Alcove
Mary's Blessings
alec vanderboom
I almost didn’t live to see my 27th birthday.
On December 26, 2001 (five days before turning 27), I woke up with my husband in my childhood bed. We had spent the weekend celebrating Christmas with my family. Now, at 4 AM we had to rush back to my law office before it opened. I was the lowest lawyer on the seniority totem pole. That meant my request for extra vacation time was denied. “Boxing Day,” would find me and my boss manning the office phones alone while everyone else enjoyed a few extra days with friends and family.
After work, I came home at five o’clock and crawled into bed. At around 6:30, my husband gently shook me awake. “If you keep sleeping now, you won’t be able sleep tonight,” he said.
I remember that my husband sat down next to me on the bed. Every time I slipped back into sleep, my husband gently tugged on my right shoulder. “I know that you’re tired, but you’ll really regret it if you go back to sleep. You’ve got to trust me on this one!”
Jon was watching a History Channel documentary on the “Gold Rush” on our bedroom TV. I laid in bed for about ten minutes listening to random facts about California in 1848. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, the words and images slipped right off my mind. I found myself slipping back into sleep again and again. It was physically difficult to keep my eyes open. “I must be coming down with the flu,” I said in a daze.
My husband agreed and thought that we must have caught some sort of flu bug during our recent visit with my family. Then my husband, Jon, started rubbing his temples. “I have a terrible headache. I can barely see. It must be some type of migraine from lack of sleep or something.”
At this point, my inner radar went off. My husband never, ever gets headaches. Something was seriously wrong. “Let me go get you some Tylenol,” I said. I made the heroic effort to get out of bed.
This is where things start to get weird. I walked into a wall! I got out of bed, turned the three steps towards the hallway door and then walked straight into a wall. I collapsed in a heap of pain and bruises. I’d missed the door by at least two feet. I ened up with serious bruises on my head, my arm, and my toe. When I hit the wall, I just crumbled onto the floor.
Jon rushed to my side and started checking me out in his med-tech way. I tried to wave him away. I was so embarrassed. What a silly mistake to make! “Just let me go get us both some Tylenol,” I said. When I tried to stand up, I couldn’t even figure out which was up. Everything was disoriented and confusing.
Jon got me back into bed. He started running through my physical symptoms, trying to find out a medical answer. I wasn’t worried about myself, I had decided it was the flu. “The flu would never make you crumble to the floor like that,” Jon said. “I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”
I lay on the bed, confused and scared. Jon was pacing back and forth in our bedroom saying things like “food poisoning? Salmonella?” My brain couldn’t follow the thread of his conversation enough to help him.
I decided to pray a Hail Mary. I was only halfway through RICA at that point and couldn’t remember the words well on a normal day. I remember I said “Hail Mary, Full . . . ,” and then my brain went all fuzzy. I “saw” a blue ball, like a balloon, float above my head and rise to the ceiling. “That’s my prayer on the way to heaven, “ I thought. I remember thinking that it completely logical that my few words had created a blue balloon. “Blue is Mary’s color. She’ll get the message,” I thought. Comforted, I put my head down on my pillow and went back to sleep.
At that moment this image “popped” into my mind. I had this clear picture of my old roommates Carbon Dioxide Monitor. I had not thought of this roommate in five years. I don’t think I ever even knew what her monitor was called at the time. Yet there was a clear image of this bulky white monitor plugged into the blue wall next to my old kitchen sink with the words “CO2 Levels.”
“Jon, do you think it could be something about that weird gas called CO2?” I mumbled.
What happened next was a second grace of our marriage. If my husband had said “phish pash” or any other negative comment, I would have dismissed the thought from my mind. After all, as a former army medic, he was the medical expert. I wasn’t even sure why I had this crazy mental picture in the first place.
Yet my husband, the kind, only married six months newlywed that he was, took my crazy thought extremely seriously. “Carbon Monoxide poisoning. That might explain our symptoms.” He opened up our bedroom window and leaned outside.
Those few gulps of fresh air, cleared his head enough to save us. He called his Dad, a retired State Trooper. On my father-in-law’s advice, my husband opened all the doors and windows and called the Fire Department.
This whole time, I lay semi-unconscious on the bed and refused to get up. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I kept saying. “Why are you bothering all these people? Why make such a big deal out of the flu?” It wasn’t until I watched my dog’s reaction to the newly opened front door, that I changed my mind. Our dog, Sara, is a serious run-away who bolts at the slightest opportunity. I watched Sara raise her head, notice the open door, and then lay her tired head back down on her feet. “Even the dog is sick. Something is seriously wrong!” I finally consented to being helped into the car to wait for the arrival of the Fire Truck.
Long story short, the Fire Department found incredibly high readings of Carbon Monoxide in our house. When we called back my father-in-law from our new hotel room, he flipped out! He had been very calm during the initial call. When he heard how high the actual readings were, he became so agitated. “You guys were seven to ten minutes from completely passing out all together,” he shouted. “That means you would have died.” My father-in-law told us grim stories about finding CO2 victims in his work as a New York State Trooper.
Our rescue made it on the front page of the Portsmouth Newspaper. I have the clipping of Jon and I holding our two dogs and smiling next to our Christmas tree. It turns out that the poisoning came from a faulty furnace pipe. Our landlord never checked out the furnace during his 15 years of renting the property and overtime soot had backed up the pipes. When we left to visit my parents, we turned down the heat. On his return on December 26, Jon turned up the heat to warm a cold house. That action caused the blocked pipe to break completely, sending the odor-less, poison gas throughout our home.
The incident freaked me out for a number of reasons. During this time period, I basically lived alone while my husband attended graduate school in another state. If the pipe had broken during any other weekend, I would never have noticed. I would have come home after work, gone to bed early and never woke up.
Our experience also gave tangible proof to the grace of “togetherness” in marriage. Our individual experiences with CO2 didn’t alert us to its dangers. I simply thought that I was coming down with the flu and “stupid” for running into a wall. My husband dismissed his migraine as a symptom of lack of sleep. It was our concern for the other spouse that made us realize the dangers of the situation. I knew that Jon never got headaches. He could see that my crash into a wall was no mere accident. Together we pieced together the danger and executed an escape plan.
It took two of us to escape from danger. Suddenly living separate lives in separate states didn’t seem so hip and modern anymore. It seemed downright dangerous.
In a few weeks, I’ll celebrate seven years of marriage with my husband and seven years of saying the rosary. I’m blessed to have Our Mother’s Maternal Protection in all matters great and small.
On December 26, 2001 (five days before turning 27), I woke up with my husband in my childhood bed. We had spent the weekend celebrating Christmas with my family. Now, at 4 AM we had to rush back to my law office before it opened. I was the lowest lawyer on the seniority totem pole. That meant my request for extra vacation time was denied. “Boxing Day,” would find me and my boss manning the office phones alone while everyone else enjoyed a few extra days with friends and family.
After work, I came home at five o’clock and crawled into bed. At around 6:30, my husband gently shook me awake. “If you keep sleeping now, you won’t be able sleep tonight,” he said.
I remember that my husband sat down next to me on the bed. Every time I slipped back into sleep, my husband gently tugged on my right shoulder. “I know that you’re tired, but you’ll really regret it if you go back to sleep. You’ve got to trust me on this one!”
Jon was watching a History Channel documentary on the “Gold Rush” on our bedroom TV. I laid in bed for about ten minutes listening to random facts about California in 1848. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, the words and images slipped right off my mind. I found myself slipping back into sleep again and again. It was physically difficult to keep my eyes open. “I must be coming down with the flu,” I said in a daze.
My husband agreed and thought that we must have caught some sort of flu bug during our recent visit with my family. Then my husband, Jon, started rubbing his temples. “I have a terrible headache. I can barely see. It must be some type of migraine from lack of sleep or something.”
At this point, my inner radar went off. My husband never, ever gets headaches. Something was seriously wrong. “Let me go get you some Tylenol,” I said. I made the heroic effort to get out of bed.
This is where things start to get weird. I walked into a wall! I got out of bed, turned the three steps towards the hallway door and then walked straight into a wall. I collapsed in a heap of pain and bruises. I’d missed the door by at least two feet. I ened up with serious bruises on my head, my arm, and my toe. When I hit the wall, I just crumbled onto the floor.
Jon rushed to my side and started checking me out in his med-tech way. I tried to wave him away. I was so embarrassed. What a silly mistake to make! “Just let me go get us both some Tylenol,” I said. When I tried to stand up, I couldn’t even figure out which was up. Everything was disoriented and confusing.
Jon got me back into bed. He started running through my physical symptoms, trying to find out a medical answer. I wasn’t worried about myself, I had decided it was the flu. “The flu would never make you crumble to the floor like that,” Jon said. “I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”
I lay on the bed, confused and scared. Jon was pacing back and forth in our bedroom saying things like “food poisoning? Salmonella?” My brain couldn’t follow the thread of his conversation enough to help him.
I decided to pray a Hail Mary. I was only halfway through RICA at that point and couldn’t remember the words well on a normal day. I remember I said “Hail Mary, Full . . . ,” and then my brain went all fuzzy. I “saw” a blue ball, like a balloon, float above my head and rise to the ceiling. “That’s my prayer on the way to heaven, “ I thought. I remember thinking that it completely logical that my few words had created a blue balloon. “Blue is Mary’s color. She’ll get the message,” I thought. Comforted, I put my head down on my pillow and went back to sleep.
At that moment this image “popped” into my mind. I had this clear picture of my old roommates Carbon Dioxide Monitor. I had not thought of this roommate in five years. I don’t think I ever even knew what her monitor was called at the time. Yet there was a clear image of this bulky white monitor plugged into the blue wall next to my old kitchen sink with the words “CO2 Levels.”
“Jon, do you think it could be something about that weird gas called CO2?” I mumbled.
What happened next was a second grace of our marriage. If my husband had said “phish pash” or any other negative comment, I would have dismissed the thought from my mind. After all, as a former army medic, he was the medical expert. I wasn’t even sure why I had this crazy mental picture in the first place.
Yet my husband, the kind, only married six months newlywed that he was, took my crazy thought extremely seriously. “Carbon Monoxide poisoning. That might explain our symptoms.” He opened up our bedroom window and leaned outside.
Those few gulps of fresh air, cleared his head enough to save us. He called his Dad, a retired State Trooper. On my father-in-law’s advice, my husband opened all the doors and windows and called the Fire Department.
This whole time, I lay semi-unconscious on the bed and refused to get up. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I kept saying. “Why are you bothering all these people? Why make such a big deal out of the flu?” It wasn’t until I watched my dog’s reaction to the newly opened front door, that I changed my mind. Our dog, Sara, is a serious run-away who bolts at the slightest opportunity. I watched Sara raise her head, notice the open door, and then lay her tired head back down on her feet. “Even the dog is sick. Something is seriously wrong!” I finally consented to being helped into the car to wait for the arrival of the Fire Truck.
