365: What Child is This?

This, this is Christ the King

Therese, my Good Shepherd Catechesis partner, often quotes her pastor, saying that the world is forever changed every time a child is born into the world. That's pretty much what my pastor had to say this Christmas, too. I sat there wedged into the pew with Mike, my kids, my parents and sisters. And I had to agree. Now, of course Sophia forever changed my world. But I thought I was done with that whole motherhood changes you thing with Maeve's pregnancy. Oh I was wrong.

Her birth was the same as Sophia's, minus the hospital-contracted infection. Which completely validated my first birth experience. Can't beat 'em, join 'em. It totally absolved me, and I look back and think my, I must have been crazy to think that Sophia's birth was my fault. But I did think that. Until 40 hours of labor at home followed by 12 more at the hospital convince me that the term "died in childbirth" exists for a reason. Because it happened so often before medical care came along, it was listed as cause of death. My great-grandfather's mother died in childbirth. Then his father married her sister. Who died in childbirth. My great-grandmother on another side of the family had 8 children survive birth but lost 3 at birth, including twins. And one of those 8 drowned before the age of 10. Not so long ago, childhood was something to be survived.

Mary didn't die in childbirth, which was probably no easy feat, alone, young, first baby, in nothing resembling sterile or familiar surroundings. Why lies he in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding? Mary survived, her infant survived. He survived the slaughter of the innocent. He survived, possibly, if not probably, several types of pox and other illnesses that we hazily remember in the names of immunizations. Accidents, broken bones--think about how many times you and your siblings went to the ER. And he made it to adulthood.

It seems like such a risk, for the Incarnation to start so small, so unguarded and tentative. Like faith. Good works. Love. Hope. It has to start somewhere, and it seems that the theme here on earth is starting small. Haste, haste to bring him laud.

Christmas Moments

We have a 10 pm mass at St. Pius V--not a vigil, not a midnight. It's actually perfect for us, because my family has this tradition of midnight mass followed immediately by Christmas morning (I think it might have stemmed from the idea that you look better in pictures if you still have makeup on from church, heels on and hair done, than after a too-short night's sleep and screaming kids and no coffee). But I have kids who usually are in bed by 8:30 so starting the present opening at 1:45 in the morning is a no-go. But 11:30 works just fine.

It was such a beautiful liturgy, I don't think I've been to such a lovely Christmas mass since...last year. But before that, it's been forever. And this year seemed even more graceful and communal than last. Fr. John had two Dominicans (one is a transitional deacon assigned to Pius, the other I have not met) and a Redemptorist join him--the Redemptorist knows all the Redemptorists my parents knew so well back in the day (me and two of my siblings were baptized in a Redemptorist parish). The gospel was sung; there was enough incense to make Marika have to leave the congregation twice; the music was inspired and beautiful, as always. The poinsettias were gigantic, the trees worked out (I was so so nervous, you know, making a stand vs. the Boy Scouts, to have the trees I would replace them with totally suck, but they didn't), things were beautiful. I'm already thinking about the things I might change for next year greenery-wise. The sanctuary was so well done, the nativity scene in the seasonal corner was fabulous (of course!). But the occasional sad little wreath on the pillars seem like an afterthought in the nave. Ruminating.

Fr. John's homily was about how a child's birth changes us, and I kept thinking about my two kids and how that was true--obviously, Sophia being my first, life totally changed. And for some reason, I just assumed the second would be Sophia Part II. But Maeve has changed me in other ways (not always for the better). Her birth onward, she has continually affirmed and surprised me. Frustrated and blessed so many moments. Sophia was the child I expected and wanted; Maeve is the one I needed to have.

In the silence after the homily (which I love, the comfort in silence at my parish is key for me, so many other parishes flow so quickly from one thing to the next there is no holy pause to let anything sink in) Maeve whispered to me that she needed water. Then she whispered it again. Maeve has an ear infection that has spread to her eye (under control now) and a bad cold, I knew she wasn't faking, and I whispered back that we would after everyone stood up. So then in her loudest inside voice, she demanded water. I got up with her right then. A baby changes things. Ah well.

So we stood in back after our trek to the parish hall to find a working water fountain. Talked with Maura a bit about her granddaughter, about the banner I made (was it heavy? Could the liturgical dancers handle it?). Then Maeve saw the nativity scene and went over to touch the lambs and baby Jesus and the shepherd. During the Eucharistic Prayer, she stood at a little side table in back where the programs had been, imitating Fr. John (later I told him, and he said, oh it's all that Atrium training....which it is, of course).

At the sign of peace, we were over near Sr. Paulette, and Maeve put her hand on the shoulder of another little girl about her age and said, "Peace." She then went over to the nativity and put her hand on the lambs, on Jesus, Mary, the shepherd, the angel, Joseph, and said, "Peace." I realized what she was doing as she tried to climb onto the platform to reach the donkey and the three magi standing behind the front scene. I pulled her off.

"But I want to give them peace," she demanded in that tone that just makes me cringe in public.

"They know you want to--it's ok to just say it."

So then she held her hand up towards each of them: "Peace."

The banner was fabulous, I think, in the end. It moves the eye well--it's probably one of the better quilts I've made, the curves, the monochromatic palette, the structure, I didn't try to do too many things at once. When Sr. Gen walked up to me after mass and said, "the banner? You? Did you make it? It is amazing," I knew I'd done well. I find her so intimidating, it was a good moment.I want to do something new for Pentecost next. I really sink my teeth into Christmas and Pentecost. I haven't managed Easter in my head yet, and so many symbols of Easter are already present in the Mass, I don't want to repeat symbols. But I was thinking...the ambo frontal I made for Pentecost is obviously inspired by the idea of Holy Spirit as wind, and so I thought perhaps something having to do with fire, and something to do with dove might be appropriate. Ruminating.

Enough about me and my inability to rein in creative religious impulses (everybody together now: there is something wrong with my temporal lobe...).

The rest of Christmas has been nice. More later. I'm in Cairo and living on Cairo Time so I'll get back to you (Cairo Time: the days stretch on forever because there is nowhere to go and nothing to do but chat and read and knit and ignore whatever's on TV in the background. And watch Law and Order).

Peace!

365: Good King Wenceslaus

Good King Wenceslaus went out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay all about
Crisp and clean and even
La la la la la la
Though it was on fire
La la la la la la la
gathering winter fuel!

What is with this song? I know I don't have the lyrics there anything close to right, and that's the point. Do you know them?

St. Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, is the subject of this odd little song. He was raised by his grandmother, also a saint (Ludmilla), who was strangled by her daughter-in-law, Wenceslaus' mother, a pagan. Or rather, Drahomira arranged to have her strangled...After he was made duke, he was murdered by his brother Boleslaus (which sounds like a side item at a barbecue restaurant to me), in 935, due to his increasing devotion to Christianity (he had the Cathedral of St. Vitus built, for instance). Not just murdered--hacked to death on a village church steps.

All the Bohemians I know live in Texas and drink beer, play cards, keep a minimalist view of Catholicism. Shiner Bock is made by Bohemian Texans. Wenceslaus is the patron of brewers. Good king Wenceslaus. But a whole song just for him?

365: Angels We Have Heard on High

Gloria!

This is Sophia's very favorite, absolutely, no question about it, Christmas song. Anything that lets you hold a note that long and in another language, and about angels? The only thing that would make it better would be horses or unicorns in the lyrics. Which of course get added, in the Sophia version:

Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria!
In a barn and stable!

Last year I would try to correct her, back when it was "In a selsy stable!" but this year, it's just not worth it.

When I was 3 I attended an Assembly of God preschool (I know. I can't believe it either), and we had a Christmas pageant. My line, my only line, was supposed to be "Three wise men came from afar." I stood up in front on that little stage, holding my dress up to my chest so everyone could see my tights, and belted out, "Three wise men came from a farm!"

There are still people who bring this up. Thirty years later. In a barn and stable, here we come.

365: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Someday soon we all will be together
If the Fates allow
Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow

It's just after midnight...My kids are asleep in their bunks, my husband is asleep in our room. I'm waiting up on laundry because I need to think forward to packing for Christmas Day. We'll leave after breakfast at my mom's house, which puts us in Cairo around lunchtime. I hope I have everything done. I had a lot of knitting and sewing this year, not including the Christmas banner, stunning, but time-consuming.

So the house is controlled chaos. Muddle through somehow. Tonight I'm going to play mah jongg with the girls, and my kids are going to my parents' house for a spend-the-night. It's the end of Advent and I'm tired. I want to drink bourbon slush and pass tiles and listen to neighbors talk.

Mike asked me what I wanted for Christmas--I think we might wait till January and buy ourselves photographs that were taken this summer. Or maybe it's time to admit the 12 year old TV needs to move to the basement with the elliptical. Perhaps. Either way, it struck me how much I don't want for Christmas anymore. Last year it was still interesting to make a list. This year, I just kind of want my kids to have a good Christmas. I have spent a year paring it down, tossing it out, sending it to Goodwill. I inherited a complex countermarche loom and I have a bead on a used piano.

