Like a Child

Seeing

2006-12-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

Father Antontio, when talking about St. Augustine's book, "Deus Trinitas":

"Faith is about seeing things that cannot be seen - faith is not a voluntaristic leap into the darkness, it's about how it's PART of seeing. There are many things we believe "in faith" that are decisive for life. Like love, friendship - can you see those? Could you do without them?"

Beautiful!

Another, when speaking of how long Augustine took to finally convert:

"Conversion and convocation [calling] are of one piece. God gives everything, and everything is unfolded. Augustine can't understand what the martyrs understood that he could not - what do they have that I don't have? He couldn't conceive of a life without a woman and falling into concupisence.

[What took him so long?] Yes, on one hand it was about the discovery of his own vocation, but also it has more to do with understanding that it's not up to him to have the strength to respond to the call. If God calls, God provides. What he had to let go of was not attraction to women but his PRIDE.

This explains the relationship between grace and nature as a doctor who cures eyes. It will hurt, but you need it because you need to see. But you must LET HIM DO IT."

The Other "Woman"

2006-12-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

Dear Blog,
I know you feel neglected. But until I have conversations with about ten important people who probably think I’ve been fed to the sharks, or to the DC equivalent (hipsters in Bethesda?), you are just going to have to wait. Don’t worry, next year when and if I have a job, I will write in you often. (The closer finals get, the more certain I am that I will not go back to school next year. This could all change the second my last test is done, however.)

Lest you remain completely neglected, O Dear Corner of Cyberspace, I will share this story with you:

My dad has a little teeny tiny dog named Honey. My dad is not a teeny-tiny dog kinda guy, (more like a, “Go fetch my big honkin’ gun, Spot!” kinda guy) but he did not choose this dog which, oddly enough, has crept its way deep into my dad’s heart. (Okay, you know I love dogs, but if it’s twelve years old and fluffy and the size of my hand, it’s not a dog. It may be cute, but it’s not a DOG dog.)

So my dad, who is usually pretty unflappable when it comes to the minor emergencies of life, was practically distraught when I spoke with him yesterday. Why? Apparently Honey had found a pill of my dad’s. How did she find it, you ask? Because he lets her sit next to him in his truck on the console and she was sniffing around the cupholder. HUGE, long SUV with a liiiiittle dog up front. Anyway, Honey found this pill and Dad was trying to get her to throw it up. He was really worried, and when it was all over (they gave her hydrogen peroxide to maker her throw up ), Dad was expressing his relief to me over the phone. THIS is what he said to me:

“She had me scared! Man, I love that little dog – other than you, she’s the most….”

Yes, that’s what he said. He trailed off. I would like to think he trailed off because he realized there WASN’T a category in which it was appropriate to put both me and the DOG together, but realistically he probably trailed off because he was distracted by thinking how much he loves that dog.

And my friends wonder how anyone could love dogs as much as I do….. the dog-lover doesn’t fall far from the dog-lover tree.

That’s all for now. Going now to study and then study (eek) more!

Stay! Sit, blog! Good blog.

Relevation!

2006-11-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know I spelled Revelation wrong. I'm punning on "elevation". Bear with me. :)

Ok, I just had one of those realizations of something that you've been grasping over and over but each time differently. I will try to explain it. If it doesn't makes sense to you, it's my fault, not yours. I don't have a lot of time to write this so I might mess it up. If it DOES make sense to you, then you've possibly "gotten" this for a long time and I'm only just catching up... so don't laugh. :)

Okay. So Christ's mission (which is an utter expropration, surrender of self) comes from his "procession" from the Father. In other words, his mission cannot be separated from WHO HE IS.

Okay. So the more we expropriate ourselves, pour ourselves out in service, we enter into, accept as our own, Christ's own mission - and THEREFORE HIS OWN SELF, thereby becoming persons-in-His-person. This has ecclesial implications - the more I serve the more of my true PERSON I become, but the less my OWN I become. The Church (the Body of Christ) finds a bigger home in my heart, because, by entering into/ accepting as my own Christ's mission, I am entering into /accepting as my own Christ's mission = his very SELF. Our service doesn't unite us with Christ because it pleases Him and he brings us closer to him as a result --- our service IS the uniting - REALLY - of our person with that of Christ. His consciousness becomes our consciousness - but NEVER in a way that eclipses our own particular reality. God is big enough to exist in us all without eliminating all our particularities. The Church as a whole and in each individual member experiences this loss/growth phenomenon. This becoming-more doesn't divide but unite the Church more because we become more HIM - the principle of our unity.

We NEVER have to be afraid of losing ourselves. Because, of course, the Cross has transformed the meaning of surrender and emptying of /death to self as precisely the RECEPTION of self because it's the reception of HIM whose love is the deepest part of our being - even our being human. We become more human in Him, not less.

I think that's it.

Faithful Promiser

2006-11-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

Uphold me according to thy promise, that I may live,
and let me not be put to shame in my hope!

Psalm 119:116

Ratzinger on Hope and Time

2006-11-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

“Humanity needs eternity; every other hope is too short for it. And it is not true that eternity robs humanity of time, impoverishes it, and makes it unimportant. On the contrary, only eternity can give man time. If a person’s death is worthless, then his life is worthless too. If man is ultimately jettisoned in death, if he becomes as so much refuse, then he is, even beforehand, one of the things that humanity can jettison and can treat as such. But if man never becomes refuse, if his value is called eternity, then this value is always his and marks his whole life.

A psychologist pointed out recently that the embezzled heaven is the crucial sickness of earth: because people forget heaven, the earth becomes empty and men become ill. If we promise paradise to alter generations but only nothingness, only death, to each individual, then we have promised nothing to anyone. It comes down to this: a future that is just future and not also present has nothing to offer humanity: every day is too long to wait for it. A present that is only present and has no future has no hope. The nothingness that follows it also pollutes the present and makes it unbearable. Only eternity can unite present and future. It always transcends the moment, is always more than we presently have, but it is not limited just to the future, it always extends even now into all our days.

Those who have talked us out of our belief in heaven, or would like to talk us out of it, have not given us the earth in exchange but have made it desolate and empty, have covered it with darkness. We must find once more the courage to believe in eternal life with all our heart. Then we shall also have the courage to love the earth and to work at building its future. Let us dare to believe once more in eternal life, to live for eternal life. We shall see how life automatically becomes richer, greater, more free and less cramped.”

-Ratzinger, from “Ordinariatskorrespondenz, January 4, 1979”

Always-Already-but-not-Yet

2006-11-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

Every autumn, the trees offer the brilliant red-orange-yellow harmonies and I am again taken aback by the utter glory of this yearly event. It always comes as a complete surprise – like every manifestation of beauty does, I suppose. It is my favorite season, and always has been. I’ve spent a lot of time this season walking around my neighborhood, which does autumn so well, delighting in shuffling my feet through leaves and feeling the crisp air awaken my lungs to their full capacity.

I’ve been wondering why it is my “secret” favorite of all the seasons, all equally beloved in theory. How is it that autumn is so invigorating? It’s so different from the spring, when there is a thrusting forth of life in a promise of things to come. Even though everything is dying in the autumn, it all bespeaks a sense of “something more”. For the first time, this year, it occurred to me how odd it is that it is precisely in their greatest expression of finitude and mortality, as the leaves die and fall to the ground, that the great clouds of red and orange and yellow and green evoke the deepest and most heart-breaking beauty. Why the poignancy?

Maybe because the beauty of autumn is a reminder that there is not a strict separation between finitude and infinitude, death and life, time and eternity. The difference, while being entirely uncollapsable, is not sharply dichotomous. The psalms sing of creation being FILLED with God’s glory. I think that the glory of God shines through not only in the living, the whole, and the beautiful, but ALSO in the dead, the broken, and the ugly… because the same instinct by which we judge something to be un-beautiful or un-glorious is the same instinct that proves to us that we have a message written by a divine Hand on our hearts that promises Something that never ends, never dies. Otherwise, there would be nothing that compels our hearts to ache or yearn – God uses heartbreak and death – the consequences of a fallen world – to whisper of the glory that waits for us, that is already-but-not-yet present to our consciousness?

I really, honestly believe that this is what I see in the autumnal beauty that touches me. The beauty of dying things is the incarnation of a Promise, of a Hope. The same hope which sustains me. The leaves drift to the ground, in a steadiness that is delicate, lovely, but inexorable. Likewise, so much in my life is out of my control, and I count my losses and crosses without being able to fix much that is broken. It is only this Hope that allows me to Really See that true “reality” includes the visible wounds and dying away AND the eternal Beyond that shines through the temporal Here.

That’s why I love autumn. Well, that, and apple cider.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

Lecture at Georgetown

2006-10-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

Last night, a few friends and I went to hear the Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright speak at Georgetown. Interesting to hear how an Anglican bishop, who I think would tend towards High Church understanding, spoke about Christianity and what Christianity has to say to modernity about the Good Life - what is good IN life and what is The Good OF life. He was promoting his new book, meant to be a modern-day Mere Christianity. After hearing his engaging talk, I had to wonder how much his promotion of the book affected his answers to the questions he fielded after his talk. Was he holding out on us, trying to neutralize his opinions to make them more palatable to a broad audience?

I don't mean to be disparaging - in fact, I thought MANY of his comments about modern society were QUITE trenchant and appropriate. I believe I began to feel that itch in the back of my mind that says Something is missing when he began to talk about our ANSWER to what is lacking or mistaken in modernity's understanding of the human person and his/her task.

He received several questions about Why be in a Christian Church? Why not just do good and believe what you will about God?

His response? Something about how Tradition is good for us, possibly because it offers a certain, valuable, kind of experience of God. Also, something about how it seems to be the best vehicle for doing good as people TOGETHER. That without this type of organization, our desire to do good falls apart and you get the tragedies of the 20th century.

There is much truth in his answer. But, if I were one of the questioners, I would have remained thoroughly unconvinced by those responses. They seem, as Jonathan pointed out, utilitarian. Frankly, I wanted to point out that the tragedies of humanity did not only occur under the atheism of 20th century but also under banners of religious belief in centuries throughout the world. People claiming to be of the Church have done awful things. People who REALLY DO believe also sin. We are fallen. If the reason to be Christian (specifically, a Christian member of a CHURCH - or THE Church) lies in a perfect track record of Christian behavior, well, I'm out!

I came into the Church because I was convicted that it is the Body of Christ, active in the World. That, as fallen and imperfect its members, there is something untouchable and impregnable about the integrity of that Body on earth - that it is beyond the performance reviews of its members, and more than the sum of its parts... although certainly not separate from the latter. I'm not trying to dismiss how we as members of this Body are to carry Christ's love to the world!! But, if I fail in my mission, the Church still stands. Does this make any sense?

I guess I just felt unsatisfied with Bishop Wright's treatment of what it means to be in a church. Maybe he keenly felt his presence at a Catholic university and wanted to avoid all talk of authority or continuity lest he sound Catholic. Maybe it's just the simple fact that He is ANGLICAN, after all, and presumably he has a reason for being Anglican and NOT Catholic. If you don't believe there is one, catholic, apostolic church, is it difficult to talk of the Church as being the Body of Christ? It seems you could still, as an Anglican, speak of the Body of Christ in a general way, referring to the unity of all Christian believers (Catholic or Protestant).

I don't know enough about Anglican understanding of Church to say much - these are just my

Through a glass darkly

2006-10-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hi there... It's been a while, and I suppose most of the reason for that has to do with living with beautiful girls who are both friends and classmates. This means that we are often home at the same times and also that we can't seem to stop talking to one another. So that's where my time has gone. I've also been a more conscientious student this year (with some exceptions for, as Winnie the Pooh said, I am a bear of very little brain and can only think so long before I must go sit out on the porch with a cold drink.)
Classes are going smashingly. My favorite so far is Father Antonio's class on the Trinity. The great thing about this class is that there's no point in being there if you're not going to wrestle with the material. Tuesday, we read Augustine's "De Trinitate" (rather, selections FROM it) and spent our time attempting to understand it. The first thing we must understand, of course, is that one can NEVER wrap one's mind AROUND the great truths of Christianity - the best one can do is immerse the mind IN the reality of the Trinity and hang on for the ride. Not to say that it defies logic - but it does transcend it. And part of our task is seeing how being transcendent is different from being illogical.

The more I study at the Institute, the more I come to see theology as a kind of loving - we can grow in our understanding of a dear friend but this understanding can never be exhaustive. The mystery can never be ecclipsed. Father Antonio pointed out that a major modern error is the way we understand knowledge as an appropriation. We have heard people say that "knowledge is power" over and over, as though it's a tool to take and wield. But the thing is that in Christ, who is Logos, we see that truth is a PERSON... Jesus Christ... more than it is a set of concepts or philosophies. Truth, then, is a place of communion, or relation. In a sense our task is not to know MORE but to love ever more deeply - but NOT in a way that leaves behind our reason. Simply we remember that St. Paul did not write: The greatest of these is an impressive set of credentials, but The greatest of these is LOVE. I've been amazed to learn that theology is so often reduced to an academic exercise. For the life of me, I cannot understand that. If I did not believe what I am studying, if it wasn't the grounding of who I am, I would not be here. Truth be told, I'd probably be some where very different, living a life that would be trying so very hard to be exciting and meaningful but would, at the end of the day, leave me bored. There is nothing more boring than a lack of conviction - only truth is dramatic.

After class on Tuesday, I had a short exchange with Father Antonio about how we can hold that 1) God is one divine nature 2) God is Three Persons, each of whom are this wholly divine nature. It might seem that you have the nature of God on one level (herein lies the unity) and the person-hood of God on another (and herein lies the distinction of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). But it CAN'T be that person-hood has nothing to do with God's nature, otherwise, no matter if it's eternally true of Him or not, it would remain extrinsic.

So, anyway, I was talking with Father about whether or not person-hood (my own word - don't blame its possible faults on Augustine or Father) is part of the nature of God. I think that Augustine refers to this. Father sounded reluctant to commit to a yes or no, and in the end said that it is both yes AND no. Time will tell what he means. :) After this, I stood in front of him bearing the full weight of my finitude as I faced my inability to reallly understand this whole Three-In-One thing, and I looked in his eyes and said,
"Father Antonio, I'm SUFFERING!"
He silently chuckled and said, "Good."

He's right - Nothing stretches one's heart (and therefore one's ability to understand) more than suffering. Father told me that I will not be able to find the perfect word or phrase that completely makes sense of these two truths - that God is ONE indivisible nature and that God is Three Persons. Mystery is something that we suffer as well as revel in. Much of my inner life has been marked by a deep desire to seek truth, but this WILL ultimately mean running up against a mystery that I cannot tear down - and ought not try. This is true of my own life as well, which has much of the twilight about it. It's a thing of joy and pain to feel God working in your life but to have not much idea what exactly it is that He is doing. But that's a mystery that can, if I let it, bring me closer to Him rather than farther. Seems to me that the same applies in my studies.

Remind me of this when I'm studying for the final for this class, eh?

Annunciation!

2006-08-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

This post is brought to you by the letter “G” and the number “3”…. and by a certain archangel...

“G” stands for GABRIEL (who “stands before God” – Luike 1:19) and “3” stands for the new number of people in C-La’s family!! (C-La… you just gotta new blogname!!)

Having gone to bed much later than I should have due to reading for too long (hundreds of warnings which my mother gave me in my childhood about not staying up too late and being tired apparently had little to NO effect on the formation of my prudence – Mom tried her best, though)… I was extremely confused and groggy when my alarm rang at 6:30AM… I had set it for 8:30, what oh WHAT was it doing waking me up so soon??

‘Twasn’t my alarm – it was my cell phone! I looked at the Caller ID and saw “C-La” on the screen. “Why is she calling so early?” I wondered, and resolved to ask her when I called her back later in the morning. I put the phone down on the bedside table and began to turn over when the other eighty percent of my brain woke up with a start, and I sat bolt upright, exclaimed, “Baby!!” and fumbled hastily for the phone, which – luckily – was still ringing. It was MR. C-LA!!! Sounding wayyy too calm for a soon-to-be-first-time-father on his way to the hospital, he explained that the baby was on the way and would I please pray for them? I said YES and couldn’t say much else due to grogginess and excitement and we said good-bye.

I paused long enough to make some espresso (don’t be fooled – I put as much milk as espresso into it) and headed off to St. Martin’s down the street. I prayed and prayed and prayed my hardest – which isn’t to say much because it was still quite early and anyways I’m such a wretch … but love covers over a multitude of imperfect prayers… : ) And I had the most lovely feeling that everything would be alright. I was hardly worried at all – just SOOOO full of love for this little person who wasn’t even (officially) HERE yet!! But I knew he was coming (although I didn’t know he was a “he” then) and that he and Mommy C-La would be alright. I gave it over to our favorite Mama Mary, St. Therese, and the ever-lovin’ JPII, and went about my day working at the Institute.

Often – that is, every other minute – I stopped to think about this thing, this newness, which occurring at this very moment by and through and within C-La. This is my first experience of watching someone close to me throughout their pregnancy (I’m an only child, after all). What struck me was this plenitude of present-ness. There was this beginning, this happening… it was so very much of-the-moment, the event of birth like an infinitely unfolding rose, a moment of potency that comes from but is unbound by the past and indicative of but not identifiable with the future. It IS. It is pure be-ing. The moment of birth is the pattern and seed of every moment, for every person. We are to become like little children. This means not just innocent, although it is that, and not just children of God, although it that to – this goal, this “be-coming” like little children seems to me to be a present-oriented existence. It is a present that is not isolated from the past or future – it contains both but does not encapsulate them. It is the meeting place of act and potency, of gift and receptivity, of creature and Creator… This is the moment when God is touching us, touching our lives. We cannot hold on to this moment – when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene after His Resurrection, he told her not to hold on to Him. If we are holding on to the present, our hands are closed, but the Lord wants them to be open, ready to receive the next moment, the next gift. Too often, I act like my life is a savings account, to be groomed and fed in preparation for a rainy day, so that I may treasure my past when there is to be no more future. NOW is the acceptable time for giving my heart once again to the Lord. One second later, that time is gone and I have the ever-present, ever-changing NOW once more to offer up. The stream of “now”s does not end, it flows on, mirroring eternity and – moment by moment, “now” by “now” – leads us to that eternity.

This childlike acceptance, this receptivity that is not passive but active, finds its pattern and form in the birth of a child. This morning as I prayed for little Gabriel and his parents, I asked that C-La may be filled up and bathed in the love of all her friends, family, and most of all her Heavenly Father. Love calls forth more love. Birth of a new being called forth my love, which I gave over to my friend, who was in the process of giving her love over to this little being. All love is circumincessive – but wildly so, and in all directions (another non-theological way of saying this is that love pays big, infinite dividends). It is not a two-way street, it is a forever-extension. So is time. Love is the form of time.

Speaking of time, we’ve been waiting for you, Gabriel. We love you already! Welcome.

the glass around your summer heart

2006-08-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

Sauntered around the neighborhood with Emily the Hairless Wonder... The poor dog is an American Eskimo, a lovely breed with fox-like faces whose bushy coats insulate them from the cold during winter months and protect them from the heat during the summer warmth. Emily visited the groomer last week, and tragically, the novice groomer was unaware of the customary cut for American Eskimos, and SHAVED Emily ALL. OVER. The hair on her face and legs remain, and her little bare body's skin shows pink through her buzz cut. It is quite a sight, and I think she feels the pain of her indignity most keenly. She has ears that point up and out (think fox-like, remember), and when she sits her shaved self down and stares at your with her head cocked, she looks EXACTLY like YODA!!! Unsettling, it is. :)

So Yoda and I sat on the front steps this evening, enjoying the summer night and watching cars drive past. Pensive is the mood tonight. I've been reading Simone Weil's book, "Waiting for God", in which is a letter explaining why she is
not seeking baptism into the Catholic Church. It seems to have something to do with her lack of love for the Church as such. She writes of her love for God, Christ, the Christian faith, the saints, and the Catholic faithful she has known, but concludes that there ought to be a connection felt to the "Church". I've not read much more than a few letters, so maybe after greater familiarity with her I will understand how she could separate the Church into some idea that is separate from God, Christ, the faith, the saints, the faithful, etc. Because, well, you can't. Those are not all the same things, but the same Love runs through each of them, and certainly if you take away any one of those elements, you would not have a Church at all.

I do understand, however, how easy it can be to feel not worthy and to mistake this for failure rather than fallenness, pure and simple. She writes:
"If one day it comes about that I love God enough to deserve the grace of
baptism, I shall receive this grace on that very day.... In that case why
should I have any anxiety? It is not my business to think about myself. My
business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me."

The thing is, we don't receive grace because WE love enough to deserve it. We are worthy because we ARE LOVED by God - herein lies the root of all that is precious and valuable in us. This root is the root of our being, the actual principle of our existence. If it was pulled up, we wouldn't become bad... we wouldn't exist at all. Insofar as we are loved by God, we ARE.

I find it easy, though, to make the mistake of waiting for something true and noble to come out of ME to GOD, when the first action of any Christian is to
receive. Right now, for instance, I am enduring the great suffering of having very little concrete idea what is in store for me after I graduate this May. I'm not sure at all which road to follow. What is the use of allll this preparation, of the Lord plucking me out of one kind of life and plopping me into a new (Catholic) one, if I squander His work with indecision? If I sit at the crossroads, so afraid to go down the wrong path that I go nowhere at all? The state of not knowing can be an actual place of residence for our souls, intended by the Lord to teach us trust (ahhh yes THAT reoccuring lesson). Granted. But how long do I have before it just becomes fear of going the wrong way? Do I honestly think that I am too difficult a case for the Lord to crack? That He won't be able to knock through my hard head and help me know where He wants me? Maybe. Not really, but when does lack of trust in myself become lack of trust in Him? The line seems awfully indistinct.

When one has spent some time charging around, attempting to wrangle your own plan out of your life, and then finally coming to your senses and stopping all that nonsense, things don't always get clearer. Not for me, anyone, and not now. And for all that it frustrates and pierces my heart, it's okay. Somehow, I don't mind feeling suspended above... everything. I don't know what He's up to, but I believe that it's SOMEthing. I suppose my strategy is to stay the heck out of God's way. Pray more. Offer myself unconditionally. Let go of my timetable. Remember that this moment, each moment, is the tabernacle of His presence in my life, and if everything else is a mite unclear and hazy, He is not. He is a mystery, but that is something altogether different, and anyway it was for the mystery that I came to this place.

Row, row, row your house

2006-08-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

I'm housesitting, and this venture is turning into a mini-retreat, thanks be to God! I'm in this beautifully furnished (classic but with fun touches) townhouse Somewhere North of Rockville. The house really has a sense of peace about it, in my opinion because the woman who lives here has a lovely and holy heart. Not to mention, really great taste in decor, music, and food (and by "great" taste I mean, of course, *mine*). I was telling someone at the Institute yesterday about how fantabulous this house is, and I said, "It's very classy. It's the kind of place where you open the pantry door and the first thing you find is three jars of olive tapenade."

So, I came home yesterday and went to nose around the kitchen. Upon opening the pantry door, I discovered...

Olive tapenade! Two jars of it! Go figure. There was a third jar, but it was Eggplant-Red Pepper Tapenade, so I don't think it counts towards confirming my prescient abilities.

