Love/hate

These things make me inordinately happy:

Another cross country season

A new sport

Strange sea creatures . . .

... that seem to want to be patted.

Burrowing owls

Blessing of the animals

Another book lover

Plumeria! Finally! A cutting from a friend has been nurtured for months until rewarding us with blooms.

Passionflower!

And some things fill me with disgust, like finding a pile of shredded candy wrapper, tufts of fabric, and other evidence that El Raton found my secret stash of chocolate in a bag inside of my favorite backpack. The war is on! Snap traps, sticky traps and poison bait have been laid for the intruder...

Thank you, gracias, merci

After the preterm labor scare and receiving the doctor's recommendation to take it easy for a couple of weeks, I spent days thinking the baby was going to arrive any time. Any twinge around my belly was a cause for concern.  Now here we are almost 38 weeks along and still no real labor. So the past few days have filled up with activities, and since the sun has been shining and the weather beautiful, I've been thankful to be able to fit whatever works into the schedule. Each day seems full of potential - Maybe today will be the birth day! - and full of graces.

A catalog of recent blessings:

• Saturday night was the school dinner dance/ auction fundraiser.  I wasn't sure if we would be able to attend this event, but since we missed the Seabee Ball, I was glad we still had an opportunity to go out on a dressy date once it became clear that Baby is taking her sweet time.  It wasn't formal, which could be why it was one of the most upbeat and sociable school fundraisers we've been to in awhile. Or is it just that Californians love to drink wine and dance? We got to visit with some other families who have interested me but whom we haven't really met, and we met some families we didn't know at all who were interesting. The crowd made it fun night, but the absolutely best, most exciting part was that we won the raffle for free tuition for one of our kids! Yahoo! We never win anything! I want to tell everyone, hey guess what! but I don't want to gloat. Several people came up to tell us how happy they were for us - and probably they are a little glad that the same family with one kid who has won the last three years because he (his parents) sells so many tickets (entries are based on how many tickets for the cash raffle you sell) didn't win yet again. Still glowing with gratitude. 

• Sunday night was a different kind of event - Pam Stenzel came to give a chastity talk to the confirmation classes. My eighth grader is in the class, and my two older boys are peer leaders, so all three teenagers were in attendance. Parents were requested to attend, so the gym was overflowing. I have been grateful for the active youth group here - over 300 kids are enrolled in the two years of confirmation class. In the summers the leader, who is a Steubenville grad, takes kids to Steubenville conferences, mission trips to an Indian reservation in New Mexico, and a weeklong urban service project in LA.  She's got a lot of charisma and dedication to the kids. So I'm grateful for her spiritual leadership, I'm grateful that my boys want to be involved, and I'm grateful for the message that Pam conveyed.  I haven't been as outspoken about chastity and theology of the body teachings as I thought I would be.  It's nice to have someone else who is witty and knowledgeable spout off statistics about STIs, anecdotes about lost and preserved virginity, and motivational messages about being chaste for your kids to hear. Half the parents were in tears by the end, I think. It's a scary world out there. But there is also a lot of hope, especially amongst the kids in that gym.  I tried to re-emphasize to my kids in the car on the way home that while it may seem like the hardships of your teen years are more suffering than you can stand, they are a very short period of time compared to a lifetime of marriage and an eternity with God.  I pray they can keep the distant future in sight as they navigate the difficult choices of their immediate future. 

• Another thing that stood out to me in Pam's speech was when she told how she was adopted. Her mother was raped as a young woman and put her up for adoption. She was an unwanted child, but her life has not been purposeless. I think about all the people her crusade has touched, and pray for unwanted children everywhere.

• I'm also grateful I'm no longer on bedrest. The past few days have been beautiful, and I've been taking walks again. The weekend was full to brim - a track meet, soccer games, the fundraiser, a birthday party, a St. Patrick's Day parade two days early.  I let one of the teenagers drive to the track meet along the back highway that runs along beautiful corridor of agriculture property.  The drought out here may be scaring the owners of these properties, but their lemon trees and strawberry fields still look lush.  We pray for rain at Mass, but I am thankful for the cheery sun nonetheless.  (And I'm thankful for getting to go to the track meet. I love track season! I felt nearly as tired after cheering for the runners as if I'd run the race myself.)

• I'm grateful we had time to help at ManyMeals again on Wednesday. This is a once-a-week dinner program our parish provides to the community. We try to go once a month. It is primarily for the homeless, but not limited to just homeless people. One table is full of elderly friends. At another table sit a group of mentally challenged adults, a couple of them were born with their disabilities, one suffered a stroke, another was in a car accident. They have homes, but they come for the meal and the fellowship.  Some of the attendees are regulars. One man, new this week, asked if I knew where he could get cash. I mentioned St. Vincent de Paul Society or Catholic Charities. I had no cash myself and the volunteers are not supposed to give handouts. Then the man told me he had only been homeless a few weeks since he lost his job. He lifted his shirt to reveal a huge scar where he had been shot in the abdomen. Now he was disabled and was still waiting for his paperwork to be processed so he could receive government benefits. One of the regular volunteers, an older woman who comes with her husband every week, told me some of the stories she has learned while serving these meals.  We also learned, through another source, that her husband, who quietly rolls plasticware into napkins and twist-ties them together, refills the butter baskets, and stocks the salt and pepper, is a retired two-star Admiral.  We knew he had been in the military on ships, but he was so humble about his jobs.  My husband was ready to salute him this weekend.