What I want for Christmas is to sit in my living room, the lights off except the tree, nothing on the television, just this song on the radio. Hot chocolate--no, wine--my kids falling asleep on sleeping bags, Mike and I on the couch. I think that sounds perfect for tomorrow night, don't you?

It isn't half bad

The banner, it's all done but the shoutin. Actually, the shoutin's done, too. It was starting to feel like a return of Christmas Past (aka, the tree fiasco--if you don't know the tale, check out December 2006 on the sidebar). I was starting to grate my seasonal affective disordered brain against the seasonal affective disordered brain of another parishioner. And frankly, that's just not worth it. None of that political BS is worth it to me, community or no community. There is no reason to open old wounds and discuss. I made the banner, I think it's rather lovely, and whatever happens from here, short of torching it at the top of its pole on the church steps Christmas Eve, is ok.

I went to Janine's this evening and wrapped presents. I made brownies for the rectory. I cleaned house. I worked out. And now, I look at that fabulous thing hanging on the curtains in the living room, all quilted and bound and ready to go to church and debut, and I think I'm ready for Christmas after all. I pick up the trees on Saturday, probably complete with hangover, but that would be according to prophecy as well, and we decorate on Sunday. I couldn't find my rear end with both hands today, or, to tell the truth, yesterday, but now whatever that storm was has passed. Everything is ready except for the scarf I'm making for Mike's cousin's husband, and that'll be done in time, I'm almost certain. Everything else is ready and my kids are out of school and relaxed and not bored yet and look, it's a banner:



I superimposed it on a darkened shot of the rose window in the back of church so that it would stand out (as opposed to showing you my lovely living room curtains as a backdrop, again).

It makes me quiet. Advent-y. No matter what anyone else thinks about it, I like it. It's heavily machine quilted and broderie-persed in the center medallions. The border, which is not part of this photo, I realize, I cropped too much, but anyway, the border has quilted into it, very subtly, Numbers 24:17. Sort of like looking through a hazy darkness of centuries to come, in variegated thread on variegated pieced fabric: I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star shall advance from Jacob, a staff rise up from Israel.

And I can hear Fr. Charles (S.J.) in the back of my head: an artist should never talk about her own work. She's done all she can in the creation, whatever else the viewer/reader/etc takes away from it is not her problem or responsibility. Feh. I can't stop talking about this one.

365: Silver Bells

City sidewalk, busy sidewalks
dressed in holiday style.
In the air there's
a feeling of Christmas.
Children laughing, people passing,
meeting smile after smile

I live in a city. My parents live in the same city, a block south. Every year since they moved here, they've had a Christmas party the Friday before Christmas. This year included. My parents are children of suburbia--rich man, poor man, but neither are city kids. I was raised in total suburbia. To put it bluntly, I didn't have a black person in my class at school until I was in 7th grade. White. Bread. America. So now we live here in south city.

A few years ago at their annual holiday party my sister and I looked around and all we could do was quote Virginia Slims--you've come a long way, BABY. It was the most diverse crowd I have ever witnessed at a holiday party. This is probably an amalgamated list, based on several years, but here goes:

*College-aged sisters with tattoos and piercings and the boyfriend with the faux mohawk.
*My working-class dyed in the wool democrat grandparents
*My very thin, very rich, very chic dyed in the wool republican aunt and uncle
*My very out, very gay, very chic cousin who dresses Oprah and lives on 5th avenue
*My mom's Vietnamese students, elderly women who are studying to be citizens
*My mom's coworkers, a mix of black and white disgruntled over-educated women
*My dad's ex-boss and his partner
*Two Jesuits
*Three nuns from next door
*A few of my mom's students from East St. Louis, returning to college middle-aged
*My dad's current boss and his wife in African garb
*My mom's south St. Louis high school friends
*My uncles, all of them Allman-brother stand-ins
*A few of my dad's clients who run not-for-profit agencies
*My money-hungry go-go-eighties cousins who live in the county and donate to those agencies
*My neighbors, who are mostly just like me, frankly.
*My aunt with one eye
*My uncle with one eye
*My amway-selling conservative Catholic great-aunt and her husband (they talked to the Jesuits)
*The neighbor from down the street from my parents who has been semi-homeless at times
*The neighbor from down the street from my parents who's a fireman at the airport and sends his kids to New City School
*The block captain from their block, his partner, and a rum cake
*My friends, who are mostly just like me, frankly, but in different ways than the neighbors
*Lucy the surgeon
*Julie the trophy wife
*Sarah, 90
*Sophia, 5

And we eat and drink and slurp bourbon slush and listen to music until Joey, the cousin from New York, puts on videos of himself in drag at Halloween, which my very chic very republican aunt from the other side of the family laughs and laughs at. Men of very race, sexual preference, and age hit the back porch and smoke cigars or pretend to. We make fun ourselves and fill wine glasses and show off kids and boob jobs and weight loss. We give tours of my parents' beautiful rehabbed house, drink more bourbon slush, and by the time we leave, we have been properly partied.

365: My Little Drum

December 1993. Mike was downstairs in the light snow, packing his car. He was going to drive me to the airport to catch an evening flight down to Houston, and I didn't want to go. SLU's winter break was a month long, and it meant a month home with my family, having recently decided to withdraw my guaranteed acceptance to SLU's medical school and switch to the matronly domestic sell-out major of elementary education. I'd put on about 25 pounds since August, as well, and wasn't proud of that. Mike and I had started dating in September, but we'd had a rocky start, and I was generally unhappy. Looking back 14 years later, I could smack myself, but at the moment, I was 19, directionless, regretting every major decision I'd made in the last three months, and, essentially, taking those first painful steps towards independence.

Snow fell lightly, and I worried about delays at the airport. Mike had cable TV, and I turned on to see what the Weather Channel might have to say. The screen came on, and it was Charlie Brown's Christmas Special. I sat down on the couch under his loft, and this scene was up next.

I'd seen this program every year, with Rudolph and other stop-action and cartoony pulpy Christmas specials. But somehow, that year, on Mike's little TV that made everything just a little green, in his dark dingy dorm room, the snow making little shhhin noises against the safety screens, Linus was speaking not to Charlie Brown, but to me. I was going home for Christmas. Who cares if I was going to be a fat underpaid babysitter of other people's children, married to a long-haired psych major from hoosierville? I was going home, it was Christmas, and I would iron out all that later.

365: Silent Night

Nixon also said opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single weapon working against the U.S.
Sleep in heavenly peace

It was the first song I learned to play on the piano, and the only one I still know (I'm lazily self-taught with some help from my youngest sister). I learned to sing it as a round in girl scouts. It was a goodnight campfire song instead of Taps. We parsed its lyrics in school, we were steeped in any Christmas song that was liturgically appropriate (as opposed to Jingle Bells, for instance). It is caught up in my head with Christmas 1981, with the crisp smell of new snow that Christmas Eve--my first and only white Christmas until three years ago. My blue velveteen dress and white stockings, hair done in tight French braids, the warm incensed church, sitting between my mother and my grandmother, pretty as a picture. So tender and mild. Opening presents that evening, sharing the pull-out couch with my great aunt Emily and a beautiful stuffed polar bear (that I still own--it was quite an evening). In the morning, the snow not as deep as it would be the next week (the proper blizzard of '82), but sparkling, amazing for a little one who'd just spent two years in the California desert and rural Oklahoma.

I found this song in my parents' record collection when I was 12--deep into the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme album. It was 1986 or so, and I knew not a thing about politics or recent history. I knew there'd been a war, but that it had ended the year I was born, maybe the year before. I actually did know about the Richard Speck case, who knows why, and I knew my dad had been a conscientious objector. Didn't know who Lenny Bruce was, didn't know much about Martin Luther King, Jr, either. But I understood the juxtaposition of a news report filled with bad news up against that perfect little Christmas carol.

365: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings

Glorious now behold him arise
King and God and sacrifice
Alleluia, alleluia
Worship him, God most high

In most Catholic and Protestant opinions, Christmas is a lesser holy day than Easter. Resurrection, not birth in a stable, is the point. Many Bible churches do not celebrate Christmas except as a remembrance holiday, mostly secular in nature. It's like Thanksgiving--well, more than that, but it is not Easter. Not. I remember mentioning to my neighbors that Christmas was a holy day of obligation, and Brent said, "What about Easter??" And I told him that since it was a Sunday, it already fell under the category of obligation. Easter reigns supreme. As a Catholic, it is almost automatic for me to respond to that with "as it should."

But, and I'm quoting other people here, I'm not the expert, in the Orthodox Church, there is a tug of war about Easter and Christmas. Was the world transformed when Jesus rose from the dead, or when God was incarnated in the person of Jesus? It is a good question to ask, if you are already Christian and believe in this fashion. Which is the greater miracle? It is, in my mind, impossible to unravel the two. Tidings of comfort and joy. If we believe that Jesus is truly divine and truly human, isn't that just as amazing as resurrection?