The townhouse complex is MASSIVE. It's almost a little freaky how everywhere you look, you see rows of townhouses or sometimes houses built to be different yet retain the same style. The blocks of actual houses have picturesque front porches on them, and after dinnertime almost every front porch contains a family or someone reading. The reason it's a little freaky is because it is SO well planned, that it looks a little like Pleasantville or the Stepford Wives - a little fake. As much as I was sending up fleeting prayers for similar blessings as I strolled through the neighborhood ("Please, Lord, could you add a front porch to that Happy Healthy Holy Family request? Doesn't have to be big, just light and inviting. With a lantern. And some hanging plants. And a dog lying on it.").... I was a little put off by the Perfection. I realized that some little nagging voice in the back of my head was COMPLAINING about how perfect it was? I know - some people just can't be pleased! Give me perfection and I begin to opine about how beautiful Nature's disorderly order is and how a neighborhood built up over time reflects that. Which is exactly what happened inside my head.

All of these houses were built at once, in a flash of brilliance from some developer who saw the money in an Instant Small Town America just outside of DC. And it's great, it really is - and needed for moneyed, growing families. But, it does lack the romance of a neighborhood built up over time, throughout the years. Like College Hill in Wichita, I guess. Where you have mostly picturesque houses of stone, brick, or wood, but also have the occasional lemon - the lilac house with pink trim. There's something great about that heterogeneity, where character is born and bred, not BUILT.

I know, I'm a snob. More like a reverse snob, though, because these houses are a lot nicer than the ones in Silver Spring or Hyattsville. HOWEVER, these houses don't have MANNEQUINS in BATHTUBS decorating their lawns! If you mosey on over to Hyattsville, you will find at least three houses within a few blocks who, despite all other appearances of normalcy, have posed mannequins - dressed in normal clothes (Ew! what about it raining? Do they change the clothes? Or simply add a raincoat? These are the great things I get to discover throughout the next year or so.) - in casual positions. Leaning by the door of the house, reclining in the bathtub... once you embrace the oddity, the word "freakish" morphs into "eccentric", thereby becoming something of which one can become fond - as opposed to frightened.

So, bereft of these touches of character, I walk the dog, Emily, in picture perfect neighborhoods. Life's tough. :) After our walk this afternoon (I'm supposed to give her 3 day, but I figure she's fourteen years old and not long for this world so we make the most of her time left with 5 a day), I came home and read Crime and Punishment on the couch until I fell asleep. I had another dream - you see, I've had some great dreams in this house so far. Very pleasant. My dreams are always vivid, almost always interesting, often action packed and sometimes sad or scary. But my dreams in this house have been... simply NICE. I woke up this morning having dreamed that I was just hanging around with Luke Wilson, whom I was dating. Apparently, I had made that commitment despite the disaster of a film, "Alex and Emma", which I rented from Netflix last week out of SHEER. MORBID. CURIOSITY. I just couldn't believe it was as bad as people - friends, critics - said. It was. I was being productive while watching the film, so I didn't resent the time spent watching it. If I had paid money to see this film, I would have taken my long list of Failed Poignant Moments and used it to tie up whomever thought that Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson had chemistry. Then, I would have sat that person down next to whomever wrote the screenplay and made them both watch the movie non-stop for a month. Hmph. One of the most glaring problems with the movie was that Alex - Luke Wilson - was supposed to be this brilliant novelist. But, he narrates his novel outloud throughout the movie... and it's suuuuuch bad writing! I've seen antacid commercials with better scripts. Yikes.

Anyway, in my dream I forgave Luke his trespasses and spend a lovely afternoon in the park. It was such a nice change from chasing bad guys - my dreams can be very tiring. This afternoon's nap brought another spectacular dream through my mind. This time, I was sailing with some Guy (Faceless Guy - when I'm not dating Luke Wilson, the men in my dreams who fight the bad guys with me or sweep me off my feet never seem to have faces that stick in my memory. I hope that Future Guy, whomever he may be, is not actually a Faceless Guy, because that would be a little unsettling.) in a shallow bay of turquoise blue water. There were dolphins swimming alongside the sailboat, and I jumped in with them for a minute. When I climbed back on board, I realized that there was a mini pool on the back of Faceless's Boat, and THAT had two dolphins in it. Blue sky, turquoise water, light breeze, dolphins, a white sailboat, Faceless Guy... a good time was had by all. Go ahead and psychoanalyze that dream, if you want. I'm pretty sure it just means that I love water, sky, dolphins, and - of course - Faceless Guy.

So, Crime and Punishment is fantastic. I'm half way through, and love the points he's making about how sin divides and goodness unites. More later.

UPDATE: I've just spent half an hour looking for any Internet mention of the Hyattsville mannequin phenomenon... no luck so far. But I will press on! - working to serve you, folks. In the meantime, here's a picture of some of the rowhouses here.

Hello Again

2006-08-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

Friends! Although I’ve probably, due to my long absence, lost the interest of what friends read my poor lil blogsite, I thought it would be only polite to write and let y’all know that I am alive!

Summer has flown by with the speed of a waitress whizzing past the table and avoiding eye contact although you both know you’re trying to get her attention. That fast. Although it feels like I haven’t done much, now that I think about it, much has happened.

My move to H-ville is now complete (ahem, aside from those boxes in my old house still to be moved). Now that I have an air conditioner, life is quite grand up here (the house has three stories, with my room on the second). As I am now someone who understands what it is to live in DC in the summer sans air conditioning, I have become a glutton about coolness, and leave my AC blowing hard enough to balloon my gauzy white curtains out into my room. Immoderacy will give way to energy conservation soon enough, but right now I’m spoiling myself.

And, despite missing my old house and roommates and “hollow glen”, I’m happy with the change. I needed a fresh start for this coming year, and my new quarters aptly serve this end. Yes, I have lost the ability to go on long walks at midnight without concern for my safety… Yes I have become used to police cars congregated outside the neighborhood eatery, lights flashing. But, I have also become acquainted with Rita’s Frozen Custard and the delightful things that happen when said custard is blended with ice and cherry flavoring. And I now have an honest to goodness parish “home”, where the friends I see late on a Saturday night are all as tired as I am the next morning as we try to focus on the lengthy, heartwarmingly devout Thomistic homilies given by the Argentinian priests who run the parish. And although I have lost proximity to Schneider’s grocery store [see a very early post from this blog], now I have…. Well, now I still have Schneider’s, because guess who drives half an hour just to go grocery shopping!! I just can’t let go of that place – I’m nothing if not loyal. Our relationship being the healthiest I’ve had in a few years notwithstanding, man does that place have good deli meats! I love the deli guys who wave in recognition and I love the traffic jams in the fruit section (the secret is to skip the apples). I love the husbands who shop with great focus and pride on Saturday mornings, and I [mostly] love the check-out guy who checks more than the groceries out… ahem.

So I hie myself to Silver Spring once a week, but mostly I’m quite content. I have paper lanterns dangling from my ceiling along with pretty crystals of various blue, green and grey hues. I have a curtain up in the middle of the room separating my workspace from the rest of my room, and a just-completed collage above my bed featuring a quote from “Perelandra” reading: “Always one must throw oneself into the wave.” I have my gi-normous blue chair-thing in the corner under the lanterns, and Erin is a happy girl.

Did I mention my beautiful roommates, too? Yayness.

The Beauty of .... bugs?

2006-06-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Don't faint, those of you know me, but I've just spent the last ten minutes marveling at how beautiful insects are. (Until they fly in my face in the form of moths or infect my living room in the form of gigantic spiders.)

Clicking on the title of this post will show you the work of Rick Lieder, a photographer who takes amazing close-up shots of different insects - often ants- that he sees in his garden. He doesn't set up the shots, he simply sits in his garden and waits until a shot presents itself. I think this shows how beauty takes patience, it needs a time of pregnancy. I know there are times when we are struck by beauty in a single instant - driving down the highway and looking up to see a sunset strike a glamorous pose - but in every case, I think, there has been time which went into creating that moment. Time in preparing the thing of beauty and time spent preparing the viewer who receives the vision of beauty.

A good, possibly the primordial, example of this is the appreciation of another person's beauty. Men have told me that they think their wives/girlfriends are more beautiful a few years into the relationship than at first glance. Recently, I heard someone (an unmarried man) say that he didn't agree - that a particular woman strikes a man as being attractive to him the first instant he sees her, and that this impression stays the same - he doesn't grow in attraction to her. I was disheartened by that, and fearing I had been deluded by an idealistic hope, asked a good male friend of mine to comment on the matter. He said, "Of course a woman grows in beauty the more you know her, love her. I would question if that man has ever really loved a woman."

The gist was that as you grow to know the inner treasures of a person's mind and heart, they grow more attractive, for the way a person is inside really does infuse their external characteristics. I remember another friend of mine, a few years ago, telling me that if you put a woman who looks more "Hollywood" beautiful next to a woman who is filled with joy but maybe doesn't look as "good" as the first... the second woman really will be more beautiful. I remember pushing the issue, suggesting that he would not really see her as PHYSICALLY more beautiful, and he said with much more seriousness than he usually musters - "No, really. She would literally be much prettier."

This makes me think of the persons of the Trinity- the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are eternally marveling at the beauty and glory of the other, which is of course shared throughout all three Persons of the one God. God is not bored with Himself, though. Superabundant beauty grows throughout eternity - it is not static. God has always been perfect love, so you can't say that at one point He has "more" love for the Holy Spirit than He did before, because God is above time, but eternity is not one moment stretched for forever - eternity is not SAMENESS that just... keeps on going. It is an event of love (ref. Father Antonio) and as such GROWS in a sense. So the Father is always appreciating more and more and more the glory of His Son and Holy Spirit, and vice versa. This process is imaged in an elderly couple who has been married for fifty years and appreciate the other more and more as the years go on....

So there you have it. You know you're a student at the JPII Institute when looking at a close-up picture of ants leads you to think about love and marriage.

:)

Daddy's girl

2006-06-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

When I was in Rome, the Institute had a private audience with the Holy Father, who wished to celebrate with us the 25th anniversary of our founding. The Institute was founded by John Paul II, and there is an acute sense, as students, professors, and staff, that we are caught up in his particular mission. Since his death, Pope Benedict XVI has proved to be no less of a spiritual father and supporter for the Institute, and demonstrated this in a special way during the audience, spending far more time with our group than he usually does in such audiences.

He came down the edges of the aisle slowly, greeting those who lined the aisle. Many of those who lined the aisle were actually families who came to the audience before the students were able, as we arrived later than they due to our participation in talks that morning at our conference. It was beautiful to see the Holy Father bless and embrace the children of these families, but he showed no less tenderness to every person, every adult, he greeted in the room. He passed by me just a few feet. I was able to see his face, the face of a father looking upon beloved children.

This was a blessing indeed.

It was all brought back to me this morning after I awoke from a dream. It was about the pope. You see, in the back of my heart, I had felt a little sadness that I was not among the people who were able to sit along the edges of the aisle and therefore be greeted personally by the Holy Father. I felt like it was my one chance to embrace my father, and I had missed it. This regret, of course, was ultimately overshadowed by the joy of having been there with him and the sweet memories of his shyly happy gaze lingering over the crowd, but still my experience could never be the same as those who had been closer.

Last night, I went to bed with a rather heavy heart. Before I dropped off to sleep, I was begging the Lord to be close to me and to lift me up. I dreamed that I was at the end of a pew in a dark church praying with many others. There was no one, just space on one side of me, and on the other, the crowded pew - except for one empty seat just next to me. In my dream, I felt peaceful but alone. I was silently kneeling in prayer along with everyone else ( I think perhaps it was in Mass, just following Communion ), when I noticed someone making their way down the pew, inching past the many people who filled the row. Slowly but steadily, the person made his way to where I was sitting, and I looked over to see that it was the Holy Father. He sat down in the pew, looked at me with the most loving smile on his face, then knelt down beside me. As he did so, he did not take his eyes from mine, and then he took my hand in his as he knelt down. I buried my face in his robes, and we knelt together, praying.

My dream was a timely gift, part of the Lord's plan of teaching me, over and over, that I am home with family in the Church. Like most families, there are times when brothers and sisters disagree and want to pull out their hair due to frustration, but ultimately, we are one in Christ, and we share the same Holy Father who is our shepherd. In my dream, I was shown the particular love of God via the universal fatherhood of the pope. Pope Benedict XVI is the Holy Father of the entire Church - but it is an entire Church made up of individuals, and it is to me as a particular daughter of God that the pope's love and prayers extend. In a very real way... that images the manner in which the triune God extends His ever-present, unfailing love to me, to Erin, to the heart of a young woman who sits in her room in Maryland, looking out at the sunlight falling through the leaves on this hot summer day. God is with me, here, now.

C.S. Lewis and the Space Trilogy

2006-06-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

Another stop on the great summer o' reading....
....The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis. Technically, I'm only 2/3 of the way through it. I finished "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra", and am in the beginning of "That Hideous Strength" (the man sure could pick great titles, eh?).
Out of the Silent Planet was good, but I thought Perelandra was great. I think I must have dreamed of this place a hundred times when I was young - truly. The Seussian landscape, the innocent abundance, all these things used to pepper my dreams growing up. I remember one such dream, walking around this alternate world, I came upon an endless supply of spaghetti and meatballs. Another time, it was a mountain of cupcakes with exquisitely beautiful icing decorations. (As you might guess, I am a huge fan of Italian food and any form of sugar.) The dreaminess of Perelandra seemed familiar to me - and I suspect it should, for it is the story of a world unfallen, and a people who still received grace as easily as breathing. This place describes how the human heart originally lived in communion with God - it is a story of our own ancestry. While we can't ever live in that plane again 'this side of paradise', we still are sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, and have not lost that longing for what we once called home. Perelandra makes real the idea that we are men and women descended from those who once lived in a paradise of grace.

One point that Perelandra gorgeously illustrates is the particularity of God's love. One big mistake Christians make is to dissolve individuals into some abstract lump of Church. God, however, loves in an intricate and specific manner. There are two great jumps I had to make in my understanding of who I am as a Christian, as a Catholic. The first turned my world inside out, and that was the realization that it is ALL about Him. Everything. It all comes from and is called back to Him. All that is in me IS only because He loves me and chose me to come into this world. I do not have the corner market on importance, I have no right to place myself above any other or see myself as superior. Which, I suppose, never consciously happened in my head. But those little selfish thoughts, those defensive reactions born of a jealous desire to protect ourselves... those had no place in a world where all was "from Him and through Him and for Him" (Romans 11:36). This first step I am describing, I think, is essentially self-surrender.

Followed by the second step, which is when I realized that although the world didn't revolve around me, God's love did. Because His love focuses entirely on me. And you. And every person in the world. All at once. Because God is not limited by our human conception of predilection and choice. He chooses me first. And everyone else first too. This second step is where I received back the self I gave up, and embraced my chosenness. The second step is where God proves that any gift TO Him will be a reception OF Him. The divine economy.

Ransom, the human from fallen earth, cannot understand how God's plan could take into account so many creatures, great and small, and so many events - he thinks that at some point, there will surely be something, someone, that falls through the cracks of God's focus, that just isn't important in the grand scheme of things. He receives an education on this point near the end of his time on Perelandra:

"Each grain is at the centre. The Dust is at the centre. The Worlds are at the centre. The beasts are at the centre. The ancient peoples are there. The race that sinned is there.... Blessed be He!

Where Maleldil {God} is, there is the centre. He is in every place. Not some of Him in one place and some in another, but in each place the whole Maleldil, even in the smallness beyond thought. There is no way out of the centre save into the Bent Will which casts itself into the Nowhere. Blessed be He!

Each thing was made for Him. He is the centre. Because we are with Him, each of us is at the centre. It is not as in a city of the Darkened World where they say that each must live for all. In His city all things are made for each. When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil [angel, sorta}, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!"

Addendum to "Superheroes"

2006-06-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

Took this out of my last post because it was getting too dang long....
A word from our friend, GKC:

Chesterton once (in "The Way of the Cross" ) quoted these verses:
"What are the names for Beauty? Who shall praise
God's pledge He can fulfill His creature's eyes?
Or what strong words of what creative phrase
Determine Beauty's title in the skies?"
And then he commented:
"But most of us have an instant inward conviction that it is a title in the skies;
that it is a reality, though not expressed in reason or speech;
that it is the unfolding of a transcendental truth."

Superheroes

2006-06-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

I love my roommate, K. Perhaps it's the fact that she's been known to eat dry Cheerios mixed with marshmallows for dinner, or perhaps it's the fact that we both hail from the heartland (she's from Oklahoma, just a few hours south of Wichita) or that she's brilliant and will make an amazing doctor someday... actually, it's all those reasons and more.

Due to the fact that at the end of this month I will be moving to another house, the rockin' Hyattsville House, I have been trying to spend as much time as possible with K before I leave. This has led to an increase in Serious Conversations, and I am just praying like crazy that she has not dismissed me as entirely insane just yet. Why? Because in the last week, I have found myself - sometimes by direct request, sometimes in the course of a discussion - attempting to explain to K (who is not Catholic) what My (Presumably) Catholic Position is on a number of confusing, touchy, or just plain weird subjects. During the past seven days, we have talked about speaking in tongues, demonic possession, "gay marriage", stories of people who can see evil spirits or talk to their guardian angels, separation of church and state, condoms/spread of diseases, the Fall, and suffering.

Whew. We've been busy.

I really, really admire K, because she is so inquisitive and always eager to learn about other people. She always listens to what I have to say with interest and such acceptance that I forget I'm not speaking with a Catholic and let slip some story about my Benedictine medal's powers of spiritual protection. Then I remember how crazy I must sound and backpedal with some explanations and background. What a funny year this must have been for her. The first things I learned about Catholicism (other than my erroneous impressions I once had of the Church before I converted) were basic - the Eucharist, Apostolic succession,and the like. K, however, has been introduced to Catholicism by a couple of girls who are forever heading off to Confession on Tuesday and prayer meeting on Thursday, etc. Not only that, but one of them is a graduate student of theology! And not even NORMAL theology, but some philosophical, anthropological, poetical theology. To give you an example:

First, an explanation: "Pulchritude" means beauty. "Superpulchritude" has popped up in our readings a few times this year, though I may have first read it in Dubay's book on beauty but I could be wrong. Superpulchritude would be the beauty of God - or, more correctly I imagine, God Himself because he IS Beauty. Anyway, I love not only the concepts behind these words (superpulchritude is the reason for my conversion wrapped up in one word) but the words themselves. I find myself entranced by the language of our course material [- hey wait, isn't philosophy supposed to be dull? Isn't theology supposed to be a bunch of rules? Why does what I read for class sound like an ancient love letter we happened to get our hands on? ]. I love that a few Latin words get pushed together if there's not already a word for something. I love that our professors use hyphens like they're going out of style. And, I love the word "superpulchritude".

Anyway, K and I hied ourselves to the movie theater Tuesday night when our power went out. We saw Akeelah and the Bee (good, by the way), laughed, cried, etc. As we walked out of the movie theater into the fresh summer night, I was in a great mood. Not even the depressing movie posters soured my cheer. They weren't ALL depressing - there was one poster advertising the Superman movie coming out.

Musing for a few moments as we strolled down the sidewalk, I said,
"If I were a superhero, I would be the Superpulchritudinator."
K glanced over, looking doubtful and confused.
"It's... the Superpulchritudinatorrrrrrr!" I demonstrated, then sheepishly explained,
"It means superabundant beauty."
"Ohhh," K laughed.
As if that weren't enough, I added,
"I would smite people with daisies and shoot them with rainbows."

If I promise that I really am an adult and not a Rainbow Brite wannabe, bear with me for one more minute?

My idea of fighting with beauty as my secret weapon wasn't so crazy. Why, after all, did I convert?

I was, truly, SMITTEN with beauty. It was both bold and reserved, mild and commanding. It drew me in and knocked me off of my feet before I had a clue what had happened or what was about to unfold in my life. It single-handedly battled childhood wounds for me before I understood that I was hurting, and it taught me of the existence of God before I even could name Him. It was beauty that fought a battle for my heart and it has been beauty that has never let me go. I was quite young when I learned how fierce real beauty is. I therefore had an instinct which told me that peace and beauty are never boring but always contain pure drama (because Truth is the essence of drama).

Beauty is God's secret weapon - with it, He sneaks into souls, He "smites" them, if you will.

He is .... the ultimate Superpulchritudinator.

Amazing (lack of) Grace

2006-06-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

So, I took a shower last night so I could skip one this morning ( I know you all wanted to know a little more about my personal habits ). Happily gaining at least half an hour to my day, I decided I had time to mix up my favorite salad dressing to use for lunch before I left to run all my errands.

This salad dressing involves melting two teaspoonfuls of peanut butter in the microwave, mixing a splash or two of lime juice, a dash of soy sauce, and several gulps of Ginger Sesame dressing made by the Ginger People. This is really, really good stuff. Ginger is one of my top ten food favorites. I happily fetched the other ingredients from the fridge while I waited for the peanut butter to melt. Retrieving the cup from the microwave, I added the lime juice and soy sauce.

Before I added the ginger dressing, I needed to shake the bottle because there are bits of ginger that settle at the bottom. So, I shook. It was sometime during the first, energetic upward swing of the bottle that I remembered I had already opened the bottle during my preparations while the peanut butter was melting - and for some inexplicable reason had REPLACED THE CAP ON THE BOTTLE, unscrewed. The dressing, my precious, pricey Whole Foods find, flew out of the bottle in the air, as I followed the motion of cap and dressing with my eyes, looking up to see it shooting above my head. It took that whole half a second to remember that when one's salad dressing flies up in the air, it usually returns to the ground post-haste, and had just enough time to close my eyes before I was showered with ginger dressing. Given my passion for the stuff, you'd think that this was my dream come true, and maybe if I hadn't been so excited about that extra half-hour of showering/hair-drying I had saved myself the night before, I would have been happy about being coated with ginger from head to heel. As it was, I looked at the clock, sighed, and then headed upstairs to hop in the shower and de-ginger myself.

I didn't used to be like this. I remember when I was younger, like in high school, I tended to be the calm, collected one who didn't do goofy things like trip, or spill things. People would ask me if I did ballet (I did) and say that they could tell from the way I carried myself. What happened??

Last week, I was walking in Georgetown with my friend, enjoying my iced chai latte (with extra chai) from Starbucks. He looked over to see me distressedly wiping at my WHITE summer scarf.
I looked up, sheepishly, and moaned, "I spilled."
He coolly remarked, "A lid and a straw weren't enough to keep it in the cup, eh?"

Last night, I was walking in Silver Spring with Jersey, when I felt a wet something drip onto my be-flipflopped foot. Looking down, I saw vestiges of my latte making it's way down my heel. I barely had any coffee LEFT in my to go cup - which was securely fitted with a supposedly competent lid. How did it come to drip out of the top of my cup, then? Jersey just smiled (smirked, if you ask me).

This happens disturbingly often. Have I lost what grace I imagined I ever had? At least I can be consoled by the extra shine my ginger tonic has afforded my blonde locks.... hmph.

More on Human Love

2006-06-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

Thinking about those notes on the Trinity I posted…. It’s incredible how the experience of human love echoes that of the Trinitarian processions of divine love. We creatures, we stumbling, stunted creatures image DIVINE, ETERNAL, AND PERFECT LOVE! We do it in our mortal, finite, and imperfect way, of course. But the dignity of being created in the image of God is still such a part of us that even our sin is merely twisting a TRUTH about God. We can't help it - even when we are running from Him, we cannot but be in relation to Him. The human experience of losing your heart to someone, of being somehow more yourself with this other person, while being in the context of loving this person... this experience of vulnerability, an experience that can be tragically unhealthy or blessedly peaceful when rooted in Christ... it helps us understand how to love God, and how love within God works.

