Light and Momentary

Present Tense

I have spent the past week in a state of wild oscillation. Much of the time I am confident that good sense will prevail, but too often I have been angry, fearful, tearful, impatient. Elwood is completely unruffled by the whole thing. He thinks I need to get a grip.

And maybe I do. After I posted yesterday about the effect this is having on my kids, I thought, "Maybe I'm part of the reason they're upset. Maybe if I weren't so upset about it myself, they wouldn't be as worried." Some of it I can't help, because I have been put together as a sensitive person. But some of it I can.

My best pal in town lives right around the corner. I had been pining to talk to her about this CPS mess but she was out of town for a week. Yesterday I went to her house for a cup of tea and a long talk, and came home feeling fortified. I pulled out my guitar and a couple of Bibles and started singing the end of Romans 8. I kept singing while I was cooking dinner and cutting the kids' hair afterward. There's something soul-settling in belting out "If God be for us, who can stand against us?" at the top of your lungs.

It vexes me that the caseworker said this would be formally resolved by the middle of the week at the latest, and yet I have heard nothing. It seems to me that it would take him 30 seconds to say, "I'm totally swamped with an emergency case but I'll get back to you as soon as I can." But no. I have been stewing all week about his refusal to take my calls and his failure to return my messages. I am resolving to stew no longer.

Last night I was playing around with phrasing, trying to get that "conquer overwhelmingly" bit of Romans 8 to fit the tune I'd come up with, when something struck me. I was singing,"We will conquer," but that's not right. It's present tense, not future: we conquer now. I've been thinking about that.

The single most important thing for me to do in this situation is to allow God to use it to bring our family closer to heaven. The most likely outcome is an unfounded determination. If that doesn't happen, we hire a lawyer to make it happen on appeal. (I have to think that a good lawyer would have a field day with this case.) I can't do anything about that right now. I cannot conquer bureaucracy; I cannot make the caseworker move faster. But I can seize this opportunity to conquer some of the things holding me back from heaven: petulance, impatience, anxiety. I can do that today, in the present tense.

Feast of St. Martha

For almost nine years now I have had a little postcard hanging in my kitchen, a print of Vermeer's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. I love it because it is a beautiful piece of art, for one. Occasionally when we lived in Edinburgh and I had a little time to myself, I would go to the National Gallery and just sit in front of it. I love it also because it reminds me that the main thing is not whether my pie crust flakes or my souffle puffs: the main thing is whether I am cooking for the love of God.

Sometimes in my kitchen I get these glimpses of what holy hospitality is like. Sometimes I realize that my ego is getting in the way again, making it about the food and not about loving service. Always, from Edinburgh to the Midwest to the East Coast and back again, St. Martha with her basket of bread has been nearby as a gentle reminder to keep on choosing the better part.

This morning I made oven pancake for breakfast and prayed for my children while I sliced nectarines. Together we read the story of St. Martha from Ethel Pochocki's little book, More Once Upon A Time Saints. (Lest you imagine a cloyingly perfect scene, let me hasten to tell you that the two younger boys complained about the presence of nectarine in their oven pancake and Alex interrupted to say, "Cthulu have mercy!")

Pochocki retells the gospel stories about St. Martha and then adds the legend that she and her sister were cast adrift during the persecutions and wound up on the coast of southern France, where she lived the rest of her life. There were dragons in the countryside near her village, but Martha dispatched them with holy courage and a little holy water. Tonight we will have a St. Martha dinner: pan bagnat, with ratatouille, and perhaps a pithivier if I can pull it off without getting cranky. (It would be the height of irony for me to get myself in a tizzy over puff pastry when I am ostensibly remembering the life of St. Martha.)

I have to stop at the grocery store to get zucchini for the ratatouille and frozen puff pastry because I am not crazy enough to make my own on a 90 degree day. If they happen to have any dragon steaks on sale, I am totally revising the menu.

More Blessed To Give

When I was a kid, I thought "it is more blessed to give than to receive" sounded like a scam. If you could persuade people to give you stuff, because they thought they'd be blessed that way, then you'd get lots of stuff. Which was clearly better, sappy sayings aside.