According to Ann, who is teaching me about the Good Shepherd Catechesis this year, there's a Jesuit that sums it up thusly (Jesuits. They make me crazy. But they have some good things to say): The way Jesus completely poured out his life on the cross (Into your hands I commend my spirit) is the way God completely poured out divinity into the person of Jesus.

So this song makes some sense, why we sing Glorious now behold him arise--everything flashes forward and hearkens back. It's all completely intertwined.

365: Sleigh Ride

"You aren't a flute player," Mary told me. "Really."

"Well, that's what you get when you let a third grader pick her own band instrument."

Then Mary went out into the hall across from the library and belted out something on her trumpet.

It's only a minor regret. But she's right--I don't have a flute personality. Guitar neither. A little more brassy. Like Mary.

365: O Come Emmanuel

O Sapientia
O Adonai
O Radix Jesse
O Clavis David
O Oriens
O Rex Gentium
O Emmanuel: Ero Cras

These antiphons become a part of vespers (evening prayer) starting tomorrow night and going through until December 23. If you read backward from Emmanuel, above, you spell out the Latin words, Ero Cras. Meaning I will be tomorrow. I love acrostics, especially early church ones.

I'm a Benedictine Oblate, and I wear St. Benedict's medal most days, mostly as a reminder to myself to keep those things front and center--a time for everything, grounded in my chosen place and position, prayerful response and hospitality towards strangers. St. Benedict's medal, first struck back in the 1500s, is full of acrostics and abbreviations. None so Christmasy and cozy and reminding us of carols from our childhood as the O antiphons. But it has several prayers in latin on it, against possession by demons. For instance, the initials to this: Crux sacra sit mihi lux! Nunquam draco sit mihi dux! (may the cross always be my light, never let the dragon be my guide). And my very favorite, around the outside of the Benedictine cross (on the reverse side of the medal, which I usually wear facing outward because it is a nice image of a square cross as well): Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas! (Begone Satan! Never tempt me with your vanities! What you offer me is evil. Drink the poison yourself!)

Drink the poison yourself. Those medieval monks, they knew how to pray.

Sort of a stained glass effect

When I'm quilting something small enough to pin up on the curtains, I pin it up on the curtains so I can stand far away enough to really get a good idea of what it will look like. I have also, in the past, laid things down on the floor and stood on a ladder to view them from far away. I'm working on this church banner for Christmas, and I pinned up the finished front (it is not backed or quilted or bordered yet) on the curtains in the living room so I could gaze upon it from the dining room and wonder if I'd done ok. Because at this point I'm not picking stitches out and doing it over. It is finished.

I left it up last night because I knew I'd be starting the next round--borders, backing and quilting--today. I came down this morning, and the weird reflective snow light gave a solid undirected glow in the window. The curtains are beiges, which throws it off somewhat, but overall, kind of a nice effect. I drank coffee and ate scrambled eggs and looked at it.

And now I'm going to put some Christmas carols on seeqpod really loud and go down and quilt it within an inch of its life. Or something.

Winter Picture for Deloney

It came. The snow came, against all odds. Forget Global Warming for a moment--St. Louis has never had big snowfalls. Two powerful rivers meet here--the Missouri and the Mississippi, and I think that tempers the midwestern blizzards that hit outstate Missouri (my sisters would regularly call from Columbia regaling me with the tales of 11 inches of snow in one day's snowfall). It's a river valley, plus heat island, being an older city built tight, and then surrounded by sprawling suburbs. I do remember huge snowfalls (for me, I was a kid) but when I talk to people from places with real snow (Mary from Michigan, Maloki from Wisconsin) I realize that our winters are mild. Nasty, freezing rain and wintry mix and layer cakes of ice and snow on the streets THEY NEVER EVER PLOW, but mild. Nothing lasts longer than a few days, and then there's a 42 degree day and it goes away in time for the next round. St. Louis, too, tends to be at the cutoff line between wintry mix and snow--north of us gets the snow. Or sometimes south. Who can figure that out?

And Deloney, as a kid, I loved it. I lived in Wisconsin one winter, and it left indelible cozy snow memories in my brain. But this was balanced by a year in Palm Springs. 2 years in Dallas (corn snow and sleet). 1 year in Macon, Georgia--we flooded and were on a boil order one spring, but no snow. And of course, years down in Houston. My brother lived in a house in college that didn't have a furnace. Why bother, for the two nights a year it gets below 40?

Sophia stayed the night at a neighbor's house, and ran home around 10 and put on snowpants--I buy them used in various sizes when I see them, cause there's no reason to buy new ones for the two times a kid might wear them. So I passed out spare snowpants to the other mothers who feel the same way about that--and she ran out to "sled" down the little hills in our front yards. Total urban environment--postage stamp yards, parallel parked cars on both sides of the one-way street. Tomorrow Trisha wants us to take the kids to Reservoir Park or Forest Park or Carondelet Park and sled for real. Because we are expecting another 3-6 tonight. I never believe it till I see it, but then I stand there in my front hall, wet hair, coffee in my hand and birkenstocks on my feet, looking at my husband with that ginormous scarf around his neck and head, throwing snowballs at the neighbor kids and helping Maeve up when she falls face first into a snow covered leaf pile.

And like the story of Mary and Martha, I know he has chosen the better part and I will not take it away from him. Winter hurts me and I have a church banner to make and 10 days to make it in.

So that begs the question why the heck I'm writing all this, Deloney, but I wanted you to see that I'm not a total scrooge about snow.

What Would Benedict Do?

The Rule of Benedict is a beautiful little treasure. I read it cover to cover, in one night by booklight, and then reread it the next day. Then I went back and read it slowly, and read it with commentary. And then translations for lay people. Meditations by monks and oblates and nuns about what Benedictine charism really is. How one might live that out. Why one might want to. It left me thirsty for more.

That said, it is probably not for everyone, although bits of it could be printed up and hung in corporate board rooms, classrooms, and kitchens and help us all live more fruitfully. But there are many ways to be Catholic, to be Christian (side note; to be an oblate, all one must be is a trinitarian Christian--if you can glance over the Apostle's Creed and say, yup, that's what I believe, you can join. Benedictine monastic tradition existed before the reformation, and even before any real formal split between Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and therefore, it transcends those divisions).

The woman I teach with at Atrium is very devoted to "traditional" Catholic devotions--the rosary, the Sacred Heart, First Friday devotions, etc. I look at all that with a jaundiced eye, frankly, but she is so deeply rooted in her faith and so lovely in the way she brings that to children, that somehow we can both be Catholic. Sophia's godparents are strongly connected to the Jesuits; Sophia's school is overrun with folks in the Catholic Worker Movement (Dorothy Day was an oblate, too). They are all Catholic, all amazing examples of our church and its true catholic (universal) flavor. Intentional parishes abound in our city. God enters by a private door into every individual (Emerson).

What does Benedict have to say about spirituality? I don't think very much that isn't intertwined in the aspects of being a Catholic monastic, a western translation of an eastern idea. The foremost part of a monastic's day is prayer, in community. Holy reading, manual labor, eating together, and rest come next. The whole book is one long quotation from the bible--every paragraph is backed up by scripture. While much has been written recently about the parallels between Benedictine and Buddhist life/thought/spirituality, the framework through which Benedict exposes these universal truths is Christianity.

One fulfills spiritual needs and desires for connection to something larger (God, mostly, and community to a lesser extent) by living out the rule. Again, prayer, lectio divina, work, silence, community life, humility. There are three vows a Benedictine takes (oblates make promises, not vows; as opposed to marriage or religious vows, I can wake up one morning and say, oh, I don't think I'm doing that anymore, and have no real consequences). The first is obedience, which is not what you think it is, the second is stability (my favorite) and the third is conversion of heart, which is the hardest one for me.

As an oblate, I try to keep those three things front and center in my day, in my interactions with my children, with Mike, with the parish, neighbors, friends, people who call on the phone. I often fail, but that seems to be somewhat Benedictine as well--fall, and get up again. Keep moving and trying.

None of it, not a single bit of it, is rocket science. It is not Aquinas or Thomas More or Teilhard de Chardin or Schillebeeckx. Nothing in it must be reread to be simply fathomed. I reread it because it is so simple and lovely and earth-shattering. But we're not talking about stuff like what I was handed in college and had to read paragraph by paragraph, dozing off in footnotes and definitions. Which is why I have grasped onto it with both hands. It is not there to impress.

But it is impressive.

Spirituality vs. Religion

Alex asked in her last round of comments what I thought about the difference between spirituality and religion, and perhaps what the Rule of Benedict had to say about that. I thought about this while Mike and I travelled out to buy dog food and go to dinner ourselves with Maeve this evening (Sophia is at a sleepover party). Talked a little, thought some more.