We always are yearning to give our hearts. So often, our loves ends in a LOSS of self, rather than a GIFT of self. Both paths entail a death: one death is LOSS of self in order to gain the "other" - it is a selfish gift, which is not for the other's own sake - this death is an annihilation of self; the other death is a GIFT of self that is for the sake of the other, it is selfless and therefore a life-giving death like that of Christ' sacrifice on the Cross - it is a bestowal of self rather than a disintegration of self. When in the thick of our lives, of the drama of love, it can be tricky to discern the difference between these two different deaths, these two different kinds of love. It seems to me that the simplest way to discern the difference is to ask if one is being brought closer to or further from God via this human love. If it's the former, the love is a gift of self; if the latter, a loss of self. I know that I have spent time losing myself when all along I thought I was simply GIVING myself.

The difference, I have found, is in whether union with Christ is my main goal in the relationship or is union with another person my main goal in the relationship. If it is not the former, I end up objectifying the relationship, despite all my best intentions, in order to obtain my own security and happiness. If the goal is union with Christ, what I do to love the other person becomes another way by which I love Christ. When we are caught up in the Trinitarian communion, a death to self always, always is an infinite, eternal gain... for God is the one who does not betray my trust. When I give my heart to another person, I pour out myself to the other. I am able to do so only because I believe that through that love I am loving God, pouring my heart out to Him. If it were otherwise, I'm pretty sure I would be too scared to say hello to a living soul, let alone give my heart to someone. My trust is in Him alone - even in trusting another person, like my (hypothetical) husband, at the end of the day I am entrusting my heart to GOD, but THROUGH another person. No person can deserve our trust or even our love, ultimately. We are so fallen. We are good, but -Lordhavemercy!- we are fallen. We only give ourselves truly if we give our selves and our trust to God before we do anything else with either of them.... In this way, we cast fear out of our relationships, because no love is ever lost, if it’s directed to Him. Even good people will fail us, even the best might fall, and we may end up alone – but no part of our heart is ever lost if we root our love for others in our Father’s constant presence to us.

Trinity and Human Love

2006-06-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity... here are some notes from one of my classes this past semester, Father Antonio's Christology class. Next semester, I will be abundantly blessed by taking an entire class from Father on the Trinity! This class in particular focused on the Holy Spirit, but often addresses the entire Trinity. (Remember, anytime I post notes from class, they came from the professor but were written down by yours truly, so anything that does not make sense please attribute to my involvement and not to their wisdom.) Hold on to your hats, folks. This man is brilliant. Me - not so much. So for my thoughts which follow the notes, your hat is out of danger.

"Why is the Holy Spirit another person? Not just because Christ talks about the Spirit in person terms, but because the Holy Spirit is both the Spirit of Christ AND the Spirit of the Father, the unity of their spirits is a separate person, the person of their unity. He cannot be identified with either the Father or the Son, taken alone."

"The Holy Spirit is the realization of the love, the unity between the Father and the Son. This ecstatic communication between Father and Son means that divine love is superabundant. It's an overflowing of the Father and Son's mutual love. It's not just a quantitative distribution of the overflowing - it's the gift itself of the communion between the Father and the Son. When Christ says "The Father and I will come to you", the unity he's referring to is not just Father plus Son, it's Another. This communion is very mysterious - it is both a relationship AND a separate person. Holy Spirit is more than the love, the orientation between the Father and the Son, it's an "other". The coming of the Holy Spirit to man is not just the bestowal of God's love, it is the person of God himself in the communion of persons."

"Human love echoes the divine processions of the three persons of the Trinity, with each person always going to the others. To love, then, means that the center of yourself is no longer you it's another. This experience of human love indicates the divine love. ... For us the understanding of difference is highly problematic - it's either me or you. We have a doubt of otherness. But really there's a positivity in the "other" being there. There are only two different possibilities in the end, when thinking of God. Either God is positivity - LOVE - or what determines the movement of spirit is negativity. Either the "other" being my center is a denial of myself, or is an affirmation of myself. Either the Cross happens outside of God, or it is God himself who dies on the cross. There is no other way."

"The relationships between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit... they are not moral relations. This is what Christ discloses when talking of Holy Spirit - it's not a web of individual relationships, it's COMMUNION of all three persons at the same time. The Holy Spirit is not only a disclosure of who God is but who the Church is: the unity of persons in many...without eliminating the unity or dissolving the personhoods of those who form the Church. We need to retrieve this aspect of communion - today, we DO think that the human being makes sense apart from others. But we must understand that the human person only makes sense in the context of the "other". In disclosing this three-fold unity in God, Christ is revealing the greatness of the communion in which WE are called to live! It's about UNITY WITHOUT LOSING HIMSELF... or losing ourselves in Him."

choice words

2006-06-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

Professor Grygiel is a good, good man....whenever he says anything... I listen.

"Sexual differences create a space for total trust between one person and another. Those who are afraid to give themselves totally to others fear sexuality, and thus abuse it, deforming it to themselves. The objective of the John Paul II Institute is precisely to study the miracle of sexual difference. This is the beginning of a path in which we discover the ultimate and fundamental difference for human beings: the difference between God and creatures. If we don't live the sexual differences correctly that distinguish man and woman and call them to unite, we will not be capable of understanding the difference that distinguishes man and God, and constitutes a primordial call to union. Thus, we may fall into the despair of a life separated from others and from the Other, that is, God." -Stanislaw Grygiel (John Paul II Institute professor)

Giving Him Glory

2006-06-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

Gerard Manley Hopkins:

"Turn then, brethren, now and give God glory. You do say grace at meals and thank and praise him now for everything. When a man is in God's grace... then everything that he does, so long as there is no sin in it, gives God glory... It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory....
To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a sloppail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. So then, my brethren, live."

Evelyn Waugh

2006-06-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

First stop on my Magnificent Summer O' Reading... "Decline and Fall" by Evelyn Waugh. Good read. That man can word-paint a character like nobody's business... a talent made especially entertaining by Waugh's obstinate refusal to entertain notions of a traditional "hero" in his book. There are no admirable characters in this novel and, likewise, no truly detestable figures either. Every man or woman which one might think villainous remained, in the end, merely pathetic. Might that be the point? The rebels without a cause, the convention-flouters, the drama-seekers... they try to sell sin as glorious, daring, and brilliantly bold - when really, it is pathetic and dull (in the long run). The worst characters in the novel look foolish and ridiculous, sad and pitiable.

Rightly so. One of the things that needed to happen in my conversion (which may never quite be finished, actually) to the Catholic faith is the purgation of the idea that "bad" is theatrical and exciting. The real drama, I discovered, is the triumph of grace over sin - not the sin itself. Sin, much like suffering, is just ugly on its own. Unknowingly, there lived in my heart traces of the cultural idea that one can be just a little evil and therefore a lot more exciting. I think the fear of being boring is a great weapon of the devil's. It is, however, a weapon immediately rendered useless the moment one understands the scandal of Christ' Incarnation. The drama of God-made-man trumps that of man-making-himself-a-god any day, simply because it is the drama that underwrites human history. Chesterton was right about the romance of orthodoxy. I remember the first days of my conversion, reading about the Church's teachings, devouring the texts of the Early Fathers... these things left me - literally - breathless in astonishment. Truth is fearsome in the way that beauty is powerful - they hit us on the level of our metaphysical being, and in doing so, change and form us. There is nothing more exciting than feeling one's heart being molded in conformity with Eternal Truth - this fact is the weapon that I think must be one of God's best.

Waugh, whose writing is the opposite of preachy, manages to illustrate some hefty truths in this book (perhaps despite himself?). He also crafted a constant theme of ludicrousness that made me laugh out loud at least a dozen times. Check it out.

All You Need to Know about the Da Vinci Code... sorta.

2006-06-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Funny stuff over at the Internet Theologian: http://holyoffice.livejournal.com/80533.html

Hot off the press, a sizeable chunk of the Internet Theologian's comments about the Da Vinci Code:

"Q: What does all this have to do with Jesus? Or, for that matter, Leonardo Da Vinci?
A: The premise of the book is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that the two had children, who passed along Jesus' bloodline through generations of French people. Leonardo was the member of a secret brotherhood of painters who protected this secret by painting pictures of men that look like ladies.

Q: Well, if it's in a book, it must be true.
A: Exactly.

Q: Why are Christians so upset about this book, if it's true?
A: Christians are dedicated to covering up The Truth about Jesus and the society of lady/man painters. What Brown uncovered in his research is the shocking truth of Christianity: Jesus was a regular dude, and a regular dude who wanted Mary Magdalene to be the first pope. Christians don't want that to come out, because the central tenet of Christianity is oppressing women. That, and getting Republicans into office.

Q: Why isn't any of this in the Bible?
A: It is - but not the Bible the Man wants you to read! The truth uncovered by Brown is contained in scriptures like The Gospel of Thomas and The Secret Gospel of Oprah, works that depict the truth of Jesus' humanity and marriage, despite being written several hundred years after the canonical gospels.

Q: That's another question. Why, in the book, is the Catholic Church the only Christian body in the world? Doesn't Brown realize there are countless different Christian denominations, often with widely varying views on Jesus? Where, for the love of Pete, are the Orthodox?
A: Look, can you imagine a Lutheran synod or a group of Orthodox bishops commissioning a mad albino monk to hunt down an inquisitive Harvard professor? Do the Lutherans even have monks, let alone mad, albino ones? So there you go."

Q: Can you cite an unintentionally hilarious passage from the book?
A: "His captivating presence is punctuated by an unusually low, baritone speaking voice, which his female students describe as 'chocolate for the ears.'"

Q: That's pretty good. How about another?
A: "One mile away, the hulking albino named Silas limped through the front gate of the luxurious brownstone residence on Rue la Bruyere. The spiked cilice belt that he wore around his thigh cut into his flesh, and yet his soul sang with satisfaction of service to the Lord. Pain is good."

Q: Ouch. Hit me with another.
A: "The curator looked down and saw the bullet hole in his white linen shirt. It was framed by a small circle of blood a few inches below his breastbone. 'My stomach.' Almost cruelly, the bullet had missed his heart."

Q: More!
A: "Symbologists often remarked that France - a country renowned for machismo, womanizing, and diminutive insecure leaders like Napoleon and Pepin the Short - could not have chosen a more apt national emblem than a thousand-foot phallus."

Q: Is that all you've got?
A: "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair."

Q: Why does the dialogue in the book which is supposed to be in French include French words alongside the English translation, like, "Pain is good, monsieur" and "Le capitaine is happy you decided to stay overnight"?
A: That is how the French speak. There is no French language per se, just a few words they throw into English sentences to make themselves seem superior to Americans."

Lost: one post, and all of my patience.

2006-06-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

It's my fault. I should have saved it. But when you finally gather your thoughts and stay up til one thirty in the morning to at last begin describing your time in Rome for a post in words that satisfy you at least a little.... it is beyond discouraging to have it all disappear the next second. Why? I still don't know why. I just know it's gone, replaced by that little sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach. Argh. I have that childish inclination and hope that if I just throw a tantrum, kick my feet and wail unrestrainedly, that all will magically be fixed, and the frustration erased. Now you will never know the extent of my brilliance. (Um...or lack thereof. Okay, on second thought, perhaps this disappearance was a good thing!)

Back Home

2006-06-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

I am back home after wandering about Italy for a few weeks, collecting almost as many memories as rosaries. I have much to tell, I think. I am still working on processing it. In the meantime, a story from my morning:

Today was CK's birthday, and K and myself got up early early to fix breakfast for her. After lingering and laughing over scones and lemon curd (we are nothing if not classy!), CK and I went upstairs for various reasons. K called us back down, however, to show us the squirrel to whom she had been passing crumbs of the last scone through the screen door [probably ruining the poor little guy's appetite for plain nuts for ever after]. While we watched the squirrel cradle the scone pieces in his hands, CK told us about how a neighbor had been having problems with the squirrels getting into her plants.
"I hope he doesn't get into my herbs," CK worried.
"Would squirrels eat herbs?!" I asked.
"No," she said, "but they dig up the dirt. I heard, though, that if you sprinkle pepper on top of the soil, they stay off of it."
"How funny..." I murmured, distracted by our furry guest.
CK left the doorway, less excited by furry cuteness than K and myself [I know, I know, you'd think that 4 years at Notre Dame would have cured me of fascination with squirrels, which are more plentiful there than Irish flags or beer... which is saying something.] As soon as she walked away, the squirrel, who heretofore had shown absolutely no interest in CK's herbs, took his chunk o' scone and walked himself right over to the basil pot, where he promptly began to bury it. I suppose K and I should have acted more quickly to scare it away, but it was so amusing that it wasn't until CK ran over to see the cause of the fuss that the poor squirrel was disturbed from his "scone nut" planting by CK's shriek and laughter as she chased him out of her garden...

...and promptly fetched the pepper mill from the kitchen...

Roma !!!

2006-05-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

Tests are over (for now).

On to Rome!!!

See you in June!

"such fullness"

2006-05-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

"I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?"

-W.B. Yeats

Helpful Advice for Students

2006-05-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

This is it... the final, most grueling 30 hours of the year. Yes the year, because heaven knows I was more prepared for exams last semester. This semester, I've been doing odd things with my time, like sitting on roofs and going dancing. :)

Not to fear, however! I am wearing sunny yellow pants today, and I think I read somewhere that yellow pants stimulate one's brain activity....um, and the place I read that was here... just now...

I have evidence, however! Click on the title of this post to see my case in point. These men have yellow pants on, and the amplifying effect on their intelligence is obvious...

Lord, shine Your face upon us and be gracious to us poor students! We place our trust in You!

Bishop D'Arcy's Reaction to Father Jenkins

2006-04-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Bishop D'Arcy, of the Fort Wayne/South Bend diocese, has issues a "pastoral resposne" to Father Jenkin's recent statement on academic autonomy. I'm certainly no expert on the goings-on of this diocese, but I did live there for a few years - I may be wrong but this seems pretty strong stuff coming from Bishop D'Arcy. I believe the good bishop's patience gave out. My favorite part is when he oh-so-subtly infers that the Notre Dame administration is superficial and political, in that they took a trip to the Vatican recently, saw important personages there including the Holy Father, I believe, then proceeded to publish photos of themselves and Vatical officials ("See how much we love the Magisterium! Really!") in the Notre Dame Magazine... however, in this recent statement by Father Jenkins, mention of Church teachings or tradition is markedly absent. Why did they bother visiting the Vatican if the administration cares so little about the authority and wisdom residing there?

Anyway, here's a few of his remarks - click on the title of this post if you'd like to read the whole, original statement, which I would recommend.

Bishop D'Arcy Minces No Words:
"Also, it should be noted that, as local bishop, I wrote extensively on this matter three years in a row, as the office I am privileged to hold is also about teaching, and teaching in communion with the successor of St. Peter, as I promised on the day I was ordained a bishop. I, too, presented each year this understanding of academic freedom; but, alas, my words were also absent from Father Jenkins’ statement and from the 10-week dialogue at Notre Dame."

Bishop D'Arcy and Philosophical Profundity:
"The term truth is mentioned twice in Father Jenkins’ rationale, and, both times as something for which we search. The search for truth is central to the work of a Catholic university. Also central is that we hold some truths as revealed by God and taught by the church; for example, the dignity of the human person. Truth is something we search for, but it is also something we receive. Surely at Notre Dame we do not find any serious objection to the fact that it is possible for men and women, through study, prayer and faith, to know the truth and base their lives on this truth. "

Time and Original Sin

2006-04-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

Fr. Granados, again:

"Time, in the original plan of God, had to be transparent to love.
Now, we experience time as a barrier, the past is gone and we are prisoners of hte past. we are afraid of our future, it means, for us, a lot of fear, a lack of trust in what is to come. If we think of relationships between persons, how often time is the time of impatience in front of the other. We do not know how to live a time of patience. We can imagine an original state of time which was transparent to the relationship, was an opening to the other, and the future held no fear or lack of trust. The meaning of how we understand time has been changed. It seems that we are always out of time. The original plan of God did not have this."

Primordial Presence of Love

2006-04-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, so finals are coming up (tomorrow!! please pray for me!) and because I'm going through my notes, I'll be posting some of the juicier quotes up here.

Another from Father Granados:

"Adam is never totally alone because he has a promise of someone who will give him a gift. Ontologically, love comes before, because creation is the first act of love. Love precedes us. Even if every other human love fails in your life, the original presence of the gift as the love of God surrounds you from the beginning."

"The body can be a barrier or a bridge, a place for the other, and not just in sexual union. EVERYthing we do, we do as a man or a woman. The virtue of chastity relates to everything we do. It all expresses a rejection or affirmation."

Love as a Call

2006-04-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

Father Granados spoke the first day of class about how modernity understands love as being of the world, as opposed to situated within grace. The secularization of love makes love so mundance and non-transcendent. He said:

"If there is something clear about love, it is that it breaks our barriers, it is a call to something greater. There is a dynamism of transcendence, beginning with a wound that looks for something greater."

Deo Gratias

2006-04-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

"I give thanks to my God at every remembrance of you,
praying always with joy in my every prayer for all of you..."

My heart is so very grateful for the amazing men and women by whom I am surrounded at this point in my life. My heart was quite heavy this week for various reasons, and today in particular, and God brought to me, throughout the day, a handful of my favorite people to lift me up in their love! I am soooo blessed!

The beautiful women in my life (including my mother!) loved me by sacrificing time and energy to pray with me and surround me with love and friendship. I cherish you girls beyond words! You truly daughters of Christ, and are so inspiring and lovely inside and out. And the awesome men who came into my day raised my spirits by making me laugh, sending me funny emails, being attentive, carrying my heavy bag when my back is so much in pain (he didn't even know that but offered anyway!), walking me across campus to my car to protect me from the sketchiness of Harewood Drive, and generally were heroes to me in ways big and small that they might not even be aware of. These men and women, just by being who they are, people I respect and treasure, were instruments of Christ' love for me today, just when I needed it. And now I hope they realize it.

Oh my goodness.... praise God ! ! ! who showers this undeserving girl with blessings for my soul and peace for my heart!

Thank you thank you thank you.......

The Present Moment and Dependence

2006-04-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

Straight from the mouth of my professor:

"This dependence is original, constituting who we are ALL the time. We do not make ourselves. There's something evident about the present moment that tells us we are not making ourselves. That is the most basic truth. If I am NOW, it's because of something else, it's not just me. It's a basic discovery one needs to make, and one is called to remake that discovery all the time. You cannot change who you are (dependent on an "other"), in an absolute sense. You must receive yourself in the present moment.

The present moment is not just that it's 10:32AM, it's an evidence that is entrusted to you - the "I am not making myself now" is entrusted to you, left to the hands of your own freedom, must be accepted so that you can always say:

EITHER

1) My existence is chance, I happened to be born and who knows why or what for - and there is nothing else that can justify "me"

OR

2) My existence is not chance, but is WANTED. Our very being not only betrays the fact that we don't make ourselves, it indicates that we are made (by something, or someONE other than ourselves. It's more reasonable to say "If I am, I am wanted." It's not accidental that human beings come from love. The present moment reminds us that we are given to ourselves, and often, we just don't want to hear that."

... You'd think it would be easy to accept the fact that we were wanted-into-existence, so to speak. It's not... not always. How many walls must come tumbling down. How many fears, that one clings to in their comfortable familiarity, must be abandoned in trust. And all our own ideas about who we should be and what life ought to look like must then be transformed in light of one whose idea I myself was before there was time. Love, then, seems to be all we're looking for and all we're running away from... at the same time.

kitties too

2006-04-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

So as to not make the cat-people feel excluded with my dog-happy post, I am making available for their viewing pleasure, a few pictures of cute cats:

Curious Kitty

Sleepy Kitty--------------------------->

Misplaced Kitty

Silly Kitty--------------------------------->

That's my town!!

2006-04-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

I know you won't believe it, but Wichita is making a reputation as a cool place to live. Read on:

From New York Post's online edition, travel section:

"OUT IN THE FIELD

The coolest place we visited last week

Ask not why we were in Wichita, Kan. the other day - these things do happen. Ask instead how pleased we were to find the restored Old Town district, a brick street, renovated-warehouse affair with a mix of shops, cafes, an art gallery or two and - gasp - lofts! Real lofts. Not those fake ones popping up in suburbs around the country. At the center of it all is the cool Old Town Hotel, a great non-boring lodging option. Get to know the 'hood at oldtownwichita.com."

*************

*gleaming look of pride*

See! I keep trying to tell y'all that Wichita is great. :)

Head of Theology Department at ND speaks up!

2006-04-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

Open letter to the University community - Viewpoint

I highly recommend the perusal of this letter sent by Professor Cavadini, chair of the theology department at Notre Dame, to the campus newspaper regarding Father Jenkin's recent statements on academic *autonomy*.

("Freedom" just does not seem to be the mot juste...but maybe I've been reading "too much" Pope John Paul II...)

He suggests that *maybe* the Church ought to have SOME place in this discussion....

Professor Cavadini ends with this:
"But everyone who is honestly invested in Catholic identity, in a genuine Catholic intellectual tradition, in the special intellectual witness that is demanded of a Catholic university, should feel some caution, and even some regret, at the absence of any explicit commitment to accountability to the Church reflected in the President's statement, and in the early positive responses it received. Without a sense of the University's close relationship with, and accountability to, the Church, the unique and precious intellectual fabric that we have woven here and which many, including many who are not Catholic, have come to value precisely because of its special character and witness, can never in the long run be sustained."

He is incredibly on target here. There are some identities one cannot simply "claim". I know that "freedom of choice" is a hallowed phrase in American culture, but ND cannot simply claim to be Catholic if it desires to leave out a huge chunk of what it means to be Catholic - namely, the Church. If the Church is not even part of the conversation, hastily mentioned and then ignored like the great-aunt no one wants to speak to at a family reunion, then one wonders what is so "Catholic" about the conversation in the first place? There is only so long that the administration can ride on the coat-tails of Notre Dame's Catholic past before it will have to stop and decide if it will or will not continue to officially exist as a CATHOLIC university. In his statement, Father Jenkins mentioned ND's faith and education as if they were two equal halves of a whole, that ND is a CATHOLIC university, as well as a Catholic UNIVERSITY. I suggest that neither Father Jenkins nor the administration will be able to straddle this fence infinitely... for these two aspects, faith and academia, Church and University, are not equal in gravity, and the weight must fall somewhere.

I'm not saying that the university ought only be a mouthpiece for the Vatican, a mere front for a declaration of established dogma. Far, far from it. The Church, in fact, needs scholars at universities to engage issues and culture with and for it. What we need are scholars who embrace the task of thinking WITH the Church (something the JPII Institute encourages its students to keep at the forefront of our minds), and who understand the great dignity and honor of such a task. To do so makes one the collaborator of the Holy Spirit in one's search for understanding - how could this be a hindrance of freedom? Oh yes, that would indeed hinder one's AUTONOMY (once one chose that route), but not FREEDOM. Never that. With truth and freedom working in unison through the scholar, what could have remained a career becomes instead a call. It is a call I pray Our Lady's University may be able to hear into the future.

The seal of Notre Dame features a cross running through the middle of a book, with a star above. The book symbolizes learning, the cross the Catholic faith, and the star above lake waters is Mary, Star of the Sea. And Mary, gleaming atop the Main Building, truly does shine down on the lake waters and the entire campus. Mary, as the icon of the Church, is the highest point of Notre Dame's physical make-up... Lord, let her be the apex of Notre Dame's intellectual landscape as well.