I don't think I knew it was Jesus who originated that particular saying. Also, I was eight years old. I've learned a thing or two since then.

Remember when I was making socks for my friend who was having trouble? I gave them to her yesterday. I had no idea -- none at all -- how blessed I would be in the giving. I am feeling a little shy about posting the end of the story, because it sounds so improbable. But here it is anyway.

My friend reads my blog, and I was prepared to take down that sock-knitting post if she wanted me to. I've known her for a while and I'd never seen her so far down. I could imagine that if I were in a bad spot, somebody else's description of my troubles, posted on the internet for all the world to read, might be the last thing I'd want to see.

But she didn't want me to make the post go away. In fact, the next time I was at her house for coffee, she said the sock-in-progress got her back to Mass. I cried right there in her kitchen -- I still can't think about it without tearing up. I had been really worried that she was staying away from church. At first I wanted to say, "But the graces! The community!" Etc. I knew that wasn't what she needed, so I just prayed and knitted her socks and let the Holy Spirit do his job instead of tripping over myself to do it for him.

She sought a little help to get unstuck. I cast on the second sock and kept praying.

Last week at the park she said the most improbable thing of all: she said knowing that I was making those socks for her pulled her out of her funk. She said she couldn't explain it (socks??) but maybe it was the Holy Spirit.

This was a humbling experience for me. I've been discouraged lately about a couple of long-term situations where I seem to be getting celestial voice mail. I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I started knitting these socks, but it was not a rapid and dramatic answer. This situation reminds me that God's timing often isn't what I think it will be. It reminds me that a small sacrifice, offered with love, can bear unexpected fruit. It reminds me that hope begets hope. And it chokes me up, every time I think about my smiling friend.

It's easy for me to look at the socks and see their imperfections, like the slight lopsidedness in one of the kitchenered toes (note to self: grafting is better done when all is quiet, because it's easy to get distracted by spontaneous wrestling matches). But she says that they're beautiful and comfortable and that she'll treasure them, which reminds me that I don't have to love perfectly to make the effort of loving worthwhile. The whole thing makes me want to knit her another pair -- who knows what might happen next?

More blessed to give indeed.

Neither Jew Nor Greek

I suspect you don't have to read this blog for very long to surmise that I think like a Democrat. I hope you don't have to read this blog for very long to surmise that I strive to be a faithful Catholic. And I know you don't have to be a rocket scientist to surmise that this puts me in a quandary.

My husband and I mostly agree about politics and the faith, but he doesn't wring his hands over which way to vote. He used to mix it up more; he voted for Bush Père when we were in college. (At the time this seemed to me as exotic and unexpected as if he had announced he was becoming a Hasidic Jew and trading in his ROTC flattop for sidelocks.) But he says Republicans today are not what Republicans were ten years ago, and he will not be voting for a Republican in the foreseeable future. "What are the Republicans really doing to end abortion?" he asks. "Nothing," he answers himself. "And they support the war, and torture, and a hundred other things I hate." He has no kind words for the Catholics on the Supreme Court, who do nothing, he says, about abortion and vote instead to suspend habeas corpus.

He is blunter with me than he is with acquaintances, though, and so I was startled when he came home from a poker game disheartened by a ferocious argument about politics. A friend of ours from church, usually a mild-mannered guy, was outraged by Elwood's political views. His escalating fury led him to bellow in Elwood's face, spraying spittle, "You have no rights! You have no rights!" If Obama is elected, he was saying, you'll have no rights. Because Obama is a socialist.

At that Elwood decided it was time to call it a night, and got up to leave. The other men at the poker table said, "Wait, don't go. You guys should shake hands. We want you to come back for next month's poker game." Elwood turned around and proffered his hand.

FMMF (Formerly Mild-Mannered Friend) wouldn't shake hands. I can't apologize, he said; this is too foundational to my faith.

Faith in what, I have to ask. I don't recall that the Bible says, "Thou shalt revile the Democratic presidential nominee," or, "Yea, verily, a pro-life Democrat is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord," but there is that pesky business about "The wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God." Also, "love your neighbor" (and your enemy, even), which I find hard to square with spraying spit in his face.

