.

It also, at the same time, identifies you with saints and the finest persons of heroic soul of every time, country, race, and gender.

To be a member of the church is to carry the mantle of both the worst sin and the finest heroism of soul because the church always looks exactly as it looked at the original crucifixion, God hung among thieves.”

— – Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., “The Holy Longing”

Holy Week Monday

2010-03-29T18:56:00.001-05:00

"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul...." (Emily Dickenson) And these days with such vicious attacks on our church and on the Pope himself, we are sustained by this hope which quietly sings in each heart that is united to Christ. The Holy Week which has begun draws us ever closer to our Lord on his journey toward the cross and reminds us that our hope came with a cost, a cost freely paid. As we unite ourselves with our Lord and journey with him through out the week, may we hold fast to the thing which perches in the soul and guides us toward Calvary and then the empty tomb.

Holy Week

2010-03-29T09:03:00.000-05:00

I am beginning a personal retreat. How it will develop I can't yet say, but no doubt posting will take a back seat. If the spirit nudges me in the direction of writing anything down, I certainly will. But in the meantime, Sent To Be will have to rely on its archives.

May we all move closer to our Lord during this holiest of weeks.

The Aunts

2010-03-26T09:54:00.003-05:00

My Grandmother came from Salem, Massachusetts of old Puritan stock. Her three sisters never married and were known collectively as "The Aunts." As far as I know, these three old dears were never in step with the world around them, though they led useful and interesting lives. To us, as children, they were always kind and at the same time formidable. They took us to the beach in Salem, toting sand buckets and shovels, and then sat in lawn chairs wearing their sensible dresses and sturdy shoes while we waded into the frigid water and made sand castles. It was always an odd mixture of duty and affection, their doings with us. We were known as "Buddy's Children", which made us sound like an outreach; the eight of us classed together as a strenuous chore which my Grandparents undertook once a year, and with which the Aunts were determined to help no matter the cost. They threw themselves into our visits with everything they possessed, inviting us to their cottage, as their old carriage house was known, to visit the garden and eat strawberries. They took us to the beach and to the local outdoor Puritan museum where we always loved trying out the stocks. The Aunts, as far I remember, never got into the stocks themselves, but they willingly took pictures of us as we gleefully locked ourselves in.

The occasion I recall most vividly, however, was one Thanksgiving when I had come down from College to join the family gathering in Marblehead. Aunt Alice was delegated to take me back to the bus stop for my return to Maine on a snowy Sunday afternoon. The nearest Greyhound stop was at a local diner, just off the Interstate. It was my Aunt's understanding that we had actually to flag down the bus if we wanted it to stop. Although I think I knew better I was in no position to contradict my Great Aunt Alice, who was rock solid in her beliefs. Aunt Alice parked right in the middle of the driveway exiting the Diner and put on her flashers. As I sank down into the back seat, she opened the car door, and got out, waiting for signs of the bus. It was not long before the bus was sighted, and Aunt Alice began waving her arms frantically, trying to get the driver's attention. He slowed down, pulled over and opened the door.

"Can I help you Ma'am?"

""My niece needs a ride back to college in Maine. She is right here with all her things."

"Well Ma'am, this is the Northeastern University basketball team. We don't go to Maine today."

By this time my aunt had attracted some attention, no doubt because she was blocking the exit from the diner. The diner manager appeared and with a certain incredulity informed Aunt Alice that she would have to move her car and park it in the lot. And turn off her flashers. And stop waving her arms about. The bus, he said, would be arriving soon and there would be no need to flag it down. Besides, he said, the driver always stopped for coffee and a piece of pie.

The Northeastern University bus driver drove off laughing, and I was sure, the whole team laughed too.

At this point I finally spoke up and told Aunt Alice that I would be just fine waiting inside the diner and really, she ought to be getting home because it was snowing. And then I prayed that I would never see any of these people again.

Every time I recall this episode, I am thankful that I have known such remarkably independent people, such fearless souls who try their hardest even when they are way outside their comfort zones. They are heroes to me, "the Aunts". As odd and as old-fashioned as they were they still tried hard to live in the twentieth century without caring how they came across to others.

I think that good evangelists in the Catholic Church know what it is like to be out of step. But they remain rooted to their spots in left field, and the longer they stay there the more respected they become. Dorothy Day and Mother Angelica come to mind in recent memory, but the lives of the saints bear constant witness to how often holy lives are misunderstood.
My Great Aunts were not Catholic, and they were not saints, yet their lives each had a kind of holy quality, a fierce witness to doing what is right regardless of the cost.

Aunt Maude, the eldest of the Aunts, gave money away generously, and told no one about her gifts. When she finally, in her nineties, entered a nursing home, she spent her days on the "sick floor" caring for the people who were more ill than she was.

We should all probably wade into the deeps and try harder to be holy, even at the cost of being unsuccessful, or laughed at or just plain wrong. Mother Theresa famously reminded us that it is not success that matters in our efforts, but faithfulness.

We try, in small ways to step outside our comfort zones here in our house. We make the sign of the cross and pray a grace before meals when we are in restaurants. We do not eat meat on Fridays, even when we are at a Catholic School function and meat is one of the options. We wear crosses and medals which are often visible. But these are just the first steps. The time will come when each one of us, in some way or another, will be asked to take a more radical, public course of action which will clash and clang. I only pray for the courage to be Catholic in whatever circumstance is called for, and if it means waving my hands in front of a passing bus, then so be it. Other people have done it before me.

May God be praised for his Glory.

Piano Lessons Updated

2010-03-25T17:41:00.007-05:00

This is my day to teach three children from the same family who are musically gifted. Bach was today's high- light , although the young man who has been playing with a cast is reserving judgement on whether Bach is the best composer. I told him he has to learn more of Bach's music before he can decide. Personally, I love Bach.

The young first grader who had sore arm pits at his last lesson, continued to have some difficulty. Today he announced that his armpits, while not sore, were sticking together. Also, his fingers hurt. Still, he is a musical child. Perhaps he is too young for lessons. He is certainly a long way from playing Bach, yet oddly enough I think that when (if) his arm pits recover he will do quite well on the piano. He is a very intelligent boy.

Another beautiful child, a six year old girl who is astonishingly gifted, has been having many stomach aches and bouts of sickness. When I learned that she underwent a stomach biopsy last week, I remembered how frightened she had appeared when she was sick all over my living room floor. Yesterday at her lesson she was pale and tired. I will be praying for her.

One more student will be in my prayers as well. Her Mother is having a difficult pregnancy and has been hospitalized for the third time in two months.

Piano students bring so much more than music with them to their lessons. I have learned many family secrets, shared in the trials of middle school, listened to tears of frustration and watched the development of gifted children who are far more talented than I am. God has sent me these children (yes, even the difficult ones) and I can only pray that our time together in weekly lessons bears some fruit, even if it is not always musical!

Here is a perennial favorite, not Bach as it happens, but Beethoven.

A World More Silent and More Strenuous

2010-03-25T08:24:00.008-05:00

"It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars; but this is not due to human activity but to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous." (Orthodoxy, pg. 131. You can find this book by G.K Chesterton at Ignatius Books.)

Chesterton has a point. I wonder what he would say to the recent phenomenon of talking on cell phones or texting while driving. Not to mention people carrying on one-sided conversations while they shop, startling some poor soul who is engrossed in choosing apples with no bruises, with these loud remarks, "think about that carefully before you make any decisions! Are you sure you want to go forward..." I have heard the strangest things in coffee shops and grocery stores.

If there were more walking and less hurrying here and there, there is no doubt the world would be quieter even though more active. There is activity and then there is activity. We don't get nearly enough of the physical kind that doctors say most assuredly keeps us healthy, fends off heart disease, diabetes, and even mental decline. And if we all were to make a vow to turn off the cell phones while walking , we could have a renewal of body and of mind and wouldn't that benefit everyone?

I have tried to walk on the track at our church while praying the rosary, which is suggested by a large sign posted near the entrance to the track. Even that is too much activity; I need either to pray or to walk, but not both lest one or the other of those necessary parts of daily life suffers. I have seen religious slowly pacing while praying and I might try that if I can find a nice cloister. Generally speaking, I am not a multi-tasker, which is no doubt apparent, but I wonder how many of us truly are?

Can any of us be strenuously involved in one activity if we are at the same time trying to do another? Consider what is required in order to be mentally active, to ponder, to think through a problem and weigh it, to discern, to pray.

Focus.

That has become a byword of parents and teachers, as they struggle to imbue children and young people with the notion that genuine thought requires all of their attention. It is true that students with ADHD have particular difficulty focusing, but the larger problem is, as Chesterton has noted, a problem of laziness, mental laziness in this case.

Genuine thought often seems to be an under-valued effort in our culture, though I will be the first to grant that thought, alone, is not the most important part of each day. But it has its place. Thought which contributes to a sincere and single-minded attempt to live the life of Christ is perhaps what is missing. Thought which is really a form of prayer.

Dorothy Day notes in her diaries that "The thing to remember is not to read so much or talk so much about God, but to talk to God."

And so everything leads us back to prayer, prayer offered with our attention, our whole being, in silence and in gratitude for the time and place to be only what God wants us to be. Not busy, not always occupied, not striving, just speaking and listening to God. For a period of time each day that activity alone can fully engage the heart and mind and body, and be at the same time what is missing in a world that is so fatigued.

Here's to a world more silent and more strenuous and more content to be what it, and we are meant to be.