Spirituality and religion aren't interchangeable ideas, in my mind. Spirituality is a drive to connect with something bigger than ourselves, an ingrained trait like sexuality or emotion or intelligence. People can be spiritual in many ways--community service, philosophy, religion, etc. Many people who are deeply religious fulfill their need for spiritual connection through religious leanings. Religion, on the other hand, isn't an ingrained trait. It is a belief system, something that we come to via faith, grace, and spiritual drive. People, in one way or another, either consciously or through fate of birth or experience, decide to be part of a religion. But spirituality is something that we are as humans.

And just as someone can supress emotion in favor of logic, denying a part of his or her humanity, one can supress spirituality. Sort of become the anti Viktor Frankl, a kind of Man's Search for Meaninglessness. The desire to connect and be a part of something larger could be frightening to someone who is trying to live out the counterintuitive notion of rugged individualism.

So if we are fully human, we are spiritual beings. And religion is one answer for that--although Mike can point out several very spiritual unchurched people, like his father, and Ted the Atheist back in college.

I think if one were suspicious of organized religion, one should reflect on why that is--bad experiences in youth hold some people back, a failure to connect with a community does it for lots of other people. I have been deeply at odds with organized religion several times. It's a journey, one I take probably far too close to heart. I think most folks who leave Catholicism, if they were not actively chased out, do so because they were sacramentalized but not catechised. We are in that time of flux, post Vatican II, like the 50-100 years post-council in the past. It is a time of upheaval and longing, searching and wishful thinking. It is also a time of grace. If all you know about Catholicism came from PSR or bad religion textbooks in gradeschool, if church was boring and you never learned how to fully participate in the life of the church, if your parents were blindly faithful but couldn't explain themselves, it would not be attractive to stay. If church attitudes towards women or birth control or homosexuality or the priesthood or divorce just cut too deeply, it is hard to reconcile this and remain a part of it.

But one must fulfill the drive to be spiritual, somehow.

When I think of most of the conversations I've had about spirituality and religion, I think about flaky people who just don't want to get up on Sunday mornings. Many, many people who say "I'm spiritual but not religious" do not seem to be very well-developed spiritually. Gazing at sunsets, in my mind, does not count as spirituality. Pretending to be a part of Eastern religions or indigenous religions, but not actually doing it--it's not the same thing. It can be eye-opening, informative, wonderful, amazing, but I'm not sure it's the same thing as being fully spiritual. And I'm only saying this because I will start conversations with folks who say things like this, and within just a few moments, I realize that what they really are is not interested. Being in a religion isn't cool enough. It doesn't thrill them.

It takes work, either way. It takes humility and silence and openness of heart. We are fed, over time, by tiny moments of grace, not by flood and waterfall, but by mists and drizzles. I am paraphrasing my pastor, who is probably quoting someone else. Not every moment in a spiritual journey can be awesome, not every Sunday morning is fulfilling at mass. But it is in the practice and upkeep that we reach that reward when the work becomes less about the doing and more about the being.

But I'm going far afield. Next up: What Would Benedict Do?

Good Mood, Bad Mood

This morning I went back upstairs to make sure Sophia and Maeve were getting up and dressed. Maeve, who is usually outright hateful in the mornings, was standing on the top step, dressed and smiling.

"Oh!" I said, "You're in such a good mood!"

"Yes," she replied, "I'll be in a bad mood tonight!"

She was correct.

Merry Christmas Meme

Thanks, Annie Knits.

1. What was the best Christmas present you got as a kid? The dollhouse my dad built in the basement. Called it the Blivet the whole time he was making it--you know, ten pounds of s**t in an 8 pound bag? It's a country music-ism. anyway, I knew it was for me, I had no idea what a Blivet might be, it was such an intriguing mystery. And a total surprise. Maeve is in the attic right now playing with it.
2. What was the best Christmas present you got as an adult? That's harder. So many things I receive are simply necessities, things I expect. I am rarely surprised. But one time, when I taught, a child I had a particular attachment to gave me a wedgewood ornament. When I hang it on the tree each year, I think about Donastas and count how old he would be now.
3. What's your favorite Christmas carol? My church choir sings one called Child of the Poor/What Child is This? and it is heartbreaking to hear. For things you might hear on the radio, I've always liked the simplicity of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
4. How long can you stand to listen to Christmas music before you break? All year unless it's on KEZK and it turns into faux Christmas music by "contemporary" musicians. Gack.
5. How many Christmas albums do you own? I'd guess about 10.
6 Did you ever go caroling as a kid? Girl scout. Yup.
7. Would you willingly eat fruitcake? My dad's fruitcake is so alcoholic you need a mixer to get it down. So, yes.
8. Do you own any Christmas sweaters? No.
9. Do you own any Christmas jewelry? Yes. What? Those older faux gold pins that ladies used to wear on their coats, you know, snowmen and holly wreaths. And I have a jingle bell necklace I used to wear when I taught school.
10 Do you wear them? Sometimes. I'm more likely to forget them until February and then think, dang it, I forgot.
11. Did your family have any weird Christmas traditions? We were a Christmas Eve present family--midnight mass followed by an all-nighter. Pancakes in the morning, which usually was about 12:45 in the afternoon. And my sister once wrote an essay about Christmas traditions but all she could come up with was shooting rediwip from a can directly into kids' mouths.
12. Do you buy Christmas presents for your pets? No...
13. What's your favorite Christmas cookie? My mom makes "moon cookies" which are cresent shaped drop cookies with cream cheese in the dough, mini chocolate chips, dipped on one end in dark chocolate.
14. What's your favorite Christmas candy? Divinity.
15. What's your stocking look like? an elf boot. It's made in a crazy quilt-style. It's weird.
16. How do you feel about the "Steal from Your Neighbor" Christmas present game (the one where people pick gifts from a pile, but others get to steal it)? Love it. I especially like the white elephant version. It is always the best part of an evening when we do it.
17. What is the oldest ornament on your tree? I have one glass ornament with the white glitter decoration from my great-19randmother's house. Undocumented age. My oldest ornament was from 1974, my godmother gave it to me.
18. Real or artificial? Real. Cut your own and drag it through the ice to the wagon and keep it up till mid-January.
19. How do you feel about Christmas letters? I keep the real doozies. We laugh at some of them. But I often wind up writing one. Or else I send an advent reflection of some kind. I like to make people teary at Christmas; I don't need to tell them how great my kids are.
20. Do you have Christmas decorations or lights outside your house? What are they? This year we have blue LED twinkle lights in the three front windows. It looks like SLU has commandeered the house (everything there is the Blue Light District). They are so bright we see the reflection in the windows across the street and think the neighbors have them, too.
21. How far would you drive to see Christmas lights? To Overland, so I guess about 20 minutes. There's an insane street up there. And then, thre's one down in Lemay that is GHASTLY, with mannequins from store displays dressed up and put into creepy stop-action moments. Nightmarish, especially since they don't intend it to be that way.
22. Are you a fan of tasteful or tacky? I like me some Christmas Kitsch, but everything in its place.
23. Do you have any Christmas collections? Ok, my house is an OCD/ADD/freakish collection repository. I have a collection of old marbles and of moon snail shells. Print blocks and bells and heart shaped rocks. Primers and fisher price houses and yarn and fabric and aluminum ware. So I am happy to say that currently, there is no tree-topper hummel figurine nativity set pickle ornament bubble light santa statue obsession. But Maeve is rather enamored with nutcrackers. So who knows where that might lead.

V is for Vatican

Eventually, I will have an alphablog like alphabird on my blogroll to the right (assuming you can see it! Blogger, what are you doing to my poor little bird!). But I wanted to add something about the bishop thing.

I have a blog counter here on SCM--it's the teensy little blue lightning bolt at the bottom of the page. It counts how many people come here, and if I click on it and sign in, I can see how many today, from what countries, what google searches brought folks there, and so on.

So after I wrote about the bishop across the way, about midnight, I went to bed, and in the morning I checked my blog counter. Usually I have hits that I recognize, frankly--I know what Mike's domain at work is, I know various St. Louis names--I don't know if you specifically check, but I can tell in general (my sister in law has a specific address; so does the guy across the street, but most are just an stlswbellblahblah kind of nonsense). But it always lists what nation the viewer hails from. This brings mostly Americans, Canadians, and the occasional British, Australian, etc.--who you would expect--and then a random assortment of other nations who found SCM via google searches for "monkey pox" or "german christmas tree" or "Sophia Louis Frugality".

But on Thursday morning when I looked, I noticed I had a larger than usual number for so early in the day--already 14 by 8 a.m.--and that the last three visitors, wait for it: Italy.

And they were more than random. They scoured SCM with a friggin brillo pad, too. Looked all around.

Wow.

What? Where's the Tufted Titmouse?