My Starbucks Drama

2006-04-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

So, I was sitting in Starbucks today, dutifully studying, when something attracted my attention. Demanded it, actually. Which was impressive, because I was wearing a pair of earplugs to help myself concentrate.

[Note: Last night as I was walking to the Metro with some friends, I was fumbling around in purse looking for my metro card when an earplug hopped its little self right out of my purse and onto the pavement, in front of my (new, I should add) friends. What does a lady do when her neon orange earplug drops under the feet of two men she hardly knows? Pretend she didn't see it and hope they didn't and keep on walking? Probably. But the little ecological elf that lives inside my head screamed at me: LITTERER! PICK IT UP! PICK IT UP EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE EMBARRASSED!! So, I stopped to pick it up, thereby ENSURING that the guys in fact DID notice it, and had to give a stammered explanation of why I carry loose earplugs in my purse. GROOOOAAAN.]

Anyway, back to Starbucks.

I was focus on my reading, when to my left I hear some noise. Unpleasant noise. The noise of a Starbucks manager forcefully knocking on the men's restroom door and requesting it be opened by the occupant. Now. Please.

When the man inside yelled something which I'm SURE in his head was *politely insistant* but came out of his mouth as "Leave me the [bleepity bleep bleep bleep bleep bleeeeep] alone".

The manager returned to the counter, and was back about ten minutes later - the occupant had not yet come out of the bathroom.

Even though what ensued was the loudest banging on a door I have ever been witness of, it still took me a good 20 seconds before I noticed it.
This was because
a) I had earplus and
b) Although I am able to wrangle my attention as I please every other Tuesday and some Thursdays, when I DO get a hold of it, it sticks and sticks hard, making it difficult for others to get through to me on the rare occasions I AM focusing exclusively on work. When I was ten, I was ridinging in the car with my mom and was - like always - reading a book. I came out of my (no doubt Anne of Green Gables) reverie when my mother commenced shaking my shoulder and asking if I was okay.
"Yeah....why" I puzzled.
"Erin - we were just in a car accident."

I looked about our grey van. Ah, so we were.

It was with this hazy awareness that I looked up to see the manager of Starbucks pounding, again, on the door to the bathroom, yelling with not a little urgency that the door must be opened immediately.
Which it was, and revealed a somewhat grizzled man who was not any more pleased with the second interruption than he was with the first, and proceeded to communicate his thoughts on this subject to the manager and the entire store. Loudly. With many colorful descriptions of the various emotions and sentiments he was experiencing.

This is one man who is in no danger of bottling up his feelings all on the inside.

And all of a sudden he was "daring" the manager to MAKE him leave. Daring him with various threats to do exactly the opposite of peacefully leaving. And it occurred to me while I pretended to be engrossed in my book and not notice this situation unfolding in front of my table, that this man could very well become violent very fast. It also occurred to me that he was the kind of guy who just might have ANY type of scary and bad thing in his pocket in case he ever wanted to do take down a Starbucks employee. These things occurred to me about the same time that I calculated my distance from this man to be about, oh, two feet, and he didn't look as if he had plans to leave anytime soon.

That would be when I began praying HARD that no one got killed, and by no one I specifically mean ME, dear Lord.

Luckily, God was TOTALLY on task, and the man left after a minute more, so thank you Jesus for not letting me get wrapped up in any sort of Starbucks fray.

A few minutes later, the man next to me struck up a conversation, asking me how a Kansas girl likes living in DC.

"It's a great experience to live here for a few years," I said. "But, I miss the rural feel.... things like shouting matches in Starbucks are a lot more rare in Wichita, Kansas..."

The man nodded sympathetically and added, "Don't worry, I was going to protect you."

And you know- I'm pretty sure he meant it. Isn't that awesome? I was sitting there, trying not to succomb to "Everyone in DC is mean" thoughts (which I know - I KNOW aren't accurate), when a nice man assures me he had been thinking during the whole scene how he would make sure to not let the scary dude get me. I was so happy I very nearly launched into an appreciative gush about masculinity and Gift and Receptivity and all those great things we talk about at the Institute, but I didn't want him to think I was crazier than the poor bathroom man, so I refrained. Instead, we chatted for about ten more minutes before he gallantly offered (he was from Texas, by the way, although he was wearing a beret -?-) his table to a party who needed the big tabletop more than he did.

See, there's DC for you. Crazy negativity and respectful friendliness packed into one small space. Thank God for the latter!

Batter my heart, three-personed God....

2006-04-21T22:13:00.000-07:00

I loooooove Easter. This has been one of the best so far in the 5 years I've been Catholic. And one of the reasons why it has been such a good Easter is that this year above all, the Passion and Cross really struck me to the core. It's such a shame that not all Protestants have a sense of Lent and Good Friday - my old church certainly didn't really focus on Good Friday at all. It leaves Easter only half-celebrated, half-realized, because it's through the cross that Easter joy is born.

Watching the baptisms on Easter Vigil was breathtaking. Really. With every touch of the priest's hand on the bowed heads of the men and women, Jesus said, "YOU are mine. And YOU. and now YOU. I want YOU too! YOU- all mine! Mine.... also mine...." I was watching it happen right in front of me - this still boggles my mind.

To really understand the fruit of the Cross... to see how it is the form of love... this has been, without a doubt, one of the most important lessons I've learned (or attempted to, in my own, imperfect, faulty - so faulty! fashion) this year at the Institute. And the Lord obligingly handed me a big, fat, cross this year to make double sure I learned the lesson. What lesson? The lesson that I must die, in one way or another, if I want to love Him. And amazingly, I can honestly say that I am grateful (on most days ;) ) for this cross, because it has called me out of a tangled mess of self, so that my heart only makes sense in His.

There is a change: that I would rather be with Him in suffering than apart from Him in borrowed time, stolen treasures... which aren't mine to keep precisely BECAUSE I want to do so very badly. Treasures of my own plans, own dreams, that became idols. I am soooo grateful that Christ has helped me unclasp my grip on my own will (and pray He will be merciful when looking at how much I have gotten in His way and botched the job at times!!). He has helped me to be more completely His in my heart. Thomas Merton points out that love fulfills not by bringing something TO a man, but by drawing the man OUT of himself. For years, I battled against learning what He was trying to show me. I was afraid of this deeper relationship with Him - I suspected it might require giving up the only things I thought I really wanted.
And it did. I was correct in my suspicions. Which were true, but false in that God pays interest one hundred-fold on anything he asks from us: he gives back amplified and transformed what He took. The truest mercies are also the most severe, I believe.

Padre Pio wrote in a letter that Jesus said to him,
"How many times would you have abandoned me, my son, if I had not crucified you. Beneath the cross one learns to love, and I do not give this to everyone, but only to those souls who are dearest to me." Padre Pio noted two souls to whom this applied, saying "Jesus requires of them a little more surrender and trust in Him. They, poor souls, do not realize how at such moments they are dearer in His eyes than when they find themsevles consoled. They do not perceive it, but they are helped by Jesus more now than before. Jesus wants to win them to Himself alone, and that is why He scatters wide their life of thorns."

puppies

2006-04-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

Indulge me for a second: Isn't he soooooo cuuuuuuuute! He is so wee and roly! I almost can't TAKE it!

I'm a dog person. So much so, that I'm always amazed and slightly offended if people have to ASK if I'm a dog or cat person. Please, cat people, don't be offended by this, it's FINE to like cats, but for me they just. don't. compare. So it's silly to me that someone has to ask - can't they TELL I'm a dog person?

There's this great line in Return to Me where Bob, who has recently lost his wife, has a friend Charlie who is attempting to convince Bob to go out with this woman he knows. Bob is not interested in dating anyone, and is very resistant to even the suggestion. Charlie, following Bob around trying to argue with him about it, knows Bob likes animals, and so he hopefully offers this incentive: "She has a cat.."
Bob turns around looks at Charlie and says, witheringly, "I'm a DOG person."

And I'm always thinking "Yeah! So there!" because it does tend to say something about you. Although I'm not prejudice against cat people, knowing someone likes dogs tends to work them into my heart faster than is usual. I'm not one of those people who think dogs are basically people only a little less rational, but I do love them. The awesome thing about dogs is that the second I look at a dog, I love it. My heart swells, and I am full of joy. I automatically look for what makes them cute. I need to do this more with people - every person I see, I would like to look at with God's eyes, try to find what makes them beautiful. I fail to do this way too often, friends.... boo on me. Ok, well- start with puppies and work our way to adults. Babies, no problem. :)

Professor Schindler is a wise, wise man.

2006-04-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

"There are an infinite ways this gets lived out, but you're not going to avoid a crucifixion. The fact is you're GOING to suffer a crucifixion and getting married doesn't solves this problem and not getting married doesn't solves this problem. Self sacrifice is painful. The giving which is a passion is a real Passion, and a painful one. "

Don't Count Me Before I'm Hatched

2006-04-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Received a wealth of insight from a friend today. Apparently, according to Chinese astrology, I was born in the year of the Rooster. My friend writes:

"Erin is is a Chicken (Cock):
a pioneer in spirit,
she is devoted to work and quests after knowledge,
but is selfish and eccentric.
Chickens should visit [edit: a certain arKANSAN gent] on Fridays and Mondays.
Chickens should dance."

Respectively:
True,
sometimes true and always true,
sadly sometimes true and probably true.
Don't know about that and that but I wouldn't mind it.
Wish this were true this very moment.

I can see why people get hooked on astrology. Nothing plays to our egotism more than reading something that has "figured" us out. We love to be understood, to feel like someone, somehow "sees" us.

On the other hand, although it rang true, let's consider the source. This friend is the same person who said:

"If it's not worth doing naked, it's not worth doing at all."

Technology and another bunch of gender thoughts

2006-04-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

"Modern means of communication 'do not always favor personal relations, sincere dialogue, and friendship between people,' Pope Benedict XVI cautioned a group of university students, meeting in Rome under the auspices of Opus Dei, in a private audience on April 10."

Dear God, have I told you lately how breathtakingly GRATEFUL I am to have such an amazing, trenchant, holy pope? It's been a few days? Well, I am. Very much a lot so.

Not to pull a Schindler diatribe here, because mine are infinitely less valuable and interesting than his, but yayyyy Holy Father for putting that out there. Last week I spoke with a few female friends about the vast difference we, as women, observe in men who are technologically addicted and those who are not. Between those who grew up supervised by their TV, video games, and computer and those who grew up throwing a football around, just being outside, or chatting with their family members. (Disclaimer: I'm not claiming these comments/issues apply only to men, but I at least have known many more men than women who gravitate so strongly and often towards the pull of technology. We women have many other faults and weaknesses... although if you count cell phones many of us are squarely in the guilty camp. :) )

Men I have known who are technologically consumed do not know how to talk to a woman, AS a woman, because so much of their interaction happens in front of a screen, on IM or email or not at all. If they do look in your eyes, it as if they do not really SEE you. It as if you are another image in front of them which requires no relation, no give and take. Images are passively taken in, rather than processed or returned in any meaningful or cogent manner. These men, even when trying to take the lead, are passive, and when trying to be tough are merely boorish. Sometimes it seems that, divorced from a real sense of relation, they swing from a parodied version of masculinity or a sorta man-ified version of a woman, lacking a sense of masculine strength.

Are there really women out there who are still looking for a "sensitive" man who is in touch with his "feminine side"? Maybe, but only because they don't understand what they REALLY want is a man who is a MASCULINE but not MACHO. A man who can, in his own masculine way, learn from women's feminine genius even as he offers his own to her. A man who is strong without being overbearing and brave without being completely reckless. A man who can be tender without being needy and considerate without being spineless.

It occurs to me that women too should be tender without being needy and considerate without being spineless. Duly noted.

.... This is where I had a bunch of thoughts on dating, then I felt bad because they were all directed towards men, and I thought, well what do I know? Not much. And so I took them all out. :) You can thank me later. :)

What Kind of Soda Are You?

2006-04-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

I took this quiz in order to see if I would come up with the result that I did... how weird it would be if I had turned out to be a Diet Coke person or something?!

You Are Dr. Pepper

You're very unique and funky, yet you still have a bit of traditionalism to you.
People who like you think they have great taste... and they usually do.

Your best soda match: Root Beer

Stay away from: 7 Up

What Kind of Soda Are You?

My soda match is "root beer" - tell me if any of you take the quiz and come up root beer.

somewhere, e.e. cummings is furious at me

2006-04-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

....for thinking this poem has something to do with the Easter and the Eucharist:

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

gladness at your presence

2006-04-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

"Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples.
And there, coming to meet them, was Jesus. ‘Greetings’ he said. And the women came up to him and, falling down before him, clasped his feet. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see me there’. " Matthew 28:8

"Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.... Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni," which means Teacher." John 20:11

********************
Can't you almost taste Mary Magdalene's joy?
This great Love, this man, had left - and she stayed behind in what, despite being a darkness of FAITH was yet a darkness. She must have felt anchorless at times - was that why she drew near to his tomb? Anxious to be near him, even in death. Where else would she be but at his side? Could who she was even make any sense anywhere else?
Maybe there was hope in the back of her heart that day as she walked to his tomb, a hope she did not even dare to acknowledge to herself. Maybe it was a hope she did not even understand. And maybe her hope stood battered by doubts, shook by memories of how human love betrays and breaks trust. How it leaves and does not come back. When this is our human experience, what does it mean to try to believe that Love is not a sham?

"Mary."

It means hearing your name called by one whose Name is above all others, and embracing the feet of one who had walked the hill of Calvary just to draw YOU closer to Him than you could have imagined.

We love by way of gift - and only one who had given an absolute gift could bear the absolute trust of even one human heart. Only that one could merit such trust, such hope. And here He was, in front of Mary, teaching her that He will always be waiting for those He loves, whether in Galilee or at his Father's right hand.
We always think of Christ as being the one who gave us love. True, eternally true, but today's Gospel tells me that the peace we have in Him is due to his infinite ability to RECEIVE as well as give. As much as we all seek someone who will love us, we seek someone who will let us love THEM. Someone who can bear the gift of our whole hearts. Fallen man cannot hold such a heavy weight, and will avoid this gift even as he desperately searches for it. Christ comes to us to love us and also to receive our whole selves. THIS is the one in whom we remain, even as he remains in us.

I read this account and recognize here -now- the one whom Mary found even as she was found by him. This is the one who comes searching for me, who eternally thirsts for love, MY love, the particular and unique Erin-love that only I can give him. I raise my eyes to his, as Mary did so long ago, and know that he is always coming to meet me. The perfect suitor for my sorely imperfect heart. He has won it, ravished it, delighted in this infinitely inadequate soul. I have forever to spend throwing myself at his feet, pouring my heart out to him.

From Psalm 91:
Because he clung to me, I shall free him:
I shall lift him up because he knows my name.
He will call upon me and for my part, I will hear him:
I am with him in his time of trouble.
I shall rescue him and lead him to glory.

choice quote

2006-04-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

"Well, it's morning....and I'm still drinking beer."
-Dave F., around 6:20am

"O God, you are my God, I wait for you from the dawn"

2006-04-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

[Note: I've leflt spelling errors intact so you can really feel how tired I am at his moment.]

You know you've really celebrated the Lord's Resurrection when....

...you leave a three hour long Vigil having wept, laughed, and praised God.
...you realize that this is no mere memorial - Christ really IS RISEN TODAY - in the souls of the newly batpized.
...waiting in your purse as soon as you leave the church is an oatmael chocolate chip cookies which you immediately eat and share with others.
....You go to a party whtere there are people who understnadd your joy.
...You leave that party at 2am, to go to NAOTHER party in another state.
...You drink a few glasses of wine and sit on a couch on a porch with a few good friends watching the dawn come.
...You pray Mroning Prayerat 6:30 with your pfriends on the couch as you await the sun.
...You climb on the top eave of the roof to join a row of 20 people waiting to see the sun peek over the topof the horizon.
...You leave party at 7:30am, get home ast 8am and write about it her ebefore you go to bed.

CHRIST IS RISEN.... INDEED HE IS RISEN! ALLELUIA!

Fed by His Passion

2006-04-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

From St. Augustine:
This is surely what we read in the Proverbs of Solomon: If you sit down to eat at the table of a ruler, observe carefully what is set before you; then stretch out your hand, knowing that you must provide the same kind of meal yourself. What is this ruler’s table if not the one at which we receive the body and blood of him who laid down his life for us? What does it mean to sit at this table if not to approach it with humility? What does it mean to observe carefully what is set before you if not to meditate devoutly on so great a gift? What does it mean to stretch out one’s hand, knowing that one must provide the same kind of meal oneself, if not what I have just said: as Christ laid down his life for us, so we in our turn ought to lay down our lives for our brothers? This is what the apostle Paul said: Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we might follow in his footsteps.

This is what is meant by providing “the same kind of meal”. This is what the blessed martyrs did with such burning love. If we are to give true meaning to our celebration of their memorials, to our approaching the Lord’s table in the very banquet at which they were fed, we must, like them, provide “the same kind of meal”.

At this table of the Lord we do not commemorate the martyrs in the same way as we commemorate others who rest in peace. We do not pray for the martyrs as we pray for those others, rather, they pray for us, that we may follow in his footsteps. They practised the perfect love of which the Lord said there could be none greater. They provided “the same kind of meal” as they had themselves received at the Lord’s table.

This must not be understood as saying that we can be the Lord’s equals by bearing witness to him to the extent of shedding our blood. He had the power of laying down his life; we by contrast cannot choose the length of our lives, and we die even if it is against our will. He, by dying, destroyed death in himself; we are freed from death only in his death. His body did not see corruption; our body will see corruption and only then be clothed through him in incorruption at the end of the world. He needed no help from us in saving us; without him we can do nothing. He gave himself to us as the vine to the branches; apart from him we cannot have life.

Finally, even if brothers die for brothers, yet no martyr by shedding his blood brings forgiveness for the sins of his brothers, as Christ brought forgiveness to us. In this he gave us, not an example to imitate but a reason for rejoicing. Inasmuch, then, as they shed their blood for their brothers, the martyrs provided “the same kind of meal” as they had received at the Lord’s table. Let us then love one another as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us.

Holy Father's Chrism Mass Homily

2006-04-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

Benedict XVI focused his reflection on the concept that “being a priest means becoming a friend of Jesus Christ, and this even more for all our existence”. This because “the world needs God, not just any god, but the God of Jesus Christ, the God who became flesh and blood, who loved us to the point of dying for us, who resurrected and created in himself a space for man. This God must live in us and us in Him. And this is our priestly call: only thus can our actions as priests bear fruit.”

....

Benedict XVI said the “mystery of the priesthood of the Church lies in the fact that we, miserable human beings, by virtue of the Sacrament, can speak with his I: in persona Christi. He wants to exercise his priesthood through us”. And “so daily cares will not mar what is great and mysterious, we need a similar specific reminder, we need to return to that hour in which He laid his hands on us and made us part of this mystery”. The pope emphasized “this ancient gesture of the laying of hands, with which He took possession of me, telling me: ‘You belong to me’”. He added: “By this he also said: ‘You are under the protection of my hands. You are under the protection of my heart. You are guarded in the hollow of my hands and thus you are in the vast expanse of my love. Stay within my hands and give me yours.”

The hands of the priest, continued Benedict XVI, are greased with the chrism at the moment of ordination. “If man’s hands symbolically represent his faculties and overall, the means of capacity to use in the world, then the greased hands become a sign of his capacity to give, of the creativity to shape the world with love – and for this, without doubt, we need the Holy Spirit”.

A respite from solemnity

2006-04-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

My friend, whom we'll call "Rusty Shackleford", has just passed his comps which are necessary in order to qualify for one Master's Degree in Theology (and has been promoted to the "Admiral" level of his video game - this will make sense in a second). To honor his accomplishment, I wrote this alternate version of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" from Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan, to be sung to the tune of the same:

"I am the Very Model of a Theological Master-Admiral
I've information philosoph'cal, curial and ontological
I know the popes and bishops and I quote the councils ecclesial,
From Chalcedon to Vatican, in order chronological,
I'm very well acquainted too, with matters that are Scriptural-,
I understand in manners both spiritual and hermenteutical
About distentia animi I have covered all the bases
With many cheerful facts about the union of the hypostases.

All: With many cheerful facts about the union of the hypostases,
With many cheerful facts about the union of the hypostases,
With many cheerful facts about the union of the hyposta-postases."

thank you

2006-04-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

"All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

From Francis Thompson's
"The Hound of Heaven"

last bend in the lenten road

2006-04-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

"God give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives:

the way we loved,
the meanings we made,
our need."

-Rilke

Anti-socialness

2006-04-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

I'm an only child. Sometimes I need my space, to shut my door and have a few minutes to myself. I understand the desire not to play the extrovert 100 % of the time, but I rolled my eyes when reading this NYTimes article about the pro's and con's of doormen. Apparently, saying "Hello" to someone is just too much personal contact for some. They want the over-priced real estate and bragging-rights locales, but pleasant conversation? No thanks!

"I had one young guy who moved from a fancy condo doorman building in California where he had a very cheery doorman," said Hy Rosen, a senior vice president at Bellmarc Realty. "He wanted a building without a doorman, and his biggest reason seemed to be he didn't want to have to say hello to someone twice a day."

It's so funny, because the places in my life where I recognize and am recognized are precious to me. I love that sitting in the Potbelly's sandwich shop yesterday eating soup, my friend Brian who manages Panera a few doors down, came over to talk with me and we spoke for about 15 minutes about family structures in America, narcissism, and psychotherapy. I told him he should try their oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and so he bought one to go along with his chocolate malt ("I like the malt," he told me, "that's where it's at!"). He waved as he left the store, thanking me for the suggestion and told me to come say hi to him later since he'd be working all night.

I love that. It's not a ground-breaking interaction, but neither is most community most of the time. Rather, it's a ground-MAKING interaction... creating ties between persons, emphasizing that we are not alone nor are we meant to be.

Note: this is very different interaction from the man at Potbelly's who took my order that day. His beard was about as out of control as his communication skills, God bless 'im.

"Hello," I smiled, "I'd like one small veggie soup please."

"Alriiiight! That'll be $2.08. But," he whispered, leaning in conspiratorily, "Maybe I can wave the eight cents." And then he winked. WINKED. Whoah Nelly, eight cents? Is he serious? Don't get too crazy now.

Actually, I thought about taking him up on it - quarters are valuable things, after all - and then thought: "MAYBE he can wave the eight cents? He's not sure about that? What kinda flirting is THAT?" I handed him my two dollars and then paused to see if he'd ring it up or wait for the eight cents. He WAITED.

Who offers a girl EIGHT CENTS off her lunch and then doesn't actually follow through with the gesture? Hilarious.

So I dug around for that quarter in the bottom of my purse.

"Here's a quarter," I chirped, anxious to quell my very anti-Lenten sarcastic thoughts in my head with friendliness.

"Did you say you liked me?!" he promptly asked with a goofy grin on his face while assiduously avoiding eye contact.

"What?!" was my subtle response.

"Nevermind," he said. "I'm starving for attention," he laughed.

What does one say to that? I tried wishing him an improved day at work, took a second to look the guy in the eyes and smile, and high-tailed it outta there. For all my talk about interaction, I'm totally guilty of the desire to avoid awkwardness... thank you Potbelly Man for helping me realize I need, regarding social interaction, to put my money where my mouth is... all eight cents of it. ;)

tellin' it like it is

2006-04-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

This evening, I babysat for two young boys - a three year old (Adam) and a two year old. Three year boys happen to be one of my favorite babysitting jobs - for better or for worse, there is never a dull moment. This evening, it was for the better.