A Culture of Mothers

2010-03-23T11:55:00.002-05:00

Just visited Theology Of the Body and read a lovely piece about changing the culture of death into a culture of life., ie. a culture of mothers. Check it out for its timely and universal message.

My own mother raised eight children, a feat I still think of as astonishing.

Here's to a culture of women who are educated, not despised, and who are most beautifully and wonderfully also mothers.

What Are the Plans?

2010-03-23T10:48:00.001-05:00

Great Uncle Bulgie, someone whom we knew in early childhood, loomed large at family gatherings. He would bend over us when we were quite small, with all of his hale heartiness and bellow out a hello, or reach down to rumple young heads and send us running to the nearest parent. I suppose his name pretty much sums up the situation, a very bulgie man greeting very small children. My Mother recalls that he always arrived at family dinners rubbing his hands together (gleefully?) and asking "What are the plans Ruth, what are the plans?" My Grandmother, a gentle person by contrast, filled in Great Uncle Bulgie as best she could.

The plans, what are the plans.

Of all the questions we are inclined to ask, that one is perhaps the most unanswerable unless it refers to the starting time of Thanksgiving dinner. And even then, well, you just don't know as Mom used to say. There are human plans and then there are God's plans, and I still haven't figured out how to live with both sets. It's hard to function day to day without making some plans , but if there is not a willingness to set aside those plans from time to time then we risk side- lining God. The ideal might be to include God neatly in each day, at adoration say, or during the recitation of prayers, but that never accounts for the interruptions of children needing last minute supplies for a Lit. project, or a piano student who falls apart during a lesson because he didn't practice, or my recent favorite, the student who is sick all over the living room carpet. The schedule is suddenly backed up and before you know it, it's time for dinner and there is no food on the table.

Those are minor interruptions as derailed plans go. The trees falling on the patio during a storm, the loss of power, a leak in the shower pan, and what is typical in our area, cracks in the foundation which heave up the flooring in the living room, those are more time- consuming interruptions.

We hardly have a day that goes as planned I often think, and it does cross my mind that making plans in the first place is fool-hardy. But groceries have to be gotten and meals prepared, and the house tidied, and it's not wise to do all that on the fly. And then there is the time needed for God. I have had to miss Adoration more often than I would like to acknowledge .

It may be that all we are asked to do is to direct each day to our merciful Lord who will guide us in peace. If we make plans , as we all must to some extent, perhaps it is our attitude to the interruptions which counts most in God's eyes. And, there I suppose, is the rub. Some of us are better at handling interruptions than others. We can tell ourselves that a sick child is not an interruption, or we can acknowledge that it is, and then be gracious and accept it, and maybe also hug the poor child.

It is part of my Lent walk to handle my days with more peace of mind, but like the disciples, I sometimes just want to get away from it all. When I was young I had a pink house on the river which I would threaten to escape to. Now I imagine a spa somewhere far away.

My plans for today, insofar as I have any, include asking God for the grace to handle whatever comes my way. Since I will have thirty young children at a choir rehearsal, I will need a large dose of spiritual gifts.

I am learning to pray for the heart of Mary as I live out each day. During the days of Jesus' public ministry, Mary must have needed to offer up every minute of every day in prayer. By comparison my life is placid enough.

Pray for me as I will pray for you , and for us all the heart of Mary, large enough to encompass with love and gratitude whatever plans God has in mind for us.

Strive to be Witnesses

2010-03-22T20:04:00.005-05:00

Strive to be witnesses of Christ's love by putting into practice his Word of Life.

"When you help your neighbor, whoever he is, you proclaim the Good news of Christ, which makes universal brotherhood possible.

When you visit a sick person, you are a sign of Christ's mercy toward those who suffer.

When you forgive, even your worst enemy, you are a sign of the forgiveness of Christ, who never nourished hatred in his heart.

When you refuse to accuse someone without proof, you proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God and his justice, and no one is excluded.

When, as Christian spouses, you remain faithful in marriage, you are an encouragement to all and a sign of the eternal covenant of love between God and man.

When, as a young man or a young woman, you save yourself for the one who will be your spouse, you are testimony of the unique value that love can construct.

When you radiate Christ, you awaken a desire for total self-giving in his service and inspire new priestly and religious vocations.

When, in the light, you call evil that which is evil and refuse to practice it, you are witnesses of Christ's light.

"May our Lord of peace help you to be, for your brothers and sisters, men and women of light, authors of peace and reconciliation who can be builders of a more just and fraternal world."

Pope John Paul II,
Chad, June 30, 1990

The World Needs Your testimony

'The world today needs to see your love for Christ; ...As St. Paul says: "You are a letter from Christ...written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Pope John Paul II
Philippines, February 17, 1981

Old Habits Die Hard

2010-03-21T10:48:00.001-05:00

This is an earlier post, published again as a way to answer questions which come my way. Also, because today is a beautiful snowy day in Dallas, quite unexpected, and my daughter wants me to go outside and build a snowman with her. How can I refuse?

Old habits can die hard, especially the bad ones. Why is it that good habits,say reading my Magnificat daily, morning and evening, can slowly erode into once- a- day if I'm lucky, while my easily triggered annoyance hangs on like the ivy which clings to our brick no matter how often we cut it back? Yes, I go to confession, and yes I'm working on taking deep breaths and being more dispassionate when bad drivers try to kill me, but it's a struggle. One really bad driver slowly drove into me while I was at a standstill and did hundreds of dollars of damage as I watched in horror. Turns out he had no auto insurance and he disappeared into the ether where the insurance agents couldn't locate him, despite my having given them his phone number, place of work and licence plate number. Of course my insurance rates went up. To be fair, I recently drove into someone else's parked car when the sun was shining right in my eyes (I know, where were my sun glasses) and did six hundred dollars worth of damage. But I at least left my name and number and I have insurance! (The rates are getting higher by the month.)

Old habits die hard.

People often ask me to tell my story of conversion, my coming into the Catholic Church and leaving behind years of protestant ministry. In part my story involves giving up finally the habit of being protestant. And here I am not trying to be facetious or unkind to my protestant friends and family. I mean no offense.

Going to church, we were always told, is a habit, a good habit, which is inculcated from baptism on by parents, and by the church itself. For many years it was a good habit, to the extent that I was unaware of the problems which were infecting the denominations to which I belonged, first the United Church of Christ and then the Episcopal Church. I visited many hospitals, nursing homes and care centers. I led Bible studies. I preached as diligently as I could in accord with the interpretation of scripture offered by means of commentaries, books and the authority of the Holy Spirit who did seem to be most present to me in the sermon writing process.

And then I was hired onto the staff of a largish Episcopal Church and began attending staff meetings. Week after week the divergent views represented by each loyal staff member (people who were dear friends in most cases) were manifested in countless hours of discussion. And the discussion was often anti-Catholic to the point of hatred. The issues under discussion ranged from what value one ought to place on confirmation, to whether one could sing any Christmas Carol during Advent, to whether it is possible for an Episcopalian to adore Jesus present in the Eucharist. Of course on this last point one had to defend a view of the real presence before then defending adoration, a view not widely shared on this particular staff.

I knew my Catholic mind even then on each issue, but try as I could, I was not able to openly defend it lest I be patronizingly told that my views would evolve if I gave them time, or worse, that I was not fit to be an Episcopal priest. There was a certain cowardice I suppose. I feared the loss of friendship. So the habit of remaining on the staff continued and my attendance at worship continued until one Sunday morning. I looked out into the congregation and realised I was no longer worshiping at all; I was present in body only and my mind and spirit were being quietly tormented.

It was then that I began reaching out toward the Catholic Church, in small tentative ways that slowly grew more confident. I began visiting our local Catholic bookstore, and listening to EWTN broadcasts on television. At first they were strange sounding, a bit frightening in their unequivocal stance on each issue. (Fr. Corapi, whom I deeply admire was at that time the most frightening of all!) What began to turn the tide of fear that was coupled with intense curiosity, was the illness of Pope John Paul II. Here was a man about whom I had known nothing, whose magnificent life was being recounted as he lay dying in Rome, and with whom I was immediately fascinated. On the day of his death a few months later I was already committed, along with my husband to being received into the Catholic Church and I credit him for having been a channel of grace. Along the way my husband and I had also been meeting with a wonderful Cistercian priest from Cistercian Monastery in Dallas who patiently answered any and all questions we took to him.

At some point during these months I realized that I would have to resign from my parish position and in the process baffle, even shock and disappoint my Episcopal colleagues. It was worse than that, as they were angry too. I left quickly and not as gracefully as I might have, though I did try.

And the years of being protestant ended. Years of a mixture of dedication and habit, habit to the extent that remaining protestant was enmeshed with past schooling, family, friends, jobs and self image. It had very little to do with being anti Catholic. There had never been on my part any intentional doctrinal positioning so that all Catholic errors could be filtered out. I was not aware of that in Divinity School at Yale, and had I encountered it then I might well have become Catholic on the spot. (This is not to say that an anti-Catholic bias doesn't exist at Yale. It did and does now, here and there, but it was not a clear part of my own years there.)

When we die to the self, it seems to me, we die to the unexamined life, the life of habit, of long-standing deference to ways of being and doing which appeal to some part of us which is less worthy, some part which does not place God first and our own small self second. Dying to the self means in part that every bit of one's path in life be reconsidered in the illumination of divine light. Did I go to seminary to give myself a position in society, a job, a measure of respect, or was I there because God put me there? Did I strive for good grades all through my schooling so that I could better offer my talents for the sake of God, or for my own advancement and comfort? Did I become a pastor so that I could prove that women are just as capable as men of good preaching, or because God wanted me to be there?