Is it just my computer? Can you see the bird picture under my title above? Or just like, half of it? You should see its full self, standing in a platform of seed, one seed in its mouth. I see the middle half of it. I am curious if it's just me or if I need to figure out what Blogger's doing.

Like I have time for that. Bah.

Annie: send me the Christmas meme.

365: Baby, it's cold outside

But don't you see
How can you do this thing to me
There's bound to be talk tomorrow
Think of my life long sorrow
At least there will be plenty implied
If you caught pneumonia and died

Ah, the good old days of getting a girl drunk and persuading her to stay the night.

My youngest sister, Colleen, wants to grow up and be the girl Holly Golightly pretends to be. She really should have been a back up singer for Dean Martin. She regrets this, in fact, that she can't walk down sidewalks with dyed poodles and big fur hats and back seam stockings and heels that break when she runs after the cab and then she gets to pout all the way home because Lou or Freddy or George bought these for her...but luckily, of course, she knows a wonderful repairman. She refreshes her lipstick and laughs at the reflection in the mirror.

I don't know if this came from high school drama club--being the female lead in All My Sons, the supporting role in Sweet Charity, the comic relief in Pride and Prejudice? Perhaps it was earlier: Colleen is the youngest, always melodramatic, always the center of attention, always on someone's stage. Maybe it was the dog bite, 77 stitches right around her mouth, at age 4. If all you see in the mirror are hairline scars (that nobody else ever sees--gosh your lips look delicious), you're going to spend 45 minutes on your hair and makeup every morning, just to put on pedal pushers and kerchief to go smoke at the coffee house--it's like she's reincarnated from my maternal grandmother and her sister.
That's her to the left of my sister Bevin here.

The past year, she's invested in 1960s era dresses, silk scarves, cigarette cases, big sunglasses--and two armfuls of tattoos. It's like everything else in that Blake house I hail from. I really can't stay...maybe just a half a drink more...you think you're seducing her but in truth, she packed a night bag. All three of us--hell, my brother Ian, too--we take some unpacking.

365: Winter Wonderland

(Warning, not exactly family friendly fare ahead)

I am going to assume you don't live in a cave and you already know the lyrics here. Because what I have offer today is a filk of this song. Mike's first roommate in college was Carlos, through whom he met all sorts of people who show up as fictional characters here and in real life occasionally. Elliot, Vanessa, Eric--and the entire SCA. The Society for Creative Anachronism. I have a lot of opinions about the medieval re-enactment group, mostly involving impatient eye rolling at poorly socialized men. But I will say this. They can sew, and they can come up with annoyingly funny songs that get stuck in your head. For instance, Traveling with a Slaver Caravan:

Slave chains ring
Can you hear them?
Screams of pain
Whips are whistlin
A beautiful sight, there's a flogging tonight
Traveling with a slaver caravan

In the meadow, we can burn a village
We can burn it right down to the ground
Then we'll rape the women and we'll pillage
Or maybe that's the other way around

Later on, by the fire
We'll split the loot
And conspire
To face unafraid all the enemies we made
Traveling with a slaver caravan

Zee plot theekins!

So I just got an email from my mother-in-law. A little background here. And her latest kerfuffle with her parish priest, according to Mike who spoke to her about it on the phone last week, was that her last letter to the bishop was then sent to her parish priest. Who read it out loud at the parish council meeting. Where she is on parish council. While she was in the room. Huevos grande.

I was going to post about that when Mike told me but I got distracted by Christmas music and biblical verses. But then just now I got an email from her. Someone anonymously printed out my blog entry (link above), along with Alex's comment, and mailed it to her in the US Mail. Like, arrived in her mailbox today. No return address, just a Carbondale postmark, which could be from anywhere in southernmost Illinois. No note, nothing. Just a nice little copy, a "I figured out who you were and I sent this to you." Which isn't that hard to do--I do not hide who I am, and Cairo isn't that big and my last name isn't common and so on.

All I can figure is that when you google braxton nigeria, I show up on the second page. Which makes me wonder, is this a pious person who is worried that my mother-in-law is in a state of grave sin? Is it someone worried for her because some mouthy St. Louisan is talking about her behind her back? Is it a fellow parishioner, or from one of the clusters? PErhaps.

My favorite theory I've developed so far is that Braxton googles his own name. Or, even better, he has a priest whose sole duty in the diocese is to google Braxton's name.

EDITED TO ADD: My mother in law just emailed me to let me know that the letter that was read aloud at parish council wasn't sent to Braxton, but to the Vicar General, who then passed it to Braxton. Braxton then personally replied to her, and cc'd 5 other priests, including her brother (what, do you think that was "hey, you need to shush your trouble making sister"?). And bcc'd her parish priest...

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pray for Us

Time goes on, circling the year, suddenly it's Our Lady of Guadalupe. You decide at some point that a date belongs to a person, because the date of birth is not known to you for sure, or the date of death is too hard to remember. Mike's girlfriend Vanessa has a liturgical date assigned to her. She died on Ash Wednesday, 1996. Had a seizure and fell. I don't know the date. Some time in February. I remember though, because I went to mass that night and it's marked with thoughts of her, every Ash Wednesday is. Even though it is a floating feast.

Fr. Jerry Keaty--didn't know him well enough to know his birthday, and I know he died in June, but I wasn't aware of it the day it happened. But he was buried on a floating feast: Sacred Heart. June 11 that year, my sister's birthday. Sacred Heart--he'd had a heart transplant several years before; officiated at my wedding (he also gave me my first communion, baptized my sister whose birthday he was buried on). His first transplant started to fail on him, but he refused to go on the list again and take a heart from a better candidate. He was so tight with my aunt and uncle. I went to the funeral, but I didn't go up to sit with them. Sat halfway back and my grandmother found me.

And today is Jesse's day. He died in the summertime, don't know when he was born. But he was a Mexican American who didn't pay much attention to Catholicism. But he had a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Which somehow is more powerful to me than our bishop having a devotion to her. Here's this young college-aged man, no religious upbringing, openly gay, a risk taker, a party kid, and he cares to pay attention to an apparition of Mary. Cultural connection, perhaps, but his mother's Baptist tradition would have stomped most of that out, I'd think. He probably came to it on his own.

I didn't even know Jesse. He was my sister's friend. But I think of him today, and for the past few years on this day, ever since he was murdered in 2004 by Steve Rios, a Columbia, MO, police officer. Rios was trading sex for legal favors--get him out of this ticket, get him off the hook on the drunk and disorderly conduct charge. Rios was married, with a newborn son at home. Jesse became a liability--Rios was using a false name with him, another officer's badge, but Jesse was figuring things out. Rios was taking great risks, and Jesse started telling friends that he was going to confront him because he thought he might be married and he didn't want any part of that. Jesse told folks he thought he might go to the chief of police with the information if Rios didn't get rid of this other charge against him. Ok, so, not the smartest thing to do in a clandestine relationship with a man trained to kill people.

Jesse's body was found a few houses down from Bevin's house. Bevin and a roommate identified his body. His throat was cut so deeply it nicked his spine. Blood sprayed on the houses. Rios got him into a choke hold, laid his unconscious body on the ground, took out his clip knife, and killed him.

Rios was convicted a year later. DNA was found at the scene, his alibi didn't jibe with facts, the police force turned on him. But because the prosecutor, Morley Swingle (aka, my courtroom boyfriend, according to most of the girls I sat with at the trial), introduced "plans of the deceased", Rios' final appeal was an attempt to prove that it was really hearsay and therefore inadmissible. The appeals court agreed.

So there will be another trial. A date isn't set yet; Swingle hasn't called my sister or her friends to let them know. I can't imagine what it must be like to be in their shoes, knowing this. I can hardly bear it, and all I did was stand to the side and breathe near them.

So I think about Jesse every December 12. I send a mass card to his friend Ellen when I know her address. Conviction or no conviction, in the end, he's still dead and there's still loss--putting Rios in prison serves justice but it doesn't make your heart hurt any less.

365: Christmas Time's A-comin

Every year, my family goes out to find a tree. We go to little family-owned tree farms in dells around Missouri. A couple of years ago, we discovered a place in Washington, Missouri, that grew Canaan Firs, which was the Great Christmas Tree Compromise. Mike grew up with balsams from the Optimist Club lot, I grew up with whatever we managed to find growing nearby. Canaans smell and look like balsams, and I was the hero of Christmas a couple of years back when I discovered them. My parents and sisters take the truck, Mike and I with the girls in the minivan, head down to Washington.

This past year, snow on the ground, we found the perfect trees quickly, but then had a lovely snowball fight. Sophia and Maeve attempted snow angels. We sawed the trees and drug them back through the snow to the lot where they net them and we pay. Each tree gets a tag, and you keep the other half. Of course, there is the obligatory hot chocolate or cider, and we stood around for a moment chatting, looking for heart-shaped rocks in the limestone gravel path. Mike grabbed our tree, started dragging it back to my dad's truck, and..my parents' tree was missing. Nothing matched the tag. The guys in flannel and boots went through the parking lot--sometimes things disappear accidentally. Don't check the tag, take home the wrong tree. No luck. No extras lying around by mistake, either.