Long story short, the Fire Department found incredibly high readings of Carbon Monoxide in our house. When we called back my father-in-law from our new hotel room, he flipped out! He had been very calm during the initial call. When he heard how high the actual readings were, he became so agitated. “You guys were seven to ten minutes from completely passing out all together,” he shouted. “That means you would have died.” My father-in-law told us grim stories about finding CO2 victims in his work as a New York State Trooper.
Our rescue made it on the front page of the Portsmouth Newspaper. I have the clipping of Jon and I holding our two dogs and smiling next to our Christmas tree. It turns out that the poisoning came from a faulty furnace pipe. Our landlord never checked out the furnace during his 15 years of renting the property and overtime soot had backed up the pipes. When we left to visit my parents, we turned down the heat. On his return on December 26, Jon turned up the heat to warm a cold house. That action caused the blocked pipe to break completely, sending the odor-less, poison gas throughout our home.
The incident freaked me out for a number of reasons. During this time period, I basically lived alone while my husband attended graduate school in another state. If the pipe had broken during any other weekend, I would never have noticed. I would have come home after work, gone to bed early and never woke up.
Our experience also gave tangible proof to the grace of “togetherness” in marriage. Our individual experiences with CO2 didn’t alert us to its dangers. I simply thought that I was coming down with the flu and “stupid” for running into a wall. My husband dismissed his migraine as a symptom of lack of sleep. It was our concern for the other spouse that made us realize the dangers of the situation. I knew that Jon never got headaches. He could see that my crash into a wall was no mere accident. Together we pieced together the danger and executed an escape plan.
It took two of us to escape from danger. Suddenly living separate lives in separate states didn’t seem so hip and modern anymore. It seemed downright dangerous.
In a few weeks, I’ll celebrate seven years of marriage with my husband and seven years of saying the rosary. I’m blessed to have Our Mother’s Maternal Protection in all matters great and small.
Mother's Day Essays
alec vanderboom
Speaking of "Conversion Diary Jen," she has written a beautiful Motherhood post today.
Are there any other Mother's Day posts on the internet which have touched your heart?
Are there any other Mother's Day posts on the internet which have touched your heart?
Missing Jesus By Inches
alec vanderboom
I've had the pleasure to chatting with Et Tu Jen? (who is now Conversion Diary Jen) about the difference growing up atheist versus growing up Protestant. When I first started reading her wonderfully written posts two years ago, I arrogantly assumed that I was so far ahead in our mutual faith journey. I grew up going to church on Sunday. I memorized the words to the "Our Father" in third grade. I knew the names to the Old Testament bible stories.
Struggling mightily with full belief in the Eucharist has flipped this around. I realized that all the time I spent in the pew, I got fed "misinformation" about Jesus. Jesus was there in name, but his message was subtly shifted around. WIthout a firm grasp on the truth, "anything goes" is the rule for preaching on the pulpit.
There was the Christmas sermon where my minister carefully explained that in Jesus' time, it was common for animals and people to sleep together under the same roof. So saying that Jesus was born in the stable, wasn't really a message about poverty or isolation. Jesus was really born with his relatives house in the warmest place they could find, next to the cattle. I remember sitting on the red velvet lined pew in my parents church in college during that sermon thinking, "Hmm, I must have had this lonely stable image all wrong in my head. I'm so glad Jesus didn't really suffer on the night of his birth."
Can you imagine that? That line of thinking inverts the entire mystery of Navitity. It's completely incompatible with basic Scripture. But that's how things went all the time in my old Protestant church. Everyone had their own opinion on "faith." As long as the faith fell into some broad outlines (Jesus was the son of God, etc.) -- it was valid. Questions were encouraged. Debate was healthy. Preachers were free to use modern day biblical scholarship or snippets from the Sunday paper to "update" the message of Jesus to better fit our modern times.
My church taught that Jesus was the divine Son of God. Yet their own sermons constantly struggled with this image.
Jesus didn't really multiple the loaves of bread. That miracle was accomplished by everyone sharing their private lunch boxes which they had hiddened under their cloaks. Jesus didn't know that he was supposed to save the non-Jews until the Gentile woman who used the "even the dogs get feed from the scraps that fall from the table" opened his eyes. These examples of "misinterpretation" which ultimately lead to the conclusion about Jesus' basic divinity.
Was Jesus really divine? Did he mean what he said? About everything? Did he mean what he said about the hard stuff? Did he really mean "No Divorce?" And if your skirting the line by approving remarriage and birth control and the "Eucharist is just a symbol" how can you really hold a strong belief that Jesus said what he meant about inheriting enternal life?
I found this year as a Catholic, that I've had to painfully relearn everything from scratch. I realized that all that time sitting in a Protestant pew meant that I was missing Jesus by inches. Somehow, that was even more dangerous than missing him by miles.
In a month, the Anglican Church (which is my faith tradition) will send leaders from all over the world to the Canterbury Cathedral in England. The Vatican officials have said that this conclave is critical. The Anglican Church faces a serious crisis over it's approval of gay marriage and the ordination of gay bishops. There is no head of the Anglican Church, no Pope. So there is no firm leadership on this issue. The Church in America has ordinated gay bishops. The Church in England and Africa has refused. In nearby Virginia, the debate has gotten so intense that fifteen Episcopal churches have withdrawn from the American oversight and requested to be overseen by a bishop in Africa. The Vatican has said that it is time for the Anglican Church to decide if it has more in common with the Roman Catholics and Orthodox Church, or the modern day Protestants of the 16th Century.
Let us pray this month for a complete conversion of hearts. Let us pray that everyone, the secular athetists and the Protestants, stop their spiritual blindness. May we have true unity of one flock under one shepard soon!
Struggling mightily with full belief in the Eucharist has flipped this around. I realized that all the time I spent in the pew, I got fed "misinformation" about Jesus. Jesus was there in name, but his message was subtly shifted around. WIthout a firm grasp on the truth, "anything goes" is the rule for preaching on the pulpit.
There was the Christmas sermon where my minister carefully explained that in Jesus' time, it was common for animals and people to sleep together under the same roof. So saying that Jesus was born in the stable, wasn't really a message about poverty or isolation. Jesus was really born with his relatives house in the warmest place they could find, next to the cattle. I remember sitting on the red velvet lined pew in my parents church in college during that sermon thinking, "Hmm, I must have had this lonely stable image all wrong in my head. I'm so glad Jesus didn't really suffer on the night of his birth."
Can you imagine that? That line of thinking inverts the entire mystery of Navitity. It's completely incompatible with basic Scripture. But that's how things went all the time in my old Protestant church. Everyone had their own opinion on "faith." As long as the faith fell into some broad outlines (Jesus was the son of God, etc.) -- it was valid. Questions were encouraged. Debate was healthy. Preachers were free to use modern day biblical scholarship or snippets from the Sunday paper to "update" the message of Jesus to better fit our modern times.
My church taught that Jesus was the divine Son of God. Yet their own sermons constantly struggled with this image.
Jesus didn't really multiple the loaves of bread. That miracle was accomplished by everyone sharing their private lunch boxes which they had hiddened under their cloaks. Jesus didn't know that he was supposed to save the non-Jews until the Gentile woman who used the "even the dogs get feed from the scraps that fall from the table" opened his eyes. These examples of "misinterpretation" which ultimately lead to the conclusion about Jesus' basic divinity.
Was Jesus really divine? Did he mean what he said? About everything? Did he mean what he said about the hard stuff? Did he really mean "No Divorce?" And if your skirting the line by approving remarriage and birth control and the "Eucharist is just a symbol" how can you really hold a strong belief that Jesus said what he meant about inheriting enternal life?
I found this year as a Catholic, that I've had to painfully relearn everything from scratch. I realized that all that time sitting in a Protestant pew meant that I was missing Jesus by inches. Somehow, that was even more dangerous than missing him by miles.
In a month, the Anglican Church (which is my faith tradition) will send leaders from all over the world to the Canterbury Cathedral in England. The Vatican officials have said that this conclave is critical. The Anglican Church faces a serious crisis over it's approval of gay marriage and the ordination of gay bishops. There is no head of the Anglican Church, no Pope. So there is no firm leadership on this issue. The Church in America has ordinated gay bishops. The Church in England and Africa has refused. In nearby Virginia, the debate has gotten so intense that fifteen Episcopal churches have withdrawn from the American oversight and requested to be overseen by a bishop in Africa. The Vatican has said that it is time for the Anglican Church to decide if it has more in common with the Roman Catholics and Orthodox Church, or the modern day Protestants of the 16th Century.
Let us pray this month for a complete conversion of hearts. Let us pray that everyone, the secular athetists and the Protestants, stop their spiritual blindness. May we have true unity of one flock under one shepard soon!
Prayer Request
alec vanderboom
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
The husband of a dear friend in my parish choir suffered a severe spinal injury on Tuesday night. Patrick B. fell down the stairs in his house in the dark and now is completely paralyzed. Yesterday, he underwent 8 hours of spinal surgery. The doctors hope that when the swelling goes down that he will regain the use of his legs. Please pray for him, for his wife Theresa and their three children.
Our Mother of Perpetual Help, please ask your son to grant full healing to Partick B. Please give him and his family the graces they need to cope during this uncertain time.
Motherhood, the best job in the world!
alec vanderboom
(For Jennifer)
It’s almost Mother’s Day, which means the gushy Hallmark sentiments are hanging over the aisles at Target. “Treasure these moments, the kids grow up in a flash!” “Motherhood, the ‘best’ job in the world!”
I’m in the midst of my own “survival” mode yet again. Two kids are coming down with some sort of sweaty, clammy virus that makes them horribly irritable. This morning found me brokering a fragile peace between them while ignoring an upset stomach of my own. (The flu? Allergies? Morning sickness?)
Does Condi Rice have such trials?
In the midst of struggle, my own mantra on motherhood has become terrible simple. Motherhood is no longer “the best job in the world.” Better than what? Condi Rice negotiating a lasting peace between Israel and a new Palestian state? A priest calling down the blood and body of Jesus in the Eucharist? A Sister of Charity lavishing loving care on deprived, orphan children who don’t share half her DNA?
For me, motherhood is simply “the job God is asking me to perform right now.”
Service to God comes in many forms. You can be called to run for President of the United States and serve God by negotiating an end to the nuclear arms race and embryonic stem-cell research. You can be called to be a Carmelite Nun. (In my own, limited imagination, I sort of think that following in the mighty footsteps of Teresa of Avila might get greater results for world peace and protection of the dignity of life than running for office).