The answer to any of these questions will always be somewhat mysterious. God after all uses many paths into his heart. It could well be that I followed exactly the path God mapped out for me. Or not. But one thing is certain. I did not on my own decide to be Catholic. For, all of the above not withstanding, the Catholic Church found me, drew me in and even now embraces me with her loving arms.

It is never wise to confuse one's own meanderings with what is true. Or, to put it another way, I can experience my road to Rome as I described it above, but the truth remains that Rome was always calling me, whether I knew it or not. I finally listened. To base one's commitments in life purely on one's experiences is essentially to live a life of habit, or what we experience as habit. It is to suppose that all one sees around him is all there is! But what if there is more? What if for every act of ours, every step we take, there is a truth toward which we are moving and acting, whether we recognize it or not?

My protestant past died hard, not because it now comes back to haunt me or challenge me, but because it took so long for me to wake up to the call I never heard until my mountain of self-created habits collapsed around me. Once I recognized the true call, the call to surrender, to be what God had always planned for me to be, the habit of being protestant finally died.

My past does not come back the way the ivy does, the way my impatience does, and may God be praised for that! I have gladly, even joyfully left it all behind to be gathered up by providence into the story of my life which will only be revealed in its fullness at the end of time. I trust that driving into a parked car will be just a small particle of that story, as will other more serious misdeeds on my part. May they rest in peace! But only God knows, only God calls and shapes, only God redeems and only God overcomes the habits of a lifetime and says "Come to me, be a part of my body, the full body contained within the Catholic Church."

Holy Reminders

2010-03-19T09:56:00.005-05:00

During the days of discernment just prior to our reception into the Catholic Church, I wandered into our local Catholic bookstore. It is now one of my favorite places to visit, but then it was a strange, almost alien place to be. There were statues everywhere I looked , of every description: tall, short, plastic, wood, porcelain, some attractive and some just plain hard to understand. The Infant Jesus of Prague was among the more mysterious statues I saw that day. For a few brief minutes I asked myself "What are you doing in a Catholic bookstore anyway? " I felt dislocated, yanked from my Protestant garden before the final freeze of the winter and put into a Catholic garden with no roots tough enough to survive what was to come.

As I said, Sacred Heart Books is now one of my favorite stores and I seek it out for every conceivable kind of book, statue, and sacramental related to our growing immersion in Catholicism. The Infant Jesus of Prague statue happens to be a particular favorite, though I don't yet own my own. I am on the lookout for just the right one.

The wonderful thing about statues, and many other things you can find at Sacred Heart Books, is the way they keep you alerted to the passing days in the liturgical year, and the devotions associated with those days. Adult converts such as myself have no way to discover the treasures of the devotional life of the church other than bit by bit. There is simply too much to take in, in one large gulp. I have said often that I regret all the "lost" years before becoming Catholic when I didn't know about the rosary, or novenas, or the difference between abstinence and true fasting. There is seemingly a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time!

I had not remembered until a few days ago when my husband mentioned it, that today is the Solemnity of Saint Joseph. I missed the entire period of novena prayers and barely had time to reflect on the significance of the feast prior to today. Providentially, I have been reading a book about St. Joseph so that he and I are at least nodding acquaintances.

How many other novenas, or days of recollection, or saintly lives have I been missing that might fill out my devotional life in ways I can't now know? And how many life- long Catholics allow these days and with them their associated practices to speed by, unheeded?

I suppose we all need what Mother Angelica calls holy reminders, visual cues to a rich treasury of prayers and devotions available to help keep our lives focused on God's time more than on our own. That's the point, really, of all these statues. They help us live in a kind of parallel time, a broadly liturgical time, during which our days and hours and minutes are directed to God and united to his unceasing actions.

Or so it seems to me. Without all these reminders I could not keep track of the church calendar, beyond the most basic observance of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. The rest is not deeply ingrained in my life the way it once was for most Catholics, and still today for a few hold-outs.

I have Mary on my kitchen counter, my rosaries hang in my bedroom, and with those treasures my prayer life has taken on wonderful new dimensions. Padre Pio, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Theresa, all greet me on a bureau, and an angel sits on my piano. I plan to keep adding to the holy reminders, unless of course they stop serving as reminders. But I don't expect that to happen. I can't imagine I will live long enough! And then my daughter will be left with the lot, and she will have to decide what to keep. She will also have to decide what to keep of my husband's treasures, including his books. But that is a subject for another posting!

For now, all three of us in our small family have our reminders, our prayers, our ways of living in consecrated time even as we live in the material world. And may God be praised for each moment that we are able to offer to him because someone or something reminded us it was the time. Holy time, sacred time, God's time.

Joseph, Guardian of the Pure in Heart

2010-03-18T21:14:00.002-05:00

"Gentle Joseph, God is captivated by the quality of your heart. Your entire being is focused on doing His will. With Mary and Jesus, you answer the Holy Spirit's call to build a better world.

With one heart, we join you in saying: "Here we are, Lord,Your will be done! Your kingdom come nearer to us!"

Keep the hope of a new world alive in our hearts. Inspire us to speak words of tenderness to awaken the love of hearts.

May we draw the energy for our actions from the source of all Love so our faces may shine with the freedom of the children of God."

Prayers from Saint Joseph's Oratory
Montreal, Quebec

"Come To Me"

2010-03-18T08:43:00.009-05:00

My computer is next to a window, so that as I type and think and pray each day I am always aware of the sounds outside. I say pray, because when the sounds are captivating--the song birds which come back every spring to nest in my neighbor's yard--I am drawn to prayer.

I used to be suspicious of prayer which is so clearly rooted in the wonder of God's creation. Perhaps because that kind of prayer seemingly doesn't go far enough, as far as the garden in which Jesus prayed before he was sent to a cross. We were warned in Divinity School about the limitations of a faith which never leaves the confines of nature.

Nowadays I feel free to drop everything and send a prayer of thanks to the God of all creation who gives us birds and flowers and beautiful Spring days, maybe because I better understand that this God is the triune God. Triune from the beginning , through the end of time, alpha and omega. And so it was the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who was in the garden of Eden, and the garden at Gethsemane. A prayer to the God of all creation is at the same time a prayer to Christ.

The sounds outside my window are not always lovely. We hear street sounds, especially in the evening and at night when tires roar and grind and sirens wail. We hear the loudspeaker from the nearby high school athletic field, which sends us, whether we are interested or not, play- by- play reports of each game. The neighbor's dogs, let out every night, and the sounds of dumpsters being emptied merge with the basketball hitting the backboard in the school yard in a repetitive cadence.

And God is there too. Of course. But I confess that prayer is not as readily prompted by these sounds. Other less worthy thoughts, yes, especially if we are all trying to sleep.

But therein is the grace of nature, or at least part of its grace. It does lead us to prayer, when all else fails. And does God care how we come to him, what path we have taken, as long as we come? Mercy answers, no. We may come as we are, in whatever frame of mind, however distant from the cares around us. Come. God alone knows how many other times we will come carrying worries and sins. Just come.

Nowadays, I take any prompting to prayer as a gift, birds as equally as sorrows. And may God be praised for his mercy which says "I am the Lord of your heart, I the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I am waiting for you. Come to me."

Speaking of Cake.....

2010-03-17T09:39:00.002-05:00

Today is my brother's birthday. He's not Irish and he's not Catholic, but he's still my little bro!

Birthday Ode

Oh scrumulous, frestinous, lemonous birthdayness!
What have you got to say?
Oh weatherous, featherous, scatterness, festiveness:
slunk a great frop on this day!
Lift your krift high:
"Here's sliff in your eye!"
All fluddlesome thoughts will away!
Sing flurrimay, dovimay, merrimay, jovinay,
Happistay, rilliday Birtheringay!

If I'd Known You Were Coming I'd Have Baked You A Cake

2010-03-17T09:02:00.005-05:00

It's not every day that this humble blog gets a sudden avalanche of visitors.

Welcome!

And thank you Taylor Marshall for throwing me this surprise party!

Since January when all of this began, really almost accidentally (or was it divine providence?) the daily attempt to focus on one aspect of our faith has been a form of prayer and blessing. These few words, typed daily, and not always edited with the care they deserve have never- the- less been the starting point of more personal meditation than I would have thought possible, given the other distractions around our house! If they have sparked a few moments of reflection elsewhere, it will have been on the wings of the Holy Spirit .

Deo, dicamus gratias!

The Sounds of Silence

2010-03-15T17:54:00.005-05:00

Back in my Episcopalian days I worked in a parish that had a fine music program and a director with good sense about what music fits where in the liturgy. But I was always bothered by the absence of any music during communion. Kneeling, I could hear the sounds of feet clicking and tapping on the stone floor, and for a long time those sounds interrupted my focus on prayer.

Nowadays, I enjoy those sounds more, and less, the hymnody we have in our parish. Not that there is much wrong with the hymns themselves. What concerns me is their insertion into the liturgy during a time when we are trying, or ought to be trying to give our grateful thanks to our Lord whose body and blood we have received in the bread and wine of communion. After all, that is a magnificent moment for each one of us no matter how many times we have been a part of Mass. The spaciousness of God, his mercy, his unending outpouring of love gathered into a bit of wafer and a sip of wine so that we might , in our mortality, taste and see him, is cause for our rejoicing. Yet so often just as I am praying in adoration, or as near to adoration as I can, my senses wander to the words and music of a hymn which seem to say so little in comparison to what is actually taking place. There are some notable exceptions.