The owners of the farm graciously let us go find another, even though we probably should have taken better care. My dad and I trekked back out to find another--they are all lovely, of course--and he said, "well, somebody must have needed a tree a lot worse than we did." The owners later agreed with him--each year they lose two or three to outright theft.

We laughed once we got back home, though, because my parents live in a 1904 era house with huge ceilings. The stolen tree was over 9 feet tall, and most houses built after 1930 in Missouri stick to the 8 foot standard. We turned on bluegrass Christmas music and reminisced about years when it would have been a good option to steal a tree. Life is good.

Welcome, Winter

Ice on the porch and van this morning. Mike is in Little Rock, which means Maeve this morning decided it would be a great time for a little fever and diarrhea. She's sacked out on my bed under 5000 blankets. Christie thankfully was able to pick up Sophia--I was dreading the short icy trip before I realized Maeve was feverish. I should go in there and feed her tylenol.

So I do have a built in excuse for changing the girl scout meeting to next week. I was kind of dreading this without Mike in town--not that he's home during girl scouts, but I am wiped out post-meeting and he usually manages the dinner/bath/bed ritual on girl scout days. On the other hand, I guess I won't be getting anything done today. That's ok--if I leave the house, I'll only spend money and that's no good.

But I did want to write about the other daughter at Atrium on Sunday morning. Therese was "revisiting" the Annunciation story, only about 9 children that morning in Atrium. The very irritating Natalie (not her real name, nor are any others from Atrium here) touching everything and fussing with stuff and interrupting with quotes from Talladega Nights--I mean, come on, she's 8, and she's seen that movie?? Therese is so patient.

Therese: and what did the angel tell Mary?
Dawn: she was going to have a baby
Therese: who was that baby?
Sophia: Jesus
Therese: and who is Jesus?
Sophia: the reason we're here.

It's nice to be reminded sometimes.

The Bishop

Yup. Mass with the archbishop this morning.

Drank too much at the neighbors' party last night, got all giggly and stupid with Janine and Trisha and Mary, and then they disappeared and I got mouthy with Clayton, well, I guess not that much, but I said some pretty blunt things (I don't like cops much being the best moment; he's a county officer, and I really like him. I was just, well, stupid). Then I had to be up at the crack of thunder and dismal dawn to go to Atrium, which gets lovelier as the year progresses. Yesterday was atrium training and the discussion of the magi brought tears to my eyes. Anyway, then it was run run run to Pius and Mike help Kathleen with children's liturgy and I listen to the archbishop tell us how Jesus came to save all men.

Why do they hate women so much? What is the deal, anyway? How is it pastoral to stand up there and thumb your nose at half the population? I'm not saying anything new here, and certainly not in a fresh way. It just drives me crazy that I can talk to Jerome, osb, about how God is depicted in so many ways, why not mother, anyhow? What isn't maternal about God? but then the person put in charge of an entire region of Missouri's Catholics cannot acknowledge me. I mean, who should be more pastoral--a monk who lives only with other men, occasionally saying a mass for some nuns down the way, with no lay people involved in his life beyond the oblates who come for retreat, not the prior, not the abbot--or the archbishop. He has a crosier--the symbol of office, of shepherding. And standing up there at the ambo, leaning on that shiny faux crook like some kind of bad John Paul II caricature, telling the crowd about Jesus becoming a man so that God could save all men--the volume inside my head just got turned down to zero and I started admiring stained glass.

I await our pastor's return to the role of homilist next week.

365: Carol of the Bells

Ding!
Dong!
Ding!
Dong!


December 1991. My class had gone on this five day silent retreat. Not that it was much of a silent retreat, and for 11 people in my class of 49, it wasn't five days, either. The second night, a group of 6 boys were caught sneaking into one of the girls' cabins, and all five girls were sent home with them. Among the boys were Michelle's boyfriend--Michelle was NOT in that cabin--and John. (Not Johnny, I know, there are too many of these). John and I had considered each other from a distance for a while--he was the one on the campus ministry retreat who turned back with me on the snipe hunt. We'd gone out, but not much had materialized, as much as I threw myself on him. So we'd let each other go without regret and had remained friends.

Getting caught on Senior Retreat in the smutty girls' cabin (yes, it did appear to be that way in the end), being on the planning team for the retreat in the first place, an honors student, in the performance choir--it was too much for him. It was one thing for some of the other guys who were caught, like Chris, who eventually went on to serve time for auto theft. But John was one of those elite goody two shoes high school heroes. On on they send on without end.

He quit. Quit campus ministry, National Honor Society, started sitting in the back of the class, didn't talk to any of us anymore. Sat and fumed. He quit choir after the last Christmas concert--this was the last song he sang with us, performing in some mall, all of us standing around sweating in our obligatory red sweaters and black pants. I told him I was still his friend, that I wanted him to know that. He nodded and didn't look at me.

365: Rudolph

All the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games

Salvation Army buckets, of course, are everywhere, starting before Thanksgiving. The annoying ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding of the bell. One Christmas, I was probably about 10, my brother, father, and I went into some store during the Season, and the bellringer outside, half-protected from the sleet, was singing Christmas carols instead of blindly dinging the bell. We went into the store, and when we came out, he was singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Probably any kid who has ever been to school knows the add-on lyrics (had a very shiny nose/like a lightbulb). Well, we walked out just as the bellringer sang "join in any reindeer games." My brother Ian, whose impulse control equals that of a toy poodle, immediately belted out, "Like Monopoly!"

I have never in my life seen my father go from zero to sixty so fast. I don't know how we wound up in the car, but suddenly, we're there, and it's one long lecture all the way home about how Ian had no respect for anyone. Even I thought this was a stretch. Turns out, though, my grandfather had been a bellringer long ago, and this was one of those hazy childhood memories for my dad. Every bellringer he saw, especially ones who really enjoyed their work, like this one, singing to passersby, was a hearkening back to another time, a time when my dad's family knew they were one paycheck away from needing the Salvation Army's handout, and because of that, gave back what they could--time in the cold.

My Inner European

A better quiz than most of the ones I've taken lately. Mostly those were boringly long versions of the Meyers-Briggs, which I already know the answers to, Lady ENFJ that I am, and taking that and applying it to Greek philosophers or Harry Potter characters just isn't that much fun. But this one asks 5 questions or so about things I like (food, cars, a good night's fun, etc) and assigns a European nationality to me. No big surprise, frankly. Sarah Bridgett Blake and all.

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?

Biblical Top Ten

I'm on a roll this December. Thinking a lot about religion of late, does it show? Stephen (blogroll to the right) completed a meme about his top ten Bible verses/passages, which came from another site he reads that kind of still makes my eyes glaze over, called Metacatholic. Sometimes I think I sould just stick to mommy blogs and knitting and leave all this to others. But I can't. And since I love memes, love thinking about religion, comparative Christianity, and biblical history in my own very small way, AND since it's after midnight and I should be totally not at the computer, I thought I'd make a short list. All my quotes come from my humble little NAB--you get used to what you learn on, after all, and Br. Stephen (osb, I might add) taught me my bible using the New American. There is no order here, and I am no bible scholar, there are plenty better choices, less typical, less naive. But these stick with me these days.

1. "Rabbi, where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come, and you will see." (Jn 1:39) This is how we started RCIA this year; this has also been said to me by every Benedictine I contacted looking for an oblate program: how about you come and see?

2. They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings, they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint (Is 40:31) I read this once at a wedding; I cried when it was read at Kyle's funeral.

3. Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my guilt.
A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.
Do not drive me from your presence nor take me from your holy spirit
Restore my joy in your salvation; sustain in me a willing spirit.
I will teach the wicked your ways, that sinners may return to you.
Rescue me from death, God, my saving God, that my tongue may praise your healing power.
Lord, open my lips; my mouth will proclaim your praise.
For you do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering you would not accept.
My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a borken, humbled heart. (Ps 51:11-19) Joan Chittister writes, God revels in weakness that tries. Oh, the hope that this is true. Reading this, I see the act of contrition, the rising and beginning again, the falling and getting back up. New day.

4. Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? (Ps 139:7) Psalm 23 will not be at my funeral. Psalm 139 will.

5. John 6:22-68, discourse on the Bread of Life, ending with Jesus asking the twelve, do you also want to leave? and Peter answering, Master, to whom shall we go? you have the words of eternal life. I kept trying to leave Catholicism. But something kept me there, each time. And then an evangelical convert to Catholicism, another oblate, opened her dogeared bible to this passage. This is why you stay. Perhaps. But I knew why she converted, and it was breathtaking.

6. You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.
Whenever I speak, I must cry out, violence and outrage is my message.
The word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day.
I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it. (Jer 20:7-9)
A fire buring in my heart...I grow weary holding it in. But it's the "I let myself be duped" that gets me. It is always a choice.