So you never know. Through the grace of God, we have been blessed with bright, healthy kids, supportive extended family, my husband's dependable job, a multitude of friends, and wonderful experiences.  We could lose any of it, any minute.  Still, I can be ungrateful. I can mull over lost opportunities and impossible dreams.  I can bewail my selfishness and sacrifices. I really want to eat cake, not diabetic diet foods.

As I have mentioned, Pope Francis has repeatedly reminded us to be grateful to our families, to our fellow human beings, to God.  To say "Thank you" is also to say "I love you."  When Lent first started, I resolved to more aware of what I have to be thankful for. I have started and abandoned gratitude lists. I have written multiple times about gratitude and giving thanks.  But still I fall back into the habit of selfishness and self-pity: What about me? That's mine!  I don't want to! Sometimes I am as grabby as my kids. It's a bit discouraging how often I have to turn again, and turn again, and turn again.

It is a good thing that Lent is not called a time of change, but a time of conversion.  Conversion takes a lifetime, as this quote from Pope Benedict XVI on Ash Wednesday of 2007 reminds us:

"Conversion ... is not something that happens once and for all, it is a process, a journey, that cannot be limited to a specific period but must embrace all existence. ... "In this light, Lent is an appropriate spiritual moment to train ourselves more earnestly to seek God, opening our hearts to Christ. Conversion means seeking God.  It is not an effort of self-realization. Self-realization is a contradiction, and it is too little for us. We have a higher destiny.  Conversion consists precisely in not thinking that one is the 'creator' of oneself, and thus discovering the truth."

And from Pope Francis's homily for Ash Wednesday this year:

Lent is a time to recover the capacity to react before the reality of evil,” the pontiff emphasized, adding that it is also a time “for personal renewal” and for “community” that “brings us closer to God.”

Highlighting the importance of “confidently” adhering “to his Gospel in order to look at our brothers and the needy with new eyes,” during this season, the Pope observed that it is “a suitable time to convert to be able to love our neighbor.”

This love, he explained, is “a love that generates an attitude of gratitude and of mercy with the Lord, who 'became poor to enrich us with his poverty.'"

If we have a Creator, we have someone to thank. One of the first and easiest prayers our kids learn is "God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for our food." If we are filled with love for the things, and more especially, for others created by God, it is even easier to feel gratitude.  And so thank you, God.

From Pope Francis' Easter Vigil homily last year:

To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.
Dear brothers and sisters, to all of you who are listening to me, from Rome and from all over of the world, I address the invitation of the Psalm: “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever. Let Israel say: ‘His steadfast love endures for ever’” (Ps 117:1-2).

How to Feel 19 Again:

Make an unscheduled stop after Mass downtown in the middle of the day.  See a handsome man in uniform walking out of restaurant straight toward you. Realize, with a flutter in your chest, that that man is your husband leaving a business lunch.  Get swept up in his arms for a big smooch as the cars rush by. 

Another List

Today I went to a short professional development session on "Teaching Millenials." I was hoping for a few more practical tips, but the tips were limited to "use technology" and "provide opportunities for group projects and teamwork," ideas I'm aware of, although I don't incorporate them often. The presenter focused primarily on stereotypical characteristics of the Millenial generation and the three generations preceding. I noticed that he left out one characteristic that my generation, Gen X, shares with the Millenials - we like to make playlists as gifts.  There's a "Truly Pathetic Love Song" tape still floating around in our car (which has a tape deck), one of the first gifts I gave my husband, back in college when he was getting ready to go away for a year in Rome. (Proof of Memorex's enduring quality?) We'd only been dating a few months, so maybe it was a little bold of me to send him a bunch of sappy love songs, but then he made me one, too. Sweet!!When he went away this past spring to Afghanistan, I made another love song mix, this time from the Itunes songs we have. And now, because I'm trying to butter him up, here's a list of those songs. Some are from the original mix.