While some individual bishops have made statements essentially urging the faithful to vote Republican, the USCCB document called Faithful Citizenship acknowledges the complexity of the issues facing Catholics who must choose between the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. (My husband likes Mark Shea's nomenclature but thinks he has the labels backwards.) For my part, I cannot bring myself to vote for someone who opposes SCHIP. It seems so obvious to me that providing affordable prenatal care is a crucial part of reducing the number of abortions in this country. What do we say to women with no maternity coverage when obstetric care costs $10K and more? "Keep warm and eat well," I guess.

I cannot bring myself to vote for Obama either, but my husband does not share those scruples. After careful consideration, he has decided that there are "proportionate reasons" to vote Democrat in November. While I can find plenty of conservative bloggers willing to tell him he shouldn't receive the Eucharist until he sees the light (that would be the light of John McCain or perhaps of Ron Paul, write-in candidate), I don't buy it. And even though FMMF called the next day to apologize, I am still troubled by their poker game gone wrong.

It's pretty common, I think, for people to expect a measure of homogeneity among their friends. It's easy for "we have so much in common" to morph into "how could you do a crazy thing like that?" whether the crazy thing is taking your husband's name (this from my college roommates) or supporting a single-payer health care system (this from the poker players). And yet I think it is impossible to look at the created world and not see that God loves variety, or to read St. Paul without seeing Christ's tremendous power to unite disparate kinds of people. Surely it is absurd to suggest that right-wing political views are a prerequisite for admission into heaven. Surely we can all acknowledge that a faithful Catholic, a Catholic committed to building a culture of life, can have Democratic sympathies.

For a while I tried to think like a Republican -- in college, when I first got serious about being a Christian and all my mentors were Republicans, and then for a few years afterward. It didn't work. I still think of myself as a Democrat, even though I haven't voted for a Democratic candidate since 1992. I reject the idea that "Catholic Democrat" equals "dissenter with an inadequately formed conscience." I look forward to the day when the party realizes that it has alienated untold numbers of voters with its position on abortion rights.

One of the things I first loved about my husband was his love of variety, and the way he challenged me to re-examine my own preference for the familiar. In some ways we are very different, and so inside each of our wedding bands is engraved half of a verse about Christ our unity: "For he himself is our peace [his]; he has made the two one [mine]." Real unity is hard but it beats the alternative, in the church as in marriage. It's time for me to let go of being angry with FMMF, because this morning we will receive the same gift from the same table. Which is, after all, the most important thing.

[Civil disagreement is welcome, as always. Spittle-spraying comments will be deleted.]

Sock Knitting and the Christian Life

The weekend before last I started knitting a pair of Monkeys. Then I started again. And again, and again. On the fifth try, I got them going. (A 32-inch needle is really too short for magic loop, but it can work if you are stubborn enough.)

A couple of days later I talked to a dear friend who has been having a hard time. I got it into my head that I would make these socks for her, praying for her whenever I sat down to knit, and offering up the frustrations that came my way in the process. I wondered if this was a dumb idea, and if maybe I should just take her a casserole if I wanted to do something concrete. But I think, on reflection, that sock knitting and the Christian life have more in common than you might expect.

Both require perseverance, for one thing. A pair of socks requires about 30,000 stitches, which roughly corresponds to the number of days in an average American woman's life. It takes patience and discipline to keep going through all those stitches, all those days. Sometimes I am tempted to throw my knitting across the room, or throw up my hands and plan a move to New Zealand.  Second Sock Syndrome is a fine metaphor for midlife, "the long, dull, monotonous years," as Screwtape advised Wormwood, which are "excellent campaigning weather."