I had already put their dinner out on the table in front of them, prayed with them in thanksgiving for the food, and was bustling around the kitchen, humming, to fetch the last few items needed for dinner. I was chatting with Adam, the three year old, as I walked around when he said something that stopped me.

" I am so happy to be here with you. "

I turned to see round blue eyes and a genuine smile turned towards me. I took two brisk steps to stand in front of Adam, bent forward until I was a handswidth away from his face, and gushed,

"Adam, I'M happy to be here with YOU!"

There was a pause where we just looked at each other, smiling.

"And with YOU," I added, ruffling the two year old's hair, and went to go bring my own dinner to the table.

It was a small moment we shared, but how big it was. My heart felt so full and at peace. This is why I love three year olds - especially precocious ones. They are just old enough to share with them a conversation but young enough to do so without any pretense or apprehension. One therefore gets either painfully frank or delightfully honest conversation.

I know that realistically one must not go about blurting out every thought that enters one's head. But in general, things that don't get spoken usually are said somehow, one way or another. So for those words of encouragement, faith, appreciation, and love, better just to say it. My family said "I love you" a lot when I was little, and still a decent amount as I neared adolescence. But it waned, especially with some people, and what never happened was a vocalization of other people's importance to you. "I love you" was all that ever was said of affection and value and love. It is, of course, an important thing to say, but is used so often that it can be said rather mindlessly. It is harder to absentmindedly or disingenuously say to someone, " I am so happy to be your sister. " or " I missed being with you today " or "I love how you always think of the little things people need ". If you take the time to say something in a way it usually isn't, it rings very true and authentic. It means, I love you because you're YOU and I value you, not just because I have to or because I'm used to it, etc.

This time of year, I start to think back to ten years ago, to May when my family was about to leave for our favorite family tradition - the Wichita Riverfest fireworks day, when everyone all over Wichita turned out on the banks of the Arkansas to get sunburned, sweaty, and tipsy together waiting all day long to save their place for the fireworks show at night. Minutes before we were supposed to leave, my mother was rushed to the hospital with a brain aneurysm. There were days of serious anxiety before and after her surgery, and one of the things that I kept worrying about is that Mom might not make it and I would not get a chance to tell her how important she was to me. She knew I loved her. But did she know that it felt like the bulk of my heart got carried away from me to the hospital that afternoon? Did she know that I did not just love her, but was a part of her? When you're adopted these things don't always feel as clear.

Mom made it through, and one thing that not only the experience but her own wisdom gained from it has taught me is to take the chances we have to make sure those whom we value know it. It takes being willing to risk awkwardness. It takes being willing to not care what the other will say in return. The point is not at all how they feel about you, but simply that it is Important to be clear about those things that really matter. What I have realized as I have tried (and still am learning...Kyrie Eleison!!) to cultivate this habit in my life is that when my heart is open to speaking love, I end up loving MORE period. And open to loving more people. I have realized that sometimes I have known someone a week before they become Important to me. And sometimes there are people I really value whom I rarely see and barely know. But it is good for me to be aware that my heart is attuned to them in a special way and to signify this to them, at least in a glance if not a few words. It is good to let myself be delighted in people, and to let this be seen by them.

We need this. We need to be told that we are wanted, that we matter.
"Abide in me, and I in you...As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. No longer do I call you servants, ... but I have called you friends.... You did not choose me but I chose you." (Jn 15)

I think He just told us that he is "happy to be here with you".

My Guatemalan Love Affair

2006-04-06T22:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
There has been a man in my life for a few months now, whom I have kept hidden from you. His name??? El Guapo, the Guatemalan Blogger. Many a late night have I spent with El Guapo - as I read his blog until the wee hours. He is many things to me, but most of all he is my picker-upper when I need to smile. He doesn't know any of this, of course, as I love him and the Mustache and the blog from afar, but - as you all might guess - my number one cannot-resist is a man who can make me laugh, so my love will continue, unadmitted except here, unrequited.... Since I can't link to you because of your...um...earthiness, I must only offer my 1.5 readers a small taste of your mad story-telling skills. This one's for you, El Guapo.

"There I was taking the 54 bus down 14th street when I saw a group of about 10 of DC’s finest cops on the corner of 14th and U.

...What is going on in the newest, hippest, over-priced neighborhood of Washington DC? Living up to the “busy-body” title that mi madre has given me over the years, I got off the bus to see what could need 5 police officers on each corner.

Oh. Look at that. They’re handing out Jaywalking tickets. Well, not even tickets. They were Jaywalking WARNING tickets. Ten police officers in Washington, DC. Jaywalking. Turns out they’re all over the city. Handing out Jaywalking tickets.

Jaywalking tickets? Pedestrian safety? Mira, if you can’t figure out the difference between the white walking man and the flashing red don’t walk man then you deserve to be hit by a car.

Pedestrian safety? Gracias, no thanks. When it comes to figuring out how to cross the street I say it should be about survival of the fittest. So a couple of people get hit, that’s the price you pay. Crossing the street isn’t hard. You look one way, you look another, if it’s all clear you cross. Need me to repeat that? No.

This is the nation’s capitol. We’re not in Buenos Aires where they tango mercilessly across the streets.

I just find it interesting that these police officers are working what I call “fancy” neighborhoods. Why don’t they come to the ghetto? Try giving pedestrian safety tips to the transvestites on my block.

There was a man who was shot in the face because of a pizza blocks from my house. Why don’t the DC police hand out “Don’t shoot people in the face because of pizza” flyers? Seriously. I want to see this flyer:

DON’T SHOOT PEOPLE IN THE FACE BECAUSE OF PIZZA
WHY?

1. SHOOTING PEOPLE IN THE FACE BECAUSE OF PIZZA IS ILLEGAL.
2. GET YOUR LAZY @$$ A JOB AND WORK TWO POINT FIVE HOURS TO BUY SAID PIZZA.
3. SHOOTING PEOPLE FOR A PIZZA BAD. WORKING TWO POINT FIVE HOURS TO BUY A PIZZA IS GOOD.

This is a flyer that I would like to see.

Then again, using 10 police officers to hand out jaywalking tickets seems like a better idea than fighting crime. Maybe the residents of my neighborhood are happier knowing that they were reminded to look both ways while crack dealers roam the streets. Hell, the crack dealers will roam the streets with more voracity now that they know how to be safe while crossing the streets."

unencumbered

2006-04-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, enjoying our Theology of the Body reading, noting to myself how clear my focus seems to be.

Then walks in a mother holding the Cutest Baby Ever. Her mother let the barista gush over her for a long time. The Cutest Baby Ever (maybe about 6/7 months?) would just stare, fascinated, at the barista's face as she said the most ridiculous things in the silliest of voices to make this little one smile. And smile she did. But in such a lovely, slow way, the smile would grow on her face as her focus intensified on the woman's face then finally break through, an amused, wide-eyed, unencumbered smile. It struck me to see how beautiful it was to see this child completely engaged in her smile. She was so little and so young, her mind not cluttered by much thought, and her whole self lived in the moment of her smile.

I tell myself to FOCUS on my WORK .... I last about two lines before I'm staring, chin propped up on both hands as I lean over my book not even CLOSE to looking down at it. I cannot take my eyes off this child.

It's not always easy to express our whole heart in our smiles. This child, however, had no fear. She looked deep into the eyes of a stranger, secure in her mother's arms, and smiled. To really smile at someone takes trust in them, it also takes patience, willing to spend half a second outside yourself as your focus on giving yourself through your love to another. Another who might not love you back or smile back or (almost worse) give a smile that touches only the surface of their face. Our smiles, like our love, are often full of baggage. What if we unpacked it? I think a pure smile means one which holds not necessarily happiness, but honesty. I know that the times when I hold back in smiling is when I'm afraid of what people might see if I really bared my heart in my glance. They might discover that I'm suffering, maybe, or they might see my weakness. I fear those things being seen, but really I shouldn't - all the better to glorify God's strength working through my fallen self. The only reason to hide your weaknesses is if you don't believe that God still works through them (not just despite them) with His strength.

This baby was objectively cute - she was little and smooth-skinned and clear-eyed. Part of her beauty was in her simplicity, though, not in her external cute-ness... of course this simplicity was expressed IN her external cuteness, but it's distinct nevertheless. How beautiful we all would be if we were all as simple-hearted as this child. We complicate beauty so often. Among the litany of things I hate about most women's magazines is how every issue there is some new trick or secret to be beautiful - Attract Any Man! Take off 20 Years with Three Easy Steps! Total Beauty in Five Minutes! The thing is, beauty is precisely what cannot be simply bought or made in five minutes - beauty takes time, not surprising as it is an icon of eternity. Beauty - all kinds of beauty- is an orientation to Christ. What would happen to the world if all the women who buy hundreds of dollars (if not more) of beauty products each month spent that time praying?

(Note to Self: Practice what you preach.)

It's one of those pointless questions, I suppose, like "Why did Eve listen to that stupid serpent?" but it made me stop for second and think about the body as the sacrament of the person: "The body enters the definition of sacrament, being "a visible sign of an invisible reality," that is, of the spiritual, transcendent, divine reality." (Theology of the Body, p. 305) That's what I was reading when the Cutest Baby Ever walked in. Good timing.

Tut, tut, it looks like rain...

2006-04-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

I just stood, dazed, out on the porch listening to the rain and watching the lightning light up the little hollow where I live. What is it about thunderstorms that bespeaks sheer poignancy? I always feel some sadness during storms, but in a way that is bittersweet rather than depressed, for streaming through that emotion are clear touches of peacefulness. Why is that? Is it just because too many brokenhearted/revelatory montages in movies take place in the rain? Or is it more?

One thought is that a thunderstorm combines hope and desolation. Thunder and lightning make one feel one's ultimate powerlessness and smallness. They bring destruction at times... yet they also show how birth comes from death, light precisely from (not despite) darkness. City-life shuts down, people stay in, unable still to control the skies, which are often forbidding. Everyone has a sense, though, of the goodness within the rainfall. Growing up in the Midwest, almost every complaint about the rain is promptly followed by: "Well, it'll be good for the crops" or "At least the grass won't be so dry". Storms connect one to the earth, awaken one's awareness of the cycles of life and death, growth and stagnation, light and dark, both in nature and in our lives. We must struggle to see the light in the darkness, to discern the figure of Jesus WITHIN the storm, braving the waves and conquering them... "It is I. Do not be afraid."

I like that the rain is indiscriminate. It falls on treetops and rooftops alike, on skyscrapers and fields of grass. It reminds us that though we think we make our world, there is larger scope than all that human beings touch and control. Despite the drone of traffic outside my neighborhood and the buzz of the lampposts, the rain patter and thunder booms take over the sounds of the city, creating a sort of equilibrium, a calm within the turmoil of the clouds, deepening a newly remembered sense of rootedness.

Just as quickly as it came, the rain leaves and the thunder echoes only in the distance. Storms, like seasons and our earthly lives, are fleeting and always just beyond our prediction and grasp, in a way that points not to emptiness and confusion (necessarily), but simply to the Something that must be bigger and beyond. I was telling my friends the other day that several times in high school I was asked to give my reasons for believing in God. I - no doubt somewhat foolishly - tried to give the reason that actually rang the truest. Whatever "arguments" or rational reasons I might have thought of for belief in God's existence were not MY reasons for belief. Instead, I tried to speak what was in my heart, and all I could say was, "I believe in God.... well.... because the grass is so beautiful.....because, yeah- because the grass. It's so beautiful."

I meant it. Who knows if anyone back then understood my utterly inadequate words, although I was thankful that my friends a few days ago didn't think I was crazy. Really, though, my answer now would not be so different. Having read much more theology and philosophy of religion since that time, the reason for my belief is not so far beyond what it was then. I believe... because there is something in the rain that touches me so, something in the sky or the friendly eyes of a stranger passing that calls me to joy, a Joy that proclaims itself as not of this world. What wells up in my gut and spreads to my heart and my head upon seeing the lightning declare its presence or a baby's chubby legs is not just mere appreciation, but it is Love. Love given and received through the smallest of things, the mere-est of moments. How amazing, how knock-you-on-your-knees incredible is it that such small things can speak of and feed a thirst for the ETERNAL?! Who would have guessed that a storm could be near sacramental? And that joy in it brings life to the heart that continues on...

"Above the understanding, below the ordinary conscience and what fills it, exists a sheet of peace and light... Whoever approaches it can have no more doubt of it. Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge it."
-Gabriel Germain

"Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
John 4:14

A Year Ago...

2006-04-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

From my journal a year ago, April 1, 2005
(Note how amazingly beyond my expectations my prayers for the next pope were answered! Praise God!):

"4-1-05....The Holy Father's health is failing fast.

It is difficult to know how to feel. When I first heard of it this afternoon, I felt that quiet, slow punch to the stomach but really the heart...like being faced with the coming death of a dearly beloved grandfather. Except that what he really has been is a father to me.
...I feel personally sad, but more than that I feel sadness for the Church's loss. I know and believe, however, that he has left us with so many gifts that we have yet to even discover. He has given so much of his mind, heart, and body for the good of the Church. It sobers me to think of it. I believe that the Holy Spirit will not leave us floundering. Either He will give us another strong leader or He will give us the strength to build a Church in which John Paul II's legacy can flower and take deeper root. I pray for both.

I keep thinking of the day when I saw the Holy Father. I have rarely felt such anticipation. I remember the incredible moment, waiting for His Holiness, when it all seemed to dim, the crowd and noise. My eyes teared up in the joy of love for the Holy Father, and they clouded all the bustle and details from sight, with St. Peter's shining so bright, so blindingly white in the afternoon sun, and for a moment I could feel the pulse of the angels' joy in Heaven. Such love that would knock a man off his feet. Heaven is there, waiting, inviting us to join that song of praise. Where love is no loss to anyone but only infinite gain.

The Holy Father drove by. I was weeping and laughing, thinking: "Here and now is my faith. Its people are around me, its leader is before me, my journey has been Real. This is Real." I looked into his eyes and saw such strength. I saw a father. It made me feel that no pope could be really pope unless he looked and acted just like John Paul II at that moment. I know he is but a man, but I could FEEL God in him.

I do not want to lose him, but eclipsing that is my desire for him to be met at the moment of death by thousands of singing angels and for Our Mother to enfold him in her arms. Then I can pray to him and tell him how much I love him and thank him for loving us so very much."

sentinels of the morning

2006-04-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

From Pope Benedict XVI's remarks upon the first anniversary of Pope John Paul the Great's death:

"On the first anniversary of his return to the Father's House, we're invited tonight to welcome in a new way the spiritual inheritance which he has left us; among other things, let us be renewed to live in searching untiringly for the Truth which alone satisfies our hearts. Let us be encouraged to not be afraid to follow Christ, to bring to all the proclamation of the Gospel, which flourishes in a humanity more fraternal and unified. From heaven, may John Paul II help us to continue along our path, remaining docile disciples of Jesus to be, as he often repeated to the young, "sentinels of the morning" in this beginning of the third Christian millennium. For this, we call upon Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, toward whom he always kept a tender devotion."

Nerdiness

2006-03-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

I would like to make an announcement:

I discussed the hypostatic union (refers to how when God sent his Son to become Incarnate, Jesus possessed two natures- human and divine- in one person) on three different occassions, each bringing my nerdiness to a higher level - first during our voluntary study group, second during a phone conversation with a friend after the study group, and third while dancing a slower number with our dearest Canadian. Ouch. On the dance floor? Hypostatic union? Really?

.....yes.

Crime, Malnutrition, and the Decline of Family Structures

2006-03-28T19:13:00.000-08:00

Here is an excerpt of an article by Thomas Dalrymple in the City Journal (August 2002). Basically, he is suggesting that no amount of blaming the "system" can really escape the fact that, at the end of the day, when you take a society that no longer eats meals around one table, as a family, you will eventually end up with an antisocialness that manifests itself in things from malnutrition to crime. I really appreciate the fact that he addresses how no one is brave enough to suggest that the decline of traditional family structures might, just MIGHT be having a negative effect on society and manifesting itself in sundry social ills (because, I think, everyone's too afraid of sounding Christian or -worse- conservative! or whatever). Especially given a sacramental view of things like MEALS, I found the article to ring true.

"...These young men’s malnutrition is the sign of an entire way of life, and not the result of raw, inescapable poverty. Another patient whom I saw soon after, similarly malnourished, told me that he ate practically nothing, subsisting on sugary soft drinks.
It never takes many links in a chain of reasoning to get from their smooth and raw magenta tongues to the kind of family breakdown favored by a certain ideology of human relations, encouraged by our laws and fiscal system, and made viable by welfare payments. It is the breakdown of the family structure—a breakdown so complete that mothers do not consider it part of their duty to feed their own children once they have reached the age at which they can forage for themselves in a refrigerator—that promotes modern malnutrition in Britain... And it is hardly surprising if young people who have not learned to socialize within the walls of their own homes, who have not learned even the minimal social disciplines required by people who eat together, should be completely antisocial in other respects.

....The existence of malnutrition in the midst of plenty has not entirely escaped either the intelligentsia or the government, which of course is proposing measures to combat it: but, as usual, neither pols nor pundits wish to look the problem in the face or make the obvious connections. For them, the real and most pressing question raised by any social problem is: “How do I appear concerned and compassionate to all my friends, colleagues, and peers?” Needless to say, the first imperative is to avoid any hint of blaming the victim by examining the bad choices that he makes. It is not even permissible to look at the reasons for those choices, since by definition victims are victims and therefore not responsible for their acts, unlike the relatively small class of human beings who are not victims. One might extend La Rochefoucauld’s famous maxim that neither the sun nor death can be stared at for long, by saying that no member of the modern liberal intelligentsia can stare at a social problem for very long. He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control. And out of this need to avoid the rawness of reality he spins utopian schemes of social engineering.

The British intelligentsia has thus come up with an abstraction that fits this particular bill perfectly—that is to say, the need to explain widespread malnutrition in the midst of plenty without resort to the conduct of the malnourished themselves: food deserts.
A food desert is a poor area of a town or city, in which there are few shops selling food, and in which those few offer a restricted range of unhealthy and unnourishing produce at relatively high prices. The huge supermarket chains, unwilling to carry out their social duty, have retreated to prosperous areas, where they can sell profitably to people who do not have to worry about what they spend on what they eat. Particularly lacking in a food desert are fresh comestibles: all food available is processed or precooked, full of salt and the worst kind of fat, and lacking in vital ingredients. The people who live in a food desert, therefore, have no choice but to eat unhealthily. Of course, the real—that is to say, ultimate—cause of food deserts is modern capitalism, the system that created and perpetuates the food deserts.

It has become a truth universally acknowledged that food deserts actually exist and must be the fault of the supermarket chains (and, by extension, the System). Indeed, the government, ever on the lookout for new areas of life to control with its dictatorial benevolence, has proposed a new law to eradicate what is now known as “food poverty” by irrigating these deserts with subsidies to food suppliers. ... One man’s poverty is another man’s employment opportunity: as long ago as the sixteenth century, a German bishop remarked that the poor are a gold mine.

Recently, at a lunch I attended, given by a left-wing magazine to which I sometimes contribute, the matter of food poverty and food deserts came up, and it was with some pride that I heard an area, not more than a mile from where I live, described as the very worst of these deserts, positively the Atacama of food.

As the only person present with personal knowledge—what Bertrand Russell used to call “knowledge by acquaintance”—of the area in question, I felt constrained to point out that I frequently shopped there, at a small Indian store in which one could buy, for example, 22-pound sacks of onions for about $3.40, and in which a huge variety of extremely fresh vegetables could be bought at prices less than half of those in the supermarket chains. Yet the only poor people who shopped there were Indian immigrants or their descendants—housewives who sifted through the produce looking carefully for the best. Practically no poor whites (or blacks) ever went there, though plenty of both live in the area. Only a few members of the white middle class from outside the area took advantage of the wide range and exceptionally low prices.

Moreover, unlike the people who spoke so fluently of the food deserts, I had, in the course of my medical duties, visited many homes in the area. The only homes in which there were ever any signs of genuine cookery and of eating as a social activity, where families discussed the topics of daily life and affirmed their bonds to one another, were those of the Indian immigrants. In white and black homes, cookery meant (at its best) re-heating in a microwave oven, and there was no table round which people could sit together to eat the re-heated food. Meals here were solitary, poor, nasty, British, and short.

The Indian immigrants and their descendants inherited a far better and more elaborate cuisine than the native British, of course, but this is not a sufficient explanation of their willingness still to buy fresh food and to cook it: they continue to cook because they still live in families, and cookery is a socially motivated art. Even among Indian heroin addicts (principally Muslim), the kind of malnutrition I have described is rare, because they do not yet live in the solipsistic isolation of their white counterparts, who live alone, even when there are other people inhabiting the house or apartment in which they themselves live. Drug addiction is thus a necessary condition for much of the malnutrition that I see, but not sufficient.

... While the Indian store gives the impression of intense activity and hope, the convenience store in a white working-class area gives the impression of passivity and despair. If food deserts truly exist—and they cannot in these times of easy transport be very extensive—the explanation lies in demand, not in supply. And demand is a cultural phenomenon.
The connections I have drawn are obvious, yet denied—or rather avoided altogether—in the typical modern British approach to social problems. The article in the British Journal of Psychiatry at least refrains from trying to explain away the malnutrition of the young prisoners without reference to their choices, ideas, habits, way of life, and pattern of social and family relations. It is completely agnostic as to the source of, or reasons for, their dietary deficiencies....

The liberal intelligentsia has several reasons for failing to see or admit the cultural dimension of malnutrition in the midst of plenty—in failing to see its connection with an entire way of life—and in throwing the blame instead onto the supermarket chains. One reason is to avoid confronting the human consequences of the changes in morals, manners, and social policy that it has consistently advocated. The second is to avoid all appearance of blaming people whose lives are poor and unenviable. That this approach leads it to view those same people as helpless automata, in the grip of forces that they cannot influence, let alone control—and therefore as not full members of the human race—does not worry the intelligentsia in the least.
.... By attempting to tackle the sources of supply rather than those of demand, it will sidestep the question of an entire way of life—a problem that it would take genuine moral courage to tackle—and aim at an easy target instead. "

smile

2006-03-27T07:39:00.000-08:00

So there's this awesome website where people in the DC Metro area email in things they've overheard people say and the quotes are posted. Here's one:

Overheard at East Falls Church Metro
Old Man 1: Do you remember when we went to the Pentagon the other day?
Old Man 2: That must have been 10-12 years ago.
Old Man 1: Well there's a shopping center there now!

The Beer Quote

2006-03-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

Dr. Crawford in class today, on how what is good fulfills the human person:

"Beer is spiritually good for the human person. It's beautiful - beer is beautiful, right? Whereas BAD beer is imitation of a real good and is... evil."

"Cooking"

2006-03-21T05:56:00.000-08:00

Anonymous Male Friend: Bananas are great because they're so easy. Other kinds of fruit are more complicated.

Erin (not convinced): Complicated? Like what?

AMF: Well, take pears, for instance. They require too much preparation.

Erin: Like CUTTING them??!

AMF: ...And rinsing.