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quae sub his figuris vere latitas:
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

God with hidden majesty, lies in presence here,
I with deep devotion my true God revere:
Whom this outward shape and form secretly contains,
Christ in his divinity manhood still retains.

Thomas Aquinas

My elementary choirs sing these words without complaint. I think they enjoy the challenge of Latin from time to time. And Latin does somehow transport us to the beyond, or it can. I know it annoys some people, who view it and chant in general as a relic of the not so glorious past. I love chant and would enjoy hearing and singing it more often than we seem to do in our parish. But even the sung chant leaves something to be desired now a days, as it is so metrically regular and often harmonized in eighteenth century style.

Which leads me back to silence. During the week at the 9:00am Mass there is no music, and that is when I typically pray with the most intensity. I can offer my heart's gratitude without distraction, usually, though of course even then attention occasionally wanders. But the sounds of feet quietly moving in the same direction toward the body and precious blood of Jesus are no longer the distraction they once were. They themselves sing a song of love, and gratitude, not always perfectly but more so than any of us can know.

Music has its place to be sure. But sometimes the absence of music is a gift too.

Deo dicamus gratias.

The Prodigal Father

2010-03-15T09:33:00.003-05:00

This morning the Anchoress, who is always at her best when writing about the human heart, graced us with the following. Check her site for more.

We all know the story of the Prodigal Son. It is (as Msgr. Charles Pope says here) almost “overly familiar”.

At mass today Fr. Dyspeptic -my favorite homilist, because he is scholarly but witty, and always blessedly brief- suggested that it is easy for us to identify with either of the sons, the prodigal or the ignored-feeling obedientiary, who has toiled in his father’s field, “but the story is not about either of them. It’s about the father.

The father who created you in his image, and loved you enough to give you free will; the father who steps out daily and casts his eyes upon the horizon, looking for you to come back. The father who “does not allow cultures or conventions to dictate his responses,” but who -when he sees you returning- cannot hold himself back, but instead runs to meet you and pulls you into his embrace, and blesses you.

The father who says “come back. I am here. I am waiting for you to return.”

Fr. Dyspeptic is not a parent, obviously, but he understands the unconditional and very vulnerable love of the parent. He understands that God -our divine and mystical parent- shares with human parents this endless longing to have our children near, even as we face their grown-up choices. Our children do not stay with us; they leave the nest. They develop their own sensibilities, sometimes in direct contrast to our own. Even if they are near, they distance themselves, and that is normal, and healthy; they need to discover for themselves all they do not know.

But we miss them. And we fret that even though we’ve taught them to swim, they may be facing more dangerous currents than they can handle, have moved too far from the safe shore. We toss and turn on wet pillows some nights, wishing them well, hoping they’ll be borne back on the tide, and land at our doors. We pray for them, and in the wee small hours we talk to photographs of their six-year old, smiling faces, and we say, “You are far away from us; you’ve chosen a distant path, but I will not give up on you. You are forever my beloved child.”

And God is sharing in that, on a meta-level. “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart…”

This is a post I'll be saving for myself and those wee small hours.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

2010-03-14T13:35:00.008-05:00

The Gospel reading for today is the familiar "Parable of The Good Samaritan." At Mass this morning during his homily, our priest reminded us that we are prodigal children, on our way home to the Father. I couldn't help thinking of this song, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". The lyrics seem to work in harmony with today's parable of estrangement and reunion, redemption and, we hope and pray, the welcome awaiting God's prodigal children at heaven's gate. Catholics often pray for a good death. Could we not also pray near the end of our journey home for a sweet chariot to take us to our Father's house?

Listen to the always engaging Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Come Again?

2010-03-12T07:55:00.001-06:00

I know it's Lent and my mind should be on other things, but I roar every time I see this. Thanks to the Anchoress who found it first.

EMBED-Awesome News Room Fight on Live TV - Watch more free videos

Piano Lessons

2010-03-11T18:17:00.008-06:00

Sometimes it's refreshing to break away from thoughts about our Catholic faith and look at the small things, the moments which make us laugh or stop and remember with renewed wonder that gifted, and well behaved children exist. It is counter point to the gloom emanating from overseas which is as dark as the black smoke that signals no Pope has yet been elected.

One such moment from today's piano lessons:

"Did you practice this week?", to an energetic First Grader.

"Well, no."

"I see. Why not?"

"Well, my armpits hurt."

Another moment, really a whole lesson, the last one of the day. A young man who began learning the piano six months ago, came to his lesson wearing a cast on his broken right arm. Undeterred by the cast he played the first two movements of his Clementi Sonatina almost flawlessly.

The sister of the young man above:

"You mean I get to play Bach? I can't wait for the challenge!"

The youngest of the three children, another First Grader:

"I love piano, but my brother plays all the time. I have a hard time getting to practice. So sometimes I come home for a snack after school and sneak in and start playing early."

Some families are just amazing.

Springtime in Big D

2010-03-11T13:19:00.007-06:00

And with the Spring comes a major announcement from Rome. Two priests from Dallas have been called to be Auxiliary Bishops for the Diocese. One of the two, Msgr. Seitz, received our family into the Catholic Church. A year later he gave our daughter her First Communion.

Blessings Fr. Mark!

Angels Can Fly

2010-03-10T11:00:00.010-06:00

From Whispers in the Loggia, a quotation that seems unusually well -timed for yours truly. Too much moralizing, however well- meant can be bad for the soul. As you can tell from the picture though, my choir class has a way of keeping my feet on the ground.

“I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry.

A writer once said that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn't think we were so important.”
--Pope Benedict XVI
Interview with German Press
Castel Gandolfo
5 August 2006

Come, Let Us Adore

2010-03-10T08:28:00.007-06:00

The Dominicans have posted a video about adoration, a devotion which is near and dear to me and many in my parish. I have written before about the Adoration Chapel in our parish which is always full of warmth and the palpable presence of our Lord. There has been a movement, not exactly a tsunami but a sort of tidal flow among some of our members, to refurbish the Adoration Chapel. I was not surprised to learn that the regular,devoted adorers don't see any need to do anything other than perhaps replace the carpeting. I tend to agree. As long as Jesus is with us constantly in that chapel nothing else seems to be necessary. In the midst of focused adoration, material surroundings recede into the background and the senses are fully engaged with His presence. It is difficult to communicate this to people who have never learned about adoration. I tend to urge people to try, even non- Catholics, because I cannot believe that our merciful Lord would withhold that gift which allows the senses to perceive His presence. In fact I would suggest that anyone considering adoration pray first, while kneeling, for the heart and mind to be filled, even flooded with His nearness. Then wait.

I will be in adoration for my scheduled hour later today. Pray for me, as I will pray for you!

Walk Softly and Leave the Stick at Home, Revisited

2010-03-09T11:20:00.009-06:00

The discussion about Catholic higher education is on-going. In a recent post I made my own extremely modest contribution. You can find thoughtful conversation at Mirror Of Justice, linked by Wired Catholic, both of which take up a variety of other current issues as well. All of these people are much smarter than I am, so go check them for yourself!

Catholic higher education matters here in our home for a variety of reasons, not least of which is our daughter who will one day soon be pursuing her college degree we hope in a Catholic school. We have no illusions about the uniform purity of the students themselves in Catholic colleges and universities, but we hope that the institutions will present, encourage and strongly support publicly the teachings of the church, especially on issues such as abortion which are non-negotiable and about which there is no room for disagreement among Catholics. Can other public figures come to the campus and challenge those views? I suppose so, but the challenge ought not to be enveloped in a degree -awarding ceremony which casts a positive glow on the dissenting position taken by the guest. Others have said this before me, and have said it better.

I still maintain that as we discuss the differences among us regarding Catholic higher education, we walk softly, speak civilly and spend more time in prayer than in public argument.

It's a Mad, Mad World

2010-03-09T09:41:00.009-06:00

From today's headlines:

Police hunt for person who stole Teddy Roosevelt walrus tusk

"Old Brookville, N.Y., police and the National Park Service are investigating. The FBI has added the tusk to its national stolen art list."
Kind of gives new meaning to art, doesn't it!

But who am I to cast aspersions? I am the choir director who does reindeer imitations and uses tennis balls to teach singing.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

2010-03-09T08:57:00.005-06:00

I am sometimes asked if I miss my old work as a Protestant pastor.
I don't have to think about the answer.

No!

I still get to teach the faith, minister to the needs of children, visit retirement homes, eat cookies, have fun, and wave my hands in the air. All this without committee meetings!

Ubi Caritas

2010-03-07T19:30:00.002-06:00

Gather a group of fairly new convert Catholics together around a dinner table and of course you will get interesting conversation, a shared sense of joy in having found the fullness of the faith, moving stories and also the occasional dropped brick. My husband, daughter and I found ourselves at one such dinner recently, an occasion marked by an underlying quiet love for the Church which gradually reached in crescendo much laughter and that fervor for all things Catholic which is so unmistakably the mark of happy converts. Any group of dinner guests that can discuss plenary indulgences with enthusiasm is a very special sort of group indeed! When the conversation turned to who would have been a blogger had they been alive today, Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine, or perhaps St. Paul, it became apparent that the happiness was perhaps after all only masking a slight bit of insanity, which is what most of the group's Protestant relatives already believe anyway. Either that or there was too much of the rich and magnificent banana pudding dessert being consumed.