Remember the bit in A Wrinkle in Time where one of the Mrs. W ladies compared human life to a sonnet? The form presents many constraints, she said, but you are free to make something lovely of it. So also with socks. Within the requirements of cuff, leg, heel, gusset, foot, toe, you have the freedom to do whatever suits you: lace or cables or top-down or toe-up or some kind of crazy Cat Bordhi sideways thing. One of my friend's struggles is the question of (paraphrasing cautiously here) how human freedom and divine sovereignty intersect -- does God intervene in the details of our lives? I cannot address the theological fine points, but I am certain that there are many ways for a Christian woman to fashion something beautiful out of her days, or her yarn.

I was well into the toe decreases when I spotted a dropped stitch back up in the leg. I felt like an idiot. I thought, "I can't even post to Ravelry to ask how to fix it because they'll all know I'm an idiot. Plus they will look at my notebook and see my ugly sweater cast-ons." Then I got a grip, and realized that this would be Exhibit A in how not to live the Christian life. Mistakes happen. You fix them the best you can. Misplaced pride only keeps you from getting where you're going.

Non-knitters really don't get sock knitting. You're knitting a sock? When you could buy a sock at Target for approximately 35 cents? You're spending all that time on a sock that will go on someone's smelly foot and eventually get holes in it? As my husband said when I, full of pride, showed him my first finished adult sock, "Ah, yes, an excellent use of 20 hours of your life." I did not poke him with a dpn, though I thought about it, because sock knitting teaches a person patience (and the importance of not breaking dpns). Here, too, I think the parallel is clear: you can devote yourself to fashioning a chain of tidy stitches or a string of well-ordered days, but usually those efforts will be hidden. (There are occasional mothering moments that I might compare to being stuffed in a smelly shoe.) Always, in socks and life, the result is ephemeral. Make it beautiful anyway.

The last line of the instructions for these socks says, "Block well." Blocking, for any non-knitters with the patience to read this far (and that's a lot of patience! you should think about taking up sock knitting with all that patience!), means that I will swish the sock in water and press out the excess gently. I will pin it out, stretching it in all directions, and leave it to dry. This will open out the lace pattern and even out the stockinette stitch, so that it looks the way the designer meant it to look. While I am blocking I will pray for my stretched-thin friend again, for peace and trust amid the stretching. I believe that in the seasons when we feel like we've been stretched too far and hung out to dry, God can work in us, calling forth the women we were meant to be. I would appreciate it if you'd pray for her, too.

Ineffable Gibbets

The American bishops are debating about translations again, fretting that Joe Average Catholic will be confused by dependent clauses and words like "wrought."

Perhaps I am biased here, because words are my thing. I have an undergraduate literature degree because I loved words and the ways they fit together. I distinctly remember using the word "ineffable," another of the proposed word choices criticized as inappropriately arcane, in a paper that I wrote when I was 18 (John Donne was the topic). In the ensuing 20 years, I have never once observed anyone panicking or shutting down in the face of the word "ineffable." I have never even observed any unhappy text-messaging in response: "Hlp 2 mny big wrds!"

The prayers of the Church already incorporate complex syntax. The first time I read the Angelus, it took me four or five tries to parse it. "Was made known by the message of an angel may by his Passion and Cross be brought"? I couldn't get those nouns and verbs to line up in a way that made sense to me. Do the bishops think we need to re-translate that as well?

I do not. I believe that people are wired to adapt to complex syntax. Every summer I read a Dickens novel (only three left!), and every summer I spend the first 60 pages thinking, "Oh, Mr. Dickens, your editor must have been sleeping at the switch. Was it necessary for that sentence to be a hundred words long?" Then my brain adjusts. Brains do that.

We are built for learning language. Whenever we listen to someone with an unfamiliar accent or an unfamiliar lexicon, we go through the same process: an initial "huh?" stage, a figuring-it-out stage, and eventually, an effortless stage. Some people do it with more ease than others, and some speakers (William F. Buckley, say) have an enduring ability to induce head-scratching in the listener. But it is preposterous -- an underestimation of God's design for the human brain -- to suggest that longer sentences in the liturgy would be a lasting impediment to comprehension.