Or God can call you to be a mother. Right now. In the midst of a 60 percent divorce rate. In the midst of a contraceptive culture. In the midst of much head shaking by your parents, your siblings, your friends, and the alumna of your college who wish they hadn’t wasted a partial college scholarship on you.
Motherhood is a privledged way to serve God. Not because it’s easy. Because it’s sometimes impossibly hard. We all know the negatives: physical pain, sleepless night, “lost earning potential,” never not worrying that crazy three year old who currently enjoys leaning off of balconies & sticking pliers into light sockets is one day going to turn into a 23 year old who does some equally stupid stunt that lands him in the hospital, jail or the morgue.
Motherhood is privileged because it takes us beyond our frailties, our limitations, and our sinful natures. Motherhood places us squarely upon the concept of “grace.” You need grace to get through pregnancy, you need grace to get through night-time nursing sessions, you need grace to survive the upset stomachs and the teething and the trips to the ER.
That grace, that feeling the breath of the Holy Spirit move over you and transform you—those are the golden moments of Motherhood.
I have a feeling that in the movie review of my life, God isn’t going to pick out the times when all the kids were laughing together in the swimming pool. Those happy moments, pasted on the scrapbook of my mind, have already given me their thank you notes. Instead, God is going to show me the hidden, hard moments of grace.
Two nights ago, I got up at 4 AM. I had to change the sheets of a nameless child who insists on sleeping in manly power-ranger underwear despite failing to master to fine-art of potty training. I got up for the first time and I didn’t sigh. I didn’t stare enviously at my sleeping spouse. I simply got up, plodded through the dark hallway and gave a nod to the Visiting Pilgrim Virgin Mary Statute. “You had these nights too,” I thought.
If Motherhood was simply one job out of many, I would never pick it. Motherhood is “my way”, however little, however hard. It’s the one thing that only I can do for myself, for my husband for my children—those children who are here and those who have yet to arrive. If I don’t do my motherhood job, there is a gap in the world—there is a gap in myself.
God doesn’t need my motherhood to save the world. God gave me motherhood so that I could find Him, serve Him and love Him. Thank you!
It’s almost Mother’s Day, which means the gushy Hallmark sentiments are hanging over the aisles at Target. “Treasure these moments, the kids grow up in a flash!” “Motherhood, the ‘best’ job in the world!”
I’m in the midst of my own “survival” mode yet again. Two kids are coming down with some sort of sweaty, clammy virus that makes them horribly irritable. This morning found me brokering a fragile peace between them while ignoring an upset stomach of my own. (The flu? Allergies? Morning sickness?)
Does Condi Rice have such trials?
In the midst of struggle, my own mantra on motherhood has become terrible simple. Motherhood is no longer “the best job in the world.” Better than what? Condi Rice negotiating a lasting peace between Israel and a new Palestian state? A priest calling down the blood and body of Jesus in the Eucharist? A Sister of Charity lavishing loving care on deprived, orphan children who don’t share half her DNA?
For me, motherhood is simply “the job God is asking me to perform right now.”
Service to God comes in many forms. You can be called to run for President of the United States and serve God by negotiating an end to the nuclear arms race and embryonic stem-cell research. You can be called to be a Carmelite Nun. (In my own, limited imagination, I sort of think that following in the mighty footsteps of Teresa of Avila might get greater results for world peace and protection of the dignity of life than running for office).
Or God can call you to be a mother. Right now. In the midst of a 60 percent divorce rate. In the midst of a contraceptive culture. In the midst of much head shaking by your parents, your siblings, your friends, and the alumna of your college who wish they hadn’t wasted a partial college scholarship on you.
Motherhood is a privledged way to serve God. Not because it’s easy. Because it’s sometimes impossibly hard. We all know the negatives: physical pain, sleepless night, “lost earning potential,” never not worrying that crazy three year old who currently enjoys leaning off of balconies & sticking pliers into light sockets is one day going to turn into a 23 year old who does some equally stupid stunt that lands him in the hospital, jail or the morgue.
Motherhood is privileged because it takes us beyond our frailties, our limitations, and our sinful natures. Motherhood places us squarely upon the concept of “grace.” You need grace to get through pregnancy, you need grace to get through night-time nursing sessions, you need grace to survive the upset stomachs and the teething and the trips to the ER.
That grace, that feeling the breath of the Holy Spirit move over you and transform you—those are the golden moments of Motherhood.
I have a feeling that in the movie review of my life, God isn’t going to pick out the times when all the kids were laughing together in the swimming pool. Those happy moments, pasted on the scrapbook of my mind, have already given me their thank you notes. Instead, God is going to show me the hidden, hard moments of grace.
Two nights ago, I got up at 4 AM. I had to change the sheets of a nameless child who insists on sleeping in manly power-ranger underwear despite failing to master to fine-art of potty training. I got up for the first time and I didn’t sigh. I didn’t stare enviously at my sleeping spouse. I simply got up, plodded through the dark hallway and gave a nod to the Visiting Pilgrim Virgin Mary Statute. “You had these nights too,” I thought.
If Motherhood was simply one job out of many, I would never pick it. Motherhood is “my way”, however little, however hard. It’s the one thing that only I can do for myself, for my husband for my children—those children who are here and those who have yet to arrive. If I don’t do my motherhood job, there is a gap in the world—there is a gap in myself.
God doesn’t need my motherhood to save the world. God gave me motherhood so that I could find Him, serve Him and love Him. Thank you!
Our Lady of Mount Carmel
alec vanderboom
"Mount Carmel, in what is today northern Israel, has always been a place rich in mystical tradition. The word hakkarmel means "the garden" in Hebrew, and true to its title, there is a remarkable profusion of plants and wildflowers on this mountain. It is considered a natural paradise and a sacred place, and in biblical times it was forbidden to disturb any of the natural life on it. Those who wanted to ascend the mountain for meditation lived in caves so as not to intrude on the landscape with unnatural structures.
In about 860 B.C., the prophet Elijah (also known as Elias) arrived on this holy mountain to begin a life of contemplation and prayer. The First Book of Kings is filled with tales of wonders he performed and prophesies he gave. In his prophetic visions on Mount Carmel, Elijah became aware of the coming of the mother of the Messiah. He and his followers mystically dedicated themselves to her, setting an example as the first monks. The descendants of these ancient contemplatives were among the first to accept the teachigns of Christ and to be baptized by His apostles. Upon meeting Mary after Christ's Ascension, they were so overcome by her sanctity that they returned to the mountain to build a chapel in her honor. For the next thousand years, Mount Carmel continued to be a place where hermits devoted themselves to prayer. By the twelfth century, pilgrims from Europe who had followed teh Crusades to the Holy Land settled with the ascetics on Carmel and started a religious holy order known as the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. Their rule, which was given by in 1209 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, says that all converges towards the contemplation of God. The Rule of Mysticism exhorts those who follow it to live a life of continual prayer, obedience to a superior, perpetual abstinence and fasting, manual work, and total silence.
Simon Stock, an English pilgrim, had joined the group on a visit to Jerusalem. At this time, Saracen invaders forced the monks out of their spiritual home on Mount Carmel. All those who would not leave were murdered. Simon Stock was instrumental in getting the order to move to Aylesford, England, where the Baron de Grey gave them a manor house. The Carmelite lifestyle of contemplation, poverty, and silent prayer was not easily accepted in Europe, particularly among the clergy who enjoyed almost the same status as royalty. Reading into the life of Mary, Simon Stock was inspired by her unquestioning acceptance of all that befell her; her virgin pregnancy, her raising and loving a child doomed to be executed; and her staying at the foot of the Cross while others ran away. It was through his insistence that the Carmelites evolved from a band of hermit ascetics who regretted the loss of their home on Mount Carmel into a traveling society of mendicant friars, opening schools and mission houes in the major capitals of Europe. Still it was difficult for many monks to accept the alteration of the rule fo the order to adapt to European conditions. Their presence was also shunned and not easily tolerated by other religious orders. The peopel thought the hermits strange and did not accept that they chose to live in such absolute poverty and isolation. In order to preserve what was left of their order, teh Carmelites invoked their patroness, the Virgin Mary, for help in establishing their new life.
The answer came in a vision to Saint Simon Stock on July 16, 1251, when he was alone in his cell. Mary appeared to him holding the scapular of his order. She told him, "Receive my beloved son, this habit of thy order; this shall be to thee and to all Carmelites a privilege, that whosoever dies clothed in this shall never suffer eternal fire. . . It shall be a sign of slavation, a protection in danger, and a pledge of peace."
The scapular, two pieces of brown wool joined at the shoulders and hanging down the back and breast, was not new to the Carmelite order. For hundreds of years before Saint Simon Stock's vision, monks in Europe had worn scapulars. But it is thought that the brown scapular that Mary delivered was referencing Elijah's camel-hair garment on Mount Carmel. Eventually, the brown scapular became reduced in size for laypeople to wear under their clothing. This is a special devotion to Mary worn as a sign to commemorate her faith in both God and humankind.
This gift from Mary helped the Carmelites explain the historical significance of their order to the laypeople; it served as a reminder that belief in Mary as the Mother of God extended back to the Old Testament with the prophet Elijah. After Pope John XXII (r.1313-1334) had a vision of Mary where she promised those wearing the brown scapular, "I, the Mother of Grace, shall descend on the Saturday after their death and whomsoever I find in Purgatory, I shall free, so that I may lead them to the holy mountain of everlasting life," the scapular became extremely popular among the common people By the end of the sixteenth centurey it had become smaller in size and very similar to the one that is worn today. Admiration for the Carmelite Order spread as their adherence to teh rules of solitude and prayer produced some of the greatest mystical saints in Catholicism, all of whom had visions of or openhearted communications with Mary. Among them are Saint Simon Stock, Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Therese of Lisieux.
Wearing the scapular is a form of prayer and is considered a visible sign of consecrating oneself to Mary and to accepting her maternal protection."
(Visions of Mary, pg 27-29).
In about 860 B.C., the prophet Elijah (also known as Elias) arrived on this holy mountain to begin a life of contemplation and prayer. The First Book of Kings is filled with tales of wonders he performed and prophesies he gave. In his prophetic visions on Mount Carmel, Elijah became aware of the coming of the mother of the Messiah. He and his followers mystically dedicated themselves to her, setting an example as the first monks. The descendants of these ancient contemplatives were among the first to accept the teachigns of Christ and to be baptized by His apostles. Upon meeting Mary after Christ's Ascension, they were so overcome by her sanctity that they returned to the mountain to build a chapel in her honor. For the next thousand years, Mount Carmel continued to be a place where hermits devoted themselves to prayer. By the twelfth century, pilgrims from Europe who had followed teh Crusades to the Holy Land settled with the ascetics on Carmel and started a religious holy order known as the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. Their rule, which was given by in 1209 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, says that all converges towards the contemplation of God. The Rule of Mysticism exhorts those who follow it to live a life of continual prayer, obedience to a superior, perpetual abstinence and fasting, manual work, and total silence.