I can't say often enough what a blessing the Catholic Church has been for our family. Precisely because it has been a blessing it saddens me when I unthinkingly cause offense in the midst of a joyous gathering of converts. Because, you see, we weren't quite all converts. One of the dinner guests was a lovely and deeply religious Methodist, a woman whose gift for ministry and Christian charity rivals that of any Catholic I have met. Truly. After hearing myself say something about "what Protestants don't understand about indulgences," I paused and remembered with a pang that we had a wonderful Protestant sitting right there among us, a Protestant who not only had not said a word against the Catholic Church, she had patiently and willingly joined into all of our slightly demented conversation about blogging theologians and saints of the church. And I had no clue about what she understands or doesn't understand about plenary indulgences.

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where there is charity and love, there is God. And converts such as myself who have received so much at the merciful hand of God ought to be more aware of this than most.

I can't begin to address or even to understand the reasons why we Christians remain divided, but one thing is certain: where charity and love prevail, there is God. The Catholics who have had the most influence in my life, some going years back and well before our conversion to Catholicism were invariably not trying to convert me with words. With their actions, though, I saw the light of Christ shining through. Several were religious, one was a laywoman who had the most marvellous gift for hospitality I had ever encountered, another was a theologian who patiently discussed everything from the role of women in the church to the magisterium, never once placing Protestants of any sort in a less than favorable light. I suppose it is no accident that he is now an archbishop.

Converts have been graced by God in marvellous ways, and we all tend to recognize and celebrate that grace. Placing Protestants in a second place position in comparison to Catholics may be an easy temptation to which some of us fall prey, but it should be avoided at all costs. We of all people should lead the way in demonstrating through our own actions the charity and love we know so profoundly and so personally.

Easier said than done, but with God all things are possible. I will be praying for the grace of charity and love during the remaining days of Lent, so that I too, though a Catholic, yet still a sinner, might know God more deeply and might allow God's grace to shine through me in word and action. May we all pray for that grace.

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.

Banana Dessert Recently Enjoyed by a Bunch of Catholic Converts and a Patient Methodist

Ingredients
1 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 1/2 cups cold water
1 (4-serving) package instant vanilla pudding mix
2 cups (1 pint) heavy cream
36 vanilla wafers
3 medium bananas, sliced and dipped in lemon juice

When Life Takes Over

2010-03-06T09:32:00.004-06:00

I will admit right up front that as I write I am drinking Mystic Monk coffee and eating Girl Scout Thin Mints, my Saturday morning breakfast. I gave up on the more traditional breakfast foods like yogurt and granola because we are out of yogurt. And granola. Not to mention decent bread for toast. We do have coffee though, without which I would not even be upright. We got home at the late-ish hour of 9:30 last night after our daughter's first ever play-off basketball game, which they lost. It was too late to run to the store to re-stock, and anyway we had to console a tired and disappointed 12 year old.

This morning the cats all got up before we did and helped themselves to WAY too much dry food, and in the process spilled much of it on the pantry floor. In the meantime our lovely and energetic daughter, disappointment and tiredness vanquished from a good night's sleep, launched into a craft project which requires that materials be strewn about in several rooms at the same time and Mom be consulted about colors and the like.

So breakfast by default took a back seat and here I am, doing what I taught my daughter never to do, eating cookies for breakfast.

Have I said a single morning prayer? Made the sign of the cross? Even thought about God until this moment? Of course not. Everyone who has ever suggested that prayer be a part of every day, beautifully intertwined with one's daily existence (I have done so myself) is invited to my house next Saturday morning when I imagine the same sort of thing will happen. One of the cats will vomit, while the other two will steal someones breakfast, the plumbing will back-up, and the exterminator will arrive to do his rounds. I promise.

On top of this, MY TEETH STILL HURT.

I am going back to the dental office this morning, this time to see the weekend guy, to see if they can't somehow put me out of my misery. Hammers, tongs, bowling balls....whatever.

Maybe in the car on the way to the dentist I can say a few prayers, but it will be nothing like the quiet, orderly prayer time depicted in Rumer Godden's novel, "In This House of Brede", which portrays a life I long to escape into on days such as today. A set time to pray. A beautiful and quiet place to pray in. People who want you to pray before you do anything else.

Instead I am going to go to the store and purchase some reasonably healthy food, and then I will mop the floor and check on the plumbing. And then I will go to the dentist. After that, who knows? I will try to make myself available to my family and to whatever our Lord has in store for me. Maybe this is what people mean when they say "Life is a prayer." Life has certainly taken over and left little time for the focused, quiet kind of prayer I enjoy at adoration. But I am called to this life. And if the best I can do is muster up smiles and good humor through the day, perhaps that is a form of prayer after all.

Walk Softly and Leave the Stick at Home

2010-03-04T12:30:00.010-06:00

Too much righteous indignation can be counter productive. Deeply caring Catholics who lambaste their fellow Catholics for shortcomings which are on display in the culture can be the worst offenders.

Yes, many colleges and universities which bear the name Catholic are falling short of the ideal as they allow and even promote practices contrary to the teachings of the church. But I wonder whether public floggings are the answer.

What for example is behind the increasing number of vocations in certain orders? Are the Dominicans attracting men and women who love controversy, or because these very same Dominicans are intelligent, prayerful and loving and are out in the world carrying the message of Catholicism to school children, Theology on Tap sessions, and radio broadcasts like "Word to Life" on Sirius? The Dominicans at the House of Studies in Washington are hardly flame throwers, (well , for the most part!) nor are the Nashville Sisters, or the nuns in North Guilford, Ct. The picture above from a "Come and See" retreat in North Guilford radiates joy and a kind of hope which has much to do with the divine love which overcomes all, even bumbling educators and institutions of higher learning which have succumbed to greed, ignorance, a perceived need to survive, or just plain sinfulness.

Should Catholics be concerned about the state of Catholic higher education? Most certainly. But the question is how to address the concerns.

On the local Catholic School level, the same issues present themselves in a milder form. Teachers quietly disagree about whether women should be ordained priests or whether priests should be allowed to marry. (The answer is no to both questions!)
And great strides could be made in the frequency with which these schools draw upon the resources of the church: prayer, reconciliation, adoration, not to mention a highlighting of virtues, as over and against merely excelling for the sake of getting into a competitive college or university.

The Catholic School our daughter attends is working on these concerns. A hand- made sign has been posted in the school's entry way this Lent which reads from a distance: Pork and Pray. Every Tuesday during Lent!

The first day I saw the sign I pondered what new devotion still unknown to me might be in store on Tuesdays at "Pork and pray." And then I got a bit closer and saw that the sign, obviously created by a child, really read "Park and Pray." Still a bit mysterious, but much more like what I have come to expect from the devout. Turns out the sign is advertising an opportunity to pray the rosary together after dropping off the kids at morning carpool. It's good for parents to pray for their children in today's world, in fact it's essential. It would also be wonderful if the students themselves prayed the rosary during Lent. We all have a way to go in learning to intermingle what we do each day with our prayers, our devotions, our intentions to lead holy lives. Not just schools and colleges, all of us.

There are pockets of devotion on every Catholic campus, I feel sure. That is a beginning point. And maybe, as we seek to reform at deeper levels we can try to rely on what we know we possess, the power of prayer directed unceasingly to a loving God, and less on the public rants. It's worth considering, anyway.

Is Anybody Listening?

2010-03-04T08:03:00.004-06:00

The National Catholic Reporter has an article today about some research which tries to correlate different types of liturgy with different sorts of brain activity.
(Our Brains Are Wired For Liturgy) It might be an interesting development in the study of the brain in general; much recent research into how and why we are wired is proving to undo years of previously held notions.

But the question which immediately springs to my mind is this: When we pray, how do we know anybody is listening? And can we track this function in the brain as well? Does conviction or belief or trust enter into the mix? Christians will always want to acknowledge the debt they owe to the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the gift of prayer. Prayer cannot originate from the brain of the one who is praying; it is always purely gift. Each of us may well experience prayer in different ways, a loving conversation with an attentive God, a call out into the night to a God who seems to be hidden in the depths of darkness, or something in between. But the impulse to pray never comes from within. It is a moment of grace.

Perhaps our brain patterns shift when we are infused with the gift of prayer, perhaps they shift when we engage in different forms of prayer. But in the end, whatever we may discover, it would be well to acknowledge the debt we owe to our Lord, and to his Church for the ability to pray. It would be a shame to reduce to brain patterns, or their lack thereof our engagement with liturgy.

We pray, if we are Christian, because God himself has initiated a conversation with us, and with that gift we are given the assurance that He is listening! Even if our brains contain from birth the latent pathways which will be used when we begin to pray, those pathways will be awakened at Baptism when prayer is offered as the door prize for each of us as we enter the church. Yes, our Lord, in his mercy can surely offer that gift before baptism to a soul seeking Him, but it is certainly offered with the sacrament of baptism, our cleansing and rebirth into his body. But whether before, during or after baptism, with the awakening of prayer comes the faith that God hears, and answers. Prayer is conversation both during the liturgy of the Mass and in private.

Pope John Paul II during a retreat posed this question : "Why do we pray?", and then he said "The answer is very simple: I pray because God exists. I know that God exists and this is why I pray." (The Way To Christ.)