When I was a new convert, reluctant to switch from my beloved NIV Bible to the NAB, one of the things that persuaded me to make the move was the language of the NAB. I remember Hebrews 1 pulling me up short: Jesus as the refulgence of the Father's glory still makes my heart sing. The Bible is full of unfamiliar words -- hyrax and chrysoprase and propitiatory (as a noun). Should we all switch over to The Message so we don't get confused? (Song of Songs: the daughters of Jerusalem say, "That dude's so into you!") One bishop objected explicitly to the word "gibbet," saying he hadn't heard it since 1949. But it features prominently in the NAB version of Esther -- surely he has read Esther in the past 60 years.

I am, for the record, enthusiastic about the phrase "the gibbet of the Cross." I think we have lost sight of the shame of crucifixion, of what an improbable instrument of redemption a cross really was. "Gibbet" offers exactly that connotation. It's not so hard to teach people what "gibbet" means.

I hesitated to write this post because it could sound elitist, but I think there may be more elitism in some of the bishops' comments. People can learn new words; they do it all the time. They do not usually throw up their hands and say, "Well, I guess I'm too stupid for this." I would argue, too, that one purpose of liturgy is stretch those who are listening -- to deepen their understanding of God and not merely to spoon-feed them the familiar. More cynically, I have to wonder if the bishops are overestimating the attentiveness of many of us in the pews. I include myself among the distracted -- I cannot count subordinate clauses while dealing with wiggly children.

This got longer than I thought it would (good thing I'm not trying to write for the bishops, since long is apparently bad in their view), but here's one last thought: when the Holy Spirit inspired St. John to describe the eternal nature of Christ, the result was "In the beginning was the Word." Christ the Word brings truth to us; we are designed to receive it, to share it. We were created to learn about the ineffable -- whether or not we know how to spell it.

Ready

Come on, ladies, how could I be pregnant? I have an early research project to defend, a semester to finish with five papers left to write, a poster presentation to prepare for early June, two different publications in progress with my advisor, and that's not even the whole of it. I also have 15 years' experience with licit and effective means of avoiding pregnancy, and a husband who is 100% on board with not having a baby at this time. I can't be pregnant.

Good Friday Thoughts

On Palm Sunday I took the boys to an early Mass. We were a few minutes early and I knelt down to enjoy the quiet. As it turned out, the priest was 15 minutes late, so there was a lot of quiet to enjoy. Someone sat down to play a piano piece while we were waiting. It was a little strange: the guy wasn't especially technically skilled (plenty of missed notes), but the piece spoke more clearly than any music I ever remember hearing. Without words it told about the Passion, a hymn of praise and a terrible lament woven into one.

Communion

Over the summer I told my son I thought he shouldn't receive communion.

Count the Cost

Twelve years ago last month I miscarried our first baby, in the twelfth week of my pregnancy. The months that followed taught me many things, but the hardest lessons came on a September weekend. I was angry -- angry that my baby had died, angry that I was still walking around in a fog. My houseplants were all dying and I kept getting lost in my own town. I could not think of my baby, of her tiny perfect ears and the improbably beautiful curve of her ribcage, without suffocating grief, but I couldn't not think about her. On that Saturday I said to God, "No. This is too much and I WILL NOT do it."

The next day's gospel reading: "Before you build a tower, count the cost." I thought about all the times I had offered myself to God, had said, "whatever you ask me, I will do; wherever you lead me, I will go." The gospel was a pointed reminder to me of promises made, and with what felt like a tremendous effort of will I said, "Okay. I was wrong. I will do it. I wish I didn't have to and it hurts me terribly, but I will do it."

This morning in church I was frustrated. My oldest has decided he does not believe in God (he asked if he could re-baptize himself in sand to undo his baptism in water), and for all that I know it is normal to question and God has no grandchildren and he has to own these truths for himself -- for all that I am weary. (There are only so many times a person, or at least this person, can explain that foreknowledge does not imply causation and is compatible with free will before she starts to get exasperated. Arwen? Want a traveling apologetics gig?) My 5yo has been struggling lately with impulsive behavior and blithe refusal to listen, and I am more than ready for him to get past it. I was standing in the pew today, listening to the gospel and feeling like a failure, when Joe said loudly, "But I don't WANT to be next to Petey!"