• In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel
• You Are the Everything – REM
• Fall On Me –REM
• Strong Enough – Sheryl Crow
• I Shall Believe – Sheryl Crow
• Better than ice cream – Sarah McLachlan
• Don’t You Forget About Me – Simple Minds
• Joy – The Sundays
• All I Want is You – U2
• Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
• Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight – James Taylor
• How Sweet It Is – James Taylor
•  Follow Me – John Denver
• Walking ON Sunshine – Katrina and the Waves
• Stay – Lisa Loeb
• Anyone Else But You – Moldy Peaches
• Come Away With Me – Norah Jones
• Turn Me On – Norah Jones
• The Nearness of You – Norah Jones
•  Livin’ On Love – Alan Jackson
• Home - Alan Jackson
• I’d Love you All Over Again – Alan Jackson
• When You Say Nothing At All – Alison Krauss
• The Lucky One – Alison Krauss
• If I Had a Million Dollars – Barenaked Ladies
• She Talks To Angels – Black Crowes
• She’s Always a Woman – Billy Joel
• You’ve Made Me so Very Happy – Blood Sweat and Tears
• I’ll See you Soon – Coldplay
• Longer – Dan Fogelberg
• Crash Into Me – Dave Matthews
• Lover Lay Down – Dave Matthews
• Wonderful Tonight – Eric Clapton
• More Than Words- Extreme
• Your Song – Ewan MacGregor
• We Make A Lot of Love – Harry Connick, Jr
• Better Together – Jack Johnson
• If I Could – Jack Johnson
• Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson
• Do You Remember – Jack Johnson

 

 

Thankful for sickness

My kindergartener stayed home from school the other day, after I was shamed by his teacher for sending him in with a cough the day before. So we had a little home school time and discovered a treasure: Crepes by Suzette by Monica Wellington. Suzette owns a little crepe cart she pushes around Paris. Mixed media depictions of famous places in Paris (Notre Dame and the Louvre, of course, and also L’Opera and the Tuileries.) are the background to Suzette’s day as she serves crepes to cartoon copies of personages from famous paintings: Cassette’s mother bathing her child, Mona Lisa, Degas’ Little Dancer, Seurat’s circus performers, and Chagall’s Bride and Groom. I love books like this that combine history and art into a new story.

So after we finished reading we followed the simple recipe in the back of the book for crepes. They would’ve been better with Nutella, but melted chocolate chips tasted awfully good.
Add crepes to my lovelist!

And add sick days to the gratitude list. Nothing like a day at home with a schedule cleared by germs for enjoying a stack of library books.

Conversations with others and self

My oldest asked today about what is a classic when I told him he “owed” me a book of my choice after reading a bunch of fun books. I could think of the Mark Twain quote about a classic being a book everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read, or a classic being a book you’ll read again (a quote from?). A classic has noble and eternal truths, added Dan. A classic has beautiful, or at least original diction, I threw in. A classic is a book that stands the test of time. Not statements that make you want to run out and read classics. I thought I’d be more eloquent about this topic after my expensive education, but I didn’t have any great one liners to offer.

J complained that classics don’t have enough action, but what he really meant to complain about (after we gave the examples of Romeo and Juliet, Tom Sawyer, Swiss Family Robinson) is the difficulty of the language. So perhaps it is the words that make a classic, more than anything else: good plot and meaning and character development can be found in books that won’t be read again, but if they don’t have any lines that stick with you, you’ll forget them. So a classic has great one liners.


Then he asked if he could sit down and write a classic, apparently because Irene Hunt, whom he’s reading in English, said “There aren’t enough classics” and sat down and wrote Across Five Aprils.


Well, if you have a gift, you could. But you wouldn’t know it for years, we decided, and probably not until you’re dead. That led to the naming of some living classics: Eric Carle. Jan Brett’s version of The Mitten (not all of her books). Strega Nona. Wendell Berry’s essays. Beloved. Others?
**So to add to my love list: these spontaneous conversations between parent and child that hit big topics.

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Also on my love list: this prayer we say at bedtime:

         “Come Holy Spirit, enlighten my heart,

                 That I may see all there is of God.

          Come, Holy Spirit, into my mind,

                  That I may know all there is of God.

          Come, Holy Spirit, into my soul,

                  That I may belong only to God.

           Sanctify all that I think, say and do,

                    That all may be for the glory of God. Amen.”


Dan learned this prayer at Notre Dame. I don’t know the source, but we have prayed it as a part of our nightly family rosary since we started doing one when the oldest boys were little (after we realized we couldn’t stay awake to say prayers together as a couple after we put them to bed.) I love this little prayer; it encompasses a lot in a few simple phrases.

But I realized tonight that I really need to work on that third petition. I’ve spent time admiring God in Creation and in His Creatures and looking for evidence of God's hand in the events of our lives. I’ve spent perhaps more time in study, trying to get to know God through the wisdom of the Gospels, the Church Fathers, the medieval enchiridions, the Scholastics, the mystics, the Popes and theologians. But although I’ve done a fair share of spiritual reading, it’s not prayer, and it’s not opening my soul to the Holy Spirit. I haven’t given up my will or my desires. (Perhaps making a life list is a reflection of valuing my will more than God’s?) Nor have I really bent my heart to the love of serving others. And this I’m sure is a source of my dissatisfaction with the way things are, because there are always more desires and needs after some are fulfilled. I haven’t learned to offer all I do to God’s glory. I haven’t learned to just be.

Perhaps this is why the last several years have been a blur. They have lacked intentionality in my actions, but also in my meditations.  After saying the words of that third petition all these years, I need to remember to surrender to it every now and then.