Let the research go on, but please let us also remember that prayer can never be reduced to brain patterns. It is always inexplicably and wondrously a conversation with the divine, with our Lord himself.

How Not To Convince Someone You Are Right And They Are Wrong

2010-03-02T08:05:00.006-06:00

A French diplomat who has been mistakenly arrested by the bumbling English police bursts out:

"Your bananas are too long and bendy, your chocolate is not chocolate-y enough and you insist on eating prawn cocktail crisps despite the fact that we have told you not to!

(You can find this clip from the "Thin Blue Line" on You Tube, under a bananas label. It is slightly too over the top to post here!)

I remarked in a recent post that you cannot shoo stampeding Buffalo. Nor can you convince a grumpy twelve year old the first thing in the morning that yesterday's snack, still in it's little baggie will be just fine for today, not at all stale, and think of the starving people around the world who would love yesterday's snack for today's breakfast. Not if want to avoid an argument.

"Because I say so" carries little weight these days around our house, since our daughter has detected the flaw in that approach. "Why is your opinion worth more than mine?" Of course when it is necessary for our word to hold sway we have the means to demonstrate with utmost clarity why we are right and she is wrong, but in a few years even taking away TV and computer access will cease to be meaningful, especially if she has her own place to live. Who can say what is true and what is not? "You English insist on eating prawn cocktail crisps despite the fact that we have told you not to."

The holier people among us tend to demonstrate by their loving actions as much as by their words what is true in God's eyes. Holiness which communicates truth in this way is unmistakable if you are looking for it. This is not to denigrate words in any way. But empty words, words not accompanied by actions are futile.

I learned to pray the rosary from a group of people in my parish who gather every day after the 9:00am mass to pray before the blessed sacrament. I learned the words, the order of prayers, which mysteries are contemplated on which days, but more than that, I learned by this group's consistent, daily devotion the meaning of this form of prayer. Each rosary is offered for the intentions of the people gathered, genuinely offered, in the form of people on their knees directing hearts and minds to the Lord who is with them in body and in spirit. In our adoration chapel the prayers which have been offered throughout the day seem to linger, filling the chapel with warmth. Then the next day it begins all over again. I don't think I had ever understood the extent to which prayer is meaningful action before I encountered this group.

Mother Theresa is often cited as the supreme example of words expressed in action. Her ministry on the streets of Calcutta is well known and remains a powerful witness to the life of a true servant of Christ. Her work was unmistakably holy because it was grounded in her life of prayer. She allowed her daily existence to be directed by God, and so she lived as wonderfully as she could the life of truth, of Jesus crucified and risen. Her life was an on-going sacrifice.

Parents understand early on what it means to become sacrificial. This sacrificial living only intensifies as children reach adolescence, as we are discovering. It may be that the greatest lessons our daughter will learn from us during the coming years will be those of tolerance, faithful love in the face of discord, gentleness and unwavering forgiveness. If we can muster them. Our success will reside in our attentiveness to prayer, to the sacraments, and to deep humility. I pray daily for these gifts not only for myself, but for the sake of my daughter. Telling my daughter that she must eat stale food and enjoy it is not getting us anywhere!

Generosity of Spirit

2010-03-01T17:17:00.007-06:00

Some days end on a considerably different note from when they began. Today is such a day. I was looking forward to being pain-free for the first time in a month, with two crowns successfully cemented in place. What was supposed to take no more than a half hour in the dentist's chair took an hour and a half, and later here at home after the anesthetic wore off the pain was back undiminished. It seemed important to go back immediately, just in case a lost dental instrument needed to be removed from the gum, or someone else's tooth was accidentally cemented in place of mine. You know, routine stuff. I say this in jest, but the assistant who did most of the work this afternoon told me that yesterday my dentist had lost a crown. It just popped out of his hand and disappeared into the carpet. It never did turn up. My crown was dropped not once, but two or three times before it made it into my mouth. For all I know, I am sporting the crown they lost yesterday and mine is now gathering dust in the carpet.

Before I could make my return visit late this afternoon, I had to call all my students and reschedule their appointments. A lovely Senora answered my call to the Torres family, Grandma, as it turned out. After muttering through a clenched jaw that I wouldn't be able to teach this afternoon, she said very politely "I don't understand." It was time to try my high school Spanish.

"Yo soy la professora de musica," I began ,forgetting the Spanish word for piano.

Pause.

"Aah, piano" she said back kindly.

"Si, piano."

"Tengo dolor de cabeza" which was as close as I could come to "I have a toothache."

I could almost hear her thinking that a headache is no excuse to cancel a music lesson.

"No problemo. I will deliver the message," or words to that effect.

"Muchas gracias." "Luego."

A favorite episode of "As Time Goes By" has Jean and Lionel in Paris for a romantic weekend. When the maid asks them in French how they slept, Lionel answers "Comme un arbre." "Like a tree?" "I couldn't think of the word for log", was Lionel's answer.

The French are not known for their forgiving nature when it comes to foreigners trying to speak their language. My husband and I once tried ordering from the menu in a Parisian restaurant using our best French.

"I would like the pot roast," I said, "pot au feu".

"Quoi?"

"Pot au feu."

"Quoi?"

"POT...AU...FEU...."

"Oui, Madame, pot au feu." (Followed by a disdainful sniff.) And for the life of me I couldn't tell the difference between his pronunciation and mine. It has become a family joke in our house.

"What are we having for dinner?"

"Pot roast."

"What?"

"Pot roast."

"What?"

"POT ROAST"

"oh.....Pot roast!!!!"

Abuela Torres turned a painful drive back to the dentist into fifteen minutes of laughter as I recalled all of the above. When I walked into the reception area and picked up "Architecture Today" to finish the article I been reading that morning, (Well, really to look at the pictures I had been looking at) it was with a renewed sense that I should be patient with my dentist and not imagine him with his teeth glued together like the fox in Doctor Desoto. Kindness and generosity of spirit beget kindness.

I suppose we all need this reminder from time to time. There is no excuse not to be kind in almost every circumstance. The people in my dentist's office are unfailingly kind after all, even if they do drop teeth on the carpet. It could be that my attempt to be kind while enduring a month long "dolor de muela" is a preparation for a far more challenging time I can't yet forsee. They matter, these small events of daily life. Each in its own way is part of the larger picture of one's life which is being created like a needlepoint tapestry, one small stitch at a time. Whether that tapestry will include scenes from the lives of other people who have been encouraged by our words and actions is, I suppose, largely up to us.

I still have my toothache, but I am going to withdraw soon and pray 25 "Our Fathers" in the hope that the relatively small amount of pain I suffer now will be united with the tremendous pain Our Lord suffered and in that union be offered for some worthy good.

It's either that or I glue my dentist's teeth together.

Giving Thanks

2010-03-01T08:51:00.003-06:00

The things I'm thankful for today:

It's raining, it's cold and nasty outside, but after helping my daughter with her Dust Bowl essay I have to be grateful. I do not have to tie a scarf over my mouth and clean repeatedly throughout the day.

Our three cats who all meow on three different pitches. It's a very musical way to wake up when they are all hungry and jumping on the bed trying to get us up.

I am finally getting my permanent crowns, after a month of feeling as though my entire lower jaw is being rearranged.

The abundant choices of breakfast, lunch and dinner food, especially knowing that during the Dust Bowl people pretty much survived on cornbread and beans. Not to mention the courageous people in Haiti who give thanks for whatever is placed before them. (Thanks to the Anchoress for keeping us updated.)

I am actually grateful today for the people in my life who nudged me toward greater holiness when I learned to forgive them. Really! I mean, it was hard at the time, but the Holy Spirit poured out when I finally knelt in adoration and asked for the grace to forgive, as I have been forgiven.

Girl Scout cookies, all purchased from the dearest group of Girl Scouts I have ever known. Each one comes for piano lessons or sings in one of my choirs, and one by one they shyly asked if I could buy cookies from them. How could I refuse? And the cookies are quite tasty.

For my friends here in Dallas (their names will remain anonymous to protect the innocent!) who honor me with their confidences, especially in times of difficulty, and who in return listen and offer the benefit of their wisdom when I most need it.

For Mystic Monk Coffee, without which I would have a great deal of difficulty getting up each morning. I recently passed by a young man wearing a Mystic Monk sweatshirt and when I commented on the coffee, he smiled and nodded as though we were old friends, comrades in arms.

For my R.E. choir class who pray with me, sing with me and show me their faith in ways that never fail to move me. When I can find a way to record them I will post their music here. They sing like angels.

For the Catholic Church and her loving embrace. Since entering we have never
been happier.

Deo dicamus gratias!

Pater Noster

2010-02-26T08:50:00.004-06:00

Prayer beads are a wonderful aid I have discovered. Lately, praying repeated Our Fathers has opened new doors, unexpectedly I might add. I was not raised on repetitive prayer and many of my colleagues in ministry were suspicious of the idea. One United Church of Christ pastor I knew in Maine deliberately altered the prayers of the liturgy every week so that "I will keep everyone on their toes." I always worried that this was a form of liturgical terrorism. I made use of a structured liturgy with only the Prayers of the People altered from week to week. Still I didn't explore the use of private repeated prayers until becoming Catholic. "The Way of a Pilgrim" is a beautiful exposition of how effective praying the Jesus prayer can be. There are several variants of the prayer, but "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner" seems to be common. Other references to the use of repeated "Our Fathers intrigued me until I decided to try it myself.