7. I won't type it all out--James 2:14-26, discussion of faith and good works. When I get frustrated with excommunications and anti-pastoral leanings of bishops, pontifications of "Christian" politicians, and the nagging in my own heart, I come back to this, exhale, and begin again.

8. The Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55 My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord... It begins with heartfelt praise, it ends with vindication and confidence. Have I mentioned breathtaking?

9. Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her. (Lk 10:41) Like so many women, I am Martha all over the place. But I am often Mary, and I have to remember that I get to be Mary because so many others around me are Martha. And I try to lend a hand but with an ear to the Word.

10. John 10:1-18, I am the Good Shepherd. I had to add it. Tomorrow is another Good Shepherd Catechesis training day. There are so many tangible stories for children, but this is the one Maeve already knows. I love the progression from sheep to believers, from shepherds to Christ. Sheep not of this flock. Captivating.

I could probably do a top ten from the Rule of Benedict as well. I may someday soon. Now I'm ready for bed.

365: Oscar Sings I Hate Christmas

Here comes Santa, girls and boys
So, who needs that big red noise?
I'll tell him where to leave his toys
I hate Christmas

A few years back, Mike and I started the Yearly Christmas Argument. Essentially, it was a merging of traditions that I was resisting with all my might. Before my parents moved a block away from me, when they were 900 miles away, we alternated Christmas every other year at each family's location. Which of course wasn't quite right, since my family was in St. Louis AND in Texas (all my extendeds are here in town). So either way, I never saw my grandmother on Christmas because I was either sleeping in my sister's room or in the spare bedroom at my in-laws'. Then my parents moved to town. Perfect! Now we can see both families!

Some of this was seamless--my family has always gone to midnight mass, followed by tree and presents and the whole bit in the middle of the night. Mike's family is a Santa in the morning, everyone with bedhead and longing for coffee style Christmas. So...we go to the vigil mass (midnight is too late for these little ones), go to my parents'. Wake up, have breakfast with my parents and siblings, and then drive 2 1/2 hours to my inlaws, which, at one point, involved 3 different houses to attend. By 9 in the evening on Christmas Day, I don't know what my name is anymore. My kids are fried. There is no joy. I hate Christmas.

Last November, after a huge Christmas blowout fight over this and, even more so, the obligatory extended family (like, the girls' second cousins) pull-a-name gift exchange, which I loathe, I hit the pause button. What the heck was I doing? This was obviously a lot more important to Mike to have it happen than it was for me to not have it happen. We were having the same fight for 5 years. It was time to stop having this fight. I couldn't care less about seeing my uncles and such on Christmas Day down in Cattawissa in Glennon's double-wide. I get to spend Christmas Eve with my parents and sisters. I got what I wanted. So I gave in on the rest. I told him, sometime in Advent, that I was done fighting. If a $25 gift certificate to Borders made his cousin Todd happy, so be it. And if visiting his entire extended family in one day was important to him, so be it. Not in some passive aggressive way, but in the way of gift. This was my Christmas gift, to be opened every year until it wasn't so important anymore. I take my Tylenol PM Christmas night and all is well come the 26th.

365: Christmas Dinner

Said she, here's a toast to everyone's Christmas,
And, especially, yours and mine

It's a song about poverty and loneliness, and sharing what you have and having a better time together in the sharing than, perhaps, those who have plenty and don't need to share. I guess. It's also from my childhood, on a Peter Paul and Mary album. Makes me cry. I'm a sentimental old fool when I let myself be. I think it's the words, and it came to pass. Something biblical about them gets me.

Every year, my parish puts Christmas baskets together. All you have to do to qualify is live in the geographic boundaries and let the parish know. The St. Vincent de Paul Society takes care of the details--food, gifts provided by parishioners who take the anonymous age/gender tag off the giving tree in back. Then, the Saturday before Christmas, parishioners gather in the parish hall, say a prayer, and then go forth in their trucks and minivans and hybrids out into the community. Mike and I, with our girls, have done this every year (Thanksgiving, too, although that isn't quite so involved). Sometimes we show up at doorsteps of immigrant parishioners who aren't even sure what this whole thing means. Sometimes it's grandmothers on fixed incomes who want to give my girls candy for coming by. Young families with big screen TVs that dare us to say something. One older woman who wanted to sell us her treadmill. It's always an adventure, and over the years, has made me, at least, realize that poverty in my neighborhood is veiled in many ways. People who can get by except that it's hard at the end of the year, or people who spend money in ways I might not, money they don't have. People who send their money home in envelopes with red borders.

Last year, we had an address a little further south--in a rougher area of the parish (our parish just consolidated a few years back and gained territory I don't know as well). It was an old side-entrance flounder house (which put it probably as the oldest house on the block--they are peculiar to St. Louis and Alexandria, VA, old and odd, like half a house), and before I even stepped onto the porch, I could smell it. It was something I hadn't pulled up since I worked in the housing projects the first year I taught. A sweet smell, but rotten somehow, stale. Poverty. Scent and sound make an impression on my brain like nothing else can, and I am suddenly taken back to Jarvis sitting next to my desk with this angry look on his face while I hunt around the room trying to find what smells so bad...and then I realize it's him, and I just make it through my day without another word.

The woman answered the door, and behind her I could see the filthy kitchen. Mike asked if she wanted him to bring the things back. No, she told us. Just hand them to her. Her five kids, all pale tow-heads, too thin, half dressed, like images out of a Bosnian war film, were slumped on the bunk beds in the too-hot room in front of the kitchen. The woman was about my age, and the look on her face said it all, right? Maybe. Mike, who is better at this sort of thing, asked if she needed anything else, and she shook her head, staring at us as we stepped off her porch.

There wasn't much to say on the way home.

Quote for Today

If he has one cardinal maxim in his philosophy, it is that truth cannot be contrary to truth; if he has a second, it is that truth often seems contrary to truth; and if a third, it is the practical conclusion that we must be patient with such appearances, and not hasty to pronounce them to be really of a more formidable character.

Cardinal John Henry Newman

365: St. Nick's Day

When Maeve was born, Sophia was expecting a fully-formed 3 year old to appear in her life. Sophia was just 3 years old, and when Hot Dog Baby (as she thought we should name the new one) arrived, it was bitterly disappointing that her sister/friend would have to grow into that role. That first Christmas, Maeve was essentially a prop, and the next Christmas, she was a nuisance. But last Christmas, Maeve was 2, and she could be used to further Sophia's goals. And first among Sophia's many goals in life is to be as cute as possible (because this furthers many other goals). So she taught Maeve Up on the Housetop.

Maeve was an early verbal child, and caught on that she was supposed to be memorizing lines to perform later for grandparental attention. So she learned her part, and they performed it on St. Nick's Day (December 6) for my mom:

Sophia: up on the house top
Maeve: click click click! (each click louder and louder)
Sophia: Down the chimney, good St.
Maeve: Nick (this was always spoken-word, never with any melody. Very cute).

Since it went over so well with my mom, they did it again for her. And then my sisters, and my dad, the neighbors, people in the grocery store. Huge hit.

Then, Christmas Day, Sophia wanted to continue the adoration of music fans everywhere, so we were down in Cairo, at the in-laws, when she persuaded a too-tired overwhelmed "presents are like heroin" Maeve to sing the "nick song" one more time.

Sophia: Up on the house top
Maeve: click
Sophia: Down the chimney, good St.
[pause]
Sophia: good St.
Maeve: No! Never!

This was recorded in triplicate in Sophia's list of reasons why Maeve is not perfect.

Why I Like Cafeterias

Carlos got married in 1998, two years after I did. Wait. Maybe it was 1997. It...no, we were already living here, so it was 1998. I remember taking the 15 passenger van up to Milwaukee with Brian and Maloki, Alyssa, Dez, Elliot, Mike. How things change and how they stay the same. For another time. Anyway, at the reception after the reception (they had the please-the-mothers tea & cake reception, and then they had an SCA barbecue where I got drunk, again, so drunk I ate barbecued spam right off the grill), Carlos' friend Dan introduced himself to us. He had been in the wedding with me and Mike and all those people, but we hadn't really talked.

Dan was Catholic. He and his wife and their children attended St. Agatha's, which was the Latin Mass church in town (they have since taken over FRancis de Sales). Dan said that one day back in the Air Force, he was ironing his pants, and he had this revelation--he could be Catholic, or not Catholic, but he had to "go all the way." He couldn't do any of that picking and choosing stuff. So he got a copy of the catechism, read it straight through (I know some very smart, very weird people). And decided this was what he was going to do. There were further revelations about Latin Mass, about whom he should marry and why, and how many thousands of children they should have. Do I sound biased? Anyway.