My Sunday Brunch Expetition

2006-03-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

Jersey and I went to Mass at the Polish church up the hill for the lengthy noon Mass in Polish - sweetness - and then went to the Black Market Bistro over in Garrett Park for brunch, and it was lovely! Pricier than my usual graduate student fare, it was worth all the (many) pennies. It's tucked away in the most charming neighborhood where every other house has a wide front porch, and the Victorian building doubles as a post office! Inside, it's very "Restoration Hardware", airy and sophisticated, with shiny black wooden tables and not too many accents on the walls. I told Jersey, " I don't want to EAT here, I want to LIVE here! "

First, we had an appetizer of potato latkes (potato pancakes) with homemade Granny Smith applesauce, sour cream, baby greens, and chives, which were yummy! The presentation was beautiful - the chives were the teeniest ones I've ever seen, minced and sprinkled over the bright white plate. Stylish comfort food? I'm a fan.
Then Jersey had steak and scrambled eggs while I had a Gruyere cheese, bacon, and leek (that's like an onion, with a milder taste, I think) quiche. They did a great job keeping the egg moist but not mushy (that's icky). I also ordered freshly squeezed orange juice - yayness! They also served mimosas but I thought better of it. :)
For desert we ordered these soft, fried, bready creations that had been covered in powdered sugar that got a little melty because it was all still warm inside the bread! MMMmmm. Dangerously yummy. They had orange lavender creme brulee, too!!!But I thought that maybe two desserts would be a TAD over-the-top, and didn't want to add another hour to my evening workout. :) I reallllly want to go back and try it. I'm such a sucker for interesting flavor combinations like that.

It's a wonderful place to have a chummy conversation, and the roaring trains that interrupt the chat do nothing but increase the small town feel. There are actually street lanterns lining the road which leads to the neighborhood, swinging chairs made of rope on front porches, and kids walking around the streets (we passed two cute rail-thin little girls straight out of Hannibal, Missouri [Mark Twain's hometown] walking side by side to mail a letter at the post office....Very Norman Rockwell. Very cute. Very must-go-back. :)

Jars of Clay

2006-03-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

If anyone is looking for good, non-cheesy Christian music, I want to throw out a plug for the Jars of Clay album, Furthermore. It's 2 cds, one is a stage cut, the other from the studio, and both are good. I played it the first time, while driving, and my reaction was, Eh, it's alright. Then I listened to it again...and again.... and all of a sudden it was one of my favorites. Great blend of upbeat and laidback numbers, with lyrics that pop up in my head sometimes when I'm praying... very soul-soothing, this. Here are the beautiful lyrics to one of my favorite songs from the album:

This Road

All heavy laden acquainted with sorrow
May Christ in our marrow, carry us home
From alabaster come blessings of laughter
A fragrance of passion and joy from the truth

Grant the unbroken tears ever flowing
From hearts of contrition only for You
May sin never hold true that love never broke through
For God's mercy holds us and we are His own

This road that we travel, may it be the straight and narrow
God give us peace and grace from You, all the day
Shelter with fire, our voices we raise still higher
God give us peace and grace from You, all the day through

Funny? or..."funny".....

2006-03-16T16:37:00.000-08:00

Overheard in Panera (from a man who was obviously on a date... and trying ever so hard to make conversation):

"When you're on call during the week and get asked on a date, you should just go to the hospital cafeteria, it'd be easier.... and at least they'd have good jello."

Telos.... and Coffee

2006-03-14T17:58:00.000-08:00

You know you're a theology graduate student when you have a conversation that ends with your remark:

"...And that's why I'm philosophically opposed to Buttered-Popcorn-flavored Jelly Belly's."

--- which only spurs you on to a discussion about modernity and valuing the new (for the sake of newness itself rather than because of a genuine improvement of quality) over the traditional.

Another I'm-a-theology-nerd moment I had was at Caribou Coffee last night. I was delighted to walk in and find some Hyattsville House girls studying together for comps! It was all very happy. UNTIL, that is, I ordered my coffee with almond syrup and could not taste the almond syrup. At. ALL.

Now, my taste-bud radar for all things gingery, garlicky, and almondy is extremely fine-tuned... and I could taste none of the above in this coffee. Which was a good thing as far as gingery and garlicky goes, but BAD as far as the almondy category is concerned.

After consultation with the girls, we all agreed that it was entirely reasonable to go back up to the counter and explain my problem to the friendly coffee dude, as he was brand new working there and maybe did not have his syrup-pouring skills honed as of yet and would be happy to correct the issue especially considering he may have not yet mastered the proper almond-flavoring technique.

So, I go up to the counter. Unfortunately, although I addressed my concern to Smiley New Guy, Not Smiley Manager Guy was right there.
I smiled broadly and said,
"You know, I ordered almond flavoring in my coffee and I just can't taste it at all...Is there anyway you could put a little more in?"
Manager Guy looked grim, and stared me in the eyes as he emphatically declared, accentuating his remarks with small pounds of his hand on the counter,
"We have a three-pump system! Three pumps! No more!"
I blinked. Then tried smiling again, and explained,
"I understand that. But you see, I would not have paid for the almond flavoring if I had known I would not be able to taste it."
He grumbled some more, and I said,
"I really can't taste it. At all."
As he obviously disliked the thought of speaking any more with Such a Difficult Customer and said to the Smiley New Guy (who looked very torn in allegiance at the moment) , dismissively,
"Put another pump in... just put another pump in!" [and get this girl outta my hair.]

I pleasantly thanked the New Guy and went back to my seat. Discussing the situation with the girls, we decided that the whole thing smelled of bad philosophy (cause it sure didn't smell of almond!). The girls pointed out that the Manager was keeping the almond from being fulfilled in its gift-nature by being received into me with what would assuredly be loving appreciation. I noted that he was keeping the almond flavor from fulfilling its "telos" ("purpose") :

"Because one assumes that the whole point of ORDERING the almond flavoring in my coffee is in fact to TASTE the almond flavoring...."

I was so excited about this last realization that I thought about trying to re-engage Manager Guy in dialogue and help lead him to a more Aristotelian world view ( I bet he's Cartesian )... but I thought that MAYBE my efforts would not be well received, despite my good intentions, so I refrained.

I'm beginning to wonder about some of the staff at Caribou Coffee, now that I think about it. The other day, on Monday, when it was so beautiful outside, I went to CCoffee to study on their patio. I walked up to the counter and ordered a Odwalla (for those who are unfamiliar - you aren't alone, as you will shortly discover - Odwalla is a kind of juice/smoothie that comes in different flavors/fruits).

I said, "I'll have an Odwalla, please, the Mango Tango kind."
The gentleman behind the counter looked at me like I was speaking Martian.
"A what?" he asked in a tone that belied his opinion of the Bizarro Girl in front of him.
"An Odwalla," I repeated.
"What's THAT?" he asked.
"The fruit smoothies in bottles that you are selling over here," I said, pointing.
"Ohhh," he chuckled. "I've never heard them called THAT before," he noted, a tinge mockingly, as if I had used the Swahili term for fruit smoothie.
"That's....what they're called," I pointed out.
[pause as he inspected the bottle]
"Oh. Yeah, that's right!" he exclaimed, surprised.
I smiled.

:)

Like that.
Now, this obviously is Not a Big Deal - it's just funny to me that I've had repeated experiences at CCoffee of pointing out what I find obvious to the staff there. But of course, what is obvious to me is not to everyone else. And very much vice versa. I don't know how many times or for how long my college roommate Teresa (who was an aerospace engineering major and now works for an aircraft company of sorts) tried to explain to me how airplanes fly. The first time I asked her, she was studying at her desk. Sitting behind her, I had been contemplating her airplane posters she had on our walls, I believe, and asked, "Teresa, what makes airplanes fly?"

She sighed, and turned around. "Okay," she began, preparing her mind to explain this to someone whose freshman science course was entitled, "Plants, Food, and Society" [ affectionately known as 'Food, Folks, and Fun']. She did a good job of explaining, and I remember that although the individual elements of her explanation made sense, at the end of it, I pretty much was thinking, "So HOW do they fly?" Lift? check. Wings? Check. Air pressure? Check. I still couldn't GET how the HUGE METAL THING could FLY IN THE NOT-SO-METAL AIR!

Oh well. Who needs practical understanding of something like "flight" when you can do other useful things such as think through the telos of almond syrup?
I mean, really.

the best medicine...

2006-03-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

To continue my own personal time-honored tradition of finding great interest in ideas which are, well, probably terribly obvious and apparent to everyone else....

Isn't humor a gift? What an amazing capacity to create and appreciate the humorous? Laughter serves no discernible utilitarian purpose. Doesn't it seem proof of gratuity? What a gift. Babies laugh - no one teaches them this is the appropriate response. We train young children to say please or thank you when given something, there are habits and manners, appropriate responses, that they learn. They don't need us to tell them to laugh when they're happy and to cry when they're distressed. Nietzsche was wrong - man did not invent laughter. It simply happens...given. God is the kind of God who makes laughter a natural part of human action and reaction.

I was with a small friends this evening, all of whom are INCREDIBLY funny, but each in a way unique to himself. And I stood there, laughing, attempting with a small stamp of my foot to express the joy bubbling up from within because laughter sometimes isn't enough, and I felt - gratitude. Gratitude for the surprise of happiness given to me by someone else, a gift I did not and could not give to myself. Gratitude that God has given me friends in whom I truly delight. Gratitude for the gift of something I can't even describe but feel is somewhat, well, magical. What IS humor? When I try to define "funnyness".... I get: "things that are funny". *Funny* just... IS.

There are people who act as if it is somehow embarrassing to laugh at simple things, at simple jokes. But I tend to think that having complicated standards of humor is much more about what you think of yourself than what you think of other people, as many judgments often are. I'd rather risk being labeled as "childish" but live as "childlike", because letting things and people be funny is to have a receptive and grateful attitude. It's amazing how often we fight joy, or strangle it by cluttered thoughts or pride. And I have been guilty of this attitude before... I have moved on to other faults, for the most part. Making my rounds of various imperfections, you know. Now, when God's conquered the Impatience in my heart, I'll write a post about THAT and let y'all know.

All of my dearest friends are people who can make me laugh. In a way, they hold the key to my heart. That makes me vulnerable, almost. It's fine with me. To laugh takes trust, when you think about it. As well as making a joke. It's a great example of what 'relationship' means. You trust the other will receive the part of yourself you are putting out there in your comment or story. There are people who are scared of being loved in this way. I have found that some people will make a joke, and then mock me when I think it's funny. I laughed at someone's joke once, and they seemed surprised - it really wasn't that funny, he said. He repeated this statement several times in a tone that made me feel foolish. What a sad reversal of relation. He put himself out there, but took himself back because he could not bear that reception. Sometimes we don't want to be received, and pull our selves back. Take back the gift. Recoil from the intimacy that exchange brings. The reception of one's gift is a gift in itself... one must make space for gifts. Some cannot. They live somewhat apart, lonelier than they ought to be, because I do offer myself to someone, in some way, when I laugh. It is a trust. I allow someone else to lift my heart for a minute or two, and I must therefore be willing to let them have a piece of it, to give up control of it for a bit in order to laugh with the openness and spontaneity of a child. Laughter really is a kind of love (which is why cruel humor is twisted, and is not humor at all). When I laugh it is, for the most part, an act of love, a small and specific version of Pieper's "it is good that you exist". Pieper also points out, somewhere in his "Love" book, that in Sophocles the word "eros" is used to mean "passionate joy", and that this indicates a connection between love and joy that ought not be ignored. (beautiful!)

I know it sounds like I'm making a big deal out of nothing, theologizing where there is no theology...but I'm not convinced that I am. Joy is no small matter, eh?

"You will see, and your heart will rejoice..."

2006-03-04T23:35:00.000-08:00

This week of respite from our class schedule was not as productive as I had hoped it would be - luckily, as a student at the Institute I know that efficiency, productivity, and utility (modernity's treasured 'virtues') are surpassed by other criteria. It was better to visit family than to get ahead in my work, and to have a conversation with my mother about suffering. We spoke about the last few months, which were the apex of a difficult period in my life. These recent months have been the worst and the best of this time. Although they have brought the biggest burdens on my heart, because God has helped me to trust in Him more I have often been full of joy, even through the suffering. Apparently, Mom noticed the change. I was sharing with her why I felt differently and better, despite that the actual situations to deal with have become harder.
I have been able to really embrace with my heart the consequences of God's love for me. I realized I had to ask myself, Do I really believe that He loves me, and wants my good, even more than I do for myself? He has worked miracles in my heart to bring me along the path I have walked (or been dragged down, or dawdled down, etc!), to bring me closer to Him. Do I believe this or don't I - because if I do, then it is still true for all times that His love trumps everything - my fear and folly, my pain and pride. I can't believe God is love only some of the time - that is not Love at all. If I don't believe that God is always working for the good of those who love Him, then my life does not make sense. If I cannot trust myself to God completely, then nothing I know or am makes any sense. There are no partial answers here. I have to find a yes or no, God is love or not. And each answer changes everything... the answer doesn't just change my Sundays, or which Church I go to. It changes my purpose and reason for being in this world. Even if I was 98% believing that God is Love and therefore trustworthy, I cannot remain on the fence about that for the other 2% of my heart, whose absence practically negates the other 98%, when we're talking about the ability to totally surrender.
Von Balthasar wrote in his book, "Love Alone is Credible":

"Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the "work" of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it; to believe against all the evidence of experience..., against every "rational" concept of God, which thinks of him in terms of impassibility or, at best, totally pure goodness, but not in terms of this inconceivable and senseless act of love."

I have felt particularly weak, and learned what it means to be strong in weakness. I have found such joy in admitting my weakness because it brings with it such gratitude, knowing that with all my faults, God loves me as is. My lack highlights His abundant gifts and therefore strengthens my soul. This awareness, this radical consciousness of gratuity, alive in our hearts, is the source of real hope.
I have this little machine that I turn on at night when I go to sleep - it is a noise machine. I can select different sounds of nature - either waves, or a running stream, or wind (that's the one I listen to, because they only recorded the stream and waves for a very short period of time, and after a while you can discern the pattern in the sound and this drives me crazy, knowing how the stream will sound next). I do this because it drowns out the sounds which come quite clearly through the thin walls from our neighbors, my roommates, etc. I am a light sleeper and will easily be pulled out of sleep by distracting sounds. The machine cannot, of course, REMOVE the other sounds, but by giving my something constant to listen to, my mind latches on to that and does not notice the other, more jarring sounds. As Dr. Schindler would say, What is my point? My point is that (like my little, nerdy noise machine) an acute awareness of the total gratuity of God's love becomes the anchor for my consciousness, the thing that has the final say in light of other distracting influences. It becomes that through which I perceive everything else.

Psalm 142:
I stretch out my arms to you, I stretch out my soul, like a land without water... Show me your mercy at daybreak, because of my trust in you. Tell me the way I should follow, for I lift up my soul towards you.
Psalm 146:
The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem: he will call back Israel from exile. He heals broken hearts and binds up their wounds. He counts all the stars: he calls each of them by name....The Lord supports the needy....He takes no delight in the strength of the horse, no pleasure in the strength of a man. The Lord is pleased by those who honor him, by those who trust in his kindness.

Isaiah 66:
BEHOLD I WILL BRING HER PEACE AS IF IT WERE A RIVER; like an overflowing torrent...As a mother comforts its child, so shall I comfort you: you will be comforted in Jerusalem. You will see, and your heart will rejoice, and your bones will flourish like living grass.

The Seven Things Meme (Quiz)

2006-02-27T11:56:00.000-08:00

Seven Things To Do Before I Die:

-1-Make the pilgrimage to Santiago, in Spain.
-2- Have a garden with both vegetables and flowers.
-3- Fast during Lent according to the old rules (which old rules? I dunno. The old ones.)
-4- Learn to tango.
-5- Own a weimaraner (that's a breed of dog.)
-6- Memorize the words to "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel
-7- Sleep in a castle somewhere in Great Britain (they have entire castles for rent, sometimes! real stone ones!)

Seven Things I Can't Do:

-1- Whistle for a cab (you know - where you stick 2 fingers in your mouth?)
-2- Play basketball "well", or, "according to the correct rules".....
-3- Open jars in the morning or when I'm laughing (apparently my muscles need ten more minutes to wake up than my mind does)
-4- Make white rice. (Okay, in actuality I am capable, but I hate it so much I effectively cannot. If you would like to know why, ask me sometime. It's a long and tragic story of a long and traaaagic night.)
-5- Remember what cards have been played in those card games where that is helpful, you know what kind I mean? Probably the ones where you take 'tricks'.
-6- Peel an apple in one, long, curly strand - like Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle said his late wife could do. Since I first saw that movie I've tried this several times and have never made it through to one, it always breaks.
-7- Make it to the end of a Tootsie Pop sucker (you know how the owl in the commercials never could wait to bite into the core until after the fruity part was sucked away? I can't either - not because I really like the core, but just because I know that crunchy bite is there waiting. Of course, characteristically, I get probably three licks away, forebearing all that time, until just before victory when I mess it all up by biting!) :)

Seven Things I Say Most Often:
(Y'all might know the answer to this better than I do...any better answers than the ones I gave?)?
-1- "I'm just saying..."
-2- "Ohh mercy!"
-3- Yayness!
-4- "Look at the puppy!"
-5- "This is happy!"
-6- Oh.... Lord! (cry for help in usually non-dire circumstances)
-7- "radically asymmetrical duality" (uh,.. I'm not really kidding about that one...! )

Seven Books That I Love:
(ARRRGH I have to CHOOSE?! Only SEVEN!?)

-1- The Jeweler's Shop, by Karol Wojtyla
-2- Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla
-3- Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
-4- Collected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
-5- Collected Poetry of W.B. Yeats
-6- The Brother's K
-7- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

Seven Movies I Watch Again and Again:
(Yes a lot of them are chick flicks, deal with it, I'm a chick after all)

-1- Pride and Prejudice (A&E 5 hr long version)
Because Mr. Darcy is oh-so-earnest and endearing when Lizzie and her aunt/uncle visit him at Pemberly, and he gets flustered and asks twice if her family is in good health.
-2- Return to Me
Because the old men dance with each other to old crooner tunes...And cause of the huMONgous cute puppy.
-3- While You Were Sleeping
Because Bill Pullman's eyes twinkle when he looks at her.
-4- The Philadelphia Story
Because nothing is better than Jimmy Stewart being wry and Cary Grant being cocky and Katharine Hepburn being... drunk (but of course in a stylish manner).
-5- Braveheart
Because it has plenty of Mel's wide-eyed "I am convicted and passionate about this!" looks. Oooh but I love The Patriot for that reason too.
-6- Breakfast at Tiffany's
Because I want to look as good in ridiculous clothing accessories as Audrey does.
-7- Sleepless in Seattle
Because...no good reason to defend this movie. Except that Tom Hanks turns around to have his guy friend tell him if he has a cute butt. That's pretty funny.

Ohhhh dear.

2006-02-25T20:45:00.000-08:00

So, KANSAS (!!!) Senator Brownback gave an interview with Rolling Stone magazine who titled the article "God's Senator". It isn't often that one can find the Bible quoted in Rolling Stone magaine, but in this article it was. Apparently, there was some confusion, as the reporter, um, misunderstood Senator Brownback's Scriptural reference. "While lamenting the fate of countries like Sweden that have legalized marriage, Brownback says -- quote -- 'You'll know them by their fruits'....There was an awkward silence as it sounded to him like the senator was referring to gay Swedes as 'fruits'."

A far cry from the days when an educated person could assume a basic familliarity amonng conversation partners with the great works of Western Civilization... including the Bible. It's sad, really - there's less incentive to expand the breadth of one's knowledge if there is no one who will appreciate or share one's particular educational background.

"I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields, only to be with you..."

2006-02-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

What I ask for this Lent....

....is the grace to hand over the corners of my heart that I keep for myself, on the grounds that I am too weak to give them up.
....is the grace to offer to God for healing the fear of failing that prevents me from REALLY throwing myself upon His grace, REALLY inviting His will to be done in my life.

Chiara Lubich wrote, "Listen. In life you can go in one of two directions: you can do your own will, or you can freely choose to do God's will. If you choose your own will.... sooner or later you will find yourself leading a humdrum existence characterize by boredomn, weariness, a feeling that you are getting nowhere, and, at times, despair.... Your life will be dull, even though you try to make it interesting, and deep down inside you will never be satisfied."

If I choose my will, I will spend my life in an exhaustive effort to control what I cannot. It's no fun, and eventually I will just get sick of myself, tired of my own desires and selfishness that I mask so delicately as love or a dream to serve God (but only in the way that I want). How much more daring to, day by day, offer my body and soul, everything I do and am, to God for whatever He wants to make of it. Instead of living in one dimension, my whole being can, in being offered to God, be caught up with the drama of eternity. In the beginning of my faith, I used to pray for some giant opportunity to prove my love and commitment to God, for the stigmata, for something, anything, to show that my life had been for Him in a way that left no doubt. But this prayer was more selfish than anything, for it was a desire to prove to MYSELF that I was living for God. In a normal, daily life, it takes a lot of work ( in a sense, but remember that in the end His "yoke is easy and burden light" because this is what we were created to do ) in order to look at my life and see something that is evidentally and conclusively for-God. For me, it takes much more asceticism and sacrifice of the heart to live, inside out, my everyday life in a way that I KNOW is for Him. God grant me the grace....

Father Lopez spoke this week of how Christ' death on the cross is not merely an atonement, a payment for our debt. It is the gift of His very self, and I don't just mean the cessation of His life. I mean His actual SELF, in totality, was given to us on the Cross. The gift of the Cross... is the Giver Himself. Professor Grygiel (in his Polish accent with which he could tell me "My dog, Flopsy, has fleas" and it would sound profound and philosophical) says:
1) Every gift is a calling, a mission. I must receive this gift, and it obliges me to work to answer this call.
2) The work of our lives is to "adequate" ourselves (so, tune, integrate, open ourselves) to the "other".

If the Cross is a Gift, and the gift itself is the actual Giver, or Other, than putting #1 and #2 together, the work of our lives is to answer the call to integrate ourselves to Christ... specifically, Christ on the Cross. His death on the Cross reveals His identity as "Love Poured Out", but also it reveals our identity as "Those Loved By the Son Unto Death". Our name is Beloved, and God gives us this name and identity from the heights of the Cross. We must embrace the Cross, then, to receive our deepest identity, to become who we are, and claim our name as Beloved.

Good find

2006-02-25T11:51:00.000-08:00

While in an Old Town Alexandria bookstore last week, I found and bought a treasure I had kept an eye out for ever since my friend Mtonga told me about it - "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady", written by Edith Holden throughout the year of 1906 to encourage her pupils at Solihull School to learn about nature. The book is a facsimile edition, which means that each page is a copy of her actual writing (and illustrations) in the diary.

It's a beautiful example, I think, of a time gone by in which attention was paid to the small details of one's surrounding world, and value was placed on knowing about the wildlife in one's area. There is an attention to the cycles of Nature and a connection to the land which seems to me very healthy and peace-giving. The book records her observations and outings throughout one year, winding its way through the seasons, including paintings of flowers or animals Mrs. Holden caught sight of during her walks. Here are some of her entries from February:

Feb. 15: Walking home from Solihull this afternoon I noticed a number of Gnats dancing in the bright sunshine, and I saw two little Shrew Mice in different places on the bank, who darted quickly into their holes directly they saw me.
Feb. 16: Heard the Lark singing for the first time this year.
Feb. 24: Cycled to Packwood through Solihull and Bentley-heath. I passed a rookery on the way, the Rooks were all very busy building up their old nests, and a great deal of chatter they made over it... Everywhere the branches of the Willow bushes were tipped with downy white balls and the Alder-catkins were shewing very red. In the garden of Packwood Hall adjoining the church-yard the borders were full of large clumps of single snow-drops. I brought away a great bunch. The farmer living there brought out a little lamp to show me, one of a family of three born that morning. I held it in my arms and it seems quite fearless - poking its little black head up into my face. Rode home seven miles, in a storm of sleet and snow.