Simon Stock, an English pilgrim, had joined the group on a visit to Jerusalem. At this time, Saracen invaders forced the monks out of their spiritual home on Mount Carmel. All those who would not leave were murdered. Simon Stock was instrumental in getting the order to move to Aylesford, England, where the Baron de Grey gave them a manor house. The Carmelite lifestyle of contemplation, poverty, and silent prayer was not easily accepted in Europe, particularly among the clergy who enjoyed almost the same status as royalty. Reading into the life of Mary, Simon Stock was inspired by her unquestioning acceptance of all that befell her; her virgin pregnancy, her raising and loving a child doomed to be executed; and her staying at the foot of the Cross while others ran away. It was through his insistence that the Carmelites evolved from a band of hermit ascetics who regretted the loss of their home on Mount Carmel into a traveling society of mendicant friars, opening schools and mission houes in the major capitals of Europe. Still it was difficult for many monks to accept the alteration of the rule fo the order to adapt to European conditions. Their presence was also shunned and not easily tolerated by other religious orders. The peopel thought the hermits strange and did not accept that they chose to live in such absolute poverty and isolation. In order to preserve what was left of their order, teh Carmelites invoked their patroness, the Virgin Mary, for help in establishing their new life.
The answer came in a vision to Saint Simon Stock on July 16, 1251, when he was alone in his cell. Mary appeared to him holding the scapular of his order. She told him, "Receive my beloved son, this habit of thy order; this shall be to thee and to all Carmelites a privilege, that whosoever dies clothed in this shall never suffer eternal fire. . . It shall be a sign of slavation, a protection in danger, and a pledge of peace."
The scapular, two pieces of brown wool joined at the shoulders and hanging down the back and breast, was not new to the Carmelite order. For hundreds of years before Saint Simon Stock's vision, monks in Europe had worn scapulars. But it is thought that the brown scapular that Mary delivered was referencing Elijah's camel-hair garment on Mount Carmel. Eventually, the brown scapular became reduced in size for laypeople to wear under their clothing. This is a special devotion to Mary worn as a sign to commemorate her faith in both God and humankind.
This gift from Mary helped the Carmelites explain the historical significance of their order to the laypeople; it served as a reminder that belief in Mary as the Mother of God extended back to the Old Testament with the prophet Elijah. After Pope John XXII (r.1313-1334) had a vision of Mary where she promised those wearing the brown scapular, "I, the Mother of Grace, shall descend on the Saturday after their death and whomsoever I find in Purgatory, I shall free, so that I may lead them to the holy mountain of everlasting life," the scapular became extremely popular among the common people By the end of the sixteenth centurey it had become smaller in size and very similar to the one that is worn today. Admiration for the Carmelite Order spread as their adherence to teh rules of solitude and prayer produced some of the greatest mystical saints in Catholicism, all of whom had visions of or openhearted communications with Mary. Among them are Saint Simon Stock, Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Therese of Lisieux.
Wearing the scapular is a form of prayer and is considered a visible sign of consecrating oneself to Mary and to accepting her maternal protection."
(Visions of Mary, pg 27-29).
Our Lady of Czestochowa
alec vanderboom
Black Madonna of the Polish Nation
"Historical legand says that St. Luke painted this icon from life. The Virgin Mary sat for while she was living in the house of Saint John the Evangelist. The cedar wood the icon was paointed on was from a table made by Jesus Christ when he was a carpenter. During the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the early Christians hid the painting. It was rediscovered in 326, when Saint Helena, the elderly mother of Constantine made her trip to the Holy Land in search of the True Cross." This painting was revered by the citizens of Constantinople for five centuries. It escaped destruction by the Iconoclasts (746-843). "This movement of the Eastern Church strictly forbade the existence of religious images."
After Constantinople fell, the painting was moved first to a castle in Belz, Russia, and later to the Church of the Assumption, in Czestochowa (Poland) on August 26, 1382.
"The followers of a heretic priest John Hus of Prague stormed the church in 1430. In an attempt to rob the jewels embedded in the icon, one of the men started slashing at the icon's face. [He took out his sword and slashed the Madonna's face once and then twice.] As he was about to slash it a third time, he fell dead. This terrified the invaders into leaving."
The icon was restored and in 1434, completely repainted. "however, the two slashes in the face have continually reappeared despite repeated attempts to repair them." (Calamari, Barbara, "Visions of Mary," pg 121-22)
Last night, we had two members of our parish's Legion of Mary come and enthrone our home to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary. The prayer service was so touching, despite the antics from three grouchy, tired kids. Afterwards, Brother Noel brought me a picture of "Our Lady of Czestochowa." I had just read about this venerated Polish image, a favorite of JPII, in my new "visions of Mary" book. Seeing the three sword slashes on her face remind me to continually offer up reperations for those who slight our Lady's heart and her image. Let us offer up many "I lOVE YOU" during the month of May to make up for our Blessed Mother's many sorrows.
The Merry, Mary Month of May
alec vanderboom
This month marks the first May that I've celebrated as a consecrated daughter of Mary.
I became a Catholic in 2002, yet I've always had a "block" when it came to Marian devotion. I remember clearly my first Holy Day Celebration in 2001. As a new RICA member I slid into a pew at the evening service of the Immaculate Conception. "This feels pretty weird, what am I getting myself into?" as I struggled to understand why I needed to be in church at night to celebrate an "invented" doctrine from 1950 which I'd never heard before in my 25 years of being a Christian.
May 2005 brought the heart attack which signaled the imminent death of my grandmother. Mother's Day 2005, was the first time I could bring myself to sing any of the beautiful Marian hymns with any sense of interior devotion. I sang from the heart for my dying grandmother and for our Blessed Mother in Heaven.
This year, I formally consecrated myself to Marian, through the method of St. Louis de Montfort on the feast of the annunciation. It's been a slow-a pathetically slow- process. I stumble along in darkness, groping through the nightly rosary, staring a devotional pictures, trying on unfamiliar concepts like "Mediatrix" and "Assumption."
This year is the 150 anniversary of Our Lady of Lourdes. I feel a special kinship with Saint Bernadette. Her "dullness" at the her catechism consoles me. Just as her trust and faithfulness in suffering inspires me. I've gradually gone from viewing Mary as this strange, fearful BVM, to my Blessed Virgin Mother too.
Through this journey, I've always felt this "Mary block" must be mine alone. "I must have some weird mother issues" I thought. I could figure out why so many other Catholics leaped confidentially into the lap of Mary, why I always felt shy and uneasy.
Our Blessed Mother has grace my home these past two weeks with a special presence. Our parish has a "visiting Pilgrim Statute program" where a lovely 32 inch statute of Our Lady of Fatima comes to your home. The Legion of Mary teaches the entire family how to say the rosary and leaves lots of inspirational videos.
On Sunday, we had finally tracked down a neighbor's VCR and started watching the video on "First Saturday's making reparations to our Blessed Mother's Heart." The premise behind this devotion is beautiful. The faithful devote the first Saturday of five consecutive months to going to Confession, Daily Mass, saying the rosary and my favorite "keeping our Mother company for fifteen minutes."
The reason for choosing the number five, has to do with the five major ways the world hurts our Blessed Mother's heart. First, we deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Second, we deny the perpetual virginity of Mary. Third, we deny Mary the title of "Mother of God." Fourth, we desecrate the holy images and statutes of Mary. Fifth, we "uprooted the devotion of Mary, particularly among the young."
The priests on the video carefully explained how each of these "hurts" harm our relationship with God. The Immaculate Conception was God's first gift of redemptive grace. Mary is "the dawn of Christ's perfect day." Her quiet, hidden sanctification was God's signal to the world that we will able be saved through Christ.The perpetual virginity of Mary, was Mary's gift back to God. He accepted that gift and insured that she remained forever a virgin, even through the birth of Jesus.
At this point, I gasped openly. I felt this sting in my heart. My Methodist faith, which I'd always seen as sort of sweet and harmless, was actively promoting four of the five harms to Mary. The Methodists (and most other Protestants) recognized Mary as "the Mother of God" and trotted her out in nativity scenes at Christmas. Otherwise, my religion was actively seeking to destroy devotion to Mary as "incompatible with the true worship of Jesus Christ alone."
We denied that Mary remained a virgin and taught that she had other children beside Jesus. We denied that she was special or above us, through the special circumstances of her conception. We tore down her "idolatrous" shrines and built crisp white churches with plain walls. We "uprooted" Marian devotion, particularly among the young, particularly among ME.
This month I'm renewing my Marian devotions with fervor. I'm taking joy in sharing her prayers with my children. It's been 350 years since my ancestors traded devotion to Our Blessed Mother, for the pale, pasty imitation of devotion to Queen Elizabeth, "The Virgin Queen." I'm proud to have moved both literally and figuratively from "Virgina" to "Maryland."
What are you doing to make your domestic churches a Mary land this May?
I became a Catholic in 2002, yet I've always had a "block" when it came to Marian devotion. I remember clearly my first Holy Day Celebration in 2001. As a new RICA member I slid into a pew at the evening service of the Immaculate Conception. "This feels pretty weird, what am I getting myself into?" as I struggled to understand why I needed to be in church at night to celebrate an "invented" doctrine from 1950 which I'd never heard before in my 25 years of being a Christian.
May 2005 brought the heart attack which signaled the imminent death of my grandmother. Mother's Day 2005, was the first time I could bring myself to sing any of the beautiful Marian hymns with any sense of interior devotion. I sang from the heart for my dying grandmother and for our Blessed Mother in Heaven.
This year, I formally consecrated myself to Marian, through the method of St. Louis de Montfort on the feast of the annunciation. It's been a slow-a pathetically slow- process. I stumble along in darkness, groping through the nightly rosary, staring a devotional pictures, trying on unfamiliar concepts like "Mediatrix" and "Assumption."
This year is the 150 anniversary of Our Lady of Lourdes. I feel a special kinship with Saint Bernadette. Her "dullness" at the her catechism consoles me. Just as her trust and faithfulness in suffering inspires me. I've gradually gone from viewing Mary as this strange, fearful BVM, to my Blessed Virgin Mother too.
Through this journey, I've always felt this "Mary block" must be mine alone. "I must have some weird mother issues" I thought. I could figure out why so many other Catholics leaped confidentially into the lap of Mary, why I always felt shy and uneasy.
Our Blessed Mother has grace my home these past two weeks with a special presence. Our parish has a "visiting Pilgrim Statute program" where a lovely 32 inch statute of Our Lady of Fatima comes to your home. The Legion of Mary teaches the entire family how to say the rosary and leaves lots of inspirational videos.