The priest's voice interrupted my brief daydream, in which I was frog-marching Joe out of church: "Before you build a tower, count the cost."

My first thought was self-pitying: I did not know how much patience and creativity and diligence and plain hard work it would take to raise four sons. I did not know how deep it would go, how adroitly they would push my buttons. We have an unanticipated cost overrun in the construction of this tower, folks.

But quickly I remembered the Sunday twelve years ago when I heard the same gospel and wept over an empty womb and broken hopes. I looked at my boys around me and thought, "This is an embarrassment of riches." I imagined myself complaining to the me of twelve years ago, and it seemed to me that it would be like saying, to someone who had no money for food, something like, "My hedge fund manager isn't answering his cell and I am SO tired of waiting for him."

This obliterated the self-pity but not the discouragement. I still don't know what to do about my 10yo self-proclaimed atheist who yawns exaggeratedly all through Mass. But I looked up at the crucifix and knew what to do next, at least. Eyes front. Chin up. One step at a time.

So As To Win

Debs asked, kindly, about the state of the ankle I sprained four weeks ago today:  I am almost entirely better.  I can't sit cross-legged for very long, which is a liability for an early intervention therapist whose working hours are mostly spent playing in the floor, and it is still a little tender to the touch.  But I finished a 5K on Saturday, and her question reminded me that I meant to post some thoughts on running.

I run at night, usually, in loops around our friendly old neighborhood.  I had never worried much about safety until my fall, when I sat on the sidewalk and cried with no idea how I was going to get home.  My first run at night after that was rather stressful.  The sidewalks are old and uneven; the streets likewise.  The streetlights are frequently obscured by the lovely old trees whose presence is normally one of my favorite things about my part of town.

I had talked to a PT at work about resuming running, and I took her advice to start out slow and easy.  I was a little obsessed with watching for obstacles (I tripped over a stick the night I got hurt -- just didn't see it until I was on the way down), but it's dark at 9:30.  Near the end of my run I was puffing up a hill (or what passes for a hill here in the flatlands), straining to see, hungry for light.  I ran out of the shadow of a tree and into a pool of light, and it seemed like such a gift.  I thought about Ransom in the Perelandran caverns, longing for light, and about how seldom we are in the dark these days -- or at least in physical darkness.  I thought about Ps. 119, about "Thy word is a light unto my path" -- it shows us where we are going, and how to get there safely.  And I thought about the beginning of the Easter Vigil, where we chant "Christ our Light, thanks be to God."  Our eyes are made for light, and in the darkness they strain and yearn for what they cannot supply themselves.

The 5K was tough.  I had been running 2.5 miles comfortably in the evenings, but Saturday was blazing hot here.  The course was unfamiliar and mostly blacktop, throwing heat back in our faces.  I was struggling.  The sprinklers were on around the park and we were veering toward them, parched.  As with darkness, real unabating thirst is rare these days.  I have sung "As the Deer" more times than I can count, but it hit home on Saturday, as I thought about what it means to thirst for God. I thought about the Samaritan woman, hearing for the first time about the gift of living water -- freely available, from a well that will never run dry.

I was hurting by the end of the course; my knee hurt and my ankle hurt and my dignity hurt because I had hoped to do better than I did.  My Joe said, "Mom, next time you should run faster so you can be the winner."  I said, "Oh, honey, I'd have to work really hard to be the winner.  Those ladies run a lot more than I do."  And then I thought about St. Paul, exhorting the Corinthians.  "Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize?  Run so as to win."  Here in Self Esteem Nation we want to have lots of winners and no losers.  My boys all got medals for the fun run, just because they finished.  I see the drawbacks to competition, but we've lost something in making everyone a medalist.  How hard would I have to work if I wanted to win the prize? 

I am running toward an enduring prize, but I'm moving forward pretty slowly.  "Run so as to win" -- that makes me a little regretful about all the time I've spent doing the spiritual equivalent of 12-minute miles.  But here's a funny thing:  I went in search of the passage about forgetting what lies behind and pressing onward, which is not where I thought it was.  Instead I found this:

At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.  So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.

Onward, once more.