My own experience praying the "Our Father" as Catholics commonly call the Lord's Prayer has opened up new vistas of focused, contemplative prayer. The "Our Father" first of all has a wonderful way of calming the mind and the imagination so that only our Father is himself the focus of prayer. Then, the prayer seems to reduce every conceivable kind of petition to a few basics without in any way minimizing the specifics of what may be weighing down the petitioner's heart. I tend to pray the prayer in couplets, with a stand -alone line here and there:

Our father,
who art in heaven

That is a magnificent starting point because it separates the every day realm of human life and discourse from the realm of God, and so the one praying can switch mercifully away from the concerns of everyday life to focus on the divine. Our father, who art in heaven. You who are my spiritual father and are every day close to me are also in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name.

In my mind that line stands alone as I contemplate what it truly means.
Hallowed, not taken for granted, hallowed, not despised, hallowed, not substituted for the name of my choosing, hallowed: revered and adored.

Thy kingdom come
thy will be done

The coming of God's kingdom is linked to doing God's will, not that the one determines the other but that the one encompasses the other. When and as God's kingdom comes it will involve the joyful and obedient doing of God's will.

On earth
as it is in heaven.

We can only prepare for an eternal life with God if we understand how obedience
now prepares us for obedience then. Even now the saints and angels are kneeling at the throne of God in devoted obedience and adoration.

Give us this day our daily bread

Give us your presence at mass and in adoration, and in reconciliation even as you feed our bodies. For we will not make use of the food at our tables if we have not fed on you at the Table of our Lord.

Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us

How many of life's daily difficulties circulate around being hurt by another person, or being the one who has done the hurting in retaliation or ignorance or a bit of both? And how much freedom has been gained by admitting to both and then offering forgiveness as well as receiving the forgiveness of God? I could spend a day on that petition alone.

Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil

Evil exists as a concrete reality around us, but whether we become ensnared in it has a lot do to with our own intentions. To ask for help with avoiding temptation is a reminder that we have wills, often weak wills, even as we also have to cope with the evils in the world not of our own making. How to keep separate the weak will of my self from the stark reality of evil outside myself is not always easy. And so these two petitions accompany one another inevitably.

If I can pray 25 "Our fathers" while in adoration, with intense focus on each petition, I can begin the glorious process of self-emptying which leads to genuine union with God. Notice I began with the word "if". I try and anyone reading this should try too. It is a beautiful experience.

May we all get better at it and inch closer to our Lord, in whom resides all our comfort and joy!

We Are Made For Something Glorious

2010-02-23T07:01:00.004-06:00

Fr. Thomas Joseph White has some good things to say about the priesthood and about the high calling of the laity as well. Here is a priest who believes in grace and what it can do for all of us concretely.

Dominican Preaching

2010-02-22T07:52:00.011-06:00

The Dominicans of St. Joseph Province have posted a nice explanation of what Dominican preaching is all about. It begins, Fr. Dominic says, in an encounter with Jesus. My own thoughts in a recent post parallel this line of thinking. We, the laity, have our own call to live and to an extent proclaim the encounter we have been graced to experience so that others may have life more abundantly. It seems to me to be the essence of evangelization to live and proclaim in this way, joyfully sharing with our words and our actions within the context of our own vocations the abundance of God's love. To the extent that we live out our vocations faithfully, that love we encountered in the person of Jesus is made manifest and indeed magnified, it is the mustard seed which takes root and spreads in the hearts of others. Take a look at the video here.

Dominican Preaching

Precious Dust II

2010-02-20T17:06:00.003-06:00

Ok, watch this and remember that we are all precious dust!
Thanks to the anchoress who never fails to come through on a slow blogging day!

Precious Dust

2010-02-19T13:07:00.004-06:00

This past week found me at my daughter's school, filling in for the music teacher who was taking some personal days. It was a lovely and creative interlude, though it took time away from this blog. But watching and listening as children from first through fourth grades created their own sound orchestras and then took turns conducting them was worth the change in daily routine.

A sound orchestra relies on created sounds to take the place of standard instruments. Repeated words or phrases, hums, tsks, pshas, oohs can all be a part of the orchestra as long as they are uttered within the beat pattern established by the conductor. So one group might chant "chicken legs, chicken legs, chicken legs," and then on the fourth beat another group says "ooh." Add a contrasting section of "chick-a-saw, chick-a-saw, chick-a-saw, saw,", accompanied by tongue clicks and ta daa...orchestral texture is demonstrated, sort of. It's a way to reduce something beautiful and sophisticated to a few of its essential elements and make it accessible to children. Children, I might add, who seem to know which pop star had a mental breakdown, and who's the cutest Jonas Brother but have only the haziest idea of what Mozart accomplished by the time he was their age.

While I would not rely on such reductive techniques alone to teach music, there being after all no substitute for simply listening to, say, a Mozart symphony, it has its place. Art teachers reduce art in the elementary grades to color and line and shape, texture and form. Music teachers introduce rhythm, pitch, color, melody and harmony and texture. For the most part, my temporary students seemed to enjoy and benefit from the experiment, never mind the occasional suggestion that a burp would be a great sound to accompany "chicken legs", or "ka-boom" was a really cool way to end a segment. Wisely, I think, I didn't tell my students about the Fourth of July concert I attended last year which featured the William Tell Overture, accompanied by inflated paper bags being popped by each member of the audience to simulate the sounds of cannons. It was a raucous evening, all told.

On Wednesday the school held mass and included the imposition of ashes. Students from Kindergarten through eighth grade, teachers, staff and visitors all received ashes, wearing them with a variety of expressions, some subdued, many quiet and prayerful indicating a sense of awe and reverence for the occasion. I always enjoy watching the children who are the silliest in class (the proponents of burping as a form of musical expression) transform at mass into suggestions of their future grown up selves, hands folded, eyes alight as the ashes are dabbed onto their foreheads. "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." It's quite possible that an eight year old boy enjoys this notion of dust for its connotations of the outdoors and the playground. It's also possible that a child burdened with too many expectations from teachers and parents should for a few minutes enjoy a sense of relief that after all we are only dust. It's for once an attainable goal, achieved by the mere fact of having been born, and it's a leveler as well. The honor roll student wears the same blurred ashy smudge as the student who struggles with dyslexia or depression. "I belong" the ash proclaims, and for too many students , the need to belong is undermined daily in ways sometimes too small to detect even by the student, but the effects show themselves in outbursts of temper, or sagging grades, aloof solitude or frequent tears.

"Man is dust and to dust he shall return, but he is precious dust in God's eyes, because God created man for immortality," Pope Benedict reminded us on Wednesday. How we need to hear those words each year, sweeping away as they do everything but the most essential in our lives: our complete dependence on the loving God who created us, from whom we came and to whose arms we will return, we hope and pray, for all eternity. The ashes are a gift, a sign of life reduced to its barest elements.

I asked my daughter what she thought as she received her ashes on Wednesday. She, being twelve and not always predictable answered, "I don't know."

"Did you feel loved by God?" I asked.

"Yes."

We are dust, but we are precious dust, precious in the eyes of God. I wonder if every child knows that or connects that truth to the ashes they receive each year on Ash Wednesday? Surely a few at least and more will grow to understand it. Just as they grow to understand after First Communion that a sip of wine and a bit of wafer offer them, not just the sign but the real presence of Jesus himself.
In sacramental and in sacrament the fundamental elements of human life are offered back to us with their substance glorified. Ashes point us to God and bread and wine give us Jesus.

The sacrificial walk during the days of Lent offers us a span of time to refocus on the basic elements, and allow them to alter how we view one another even as we deepen our understanding of God. I can't claim to be anything more than a beginner on the way toward regarding everyone in my life as precious dust, but by grace perhaps I'll inch forward.

"Dust, dust, precious dust"...it doesn't have quite the easy rhythmic snap of "chicken legs, chicken legs, chicken legs ooh ," ....but noone said life with God was entirely easy.

Dominican Confessors

2010-02-09T08:33:00.000-06:00

My friends, the Dominicans of St. Joseph's Province are offering talks online. Here is one on confession which is wise and gentle and encouraging! Read it and then hurry to your nearest confessional!

Dominican Confessors

The Peace Which Passes all Understanding

2010-02-08T18:17:00.000-06:00

Magnificat Magazine has a lovely introduction to today's psalm for Morning prayer:

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. (Is. 30: 15b)

God in his power is refuge and strength; God in his mercy is the river that refreshes the soul; God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gathers us into his peace.

And then comes Psalm 42 which begins with words I remember from childhood:

"God is for us a refuge and strength."

I don't think I truly understood those words until one memorable day a few years back, when I sat on a bench at a neighborhood playground.

Annie was still young and so we were making regular visits, often lengthy ones. I had my Magnificat Magazine with me and was taking the opportunity to pray while enjoying a particularly mellow spring day, which probably means that it was sometime in March or April. I began to feel a presence, like a sweet breeze, the gentlest of encounters which did nothing but fill my heart with joy. All at once I was praying to Someone and Someone was listening. I could hardly tear myself away from the beauty of the encounter.

It was an encounter with the person of Jesus, an encounter from which has flowered a whole new understanding of the spiritual world in which reside the angels,the saints and the living Christ.

I had already been received as a Catholic when this event occurred, and indeed had been a baptized Christian since infancy and a staunch believer for most of that time. So it cannot be that this was my first real experience of faith, or that any doctrinal convictions changed. But some perceptions did change, not as dramatically as they did for Saul of Tarsus, but dramatic enough for this former protestant. You cannot encounter the living Jesus as I did on that blessed day without your horizons widening and your faith deepening.