On Sunday, we had finally tracked down a neighbor's VCR and started watching the video on "First Saturday's making reparations to our Blessed Mother's Heart." The premise behind this devotion is beautiful. The faithful devote the first Saturday of five consecutive months to going to Confession, Daily Mass, saying the rosary and my favorite "keeping our Mother company for fifteen minutes."
The reason for choosing the number five, has to do with the five major ways the world hurts our Blessed Mother's heart. First, we deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Second, we deny the perpetual virginity of Mary. Third, we deny Mary the title of "Mother of God." Fourth, we desecrate the holy images and statutes of Mary. Fifth, we "uprooted the devotion of Mary, particularly among the young."
The priests on the video carefully explained how each of these "hurts" harm our relationship with God. The Immaculate Conception was God's first gift of redemptive grace. Mary is "the dawn of Christ's perfect day." Her quiet, hidden sanctification was God's signal to the world that we will able be saved through Christ.The perpetual virginity of Mary, was Mary's gift back to God. He accepted that gift and insured that she remained forever a virgin, even through the birth of Jesus.
At this point, I gasped openly. I felt this sting in my heart. My Methodist faith, which I'd always seen as sort of sweet and harmless, was actively promoting four of the five harms to Mary. The Methodists (and most other Protestants) recognized Mary as "the Mother of God" and trotted her out in nativity scenes at Christmas. Otherwise, my religion was actively seeking to destroy devotion to Mary as "incompatible with the true worship of Jesus Christ alone."
We denied that Mary remained a virgin and taught that she had other children beside Jesus. We denied that she was special or above us, through the special circumstances of her conception. We tore down her "idolatrous" shrines and built crisp white churches with plain walls. We "uprooted" Marian devotion, particularly among the young, particularly among ME.
This month I'm renewing my Marian devotions with fervor. I'm taking joy in sharing her prayers with my children. It's been 350 years since my ancestors traded devotion to Our Blessed Mother, for the pale, pasty imitation of devotion to Queen Elizabeth, "The Virgin Queen." I'm proud to have moved both literally and figuratively from "Virgina" to "Maryland."
What are you doing to make your domestic churches a Mary land this May?
Lord, Protect the Unwanted & the Unloved
alec vanderboom
"Lord, Creator of Life, You have blessed us with the privilege of bringing new life into the world. Open our hearts and minds to recognize Your special gift of children and Your great love for each of us created in Your image and likeness.
Through love You sent your Son Jesus to redeem us and through love He entered our world as an unborn child in the womb of Mary, His mother.
We now turn to Mary for her prayers and intercession as we struggle to protect innocent unborn children from decisions that seek to destroy them. Following Mary's example as mother and disciple, let us proclaim the truth of our faith, assist those in crisis and protect those most vulnerable, unwanted and unloved. Amen."
Prayer of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Maryland
(We say this prayer everyday at the end of Daily Mass at my parish church.)
Through love You sent your Son Jesus to redeem us and through love He entered our world as an unborn child in the womb of Mary, His mother.
We now turn to Mary for her prayers and intercession as we struggle to protect innocent unborn children from decisions that seek to destroy them. Following Mary's example as mother and disciple, let us proclaim the truth of our faith, assist those in crisis and protect those most vulnerable, unwanted and unloved. Amen."
Prayer of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Maryland
(We say this prayer everyday at the end of Daily Mass at my parish church.)
Tea With Papa Benedict
alec vanderboom
To console my heart from missing our Holy Father, I reading little snippets from "The Essential Pope Benedict XVI" during my morning coffee break.
Today I found a great nugget of wisdom about original sin:
"It must once again be stressed that no human being is closed in upon himself or herself and that no one can live of or for himself of herself alone. We receive our life not only at the moment of birth but every day from without-from others who are not ourselves but who nonetheless somehow pertain to us. Human beings have their selves not only in themselves but also outside of themselves; they live in those whom they love an in those who love them and to whom they are present. Human beings are relational, and they posses their lives-themselves-only by way of relationship. I alone am not myself, but only in and with you am I myself. To be truly a human being means to be related in love, to be of and for.
But sin means the damaging or destruction of relationality. Sin is a rejection of relationality because it wants to make the human being a god. Sin is loss of relationships, a disturbance of relationship, and , therefore, it is not restricted to the individual. When I destroy a relationship, then this event-sin-touches the other person involved in the relationship. Consequently sin is always an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it. To the extent that this is true, when the network of human relationship is damaged from the very beginning, then every human being enters into a world that is marked by relational damage. At the very moment when a person beings human existence, which is a good, he or she is confronted by a sin-damaged world. Each of us enters into a situation in which relationality has been hurt. Consequently each person is, from the very start, damaged in relationships and does not engage in them as he or she ought." (Scripture, page 265)
Our beloved Holy Father does have a way with words! I feel like I'm starting to grasp the mystery of original sin at last (and only after being the parent witness of three baptisms).
Reading these words make the social "sin" of slavery so obvious to me. When a little child to a slave, his experiences in life are already horribly damaged as a result of the "sin" that let his mother be owned. The little newborn did nothing to "cause" this sin. Innocent or not, the sin of slavery will continue to haunt his relationships with all people (slave or free, black or white) for the rest of his life.
Taking a step into more abstract territory, each of us is equally marked by the slavery of sin, since we are "daughters of Eve." It may be less obvious to see at first, but not if we look at our life and family relationships through our spiritual eyes.
A beloved reader once posted a question about child abuse on her blog. With a kind Catholic heart, she is considering adopting a little boy who was removed into foster care after his father punched him in the jaw. "What makes a parent punch a child so hard to break a jaw?" she asked. "How can such evil exist? Why do innocent children have to suffer?"
I felt uncomfortable reading that post. Unfortunately, I've come across even worse details of child abuse in my former life as a lawyer. However, this was the first time I'd considered such questions as a parent. A parent who falls into sin, A LOT. Granted, I'm blessed not to be physically violent with my kids (and I'm sure this reader would say that line not being crossed means everything) but sin is sin is sin, it's just a matter of degrees. Screaming hysterically at my kids in one of my fits of anger might not get my kids removed from my home, but it still scars them. My sin, which comes out of my damaged, impure heart and then actively hurts the hearts of my children, makes Jesus very, very sad.
Thankfully, the cure is Christ. As Pope Benedict explains, "Only being loved is being saved, and only God's love can purify damaged human love and radically reestablish the network of relationship that have suffered from alienation."(pg. 266). My "love work" with Christ through prayer and the Eucharist is helping me, step by step, heal into the loving mother that our Creator originally meant me to be. In the adoption situation, the parent maybe be so closed off to Christ that his saving power isn't allowed to transform a life. Yet God never leaves one of us orphaned! The saving power meant to heal a harmed child will still break through the pain, maybe through the loving hands of an adopted parent herself.
May brings lots of graduations and lots of opportunities for visits with extended family. This time, when the fur starts flying, I'm going to tuck along Pope Benedict's words into my pocket. The question isn't "why aren't we getting along?" anymore. If all relationships are damaged by sin, the simple fact that most of our beloved extended family are vocally "on the outs with Christ" explains everything. My new task from Pope Benedict is simply to "have hope." My job is to stand in love, hold Christ's hand and let his love heal my heart.
I have hope for myself. I have hope for the little boy with the hurt jaw, and hope for his frustratingly imperfect dad. I have hope for my parents, and their parents, and the great-grandparents who are probably still struggling in purgatory. "Christ is our Hope!"
May you all have a blessed day!
Today I found a great nugget of wisdom about original sin:
"It must once again be stressed that no human being is closed in upon himself or herself and that no one can live of or for himself of herself alone. We receive our life not only at the moment of birth but every day from without-from others who are not ourselves but who nonetheless somehow pertain to us. Human beings have their selves not only in themselves but also outside of themselves; they live in those whom they love an in those who love them and to whom they are present. Human beings are relational, and they posses their lives-themselves-only by way of relationship. I alone am not myself, but only in and with you am I myself. To be truly a human being means to be related in love, to be of and for.
But sin means the damaging or destruction of relationality. Sin is a rejection of relationality because it wants to make the human being a god. Sin is loss of relationships, a disturbance of relationship, and , therefore, it is not restricted to the individual. When I destroy a relationship, then this event-sin-touches the other person involved in the relationship. Consequently sin is always an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it. To the extent that this is true, when the network of human relationship is damaged from the very beginning, then every human being enters into a world that is marked by relational damage. At the very moment when a person beings human existence, which is a good, he or she is confronted by a sin-damaged world. Each of us enters into a situation in which relationality has been hurt. Consequently each person is, from the very start, damaged in relationships and does not engage in them as he or she ought." (Scripture, page 265)
Our beloved Holy Father does have a way with words! I feel like I'm starting to grasp the mystery of original sin at last (and only after being the parent witness of three baptisms).
Reading these words make the social "sin" of slavery so obvious to me. When a little child to a slave, his experiences in life are already horribly damaged as a result of the "sin" that let his mother be owned. The little newborn did nothing to "cause" this sin. Innocent or not, the sin of slavery will continue to haunt his relationships with all people (slave or free, black or white) for the rest of his life.
Taking a step into more abstract territory, each of us is equally marked by the slavery of sin, since we are "daughters of Eve." It may be less obvious to see at first, but not if we look at our life and family relationships through our spiritual eyes.
A beloved reader once posted a question about child abuse on her blog. With a kind Catholic heart, she is considering adopting a little boy who was removed into foster care after his father punched him in the jaw. "What makes a parent punch a child so hard to break a jaw?" she asked. "How can such evil exist? Why do innocent children have to suffer?"
I felt uncomfortable reading that post. Unfortunately, I've come across even worse details of child abuse in my former life as a lawyer. However, this was the first time I'd considered such questions as a parent. A parent who falls into sin, A LOT. Granted, I'm blessed not to be physically violent with my kids (and I'm sure this reader would say that line not being crossed means everything) but sin is sin is sin, it's just a matter of degrees. Screaming hysterically at my kids in one of my fits of anger might not get my kids removed from my home, but it still scars them. My sin, which comes out of my damaged, impure heart and then actively hurts the hearts of my children, makes Jesus very, very sad.
Thankfully, the cure is Christ. As Pope Benedict explains, "Only being loved is being saved, and only God's love can purify damaged human love and radically reestablish the network of relationship that have suffered from alienation."(pg. 266). My "love work" with Christ through prayer and the Eucharist is helping me, step by step, heal into the loving mother that our Creator originally meant me to be. In the adoption situation, the parent maybe be so closed off to Christ that his saving power isn't allowed to transform a life. Yet God never leaves one of us orphaned! The saving power meant to heal a harmed child will still break through the pain, maybe through the loving hands of an adopted parent herself.