Heh.

2006-02-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

List of STATE SONGS, IF THEY ALL SUGGESTED THE APATHY OF IDAHO'S "HERE WE HAVE IDAHO."

- - - -
Check It Out, Dude, I Think That's Florida
Well, If You Insist, Then I Guess I'll Take Indiana
Hey, Is That Oregon? Oh, My Mistake, It's Washington
Hey, Kentucky, How You Doin'?
Texas, Does This Mole Look Irregular to You?
I Was Only Born in Arizona, Then We Moved When I Was 2
No, This Is the Other Carolina, but It's an Honest Mistake
Please Pass the Salt, Wyoming
I Don't Even Know Why I Try With You, Arkansas
To Maine It May Concern
Do You Like Nevada? If So, Check This Box
What Are You Going to Do, It's Michigan, You Know?
Kansas Loves Its Zoloft
Minnesota, Land of Minimum Expectations
The Collective Sigh of North Dakota
Another Day, Another Delaware
Utah: The State Version of a Polite Nod in the Office Hallway

"but girl don't let your dreams be dreams"

2006-02-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

I've been silent here, recently, mainly because God has been talking up a storm on my end (and you don't interrupt the Lord of all creation...I've tried, but it's just not good manners). Let me share some of my recent thoughts with you all:

I found some selections from the Radiation of Fatherhood, a play by John Paul II, and was utterly struck by its profundity. The play speaks a good deal about giving birth - not just in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense as well (the two point to each other). Love itself is a birth - in the mutual relation of love (of God, of an 'other'), I am born ever anew. Love, after all, is the creative force of God, the reason for my existence, God's rationale for creating the universe. At the foundation of all there is, we see the labor God to bring forth new life, a birth which He continues within our hearts as we grow in love, in Him. From the play:

"Then I did not want to find myself in you. But now I want to. Now if I am to find you in myself, I must find myself in you.... Love is always a choice and is always born by choice. (This is the mystery of the word "mine".) If I love, I must always choose you in me, so I must always give you birth and always be born in you. Giving birth this way through perpetual choice, we give birth to love..... After a long time I came to understand that You did not want me to be father unless I become a child."

We cannot possibly give what we have not received - are we not paupers, after all? We must first receive our selves from God, be born in His love. The play later states that to be born of God means to penetrate the depths of His will, much like a baby penetrates the depths of his mother as he makes his home in her womb. To make our home in God's will, to be formed by it as a child is formed in the womb, is to truly be born, by choice. "And to choose means to accept what makes my world, what is in me and what is of me.... are you able to accept it?" What a weighty question. Am I willing to be the unique creation God wishes me to be? Or do I struggle, literally "belaboring" the point - every point, in fact - until I come to a moment where I simply must choose to be born in Him or not. "If I knew how to implant myself in Him, if I knew how to live in Him, I would find in myself the love that fills Him." Then I could truly give birth myself, truly give life to others in self-abandoning love.

God is Love - is utter fruitfulness, which He desires to pass on to His children. But we must embrace this inheritance, that is the catch. And how often I refuse to become what I am meant to be, and will only receive God's love on MY terms. I only am interested in life with Him if it looks like I imagined it to be. I miss the richness of God's plan when I only look at my paltry sketch - He paints with the colors of eternity, whereas I only have my limited resources to draw from. You would not think it would be a difficult decision, this embrace, given how much I need Him - but how often it has been, for me at least! Jesus knew that turning our hearts over to Him would be frightening, so He constantly reassured us - "Take courage, it is I; be not afraid."

I have been so much like the character in the play. I did not want to find myself in Him - I wanted to make my own life (thank you very much)! I have been praying about where God has recently been leading my heart. I have felt many a trepidation as God coaxes me into a real trust of Him. I have felt doubt as to whether God's will is at work in the events of this year in my life and heart, and whether I can trust the place where I find myself.

A few nights back, I was praying at Adoration very late at night in the St. John's chapel, meditating on the great changes which have been occurring in my life. The evening prayer I read for that night was a beautiful line from Isaiah that seemed handpicked for me:

"Hear me, O house of Jacob,...my burden since your birth, whom I have carried from your infancy. Even to your old age I am the same, even when your hair is gray I will bear you; IT IS I WHO HAVE DONE THIS, I WHO WILL CONTINUE, and I WHO WILL CARRY YOU TO SAFETY." Is 46:3-4

Then, the words of a Bible verse I hadn't heard in a few years came to my mind quite clearly. I remembered them still because I spent an entire afternoon repeating it to myself in prayer, during a similar time in my life while at college. I still recalled the words: "I am doing something new!... In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers." Those words had struck me, years back, as a call by God to trust His hand in my life, and now they came to mind, unbidden, again. Would you like to guess what the Old Testament reading was the very next day, at Sunday Mass?

"Thus says the Lord: Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
IN THE DESERT I MAKE A WAY, IN THE WASTELAND, RIVERS...."
Isaiah 43: 18-19

Sometimes, God needs to get our attention, so He allows disturbances in our plans, habits, lives...sometimes He wants our whole focus, either to redirect it from where it had been to a new horizon or simply to refocus it again, only now through Him. Either way, He wants to be the first sight in our field of vision, because He knows if He is not, we - poor souls - will get confused and possibly lost. We try so hard to hide Him behind other goals, to tell ourselves we will reach Him through other things, other people, rather than always, always coming through God first and only then to every other event, person, or place. We must be born through Him to all else that we face, to every other person we love. If not, our lives limp on, only half-complete, and our love remains only partially formed and barely potent. Love is not giving anything we HAVE, it is giving what we ARE, as a mother gives of her very body to form her new baby. This is what we must do in offering our life and love to others, and ultimately back to God. Before we are able to do so, we must first receive it from Him. We just cannot love without Love.

Maybe God is telling me to chill out. I am struggling so much with growing, but really it is not. my. work. I am having sympathy pains, but it is GOD'S job to give me life, to let me be reborn in Him. I do not need to impress Him with some new-found wealth of 'wisdom' - He knows me better than to believe that or really to be interested at all in something like that. What He is interested in is my full attention, my total surrender. Childlikeness. That's all He needs to flood my heart with His fatherly delight and love. "Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged! The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, and RENEW YOU IN HIS LOVE. He will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals." (Zeph 3:16-18).

My odd conversations...

2006-02-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

A Valentine's Day Conversation with my friend J.C. (not Jesus. A different J.C.) I think it's funny.

Erin: It was funny being at the coffee shop studying tonight, and watching the people frantic to hit on someone just cause it's Valentine's Day and they felt they should be doing somethng about their love life.
JC: It is Singles Awareness day.
Erin: That's hilarious.
JC: Then why do you think everyone is so sad?
Erin: 'Cause they dont have people like you to make jokes for them! They think they should be on dates instead.
JC: I like dates they are chewy and sweet.
Erin: Actually, me too. I also like dates. I had some coconut covered dates recently... those were yummy.
JC: See, thats what this diay is all about: nuts and dates getting together in sweet combinations....with some coco of course.
Erin: I've definitely had dates before that involved some major nuts... so I must agree.
.......
JC: So, what's the low down on this Valentine character anyhow? I've heard he was some third century Christian noble who
allowed Christian marriages amongst the slaves and the slaves got caught.
Erin: Yeah, that's about all I know. But I think he had wings and wore a diaper too. And shot people with a bow and arrows.
JC: Don't mess with the story like that, kid.
Erin: I was just helping...
JC: Helping mess up the story - now I can never believe in Valentine's Claus again.
JC: Or is it the day fairy? I forget.
Erin: No, Valentine's Claus is the dude who puts lumps of coal in polka dotted eggs.
JC: Eww - waste of good eggs. I think we need to do a line item veto on that "clause".
Erin: Fair enough - for the eggs, he'd be better off with cheddar, anyway.
JC: Better with cheddar? You do cheese commercials now?
Erin: They wish.
JC: Who? the cows?
Erin: "they"... the cheese "theys"...those cheese bigwigs...
JC: Green Bay Packers fans? They'd wear pretty big cheese wigs on their heads.
Erin: Hah, nope, I dont think THEY want me to do their commercials... Well, maybe we should combine the two commercials - those cheese big-wigs could sell cheddar and football tickets all at once.
JC: Now thats a way to use the old noodle.
[Simulanteously]:
Erin: Noodles are also good with cheddar!
JC: Hey, maybe we could put cheese on that too!

Erin: Uh speaking of noodles... I must go try to use mine... to read some hella dense theology.
JC: You should go for the light theology: less carbs and fewer qua's... qua's are fattening.
Erin: Hahaha. Amen, but it's the hyphens that really get ya where it counts - in the gut. Although, getting through a 2 line-long word can be a work out, so maybe it balances out.
JC: 2 lines long? It's in German?
Erin: Nope, but it might as well be.
JC: I think thats another ad campaign, this time for German: "Writing something long? Might as well be German!"

all ya need is love

2006-02-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

On Valentine's Day, I want to celebrate all the love in my richly-blessed life. To do so, I am writing some of the things that I most love about the people in my life, those who have recently graced the pages of my blog's stories or those who undoubtedly will. Who wants a dozen roses on Valentine's Day when I have dozens of gifts every DAY in the shape of those around me? Mucho Amor, friends.

Mom-
I would like everyone to know that my mother has beautiful eyes, along with a great sense of humor. She's hands down one of my top choices for company. My mother is incredibly devoted to her friends and family and that is one thing I love the most about her - she is a great friend.
West Side-
Although he is from the "wrong side of the tracks", I overlook this because, after all, my mom married him a few years ago and now I'm stuck. So, I will say that West Side is a gentleman, the kind of guy who will jump to do whatever needs to be done without being asked to do so first. I admire that so much. West Side is also a blast to hang out with and tells great stories. Can't top that, unless it's with something he cooked using every edible object in the house all at once.
RaeMae-
She is possibly the most endearing person I know. I miss her hugs and how her whole face lights up when she laughs. Ciao, bella!
Mtonga-
I love that this man could laugh for a full 10 minutes and not make a sound - he just shakes internally. This is hilarious to watch, and makes anything twice as funny just cause he is there. I also dub him Most Competent Person I know, - a person pretty much has to be awarded this title if he can tame cheetahs. He is the person you want around just when you begin to lose it - not only can he fix any problem but his African calm is contagious.
Dimples-
I love that you can "see" her thinking. I love her "No worries". She is the best person to not-study with ( something we are so talented in ), and her bright eyes and dimples cheer me up when I need it.
Love-
I love her intent expression when she is focusing on what someone is saying. I also love her happy-wiggle and the fact that she is the kind of person who HAS a "happy-wiggle". And dontcha just love how she looks like Megan Follows? (It's the cute nose that does it, you know).
Berkshire-
He stands up when a girl enters the room or comes to the table. Who DOES that? Men who are quietly being heroes, that's who. Also, what's not to love about a guy who would throw himself in between the metro doors just to be funny? FanTAStic.
Pavlov-
My favorite African/Canadian/American/Whatsit I know. Classy and good company (I'm not the only one who's noticed how he can talk about ANYthing.) And he dipped me while dancing last weekend, forever earning a place in my heart.
Yours-
My techie-bon vivant, and also the best company I can think of for paddling around smallish lakes in the state of Washington. I love that he vehemently defends his caffeine addiction with "scientific" facts, I love that he drinks sophisticated liquor, and I love that he is out to conquer the world. I also love that he is sillier than he would have us all think. I miss him and his good taste and his Brooks Brothers sweater vests.
T-
Miss her dynamo energy and commitment to doing whatever she does well. I miss her Star Trek/Van Gogh decor and her weakness for ice cream.
Jersey-
I love that my conversations with this man never actually end, they just are interrupted. I love the bratty look he gets in his eyes when he's giving me a hard time... which is often. He's not that bad - for someone from New Jersey. He's "not nice... but he's good".
Petros-
This man became one of my favorite people before I realized why, exactly. Looking back, it must be the suavity and decorum (ahem) with which he conducts himself... there's a true gentleman behind the guy who dons speedos and cowboy hats. He has a big heart and bigger hair and both are a good look for him.
Fooseman-
I hope this man knows that all those little things he does for people around him don't go unnoticed. I love how easy-going he is. First class, chivalrous guy. And boy can he crack a nut.
Virginia-
Smart as a whip. Her presence is really calming, probably because she is so. very. authentic. Oh! and I love her pretty blue eyes. And I love that I always miss her on Mondays and think how it would be better if she were there.

Amen!

2006-02-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

So tonight, Dimples, Love, Berkshire, Jersey and I headed over to the Passage to India in Bethesda. (Note: about 65% of Indian restaurants are called "Passage to India". Honest. I've been to at LEAST four that I can think of which share that same name.). Not only was I with some of my favoritest people, but while I was there I found my one true love. Would you like to know the name of my one true love? I'll give you the initials: CTM.

Christoff Traugott Muenster? No.
Competent Toasting Master? No.
Chai Tea Mecca? Oooh, tempting, but No.

Of course, the answer is: Chicken Tikka Masala.
It was second best chicken tikka masala EVER.
Those of you who know me well, understand what this is for me... it was indeed a momentous day. Now, we all KNOW the 1st Place Award for best chicken tikka masala will always be held by the one which used to be served at the Star of India in South Bend, Indiana. But since they changed chefs, my heart has been longing for its one true love.

And thanks to my friend Jersey, I found both CTM AND great garlic naan (with cilantro!!) AND yummy mango lassi (that's a mango-yogurt smoothie type drink - takes the edge off of the spices). That Jersey. I always knew he'd be good for something. It was such a joyous occassion that I almost forgot how I spilled my coffee all over the place at Starbucks today. Hrmph.

So, friends, glory be to God for dappled things... and for Indian food. Amen.

My Everything [bagel]

2006-02-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

Taking a break from studying [hah. at this point, I'm taking breaks from my goofing off in order to study]. I am doing this in order to share with you, my favorite friends, this ponderous question:

WHY did none of you ever tell me how good "Everything" bagels are?? I thought they were all poppyseed and pepper... I didn't know there was SO much GARLIC! and salt, to boot! If I had known this, I would have been eating everything bagels daily - and all of you would be constantly offering me minty gum when we hang out. :)

Peace Out, Amigos.

...This post brought to you by Boyz II Men:

"I've been thinking of a way to phrase it, seem to never find the words to say it ...
I've been occupied by other things (I've been occupied by other things)
how could i think that you wouldn't notice (you wouldn't notice)
Now I know it - should've shown it - and now I realize that:

you are my EVERYTHING [bagel]."

Salsa Dancing and God.... :)

2006-02-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

We have discovered that I really. love. salsa. I mean the dance - of course, the dip is not bad either, especially if there's a ridiculous amount of cilantro in it... mmmm, cilantro....

Four of us headed over to Habana Village in Adam's Morgan for a night of salsa dancing. It's just divey enough to keep out any yuppy-feel but not sketchy. Okay so there were some shady characters, but they were keeping their shadiness to themselves. Easy enough to ignore. Because most people were there to dance. I LOVED it. There are three different levels, the bottom is a restaurant at which no one was eating, and the top two were dance floors, one with piped music, the other with a band. Each level was long and narrow, and you kept spinning into people. We did the lessons for a while and then downed a few mojitos before dancing for real on our own.

A word on mojitos. Hold on to your hats, my friends, because Erin just found a competitor for the place in her heart which heretofore has been held by Amaretto Sours. My first one was just okay, but then we moved floors and the bartender up on the third floor was muoy talented and practically stuffed my glass with mint leaves, topping it off with a stick of sugar cane. Holy Lime Juice! It was GREAT! Not too sweet, and very light. I don't think there was a ton of alcohol either, which suits me just fine.

Dancing was such fun. To go out with two great guys who are fun and trustworthy, and just focus on having fun dancing. There is something about dancing (and I mean good dancing, not stupid rap-all-I-can-hear-is-the-bass dancing) which is soothing to the soul. Why? For me, I think it encourages you to really focus on the present moment. I spend so much of my time longing for a time past, or an era past (aka any century where I could wear big pretty dresses and go to balls), or just the opposite - straining my neck to get a glimpse of what's around the corner, trying to guess what is in God's head, trying to nudge my future in the direction I'd prefer it to go.

All of this can be extremely exhausting. If I am always looking behind or ahead, I forget that God is here with me - now. I do not have to wait for all the mottlied pieces to fall into place for my life to make sense. It makes sense at this present moment, here, now, with You. And all the other you's. Why do I assume that just because I'm confused about my life now and ignorant of where it will be in the future, that somehow it hasn't begun yet? Maybe the fact that I do not know where God is taking me is exactly the POINT, rather than a sign that I missed some divine memo cluing me in on where my heart and life ought to be headed.

I felt so very Present last night, dancing with one of my fave dates, Miss Dimples, and two great guys, Berkshire and Pavlov. What a blessing, to be out on a crowded dance floor with a skirt that flares when you spin, hair blown by the fans they have strapped to the ceiling, hot and *glowing* and not caring. (I was once told my a teacher that horses "sweat", men "perspire" and women "glow".) To be focusing on the eyes of my dancing partner and not on how I looked or how anyone else looked. To take joy in being spun around and even dipped! and having my mind full of sensation and sound and the pleasure of good company and a lack of concern. To be able to free my mind of its constant analysis and contemplation and remember that God created me to live in Him and for Him in this moment of innocent delight... to embrace that freedom.

There is much I have not figured out. In a sense, it is not really my work to do that. It is my work to allow Jesus to be made present in my life, in my heart at each moment. With Him will come understanding and wisdom. Maybe not the kind of wisdom I would wish for - but He will give me what I need. And if I know nothing, maybe that too is exactly what I need. On my knees, I thank God for the chance to have nothing but Him, for the chance to know for certain that He is in charge of my life. I have fought with Him for so long, trying to wrest from Him the kind of life I envisioned for myself. I am tired now. You win, God. Take me - all of me. I do not want any blessing which You did not really give. I do not want Your grace on my terms. I extend my hands to offer You what I have - I open them and they are empty. This is my gift to You, Jesus. I offer You space. Space in my heart that belongs to You alone. A life that is open to be filled how You wish. I will delight in my unknowing, will delight in my lack, because that is just that much more which I may be able to receive from Your hands, which are always full of blessings. I cannot take what You have to offer if I am too full of my own plans, my own dreams.

The present moment. Whether it be dancing til all hours, or late-night empanada runs (yummm), or sitting in a quiet room lit by the thick new-fallen snow outside... It is from and through and for You. And it is enough.

"Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.

Oh, What a Night

2006-02-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

Well, friends. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was....
my very first first keg stand.

First keg stand that I have SEEN that is, not performed. What do you think I am, a 21 year old frat boy?
And actually, it was 4+ keg stands that I saw, accomplished by some of my favorite, most respected men around here. Oy veh.
I don't think I've ever experienced such a mixture of admiration (at the sheer skill demonstrated) and disgust at the same time!

But major props also go out to all those men at the "Best Ever Valentine's Day Party" who made a dessert - the key to my heart, after all, is through my sweet tooth. All the men there made a fabulous effort in the Men's Dessert contest - except for one. That "one" is the gentleman who offered me a bit of icing from his cake. What is so wrong about that, you may ask. What is wrong is when you make icing out of ANCHOVY PASTE! I think I said it was "interesting"... that's all I could get out because I was literally trying not be sick to my stomach then and there. Ughhhh. Okay enough - instead we're going to focus on the cupcakes.

Favorite New Person Met: Eugene the Hilarious Hungarian. This is a funny, funny man. I actually had to leave the conversation because he kept me laughing so consistantly that I could not hold my drink. The more I laughed, the funnier he became, either because I was already on a high and so everything was funny, or because having such an appreciative audience inspired him. Either way, wow.

You know a night that begins with brownies at home and ends with cookies at a party is going to be fun, dontcha?

Uganda

2006-02-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

This is from a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal (Fr. Groeschel's order), written a few weeks ago, who just got back from Uganda:

"In spite of the long distance geographically and the big difference culturally the bigness of the communion we have in Christ Jesus and His Church makes these geographical and cultural dimensions pale in light of the splendor of the Light of Christ. This reality does not negate suffering. Rather the awesomeness of the reality of Jesus being alive perpetuating in time and space the reality of His Victory over hatred and death makes suffering redemptive which rescues us from a life with no meaning, which rescues us from a life with no vision, which rescues us from a life with no hope, which rescues from a life with no joy, which rescues from a life with no love, no purpose and determination, which rescues from a life with no generous giving of ourselves which is the key for us to be happy and help others to smile because they can see and feel love.

TATTA WANG NA GIRA ATI - (my father says) in his awesome apostolic exhortation Ecclesia In Africa that “The very nature of ecclesial communion transcends all boundaries of time and space.” The gifts flowing from this transcendence will help us to re-learn the piety of the Cross and to be ever more greatly blessed by the liberating power that lies in overcoming ourselves with the help of God’s grace and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit and our communion with one another.

And here are we with the availability of God’s amazing grace to be in communion with them and with one another in the sufferings we see and don’t even see, with everyone everywhere. May the riches of the Mystery Christ Jesus renew us, refresh us and redeem the resisting dimensions of our hearts minds and histories so that …so that…. Lord have Mercy…

…. so that Jesus may find us ready and alive for Love - Love to be received, Love to be given, Love to be for real, Love to be for ever carrying us along one with another, one day after another right into that day which knows no end and needs no light from the sun…. Thank You Jesus…peace and Blessings to you and your families and friends now and for ever…"

Rilke's Stuff

2006-02-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

"Ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need? Not angels, not humans,
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. ..
Whom would it not remain for - that longed-after,
mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the space we breathe....

Yes - the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)"

***********
"Children, one earthly Thing
truly experienced, even once, is enough for a lifetime.
Don't think that fate is more than the density of childhood...
TRULY being here is glorious...for each of you had an hour, or perhaps
not even an hour, a barely measurable time
between two moments -, when you were granted a sense
of being. Everything. your veins flowed with being."

************

"And the rumor that there was someone
who knew how to look...
There is a boundary to looking.
And the world that is looked at so deeply
wants to flourish."

*************

"Are you still here? Are you standing in some corner? -
You knew so much of all this, you were able
to do so much; you passed through life so open
to all things, like an early morning."

*************

Rilke

2006-02-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

Professor Grygiel mentioned the Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Archaic Torso of Apollo during Master Class week. Rilke has, since my early teens, been my favorite poet (although a close second is Yeats - Rilke wins because he is more, I don't know, raw). I'm not sure what it is exactly in his poetry that captures my heart so, but I know that it has something to do with this deep, driving sense of "searching". Rilke seems - to me - to be on a quest for some pure moment, where he really is what he is, and questions cease.

Rilke had an odd sort of relationship with God... and this relationship fascinates me, because all the questions he asks, the things he longs for, and that ever-present theme in his writing - desire - all find their fulfillment in God's eternal love. I am sure of this because this is what I found in Christ's truth, this ultimately is why I converted.