In 2000, I participated in Renew 2000. I sat in Ruth Ehresman's living room going over the week's focus, and there was a woman there who had come to St. Pius mostly because of our ex-pastor. Lots of people float in cities big enough to have lots of parishes--you find what you want, for whatever reason, and if it's the priest, you tend to float with him to the next parish. So she was there, we were all there, and she mentioned that she'd recently purchased a catechism. "And I can't believe the things I believe!" Ruth asked her to elaborate, and she said that it was amazing the things she found out she believed in. Because the Church said she did.

Hook line and sinker, blind unthinking faith, accepting words as truth simply because someone spoke with authority. Swallowing the catechism whole. Deciding to live one's life contrary to one's conscience because some elderly Italians said you should. These things bother me. A lot.

I have had one foot out the door of the Catholic Church for a long time--since early college. What most of those almost-leavings were actually challenges to find a place, a more mature spirituality, they were uncomfortable nudges towards further Truth. The last attempted departure was for the Friends, the Quakers, actually for very similar reasons to why Dan came to his decisions--I could be Catholic, or I could be liturgically as far from Catholicism as possible. Because I came to the realization that every Protestant church I walked into, I totally compared to my own experience. The Quakers are incomparable. And I almost did it. I then went on retreat and met Sr. Cathy and Hildegard and the rest is a very nice little story of faith journeys.

Everyone has to find his or her own way in this. There have been times when Peggy Stein is the only reason I stayed Catholic. Because my friends were and I wouldn't stay friends with them very long because St. Pius was our connection point. Other times, because I was teaching Old Testament and it would have been a bad example to fall away. Because of Good Shepherd Catechesis, listening to the breathtaking things my daughter would say.

But I spend a lot of time really frustrated with the Catholic Church. So I read a lot of Joan Chittister. Keep NCR on the bookmarked tabs. Commonweal on the coffeetable (what I like about Commonweal is that liberals think it's conservative, and conservatives think it's liberal. I have a hard time deciphering it sometimes, but 8 issues out of 10, I read it cover to cover and ruminate, deciding for myself). My grandmother's annual Christmas present to me is the Liguorian, but I've kind of moved beyond a great deal of that. I became a Benedictine oblate. Who knows what is next. I came to a realization, not while I was ironing, that I had to fight to keep this faith of mine. Maybe some don't, maybe reading the catechism and saying "yes" is enough for them.

I had to reinvent the faith wheel inside my own mind, find what I believed, what the Truth was for me, and then, opening my eyes, I realized I didn't have to leave Catholicism. I just had to continually turn the earth over, not let anything cement down into rock. Stay fluid, stay live, let something grow.

So I probably fit into the disdainful cafeteria Catholic. Which may make some blind-faith Catholics look down their nasi at me. But I'm not going for a "I don't like green beans, so I won't take them" kind of cafeteria that they have so much disdain for. I'm not trying to ignore matters of dogma.

As I put in a comment on Stephen's blog (on the blogroll to the right), though, I still believe in the informed conscience. That it's about me and God in the end. Not about Latin mass or vernacular. About birth control or women clergy or homosexuality and how closely I matched the opinions of certain bishops. All that will be covered with a blanket of snow to put into stark contrast my own life, my faith, and how I followed my own mind and brought it into concordance with Christ.

365: That's Christmas Tree in German

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum
That's Christmas tree in German.

So back in August, I was at my parents' house, and there were donuts. My sister Bevin was there, and she noted that I'd taken the one with the sprinkles.

"I bet you don't have a lot of sprinkle donut fights at your house," she said to me, which obviously meant something to her that I was missing. I asked her to explain, and it was determined that I was so much older, I must have already been in college by the time the Sprinkle Donut Argument began. Now, I remember the Frontier Airline Spoon Contest (we had one stray unmatched spoon taken from an in-flight meal tray in the 70s; my brother and I used to fight over who got to use the spoon at dinner) and I remember the more universal front seat vs. back seat kerfuffles. But I was unaware of the Sprinkle Donut controversy. So she explained:

"Dad always went down to Shipley's on Sunday morning and brought home a dozen. He never just brought one kind, either--it was always an odd assortment of things. There was always just one sprinkle donut, with the little colored or chocolate sprinkles on top. And Colleen and I used to fight over it every Sunday. Sometimes Ian would be a part of it. You don't remember this?"

"No," I admitted, although I was sorry I'd missed it. I cherish other sibling moments, like when Bevin named Colleen's front tooth 'Old Chopper' or the time Ian gave Bevin a paper bag to wear over her head when she left the house. Good times.

"One Sunday, I think you weren't married yet, even, and so you would have been there, I swear," she continued. "Colleen and I fought over the donut, and I won. So she got to pick out the Christmas tree that year."

These are not greeting card moments. These are signs of familial mental illness.

365: Mannheim Steamroller for Christmas

1. My father has an unnatural attraction to Mannheim Steamroller.

2. Every Advent, we trekked through the snow, or ice, or damp fields, in Dutso, Missouri; New Caney, Texas; Pocohontas, Illinois. We were looking for the perfect Christmas tree. Every year from the time I was 8 or so, we cut our own tree, at some family-owned tree farm, wherever we lived. Which means in Houston, we got sad little junipers, and up here in Missouri, we've recently discovered the Canaan Fir, which smells and looks like a Balsam but can take the summers better.

3. My dad drove. And therefore, we were forced to listen to Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas albums. No matter what was suggested, no matter how much whining emitted from the back seat. It was weird keyboard Christmas standards or it was nothing. Do you hear what I hear? I hear the sound of my own van: there are too many people who go now to have us all squeeze into one vehicle. Ah.

Rise and Greet Your Bishop

Ok, at the risk of interdiction...

My mother-in-law is in the Belleville diocese, the former home of Bishop Gregory. Gregory had lunch at my in-laws' table after confirmation one year. He presided at my mother-in-law's father's funeral, since her brother is a diocesan priest. He was so disarming in person. Talked about his tennis game. Stuff like that. The few encounters I had with him gave me great hope for the church.

So of course he was moved to Atlanta. And in came Bishop Braxton. Braxton had been an auxiliary bishop in St. Louis, and came for confirmation the first year I taught at Pius. Not only was his homily 45 minutes long and he used high-falutin language and didn't allow any photographs afterwards...but in the homily, remember, this was at Pius, where 50% of our students were Vietnamese, most of them children of former POWs from re-education camps, in the homily he mentioned how St. Pius V parish was a place of healing, a place where nations came together and could forgive each other the 50,000 dead Americans and the "tens of thousands of dead Vietnamese."

His American number is just about right; his Vietnamese count should have been in the millions. And I think his audience knew that.

Anyway, he's bishop across the river now. I have been listening to my mother-in-law rightly lament this fact. Her parish is in dire straits and has been assigned a foreign priest from Nigeria (I love the blinders on this crop of bishops--there is no priest shortage, nothing about the church must change, we must return to pre-vatican II standards, it was so much better when people obeyed and were sacramentalized but not catechised, don't talk about modern times, look at my expensive robe, I'm a prince of the Church, blah blah blah). Opinions about foreign priests aside, because I've known only a few, this guy doesn't belong in Cairo. He would fit so much better in a place that isn't, ahem, still battling the civil rights era. A place where the average age of parishioner isn't 80. A place with other priests. Or other Nigerians--really, either one. And, lo, the bishop could have placed him in suburban St. Louis. Sent some Illinois chap down to the southern tip. Do some gentle catechising. Bring the cluster of parishes up to speed. Or, frankly, not.

But instead, you have an ever-increasing exodus from the parishes down at the end of Illinois, an unhappy priest with no mentoring, no social contacts, in a foreign place with nothing he expected. And he and the parishioners are now forced, once a month, to drone out a prayer written by Braxton to increase vocations to the priesthood.

And only the priesthood, mind you.

Because the Church can live without nuns, without religious sisters and brothers. But it cannot without priests. That would be his words, not mine. And telling people in Cairo that they have to pray harder and get a priest from their ranks, and if they don't get a priest, they must not have prayed hard enough, oop, I'm going to take your one last priest away....it's sort of Nero level crazy.

So it's more than a little sad down in Cairo, and I know that sadness, because everyone who is still going to church and hasn't fled across to Cape Girardeau or over to Kentucky, thinks this priest has come (been sent) to close them down. Mary Helen wants me to come look at St. Patrick's windows and figure out this one female saint's depiction. I think she fears it won't be here much longer.

When the bishop made his rounds and came to my husband's uncle's parish, which is closer to Bellville and was used to bishop visits on occasion, he walked into the sacristy where the servers were waiting for mass to start. When Bishop Gregory had visited in the past, he often greeted the young people there, talked about what he expected or what was different, etc. Braxton walks in, sees them sitting in side chairs waiting, and says, "Arise, and greet your bishop."

The more I learn about what ecclesiastical leaders do and say and how they treat their priests and flocks (cause my bishop, he ain't no prize), the more of a congregationalist heart I develop. Hildegard of Bingen, pray for us, sheep in a hired man's care.