May brings lots of graduations and lots of opportunities for visits with extended family. This time, when the fur starts flying, I'm going to tuck along Pope Benedict's words into my pocket. The question isn't "why aren't we getting along?" anymore. If all relationships are damaged by sin, the simple fact that most of our beloved extended family are vocally "on the outs with Christ" explains everything. My new task from Pope Benedict is simply to "have hope." My job is to stand in love, hold Christ's hand and let his love heal my heart.
I have hope for myself. I have hope for the little boy with the hurt jaw, and hope for his frustratingly imperfect dad. I have hope for my parents, and their parents, and the great-grandparents who are probably still struggling in purgatory. "Christ is our Hope!"
May you all have a blessed day!
In Praise of My Husband's Hands
alec vanderboom
(In Honor of the Feast of Saint Joseph the worker)
Last September, my husband came home and complained of pain in his right index finger. The tendon was so inflamed the pain shot all the way down his arm into his elbow. His workload had tripled after his firm took on two new clients. Now, my husband couldn't bend his knuckle or hold a knife.
Since all of my medical knowledge comes from worker compensation hearings, I immediately started freaking out about carpal tunnel syndrome. I looked up the facts in our little "do it yourself" health care manual from Kaiser Permenente.
"You need to ice your tendon for a half hour after work each day. You also need to take five minute stretch breaks at work. And you should do some finger strengthening exercises. And if that doesn't work we need to call your doctor-- otherwise you might need surgery!"
"I don't need to call my doctor," my husband said as he attempted to cut his pork chop with the knife in his left hand and held his fork in his right hand in a grip more awkward than our newborn's fist.
I stared at him in horror. "Everyone at this table depends upon that one hand to eat!" I exclaimed. The force of that statement hit both of us at once. "I'll ask my boss to order a better mouse pad tomorrow," my husband said with a nod. (Happily some minor changes on his computer desk have cured the problem.)
My husband is a graphic designer. He is the skilled laborer of our modern day. He loves to draw, but sadly handles pencil and paper all to rarely at work. Most of his day is spent doing click after click on his mouse. He moves type and photographs from web browser to spread sheet and then back again. Click. Click. Click. His right index finger moves up and down all day for nine to ten hours a day with only a modest break for lunch.
The steady paycheck from such humble work feeds a family of five, keeps a roof over our heads, and buys us netflix rentals and coffee grounds.
I'm so, so grateful to my husband for being a model of Saint Joseph for our family. Humble & Devout. Strong & Gentle. Diligent & Loving.
Saint Joseph pray for us, that we may always appreciate our spouses and their hard working hands.
Last September, my husband came home and complained of pain in his right index finger. The tendon was so inflamed the pain shot all the way down his arm into his elbow. His workload had tripled after his firm took on two new clients. Now, my husband couldn't bend his knuckle or hold a knife.
Since all of my medical knowledge comes from worker compensation hearings, I immediately started freaking out about carpal tunnel syndrome. I looked up the facts in our little "do it yourself" health care manual from Kaiser Permenente.
"You need to ice your tendon for a half hour after work each day. You also need to take five minute stretch breaks at work. And you should do some finger strengthening exercises. And if that doesn't work we need to call your doctor-- otherwise you might need surgery!"
"I don't need to call my doctor," my husband said as he attempted to cut his pork chop with the knife in his left hand and held his fork in his right hand in a grip more awkward than our newborn's fist.
I stared at him in horror. "Everyone at this table depends upon that one hand to eat!" I exclaimed. The force of that statement hit both of us at once. "I'll ask my boss to order a better mouse pad tomorrow," my husband said with a nod. (Happily some minor changes on his computer desk have cured the problem.)
My husband is a graphic designer. He is the skilled laborer of our modern day. He loves to draw, but sadly handles pencil and paper all to rarely at work. Most of his day is spent doing click after click on his mouse. He moves type and photographs from web browser to spread sheet and then back again. Click. Click. Click. His right index finger moves up and down all day for nine to ten hours a day with only a modest break for lunch.
The steady paycheck from such humble work feeds a family of five, keeps a roof over our heads, and buys us netflix rentals and coffee grounds.
I'm so, so grateful to my husband for being a model of Saint Joseph for our family. Humble & Devout. Strong & Gentle. Diligent & Loving.
Saint Joseph pray for us, that we may always appreciate our spouses and their hard working hands.
A Water Moment
alec vanderboom
Lately, whenever I've been having a stressful moment in my marriage, I've drawn on the image of the Wedding of Cana. Instead of getting upset, I sort of withdraw into myself. I place myself at that lavish wedding banquet, where the worse crisis of hospitality has occurred- the bride and groom have run out of wine.
"This is a water moment," I'll tell myself. It's a sort of shorthand to my soul that says, "yes, your agitation is real, yes your feelings are proportionate-- but we are doing something deeper now than trying to validate fears and hurt feelings. We are going to wait expectantly for Jesus to turn this 'water moment' into a 'wine moment'."
I'm a visual girl, so this sort of mental prayer helps me. Placing myself at the Wedding of Cana helps me transition from the Protestant girl who expected the formula was a) find the right guy, b) get married in a church c) don't do anything seriously sinful and BAM! this formula is guaranteed to equal happiness with your spouse for all your time on earth.
There's still this part of me that expects to be drinking the fragrant wine of domestic happiness every second of my marriage feast. When the wine runs dry because of the agitation that accompanies seasonal allergies, or due to sleepless babies, etc., it used to common for me to freak out. Why isn't this working?
My inner conversation used to go "Why isn't this working when I'm such a good person?" Now, that I'm Catholic that former conceit is comical. No the conversation (which is still prideful) goes something like "Why isn't my marriage 'working' when I'm following NFP, hitting daily Mass, consecrated to our Blessed Mother-- or any of the other of my latest spiritual practice additions." Last night it went, "Why didn't my husband empty the overflowing recyclables while I was at choir practice. I'm a choir member, why is this happening to me?"
That's the moment when I try to catch myself and place myself internally at the Wedding of Cana. "This is a water moment. Wait for the wine moment."
When I practice this prayer, it always, always works for me. I get showered with graces. The deal is that, I actually have to wait patiently for the wine moment to come, and then gratefully take a gulp. Sometimes it's as easy as spending the four minutes emptying the recyclable bin myself rather than making a scene. (Yes, more pettiness to wince at during the movie rewind of my life at the end of time!) Sometimes, its a little longer in coming but even more dramatic-- as when my husband's expensive allergy medicine suddenly went over-the-counter and became available for me and the kids as well.
Anyways, many thanks to the dear friend who encouraged me to transfer this "water moment, wine moment" prayer into my life with my children, who after all are simply the fruit of my union. The sacramental graces that I draw upon to make me a better wife are equally available to make me a better mother.
Pray for me, (it's allergy season, I need it!) and I will pray for each of you. May we all one day toast our glasses in the one, eternal banquet where the wine never runs out!
"This is a water moment," I'll tell myself. It's a sort of shorthand to my soul that says, "yes, your agitation is real, yes your feelings are proportionate-- but we are doing something deeper now than trying to validate fears and hurt feelings. We are going to wait expectantly for Jesus to turn this 'water moment' into a 'wine moment'."
I'm a visual girl, so this sort of mental prayer helps me. Placing myself at the Wedding of Cana helps me transition from the Protestant girl who expected the formula was a) find the right guy, b) get married in a church c) don't do anything seriously sinful and BAM! this formula is guaranteed to equal happiness with your spouse for all your time on earth.
There's still this part of me that expects to be drinking the fragrant wine of domestic happiness every second of my marriage feast. When the wine runs dry because of the agitation that accompanies seasonal allergies, or due to sleepless babies, etc., it used to common for me to freak out. Why isn't this working?
My inner conversation used to go "Why isn't this working when I'm such a good person?" Now, that I'm Catholic that former conceit is comical. No the conversation (which is still prideful) goes something like "Why isn't my marriage 'working' when I'm following NFP, hitting daily Mass, consecrated to our Blessed Mother-- or any of the other of my latest spiritual practice additions." Last night it went, "Why didn't my husband empty the overflowing recyclables while I was at choir practice. I'm a choir member, why is this happening to me?"
That's the moment when I try to catch myself and place myself internally at the Wedding of Cana. "This is a water moment. Wait for the wine moment."
When I practice this prayer, it always, always works for me. I get showered with graces. The deal is that, I actually have to wait patiently for the wine moment to come, and then gratefully take a gulp. Sometimes it's as easy as spending the four minutes emptying the recyclable bin myself rather than making a scene. (Yes, more pettiness to wince at during the movie rewind of my life at the end of time!) Sometimes, its a little longer in coming but even more dramatic-- as when my husband's expensive allergy medicine suddenly went over-the-counter and became available for me and the kids as well.
Anyways, many thanks to the dear friend who encouraged me to transfer this "water moment, wine moment" prayer into my life with my children, who after all are simply the fruit of my union. The sacramental graces that I draw upon to make me a better wife are equally available to make me a better mother.
Pray for me, (it's allergy season, I need it!) and I will pray for each of you. May we all one day toast our glasses in the one, eternal banquet where the wine never runs out!
Charity Begins At Home
alec vanderboom
My little sister needs prayers this week as she searches for her first "real" job after grad school ends in June. Emily spent three years in the peace corps in rural Ghana. She lived without running water, without electricity and had to climb on her thatch hut roof to get cell-phone reception strong enough to call home. From her reports, finding a new job sounds far more intimidating than life in Africa.
Emily wants to find a "do good" job in the social justice field. She could hardly share half my genes if she was thinking about a career in Hedgefund Managment. All the same, it's getting harder and harder to talk to her about our shared interest in saving the world. Her talk consists of NGOs, eccumencialism, non-profits, and "productive plannning."
My whole life has sort of shrunk and expanded in one burst. My whole "plan" right now is:
Step One: Discern God's will
Step Two: Do it
I think my sister would probably agree with that approach, since she's right now in the midst of "what job does God want me to have?"
For me, however, God's will isn't some abstract thing "out there" for me to discover. God's will is sort of in my face all the time. I know what I'm supposed to be doing. The challenge is to do it, consistently, which means ALL THE TIME, without complaining! In otherwords, God is in the details.
For me, the details, is where charity starts to hurt. It's one thing to "volunteer" to read to an economically deprived child once a week, or send protest letters demanding that Congress not cut the food stamps funding, or carry a recycled mug into Starbucks. That's benevolence, or "giving out of your excess."