I suppose it was fundamentally a call to relationship, which means it was a call to prayer. In that sense it was a call to vocation, as Paul was called to his vocation to preach to and teach the gentiles.

I cannot say I experienced that kind of call to ministry as a protestant, though I was a pastor for a number of years.
I would not ever deny that many of my protestant colleagues in ministry did in fact experience that very kind of call. But my call to ministry in those days was more of an ecclesial one, an intentional decision on my part in concert with the decision of my sponsoring congregation to consider together the fitness of such a path. After years of study, practical experience and an examination of sorts by the governing body of the church's regional overseers, and then the offer of a pastorate, I was given the credentials to be a pastor, which meant that as far as my church and the state authorities were concerned I could preach, teach, perform weddings and funerals
and celebrate Holy Communion. I was licenced to do a certain kind of job, and yes, it was probably more than that. It was a ministry in some sense which Catholics would recognize, though it was in no sense the role of priest because I was not ordained to be a Catholic priest. And however similar the job descriptions might sound, without the transforming element of true ordination by a bishop, sacramental ministry cannot be exercised or indeed most likely be fully fathomed by the non- ordained.

Did I pray in those days? Yes, of course, though never with the sense that I do now, that I am praying to the One whom I encountered on that playground one spring! My prayer now truly is vocation, it has purpose and meaning, defined as it is by certain key thoughts and phrases: "for healing, yet not my will but thine be done"; "that suffering might be removed, yet let the suffering be joined with the suffering Jesus on the cross"; "for contrition and the right reception of absolution"; "for dying to the self that the soul might live." These are words which seek out life with Jesus Christ, life in and through him. They go beyond mere petitions and extend most intimately to life with the triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Above all, my prayer now rests on the sure understanding that the peace which passes all understanding resides in the midst of life with the triune God, that that peace is a part of every breath taken, every word uttered, every gesture that is made in and through Jesus.

So it is that I have left behind a former life as a pastor, a life that had its own richness, challenges, heartaches, its salary and retirement account. I found instead a vocation to prayer, a vocation that is offered to every lay Catholic who desires a joy-filled life with God. It is far more beautiful than the creaturely call I followed earlier, though I say that with a pang, as I know and love many fine pastors. Yet it is true. Perhaps in some ways they know that call as I did not then know it.

But having received it, I cannot ever mourn the truth that women are not ordained in the Catholic Church. How can I be sad or frustrated or angry at the call which has breathed life eternal into my soul and entrusted to me a richness beyond any treasure I could have imagined? What is more precious than the call to approach Jesus on the cross with one's heartaches and unite them to his suffering? What is more worthy and filled with dignity than the call to leave behind the old tattered self so that a new self can be reborn,a self which seeks virtue for its own sake and for the sake of God?

"God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gathers us into his peace."

"Be still and know that I am God."

Deo, dicamus gratias!

Quiet Day

2010-02-06T19:22:00.000-06:00

All is quiet here on the home front. After a couple of hours in the dentist's chair yesterday for two crowns (the dentist says that's nothing, sometimes people have seven or eight at once....yikes!) and then some bustling about doing errands, no time remained for blogging. Today we have spent our time preparing for Annie's 12Th birthday surprise party which turns out not to be a surprise after all....she wormed it out of us. Suffice it to say I haven't had much on my mind on the Catholic front, except to wonder who the patron saint of dentists might be. And, as promised, I have been praying as I go about the cleaning.

When I first became Catholic I was overwhelmed with all of the available saints, angels, patrons, guardians, and then Mary, to accompany me on my prayer journey. Who to turn to first? Now I simply call upon my favorites, Padre Pio, Mother Theresa and Therese,followed by a general cry to all the saints and angels (after all we do that during Mass) and then a special appeal to Mary. It seems to work out, so far. I don't know enough about their particular traits to call upon one saint or another in highly specific situations, like being in the dentist's chair. That could change of course. For now I will continue to draw upon those saints I know a bit about and leave the rest to their mercy. For all I know there is a patron saint of birthdays who even now is keeping a special eye on tomorrow.

Hospitality Revisited

2010-02-03T10:03:00.000-06:00

During the weeks preceding Grandma's anticipated visit (now cancelled for health reasons) our family had much discussion about which bed she would occupy.The guest bed is not much of an excuse for a bed at all, being one of those sofa beds which relies uneasily on a thin mattress, metal rods and springs for its supposed comfort. Because the mattress can't really pad the rods and springs, sleeping on this bed is something of a penance, maybe not as bad as a hair shirt, but getting there.

With a clean house and lots of sparkling windows on offer, it seemed a shame to provide a bed upon which Grandma would lie and most assuredly not sleep.

The only person who really wanted to try it out was Annie, who still thinks of sleeping on sofa beds instead of her own bed as an adventure. She thinks the dips and curves are cozy, and she gets around the metal rods by sleeping at an angle, which she is still small enough to do.

That left her bed for Grandma, in a room which is far from clean and which houses a hamster, two hermit crabs, and two fish. I figured Grandma would adjust to the bright pink walls and maybe even the general air of untidiness, but I couldn't see her sleeping through the night with a hamster periodically exercising on a noisy wheel and an air filter for the fish tank whirring loudly enough to fall outside the boundaries of white noise. The hermit crabs are pretty harmless unless you get up close and whiff their fishy aroma.

We finally decided that yes, we could clean the room, and then temporarily relocate all the boarders to one of the bathrooms, where the door would be closed at all times so the three cats couldn't get in.

One more problem solved in our effort to welcome Grandma. Or so we hoped. When you are expecting company you can never perfectly prepare, and mostly the company you expect know that. They know that you will likely not anticipate every need that might arise. One couple we entertained when we were much younger, took the mattress off the pull-out bed, placed it on the floor and happily slept soundly all night long. It was only in the morning when they produced their own organic herbal tea for breakfast that I began to take offense.

In Barbara Pym novels, a suitable selection of books is always left by a guest's bed, carefully chosen with that particular person in mind. A Norwegian grammar book, the collected sermons of John Henry Newman, and a stack of parish newspapers laid out for a visiting Anglican rector for whom the host has scant regard, or a limp volume of the Poems of John Dunne for an old school friend. Few houses I've visited have offered hospitality in quite that form, though the most recent guest room did have a machine which would make a variety of soothing background sounds. Providing bird song, or the sound of ocean waves to guests is my idea of hospitality. I suppose if you had an Anglican vicar visiting for whom you felt only slight fondness you could provide Cd's of Hymns Ancient and Modern.

As I said, it's difficult to welcome even the most loving family members, never mind friends and relative strangers, with any certainty that you have offered just what they might need. Being human, we all mostly understand that, and we do our best whether we are the invited or the invitor, to be gracious and kind and non- critical. Hospitality is not the same as hotel service. It is more a humble offering of self to be received with a corresponding degree of humility.

Beyond the obvious preparation of home and hearth,hospitality is a matter of the heart, the opening up of heart and mind and soul to the active presence of something more. Christians will identify this as the Holy Spirit, the constant current of quiet wisdom and guidance and love which, if allowed to enter, will take over where the material cannot go, into realms of tolerance and understanding and virtue.

I suggested in my previous post that we could probably all benefit from spiritual housecleaning from time to time, dusting off virtues so that the Holy Spirit might be our guest. By this I did not mean that we are in any way responsible for the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, if we allow the Holy spirit to penetrate deeply into our interior lives, it is by virtue of the Holy Spirit himself! Embedded in the mystery of human action is the truth that no human activity can on its own do what God himself does. The most we can say about how we control our own spiritual lives is that we are asked to ready ourselves for the workings of the divine in our human hearts and souls through prayer, prayer motivated by the Holy Spirit, prayer which opens doors to guidance from somewhere outside ourselves but which translates into thoughts and actions done by our selves. I suppose it's a way of saying that the Holy spirit himself readies our hearts for his coming!

To be sure we can cooperate with this flow of divine love by attending mass and confession, and spending time in adoration. A difference in the way I understand all of this now, as compared with earlier protestant days, is located in the word cooperate. I see now more clearly that the small portion of good done at my hand is really tied to what I allow God to do. I have the means to prevent God from acting. I can be stubborn, proud, lazy, and act in any number of ways which are not at all virtuous. Or I can hold out my hands and allow God to act through me, displaying virtue which is always a gift and never a product of my own doing.

So it is that when guests are expected we - all of us- can do all the cleaning and polishing we like. But if we are to cultivate the habits of hospitable living we will, in prayer, listen more and more to the promptings from the Holy Spirit and allow him to be our guide. I rather like the thought that this can be done while mopping the floor and sweeping underneath beds. These simple tasks allow time for reflection and prayer as long as the back stays free from pain and the knees continue to bend with flexibility.

I am truly sorry that Grandma won't be with us this week, as we had planned, but for the opportunity to encounter God in the midst of all the preparation I am truly thankful. Perhaps next time company is coming I will be even less tense and more prayerful, and God willing I will even have a decent spare bed to offer!

Ashley Torrenti Interview – 1/28/10 : Currents

2010-02-01T08:18:00.000-06:00

Ok, if this doesn't restore your faith in school children in general, and Catholic children in particular, I will be surprised! I found this at the Deacon's Bench, I site I visit regularly for gentle wisdom, humor, and Catholic insight.

Ashley Torrenti Interview – 1/28/10 : Currents