Speaking as someone UTTERLY unqualified to do so, it seems to me that Rilke gets *so* close to the answers, especially in certain phases of his life, but ultimately must dismiss them because they seem unreal, inadequate, an easy-out to the deep longings... I am not sure, but I think maybe it's simply because these answers are not grounded in the ultimacy of God's grace, and then, of course, like a house of cards, they collapse with barely a whisper. He fears disappointment, and the loss of self it entails, perhaps. He dances around the reality of love and the great great import of "relation", and then turns away from its call... I think his lack of "getting" God's love maybe has something to do with not seeing that at the center of God's love is the Cross. Without the Cross it really COULD seem like an easy-out, some fantasy of everything's-hunkey-dorey that Christians live because it blinds us to the agony of questions and desires. Ha. The love of the Cross doesn't anesthetize us, blind us to questions or desires, but it does pierce through the heart of them, demanding some sort of reconciliation, some sort of orbit around this pole which, truth be told, doesn't just pierce but permeates everything. Hm.

I'm going to follow this post with another, with Rilke excerpts. I highly recommend this book, a selected collection of his work (it has the Apollo poem in it, by the way) - it's a lovely edition by Vintage Books, translated by Stephen Mitchell, with the original German on one side of the page and the English on the other, so if you're a nerd like me, you too can read the German (as best you can) out loud to hear the natural rhythms. If you're a French-speaker, there is a complete collection of Rilke's French poems (printed alongside the English). I have really enjoyed it because I can (sorta) read French; I don't like the poems in that as much as the first book I mentioned, however.

I like to Rilke with Grygiel's whole lectures floating around in the back of my head... the saying-yourself to someone... the idea of giving yourself to a thing... of really knowing someone or something... of how we experience love....

In case anyone's interested, the picture on this post is of a sculpture by Auguste Rodin, who is one of my favorite artists. It is of hands coming together, and is entitled "Cathedral"... This is interesting, when I first saw this sculpture in Paris and one there too called The Kiss, Rilke's poetry began coming to mind, was evoked somehow by what I saw. Guess WHAT? Years later, I learned that Rodin and Rilke actually were friends - Rilke lived there and worked for him as his secretary of sorts for a while, and was very affected by Rodin's art! Isn't that weird?

I knew it !!

2006-02-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

You Belong in Rome

"You're a big city girl with a small town heart
Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome
Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand
And gorgeous Italian men - could life get any better?"

What City Do You Belong In?

Why I Love Schneider's

2006-02-02T20:14:00.000-08:00

There is a small grocery store just around the corner from my house that has been owned by the same family for years. It is called Snider's, which, inexplicably, I pronounce "Schneider's"....(I work in mysterious ways, what can I say.)

Here is why I Love Schneider's:

1) They carry products made by small companies with unprofessional looking labels, or none at all! Some might call this sketchy, but I think it makes shopping more personal as well as supports small businesses, something which I applaud.

2) They have a great wine selection! It's not that big of a store, but they devote an entire aisle (both sides) to vino! Which, since in vino veritas, means that they value truth, which is a transcendental. Therefore, it is theological grocery shopping. Heh.

3) They began carrying my FAVORITE hummus. This hummus formerly was available at Whole Foods, for a dollar and a half more than Schneider's carries it. Holy Mediterranean, Batman!
(uh, anyone seen the old-school Batman movie from the 1960's? With Adam West?)

4) People ask you - several times, even - if you need any help. And they don't mind actually helping you.

5) Their paper bags have handles on them. This is just happier.

6) They carry an interesting selection of fresh breads baked there and nearby, some organic, some with only whole grains, etc.

7) Their sales are actually SALES, rather than just being what the normally jacked-up price OUGHT to be. None of that special-card-to-receive-what-we-claim-are-sales-but-really-are-just-NORMAL-prices.

8) The Boursin Phenomenon: Have you ever had Boursin cheese? It's a soft cheese spread mixed with garlic and other spices, comes in a little foil package and is quite tasty. Schneider's sells these for about a dollar, but INSIDE the box is a coupon for ONE DOLLAR off your next Boursin purchase.... I'll let this sink for a second.... YES! folks, that means that after your initial Boursin purchase, you can in fact, get unlimited Boursin by using the coupon! AMAZING! I love this because it sorta feels like magic, although really I think it's a gimmick to get people to shop there. Fine by me. There is "scope for imagination", as Anne of Green Gables says... it's *almost* like being at the miracle of Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand.... only it's with gourmet cheese spread, not bread. Eh, pretty close, no?

9) There is a crowded parking lot. Some people think this is perturbing, and sometimes it can get frustrating, but I was thinking today that it made it more homey and neighborhoody, rather than the ginormous parking lot at superstores where you get lost in the rows. Come to think of it, I almost never remember where I park in those lots, so maybe this is really the reason I like the small but crowded lot at Schneiders.

10) TOP REASON I LOVE SCHNEIDERS:
This afternoon, as I was wheeling my little cart around, I noticed myself singing to the music, which I had not consciously identified. I listened, and what I heard were these words: "...if I die, let me die, let him liiiiiive. Briiiiing him hooooome."
High five to the person who correctly identifies the source of this song? Yes! Les Miserables. They were honest to goodness playing Les Miserables soundtrack in Schneiders. THEN, they switched, to this song: "Stand By Me". This song is my absolute favorite oldie EVER!!! I was so happy I bought a bottle of red wine. Argentinian. Amen.

Praise God for Schneiders!

"Stand By Me":
When the night has come and the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No, I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.

If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall
And the mountains should crumble to the sea,
I won't cry, I won't cry, No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.

So darlin', darlin' stand by me,
Ohh, stand by me, oh darlin' won't you stand now,
Stand by me.

A Child's Eyes

2006-02-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

Because I never get tired of thinking about childlikeness :)

From Father Lopez, today:
"This is important for me to say...and often:
We cannot reduce salvation to the removal of our stains. Salvation is a divinization, bringing man to his fulfillment, which comes only in the restoration of sonship, communion with God....Guissani points out that the greatest miracle of Jesus which left the deepest impression was not the healing of legs, leprosy, or blindness, but that truly human gaze which reveals man to himself and is impossible to evade. "

Rick made this more explicit:
"It's not just seeing the miracles from our sense, but our being gazed upon, being beheld by Christ, whose gaze is prior. Our task is understanding ourselves through his gaze."

Father Lopez again:
"He reaches to those who need him and also at same time discloses himself to them. He does the same thing with children - it's a revolution. Christ' mercy is overturning everything. BUT it's not saying that if you're a child you MERIT something, it's that you receive this mercy. He himself is a child, Son of the Father.. In dealing with children, everyone in that way, he's offering himself. It's an offer that longs to be received."
*******
What do I look like in Jesus' gaze? How can I understand myself in light of his gaze? He looks on me as a child, a babe in arms, HIS arms, and this is the truest meaning of my self, my deepest identity is that I am held in total, everlasting love in Christ' love. It is like the picture of the baby sleeping I posted above. Jesus is the parent gazing at His child with such love, excited to see our every movement, anxious for the moment when we will open our eyes and return His gaze. Until we can or do, He simply waits, with a gaze of constancy, willing to simply hold us until we can really relate to Him in dialogue. He does this even when my eyes are closed out of stubbornness or sin or sheer stupidity... He holds me in deepest love and just cannot wait until I turn my gaze back at Him.

This fall, I went to go visit one of the sweetest little girls, a little two year old. I spent a lot of time with her last year when I was tutoring/nannying in Virginia for different families. I walked into the house and turned into the kitchen. She was standing on the kitchen counter next to her family. I neared the counter and called her name - she turned around and smiled a beautiful smile, and went running over the edge of the counter into my arms which were outstretched for a hug. She didn't think twice about flinging herself off the counter into my arms. She had no doubts of being caught - and she was, with a lot of joy. Children are so simple and honest in their love. That memory makes me think that this must be the ultimate for God - that His greatest joy would be to call my name, and to see me throw myself into His embrace, without worrying about falling. I think it pleases God when we follow Him, but it delights Him when we completely abandon ourselves in childlike trust. Part of the reason it makes Him so happy is that He knows that only in living our lives and giving our hearts in this manner can we really be happy ourselves. You know when fathers throw their young children in to the air above their heads, catching them again in their arms? The child is full of glee at this game.... part of the delight is in the sensation of flying, but I think part of it must be in the knowledge that he will be safely caught in a pair of loving hands.

These are things I should think about every day, every hour. Remind myself of how God sees me now, right now, and will always see me - His precious child. This is so fundamental, I know am stating the obvious, aren't I??? ... but I am a little slow on the uptake, God has to beat me over the head with a thing before I internalize it... and it is not so obvious if you begin to listen to the lies whispered at us about ourselves all the time... they come from our own lips, even. Father Lopez says, "God is no liar." When God says He loves me with an everlasting love, I can either take it seriously or not... take it seriously every second of my day, my life. Why don't I ??

Happy sigh....
"Thank you."

The Crux of the Matter.... ( I think )

2006-01-31T15:41:00.000-08:00

Alright, so in class we spoke of Aristotle putting the form/matter distinction parallel to the man/woman distinction. Man is: form, act, power, transcendence, control. Woman is: matter, potency, immanence, obedience. Matter waits for form in order to be actualized - it therefore DESIRES form in a way form does not. On the other hand, form NEEDS matter in order to be realized- there are no "forms" walking about, it takes a UNITY of form PLUS matter to make a substance. This is the unity within the polarity of form and matter... and by the same token, man and woman.

So the thing is: we need the Trinity to ground this distinction. Aristotle has the polarity right, even (albeit with some qualifications) as regards the man/woman distinction. There is a way that the gender difference mirrors form and matter, however it is most important to keep in mind that the biggest way this imaging happens in in the POLARITY. This polarity implies a MUTUTAL DEPENDENCE (although perhaps assymetrical). Man is not complete without the woman, and vice versa. Just like form isn't really real-ized without matter, which isn't act-ualized without the form. To be a person means to be for-the-'other'. We were given all we are and have, and we respond be returning ourselves in gratitude as gifts ourselves - to God, to spouses, to many but also particular "others". We are not our own. Professor Grygiel says:
"The Work of our lives is to adequate ourselves to the other. When I am dying in this way, I am breaking myself. I do it in the hope that I will rise again in the other. When I am dying, I am already risen, already reborn, already a new man. "

So if you have this Aristotelian polarity WITHOUT the prior foundation of the polarity and all of being and reality IN GOD, FROM GOD AND THROUGH GOD, then it ends up being a totally raw deal for women (but really for man too). BUT, when you get that we image the Trinity and so are Always-Already moving towards an 'other' in love (and ultimately toward "other" with a capital 'o', that is, GOD)... then the complementarity of the polarity becomes a dual-unity, a mututal dependence, where we need to be continually going toward the other who has what I lack, who is what I am not, in order to keep working out this continual conversion. We are converted TOWARD the other.

Without being grounded in the Trinity, this parallel of form/matter, man/woman would end up so dramatically unequal and irrational.... within the light of God's truth, however, we see that all Being, all of it, comes from Him. The form/matter of Aristotle isn't thrown away but is put within the context of God as being intimately the Creator and provider of being for every creature. Man (as opposed to woman) is not the be-all and end all of the world; he and the woman both receive all they are from God, and the gender difference happens WITHIN this crucial context.

So in light of all of this, the gender difference -and complementarity- is not drawn with straight, distinct (Cartesian) lines. Man and woman are NOT like a yin and a yang, or as Dr Schindler says, it is NOT that 2 halves make a whole. All 2 halves put together make are 2 halves. This is RICHER than mathematics. It is not:
1+1=2 OR
1/2 + 1/2= 1
But more like:
1+1= ONE, which images ETERNAL LOVE and infinity.....
So .... what, 1+1= Infinity??? Heh. With God's grace, and in Heaven this will reach its fulfillment. In the mean time, we'll do the best we can down here.

Learning the truth about masculinity and femininity is not about nailing down a list of distinct qualities or characteristics which mean "manly" or "womanly".... because I am what you are, only in a different way, and you are what I am, but in a different way. Man is what woman is, but in a different way, and vice versa. That's why we live in constant conversion (maybe similar to Grygiel's sense of 'adeuqation') to the other in gift. We draw each other on to this conversion of self... we die to ourselves in gift that we maybe become what we are not yet but hold in potentiality.

There is a beautiful, rich UNITY in DISTINCTIVENESS in all this gender stuff that freaking blows my little mind to itty-bitty pieces. This is imaging reality, this is the meaning of being a human person, a constant conversion of self, a pouring out of who I am. It is the meaning of how a Christian can "lose" his life for Christ and yet save it by doing so. This is all about the paradoxical nature of Christianity's deepest truth! It's the cross, how abandonment for the other fulfills everything we were created for.

So now I don't have to stress out about figuring out what "masculinity" or "femininity" is. There's much to be done, obviously, in addressing these questions. But my point is that the MOST important thing about ALL of this is that the gender distinction is much less a line drawn in the sand and much more an organic cycle of conversion. Man calls woman towards the other, which in itself calls her to be more who she is, for who the human person IS is one-called-toward-and-for-an-other. Woman calls man out of himself towards her, but this will make him MORE who he is, since he was created to be for the 'other'.
NO WONDER JPII called marriage a "school for self-perfection"... it is not just that we become saints in marriage by learning to put up with the other... it is that marriage in itself, in calling each other forth toward the other, grounds each in the meaning of their humanity. (Crawford's right about marriage itself being the form of holiness, not just a convenient cause.)

And it seems to me that there will always be a mystery here which calls not for comprehension but bending of the knee in awe. Awe at the beauty of the world. That me, my femininity, my identity, my reality... is so much more than "me". That my loving and living is wrapped up in eternity - my TIME... is at the service of and is shot through with "forever"....

Hah! You didn't think I'd make this gender thing relate to the time question... but there it is. See quote at beginning of post. :)
Any thoughts?? This post flew out of my head, sorry if I rushed through the steps of my thoughts and therefore was confusing... today's lecture confirmed some things I had been thinking and helped some of my difficulties (whose answers may very well have been obvious to others :)....., so I'm super excited. )

Gender Issues... "Issues" with Gender....

2006-01-31T14:27:00.000-08:00

I'd like to share an email exchange between Charity and me, begun by a quote Charity shared about time which related THAT question to the gender question (Charity you rock my world you smart cookie)....ahhh the gender question. What follows is our exchange... THEN I'm adding some stuff from our gender class today, which conveniently touched on some of these issues:

"The Cross is the meeting of eternity and time; this is why the Cross is eternal. Jesus offers Himself to the Father throughout eternity. The Cross is contemporary with our entire Christian life. ...Eternity doesn't do away with time...Love assumes without destroying. Love always respects the smaller. Compared to eternity, time is the little one. ...The Cross seals a covenant between time and eternity through the Heart of the Lamb. And the covenant between time and eternity is revealed to us through the Heart of Mary. It is Woman who seals the profound bond between time and eternity because woman is the milieu of love." from Follow the Lamb, by Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe

Charity:
I'd just been thinking, at Mass, how usually only women are called "virgins" by the Church (as in consecrated virgins) ...not exactly liking that, how men are not-so-obviously a "place" to be "for the other" and "because of the other"...and some unhappy things related to how gender difference and sin affects sexual experience.   And the words that came to mind was that a woman/a woman's body is so acutely the "crossroads" of love enroute to eternity (hopefully), the meeting place of love. Then I found that quote, above.
Erin:
I understand the harumph-y thoughts regarding men and sexual difference.
Sometimes it seems that the more I get into this, the more things I
learn about how men "just are" that make me stew a bit inside. I
wonder if for some things we are too quickly playing the gender card
as a free pass instead of challenging our sexual identities to be
reborn in Christ... I dont' have real examples, just thinking that I
want to make sure grace (specifcally its redeeming power) always plays
a key part in my thoughts about gender. Not in a naive way, but in a
hope-filled way. And I'm talking about this as someone who generally
enjoys more traditionally drawn pictures of masculinity/femininity
(with the proper qualifications,etc.).... I don't want men to knit. I
want then to enter into love in a more organic way, for example.

Charity:
I whole-heartedly affirm everything you just wrote...! Ah, it feels good to hear you say that you want to play the grace/redemption card in your thoughts and in your living rather than the "gender card/status quo-as-unreconciled to Christ" card. Afterall, doesn't Christ recall us to "the beginning"? And he can because redemption was at work from the moment of the fall from Original Innocence.

I do have "real examples." Women's innate connectedness to "being for the other" (in this case 'child') and "because of the other" is obvious--and her nearness to them in their development is irreplaceble. But too often for men (who also exist "for the other and because of the other;"... I think, their relative distance is an excuse not to make the effort--to fully enter an unfamiliar sphere and remain there.  Men's relative "distance" should provide the space for self-revelation and gift and recognizing the good of the Other as other (think Adam's recognition of Eve!)--not the space for individualism. But too often Christians say things (without major qualification) like "a woman's place is in the home" and a "man's is in the world" which only "blesses" what I think is a man's "bent" fear of self-revelation and integration into the order of love--his wife and children. Silence. Passivity. Workaholism. Divorce.

....stay tuned for class stuff on gender and my attempt at summarizing it and my subsequent thoughts....

Roma !!!

2006-01-30T21:23:00.000-08:00

I've just bought myself one ticket to the Eternal City! Granted, this purchase means that I won't be spending any money on those non-essentials like... food....until I go, but who needs real food NOW when there's gelatto to be had LATER?!?
Praise God for helping me fly over on the same flight with friends (Eric, I hear that on the airplanes they actually GIVE you food READY-MADE...no need to forage or 'hunt' ....alRIGHT???!).

In other news, I believe that I have fixed the commenting-issue, so anyone ought to be able to leave a comment. And please do. It will make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

About the time thing....

2006-01-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

When I think about my life, about how I spend my time, am I satisfied with the vision of eternity I am translating into my every day life? Do I faithfully mirror the beauty and magnitude of Forever into my present?

What I mean by these questions, is not: Am I always doing all that is humanly possible to engage in weighty thoughts or important actions?

For God created the world which still echoes the beauty of its Creator. What we have here are small moments of forever. The time I took to speak with an old friend tonight, the morning of study, the hours spent kneeling in prayer, the errands I ran today, the evening I spent last week baking scones in a slow, inefficient, but delightful manner, the time I imprudently used today to read about local nightlife, the afternoon passed by walking in a nearby national park yesterday... these are minutes and hours with which I am building my eternity - moreover, in them I reflect eternity.

Eternity is both weightier and lighter than we can imagine. My play-time is not any less worthy of eternity than is my philosophizing-time or worship-time. It seems that we reflect eternity in our lives in a way that is either worthy or not, but the worthiness is tied not to the depth of our actions but our hearts. If our hearts are filled with Christ's life, than every moment becomes a prayer, a way of returning to and reflecting our origin in eternity...in God. I feel like this way of looking at time and eternity serves to sanctify our small moments. In my playing, and studying, and working and cleaning and exercising and socializing... I am in the midst of eternity. Eternity happens NOW, for me.

I can therefore say:
1) I must not waste 'my' sharing in eternity.
2) I rejoice in my small moments, dignified by their relation to eternity.
3) I thank God for every second. He does not mean for me to wait until some momentous occasion to begin living fully, completely, blissfully in Him. My eternity with God begins now... it begins again every moment of my life, ever old, ever new. He does not wait until the "moment is right" to begin loving me with His whole being, and I should not wait to return this gift of love back to him. There will not be a better time to give myself to God. The time to love Him is now, not tomorrow, not after my schedule settles down, not after I get my degree, not after things seem clearer. He is with us always - in times of confusion and clarity, in the past and the future... why wait to return His steadfast gaze?

Living Our Time

2006-01-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

From "The Writing Life" by Annie Dillard:
"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.

...Wallace Stevens in his forties... hewed to a productive routine. He rose at six, read for two hours, and walked another hour - three miles - to work. He dictated poems to his secretary. He ate no lunch; at noon he walked for another hour, often to an art gallery. He walked home from work - another hour. After dinner he retired to his study; he went to bed at nine. On Sundays, he walked in the park. I don't know what he did on Saturdays. Perhaps he exchanged a few words with his wife, who posed for the Liberty dime. (One would rather read these people, or lead their lives, than be their wives.)"

Though Stevens and I wouldn't agree in a philosophical discussion as I imagine the answers the Christian faith gives to all his questions might rob him of his angsty poignancy - and this he might not appreciate.... I do like the way he puts forth the issues, often striking closer to the Truth I cherish than he might realize (when reading these passages, I couldn't get the fact that God refers to himself as "I AM" out of my mind....):

from The Palm at the End of the Mind
by Wallace Stevens

I am the spouse. She took her necklace off
And laid it in the sand. As I am, I am
The spouse....

Clothe me entire in the final filament,
So that I tremble with such love so known
And myself am precious for your perfecting.

********
It is possible, possible, possible. It must
Be possible. It must be that in time
The real, will from its crude compoundings, come...

...Is it I then that keep saying there is an hour
Filled with expressible bliss, in which I have

No need, am happy, forget need's golden hand,
Am satisfied without solacing majesty,
And if there is an hour there is a day,

There is a month, a year, there is a time
In which majesty is a mirror of the self:
I have not but I am and as I am, I am.

"Tiiiiiiime is On My Side, Yes It Is..."

2006-01-30T00:54:00.000-08:00

If anyone is curious as to what I think about when I'm not studying, reading about dog breeds, or researching swing dance lessons in the DC area.... here is your chance to find out:
I've been thinking about time, mainly due to a brilliant lecture by a professor at the Institute, Father Lopez. Quotations here are his.
Modernity tends to view time as "objective, as a way of understanding reality and history", of measuring development and movement and change. In light of this understanding of time, eternity becomes something different, becomes quite the opposite. We think of eternity as some sort of pure stillness, changelessness. Time seems to be for modernity what is spent, measured, and weighed in units of priority and accomplishment. Eternity seems to be removed from our human sphere of time, as an ethereal idea of "forever" that bears little on the particular moments which make up our daily lives.

Father Lopez stressed that we must see that "time comes from eternity, is patterned after eternity and leads back to it. They are not two separate realities like water and oil. Eternity is time in an extended form. Time is the copy of eternity and participates into it and seeks to go back to it."
What this means is that "there is no such thing as "objective" time or history, a mere succession of events more or less connected to each other. Every historical event has a meaning. History, facts and meaning always go together - there is no such thing as raw historical data."

In the human present, no matter what takes place, is a return to our origin - each moment touches eternity and reflects it. Our present is a journey from and to eternity, all at once - there is no mere "passing" of time.

.... I have some thoughts about this. Lest I scare or bore anyone with too much at once, I will share my thoughts tomorrow. You'll just have to wait. Try to sleep anyway, despite the anxious anticipation, alright? :)

March of Christ's Light Brigade

2006-01-29T23:40:00.000-08:00

This is a group of some amazing fellow-students at the John Paul II Institute. In the middle is Dr. Schindler, dean and professor-extradordinaire. To his left is my good friend, Mandy, who is also a fellow ND grad. Hailing from ND as well are the lady and gentleman on the very left, Meghan and Eric. Left of Mandy is someone whom you may or may not recognize, the one in the pig-tails.... We are all be-wintergeared because we were about to head out - with others, not pictured, from the Institute - to the March for Life to march together under the Institute's banner, carried with pride and (well, mostly) without complaint in the cold and wet weather by the young men of our band.

In the Beginning...

2006-01-29T23:03:00.000-08:00

...there was a blog. And the blog was good.

At least, it's pretty. We shall see if I can keep this up. Welcome!