It's Charity-- "giving of what you need" to turn your life upside, give up "free-time", give up letter writing and Starbucks trips in order to have a bunch of new souls in a short time. . .then give your only bike pump to the neighborhood kids who don't have a Dad at home and then watch your husband walk to work for a week after his bike gets a flat tire. . . and then feed pancakes on your day of rest to another neighborhood kid who is having a hard time. I've written before that I served as a child advocate for four years in Appalachia. It wasn't until I was fumming after my husband spent yet another Sunday patching up the bikes for kids with missing Dads that I realized, my "child advocacy" work before my marriage was never that hard. Child Advocacy was a job that let me off to recover on the weekends. Now there are no more lazy, pajama-wearing, paper reading, coffee drinking, art film gazing weekends.
Then there's charity at home with our own kids. Hanging out with your own little ones is sometimes easy, breezy, lemon squeezy. And sometimes it's truly hard.
Last night, I actually "quit." I didn't know who I was handing my notice too. God, I guess. I knew at 4:30 AM that I was finished. Maria needed a night feeding at 3:30 AM and nothing could lull her back to sleep. I was so, so tired. Then, I started to the math caculations. I've been nursing Maria for eleven months and pregnant for nine months. That means my last full night's sleep was back in September 2006. 2006!!!
I got so upset that I handed "party girl" to her father, climbed out of bed and walked out the front door of the house. I stood on the "welcome" mat and tried to take some deep breaths.
Thankfully, our "Welcome Pope Benedict" montage was still on my front door. So I gazed into our Pope's eyes and muttered this prayer: "You said that Christ is our Hope, Papa and I believe you, but not sleeping and not having money for groceries and worring about our rent spike next month, makes being a Mother very, very hard!" Our Pope waved happily at me. I thought about his mother and how she must have had sleepless nights like this with her happy baby Joseph. She dealt with them gracefully on top of dealing with the incredible stress of the Natzis and two World Wars. I said a prayer to her for help, and that was enough to get me to head back into bed.
My husband let us skip Daily Mass this morning, so I caught up a little on sleep. Headed out the door to partake in Ben & Jerry's free ice-cream day, I saw the Pope Benedict pictures again. "Charity begins at home, in the little domestic church," Pope Benedict recently told us. It's a hard, hard deal to love the Lord BEYOND your strength somedays. But it feels good to never worry about being "unemployed" or directionless in how to do deeds of charity ever again.
Emily wants to find a "do good" job in the social justice field. She could hardly share half my genes if she was thinking about a career in Hedgefund Managment. All the same, it's getting harder and harder to talk to her about our shared interest in saving the world. Her talk consists of NGOs, eccumencialism, non-profits, and "productive plannning."
My whole life has sort of shrunk and expanded in one burst. My whole "plan" right now is:
Step One: Discern God's will
Step Two: Do it
I think my sister would probably agree with that approach, since she's right now in the midst of "what job does God want me to have?"
For me, however, God's will isn't some abstract thing "out there" for me to discover. God's will is sort of in my face all the time. I know what I'm supposed to be doing. The challenge is to do it, consistently, which means ALL THE TIME, without complaining! In otherwords, God is in the details.
For me, the details, is where charity starts to hurt. It's one thing to "volunteer" to read to an economically deprived child once a week, or send protest letters demanding that Congress not cut the food stamps funding, or carry a recycled mug into Starbucks. That's benevolence, or "giving out of your excess."
It's Charity-- "giving of what you need" to turn your life upside, give up "free-time", give up letter writing and Starbucks trips in order to have a bunch of new souls in a short time. . .then give your only bike pump to the neighborhood kids who don't have a Dad at home and then watch your husband walk to work for a week after his bike gets a flat tire. . . and then feed pancakes on your day of rest to another neighborhood kid who is having a hard time. I've written before that I served as a child advocate for four years in Appalachia. It wasn't until I was fumming after my husband spent yet another Sunday patching up the bikes for kids with missing Dads that I realized, my "child advocacy" work before my marriage was never that hard. Child Advocacy was a job that let me off to recover on the weekends. Now there are no more lazy, pajama-wearing, paper reading, coffee drinking, art film gazing weekends.
Then there's charity at home with our own kids. Hanging out with your own little ones is sometimes easy, breezy, lemon squeezy. And sometimes it's truly hard.
Last night, I actually "quit." I didn't know who I was handing my notice too. God, I guess. I knew at 4:30 AM that I was finished. Maria needed a night feeding at 3:30 AM and nothing could lull her back to sleep. I was so, so tired. Then, I started to the math caculations. I've been nursing Maria for eleven months and pregnant for nine months. That means my last full night's sleep was back in September 2006. 2006!!!
I got so upset that I handed "party girl" to her father, climbed out of bed and walked out the front door of the house. I stood on the "welcome" mat and tried to take some deep breaths.
Thankfully, our "Welcome Pope Benedict" montage was still on my front door. So I gazed into our Pope's eyes and muttered this prayer: "You said that Christ is our Hope, Papa and I believe you, but not sleeping and not having money for groceries and worring about our rent spike next month, makes being a Mother very, very hard!" Our Pope waved happily at me. I thought about his mother and how she must have had sleepless nights like this with her happy baby Joseph. She dealt with them gracefully on top of dealing with the incredible stress of the Natzis and two World Wars. I said a prayer to her for help, and that was enough to get me to head back into bed.
My husband let us skip Daily Mass this morning, so I caught up a little on sleep. Headed out the door to partake in Ben & Jerry's free ice-cream day, I saw the Pope Benedict pictures again. "Charity begins at home, in the little domestic church," Pope Benedict recently told us. It's a hard, hard deal to love the Lord BEYOND your strength somedays. But it feels good to never worry about being "unemployed" or directionless in how to do deeds of charity ever again.
The Magic Fast
alec vanderboom
Netflix mailed us “The Chronicles of Narnia” this weekend. Something about watching it with my wide-eyed pre-school set has got me thinking about imposing a stricter fast from all things magic.
As I kid, I grew up surrounded by images of witches. There was the good witch Glenda in the Wizard of Oz. The funny housewife in “Bewitched.” The evil stepmother in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Growing up witches seemed like a harmless Halloween costume or a relic from medieval folk tales.
Then something happened over the past 15 years. Witches became Wiccans.--A true false religion that started gobbling up my peers.
In college, I remember sitting down with my Protestant Chaplin for a discussion about how to reach out to students of different faith. There were discussion about inter-faith dialogue with Jews, Muslims and Hindis. Then he said “What about the pagans? I heard there was a new ritual about dancing around the oak tree on the winter solstices. They had a big crowd. Those poor kids have no faculty advisor on campus, perhaps we can help them.”
“NOT THE PAGANS,” I responded. I didn’t really have a full explanation at that point. My baby-boomer Chaplin thought I was being unnecessarily narrow-minded. I couldn’t articulate my feelings well on that day. It just seem so clear to me on a gut level that believing magic was real was not a faith.
Then came graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin. There I was shocked to rub shoulders with actual Wiccans. I thought witches and warlocks had disappeared soon after the Salem Witch Trials. But here were twenty-something peers, fed up with the oppression of the patriarchy of Christianity. The girls bought cauldrons and practiced spells for more money and better roommates. The boys, who hoped the date the pretty girls, bought hexagon pendants and magic wands.
Meanwhile, countless friends have told me about the “amazing” experiences with accurate palm-readers in New Orleans and “insightful” daily horoscopes. There’s the “magic” of the secrete tooted on Oprah. And my was I shocked to see cartoon after cartoon of happy kid witches on the Saturday morning cartoons after my oldest kid hit age three. Even worse, Catholic kids in our local newspaper were quoted as saying that seeing the Pope "felt like magic!"
The one thing I have gleaned from my reading of the Old Testament is that God is not down with sorcery. Believing that you can reduce control of the universe to your own personal "whim", is the opposite of embracing the humility to true all powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Even the murder of your brother does not profane the mystery of faith as much as one small "money quick" spell.
Once I started flipping over the happy “animal year” chart at our local Chinese Restaurant, which by the way happens to have the BEST garlic dishes and is a favorite of the Bush family, I started finding “magic” everywhere.
When my kid showed up for Valentines Days at her C.C.D. class, there was a giant cupid over her door. “Why is there a naked Guardian angel on my door?” she innocently asked. That prompted a huge discussion that St. Valentine was real, and was martyred by the Romans who believe such “fake” gods as cupid were real instead of Christ. Jon and I started scratching our heads. Why had we never noticed how awful it was to promote fake Roman deities on the feast day of the Holy Saint martyred for his beliefs in the sanctity of marriage before?
Then came St. Patrick’s Day. Now giant leprechaun’s and pots of gold appeared outside the Catholic School Classroom. “We can like those men in funny hats, right Mom?” Hannah said. That prompted a chat that St. Patrick was real and that he came to help those Irish believe in the Trinity (yeah shamrocks) over the foolish fairies.
My husband and I are in a difficult role as converts. Half the in-laws don’t believe in “the Jesus bread” as Hannah delicately puts it. The other half think that going to Sunday Mass is a bunch of hooey since you can just as happily talk to God among the Trees. We get a lot of questions about “what is your Halloween costume this year?” among the grandparents and nil about “How are you coming on learning your rosary?” I admit this unique situation has created a type of bunker mentality between my husband and I in terms of Holiday traditions.
Still, I’ve gone on an all out war against “magic” in my house. Gone are the “lucky charms.” Saying “I’m blessed” has replaced saying “I’m lucky.”
Now, I’m considering extended the blanket “no wiccan cartoons” ban to no “witch movies’ in general. Even with such Christian classics as “the Chronicles of Narnia.”
Here’s my reasoning. I think that close to Christianity, yet still a myth is even more dangerous that “total myth” such as Harry Potter. The Christian parallels in this story are striking, but still “wrong.” Aslan is supposed to be a Christ figure, yet here is talking about his “resurrection” in terms of “the deep magic”. For all his fame among Catholic circles, C.S. Lewis is not a Roman Catholic. He was an Anglican. One in our faith in baptism, but not one in the sense of the Eucharist, and I'd argue not a full understanding of Jesus in his divinity or as his founding of one church on the rock of Saint Peter. Why do I want to confuse my five year old's hand on this issue and let her think that "witches" are nothing more than harmless fairy tales?
Has anyone else come up with clear rules on this difficult, modern issue?
As I kid, I grew up surrounded by images of witches. There was the good witch Glenda in the Wizard of Oz. The funny housewife in “Bewitched.” The evil stepmother in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Growing up witches seemed like a harmless Halloween costume or a relic from medieval folk tales.
Then something happened over the past 15 years. Witches became Wiccans.--A true false religion that started gobbling up my peers.
In college, I remember sitting down with my Protestant Chaplin for a discussion about how to reach out to students of different faith. There were discussion about inter-faith dialogue with Jews, Muslims and Hindis. Then he said “What about the pagans? I heard there was a new ritual about dancing around the oak tree on the winter solstices. They had a big crowd. Those poor kids have no faculty advisor on campus, perhaps we can help them.”
