Love and Ashes

Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday make odd companions. Being a person of faith and having never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day, I easily decree that Ash Wednesday takes precedence, and gave the kids homemade Valentines and some boxes of conversation hearts yesterday. They all are giving up candy, so three of the five boxes of hearts are still sitting on the front table, even though we had a dinner guest last night. Since my husband and son (and maybe one of the girls - who doesn't like meat) are giving up meat for Lent also, I made steak and roasted vegetables. The vegetables weren't cooking fast enough and the puff pastries were underdone, so I put the oven on convection and burned it all. Happily, I had bought caramel gelato at the store as a back up. And we had salad with a few roasted potatoes.

We did not host our usual Mardi Gras party this year because we have been busy and have two confirmations and two graduations (ok, one a promotion from eighth grade) and an 18 yr old birthday and a 16 yr old birthday (the second oldest turned 20 yesterday. Just got a party in a box).  Instead I hosted book club on Monday. We read The Book of Joy, a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu edited by Douglas Abrams. So I tried to make food that honored three cultures: pickled okra, sausage, sweet tea and a pathetic king cake for the Gulf Coast, mumus, naan and curried chicken for Tibet and a sweet potato, syrup, and coconut bake for South Africa. My daughter made cheesecake bites and my friend brought tiramisu. We also had cookies and candy, a veggie platter with homemade hummus, a pistachio honey cream cheesed dip, raspberries filled with white chocolate, and wine. A veritable feast, which was mostly admired and not consumed because friends had eaten dinner. My children, however, had not, so they hoovered most everything left on the counter when we vacated the kitchen for the living room discussion.

I think I have mentioned before that this book club is an offshoot of a book club started in about 1998 with a friend who also now lives in San Diego.  She had been a part of the great books program at University of San Francisco, so we found kinship in reading hard books.  We pulled in some moms from a mother's group that met at her church, and started meeting to read and discuss books about Catholic teaching, spirituality, or experience. That book club was still flourishing when I returned to Virginia in 2005. And when we moved here, my friend and I started up again in 2015. This year we were joined by another of the original group, whose husband is a pilot and just got stationed here.  Serendipity or providence or a small Navy?

Now it is an evening of lively discussion. Most of the members read most of the books and come most of the time. It's rare than more than a few people finish the books, but there is always plenty to discuss. It's not a book club where we meet and talk about kids and husbands while eating bonbons and drinking wine, although sometimes I have to push people out of the kitchen to get started. 

The point of this digression about book club is that The Book of Joy, while not a Catholic book, has many conjunctions with The Joy of the Gospel and The Joy of Love, which we read earlier (and even Bishop Barron's book To Light a Fire). I think Abrams should have invited Pope Francis to this party, but the Archbishop and the Dalai Lama had a preexisting friendship, although they met rarely and had only spent a minimal amount of time together. They had a kinship. 

In an attempt to synthesize these texts, I feel like the relationship between Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday becomes obvious.  Love of others is the source and direction of our joy. Looking outward with compassion helps us turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own fears, desires, and loneliness; we realize we are not alone.  Practicing compassion, forgiveness, humility, humor, acceptance, and hope are all means of achieving a joyful heart and of uniting our will with God's. Spending time in quiet prayer, practicing detachment from consumerism and material well being, giving of our time, treasure, and talents are all sources of joy - as well as the practices of Lent. 

Happiness and joy have received a lot of attention lately - as well as the opposite emotions of loneliness and despair, especially when teens 10-14 are attempting suicide at a 200% increase over a few years ago.  And really the way to find joy, that deep-seated emotion that exists even when we might feel angry or annoyed occasionally, is so simple. Love God and love your neighbor. Don't love yourself more than anyone else. And yet that is our tendency.

So for Lent: I'm going to fast as usual from sweets and alcohol (and probably most meat since everyone else is). For prayer, I'm going to participate in a parish women's Bible study and Stations devotions on Fridays. I'm going to keep writing little lists of good things that happen each day. And I'm going to keep trying to begin each day with a little reflection on the daily readings, even if I don't get to Mass. For almsgiving, I'm going to put change in the little box on the table and give to our charity of the month, but I"m also going to stay off Facebook unless I need to check a meeting. I want to use the time I usually spend checking in to give more attention to people around me, mainly the kids.  I'm going to try to remember to always assume the best about others' intentions.  I want to try to reach out to give charity to others in the form of time and attention, in addition to money. I want to copy Mrs. Darwin's idea of writing letters, and write to my children the things I keep forgetting to tell them.  I want to remember to offer my sacrifices for specific intentions, too. 

I have been looking forward to Lent. I know it's not meant to be a time of self-improvement, but redirection toward Christ and toward what is essential, love. 

Sweets

for my Sweet!

Happy Valentine's Day! I'll be renewing my marriage vows at Mass this morning without my Valentine, but we had a nice phone chat this morning.  The connection is surprisingly good, despite the fact that it is 10.5 hours later in the day where he is.

We don't do much to mark Valentine's Day around here. A favorite quote from The Little Prince: "The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen . . ." A nice card does my heart as much good as any supermarket roses or box of chocolates.  But I have been reminiscing about past Valentine's dinners.  We didn't go out often early in our marriage, but on our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, in Newport, Rhode Island, we went to a little seafood restaurant on the Point, down the street from where we lived on the first floor of an old house. Our upstairs neighbors were always making curries that fragranced the whole house, while I cooked rice with canned vegetables mixed in. Not a high point in my culinary history.  I was six months pregnant and always hungry, so it was a real treat to dine out on fresh lobster.

But my favorite Valentine: in 1998, my second son was born on the 13th, so on the 14th, our little family welcomed him home. By our second anniversary we had two babies, and have had birthday cake on Valentine's days since.

So until March, I have two twelve year olds. We are in our Irish twin month.