“NOT THE PAGANS,” I responded. I didn’t really have a full explanation at that point. My baby-boomer Chaplin thought I was being unnecessarily narrow-minded. I couldn’t articulate my feelings well on that day. It just seem so clear to me on a gut level that believing magic was real was not a faith.
Then came graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin. There I was shocked to rub shoulders with actual Wiccans. I thought witches and warlocks had disappeared soon after the Salem Witch Trials. But here were twenty-something peers, fed up with the oppression of the patriarchy of Christianity. The girls bought cauldrons and practiced spells for more money and better roommates. The boys, who hoped the date the pretty girls, bought hexagon pendants and magic wands.
Meanwhile, countless friends have told me about the “amazing” experiences with accurate palm-readers in New Orleans and “insightful” daily horoscopes. There’s the “magic” of the secrete tooted on Oprah. And my was I shocked to see cartoon after cartoon of happy kid witches on the Saturday morning cartoons after my oldest kid hit age three. Even worse, Catholic kids in our local newspaper were quoted as saying that seeing the Pope "felt like magic!"
The one thing I have gleaned from my reading of the Old Testament is that God is not down with sorcery. Believing that you can reduce control of the universe to your own personal "whim", is the opposite of embracing the humility to true all powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Even the murder of your brother does not profane the mystery of faith as much as one small "money quick" spell.
Once I started flipping over the happy “animal year” chart at our local Chinese Restaurant, which by the way happens to have the BEST garlic dishes and is a favorite of the Bush family, I started finding “magic” everywhere.
When my kid showed up for Valentines Days at her C.C.D. class, there was a giant cupid over her door. “Why is there a naked Guardian angel on my door?” she innocently asked. That prompted a huge discussion that St. Valentine was real, and was martyred by the Romans who believe such “fake” gods as cupid were real instead of Christ. Jon and I started scratching our heads. Why had we never noticed how awful it was to promote fake Roman deities on the feast day of the Holy Saint martyred for his beliefs in the sanctity of marriage before?
Then came St. Patrick’s Day. Now giant leprechaun’s and pots of gold appeared outside the Catholic School Classroom. “We can like those men in funny hats, right Mom?” Hannah said. That prompted a chat that St. Patrick was real and that he came to help those Irish believe in the Trinity (yeah shamrocks) over the foolish fairies.
My husband and I are in a difficult role as converts. Half the in-laws don’t believe in “the Jesus bread” as Hannah delicately puts it. The other half think that going to Sunday Mass is a bunch of hooey since you can just as happily talk to God among the Trees. We get a lot of questions about “what is your Halloween costume this year?” among the grandparents and nil about “How are you coming on learning your rosary?” I admit this unique situation has created a type of bunker mentality between my husband and I in terms of Holiday traditions.
Still, I’ve gone on an all out war against “magic” in my house. Gone are the “lucky charms.” Saying “I’m blessed” has replaced saying “I’m lucky.”
Now, I’m considering extended the blanket “no wiccan cartoons” ban to no “witch movies’ in general. Even with such Christian classics as “the Chronicles of Narnia.”
Here’s my reasoning. I think that close to Christianity, yet still a myth is even more dangerous that “total myth” such as Harry Potter. The Christian parallels in this story are striking, but still “wrong.” Aslan is supposed to be a Christ figure, yet here is talking about his “resurrection” in terms of “the deep magic”. For all his fame among Catholic circles, C.S. Lewis is not a Roman Catholic. He was an Anglican. One in our faith in baptism, but not one in the sense of the Eucharist, and I'd argue not a full understanding of Jesus in his divinity or as his founding of one church on the rock of Saint Peter. Why do I want to confuse my five year old's hand on this issue and let her think that "witches" are nothing more than harmless fairy tales?
Has anyone else come up with clear rules on this difficult, modern issue?
Just a Reminder to Myself
alec vanderboom
that 3 year old boys are well worth the effort it takes to turn them into sweet Catholic men!
Feast of Saint Mark
alec vanderboom
Today is the feast of Saint Mark, martyr for the faith and author of the first Gospel. In his homily today, Father Brennan explained that Saint Mark was a close companion of Saint Peter. He would have been immersed in the story of Christ directly from Saint Peter's lips. Inspired by these truths and wanting to share them with others who were not as priviledged to hear "the Good News" from Saint Peter directly, Saint Mark wrote the first Gospel. Saint Mark basically "invented" a new genre of writing, the Gospels. This would have been a radical act in the world of oral tradition and story-telling. Imagine all that work to write out a Gospel by hand before the age of the printing-press. All of Saint Mark's intensive liteary work was motivated by love!
A Sign of the Times
alec vanderboom
Last night, as I filled up the tank on my way to choir practice I glanced over at a huge sign over Exxon saying "Buy Milk here for $2.99 a gallon!" The price of the cheapest gas, (at our area's cheapest gas station) was $3.54 a gallon. That whole moment felt all wrong to me, but I'm sure I'll be living through many more of them as a mother of a "large" family during these crazy economic times.
A New Art Find
alec vanderboom
"As Seen From the Cross"
James Tissot, French
From the book: "The life of our Saviour Jesus Christ: Three hundred and sixty-five compositions from the four Gospels with notes and explanatory drawings."
In the late 1890s, this artist had a sort of conversion experience while doing ironic sketchs of the London party scene. In Tissot's own words "I coulnd't get the image of Christ out of my mind." So Tissot moves to Palestine and spends years in serious study of the Holy Land. The end result is the art book listed above. Oh, I hope I can somehow get my hands on this rare book through our inter-library loan program.
Order, Obedience, Sincerity
alec vanderboom
When I wrote this post, I thought I had the “order, obedience, sincerity thing almost down. My two naughty chair --no matter what, even if I’m nursing a starving baby or about to burn dinner—offences were “disobeying a direct order” and “lying.” I just have to figure out a creative way to add “picking up the toys” to our daily task list, I thought as I listened to the incredibly inspiring speech on sanctity by a mother of twelve.
Yeah, turns out that having three kids far under the age of reason is boot camp for my soul! The virtues I’m learning by the school of hard knocks are order, obedience and sincerity.
Order
I had no idea that this simple virtue would define “good day” from “awful day.” Forget checking our D.C. the pollen count, if the laundry in my house is spilled all over the hallway--that spells a “bad” day for us. Everything else goes down hill from breakfast over unwashed dinner dishes.
Has anyone seen wrote Cold Mountain? You know the scene where the lovely Ada screams to the hardy Rudy “Why? You can ask Why about just about all of my education. I know how to embroider, but I can’t knit. I can name plants in Latin, but I don’t know how to find three herbs we can eat! I can name all the major rivers in Europe, but I can’t name a stream in this county! If it had a purpose, if it had a use, then I couldn’t learn it because it wasn’t fit for making me a lady!” I have that same dialogue in my head every day. I never had use to learn anything practical in life because I was to busy mastering obscure Latin terms in order to be a working woman!
My notion growing us was that housework was for fools. As a smart girl you weren’t supposed to waste your time preparing dinner. My mom, who it must be said is a cracker jack of a teacher, served us fish sticks or chicken nuggets every night. Every single night something came out of the freezer, got defrosted in the oven (and later the microwave) and ended up on our plate. Bathrooms, linen closets, hallway closets, we never cleaned them. Once a year, my family would spend a day of “work camp” where we would gather all the trash and broken things into a huge pile of trash-bags and cart them away.
Not surprising, there are some inherent problems with this method of maintaining “order.”
So I’ve been starting from scratch. Since my marriage, I’ve painfully, painfully built up some methods and learning some home-making skills under the gun. Now with three “real” children (as opposed to two and a baby who happily went everywhere in my arms), my house-hold routine has fallen apart. No one naps at the same time. No one will sit quietly watching TV together without needing a constant referee.
And so I’m stuck, except the need for serious order is growing! One of the saddest things about the whole “roof is leaking” incident is that I thought, “oh no, I just finished spring cleaning their room.” My next thought was “thank heavens, how could we have picked up their entire room in under 10 minutes if I hadn’t already pitched out half of their old toys?” While we hope that the roof will stay dry, three kids mean that we will soon be battling other emergencies like the stomach flu.
So order is crucial, because the more kids you have the more you increase the risk that “disorder” will soon engulf your home.
Please pray for me, to master the “order” habit. Let me know if you have any thoughts on how to increase the virtue of “order” in your life.
Yeah, turns out that having three kids far under the age of reason is boot camp for my soul! The virtues I’m learning by the school of hard knocks are order, obedience and sincerity.
Order
I had no idea that this simple virtue would define “good day” from “awful day.” Forget checking our D.C. the pollen count, if the laundry in my house is spilled all over the hallway--that spells a “bad” day for us. Everything else goes down hill from breakfast over unwashed dinner dishes.
Has anyone seen wrote Cold Mountain? You know the scene where the lovely Ada screams to the hardy Rudy “Why? You can ask Why about just about all of my education. I know how to embroider, but I can’t knit. I can name plants in Latin, but I don’t know how to find three herbs we can eat! I can name all the major rivers in Europe, but I can’t name a stream in this county! If it had a purpose, if it had a use, then I couldn’t learn it because it wasn’t fit for making me a lady!” I have that same dialogue in my head every day. I never had use to learn anything practical in life because I was to busy mastering obscure Latin terms in order to be a working woman!
My notion growing us was that housework was for fools. As a smart girl you weren’t supposed to waste your time preparing dinner. My mom, who it must be said is a cracker jack of a teacher, served us fish sticks or chicken nuggets every night. Every single night something came out of the freezer, got defrosted in the oven (and later the microwave) and ended up on our plate. Bathrooms, linen closets, hallway closets, we never cleaned them. Once a year, my family would spend a day of “work camp” where we would gather all the trash and broken things into a huge pile of trash-bags and cart them away.
Not surprising, there are some inherent problems with this method of maintaining “order.”
So I’ve been starting from scratch. Since my marriage, I’ve painfully, painfully built up some methods and learning some home-making skills under the gun. Now with three “real” children (as opposed to two and a baby who happily went everywhere in my arms), my house-hold routine has fallen apart. No one naps at the same time. No one will sit quietly watching TV together without needing a constant referee.
And so I’m stuck, except the need for serious order is growing! One of the saddest things about the whole “roof is leaking” incident is that I thought, “oh no, I just finished spring cleaning their room.” My next thought was “thank heavens, how could we have picked up their entire room in under 10 minutes if I hadn’t already pitched out half of their old toys?” While we hope that the roof will stay dry, three kids mean that we will soon be battling other emergencies like the stomach flu.
So order is crucial, because the more kids you have the more you increase the risk that “disorder” will soon engulf your home.
Please pray for me, to master the “order” habit. Let me know if you have any thoughts on how to increase the virtue of “order” in your life.