Light and Momentary

O Emmanuel

Today's antiphon calls Jesus the "legifer," the law-bearer.While Moses climbed Sinai to receive the law, Jesus came to us, bearing the law in himself. He took on human flesh with its many limitations to teach us this truth: his law is love.

From Adam's time onward, every human baby was conceived beneath the shadow of original sin. (The Blessed Mother was freed from its stain at her conception, but even she required a redeemer.) The Lord pierced that shadow with his own light. He needed no redeemer; he is redemption enfleshed and his law is righteousness.

He came to bring the heavenly food that still sustains us; he came in the innocence that would take on sin. His law is written plainly on pierced hands: his law is grace. Glory to him.

O God-with-us, our King and law-bearer,
the long-awaited of the nations and their Savior,
come to save us, Lord our God.

O King of the Nations

I don't feel very praise-y right now. A few weeks ago my husband and I had some late-night fun picking out gifts for our boys. Today two of the boys' gifts are missing, and the most likely explanation is that they were stolen from our porch. This makes me sad, and suspicious, and slightly stressed.

O Sunrise

We have lost sight of what it means to wait like watchmen for the dawn, here in our post-Edison world. We can keep darkness at bay with the flick of a switch. When Jen posted about her reckless experiment, the element that shocked me was the idea of a life's rhythm in which a day's work ends at nightfall.

I am reading The Return of the King to my middle boys. We are in the stretch where Sauron's darkness has crept across the river from Mordor, and the hobbits and the Rohirrim and the men of Gondor are all hungry for sunlight. It's something I have thought about before, that aching for light when darkness is all around, something on my mind especially here in the darkest time of the year.

Today's antiphon contains an echo of yesterday's: they both implore the Lord's deliverance for those "idling in darkness and the shadow of death." It sparked a thought for me: if you are locked in solitary confinement, or in darkness, you will likely be idle. Dr. Manette could not do the healing work he was trained to do in the Bastille; there is little work that can be done well in darkness. We tend, I think, to conflate freedom and leisure, but they are not the same thing. Christ calls us out of that enforced idleness, so we can labor gladly to further his Kingdom. It's a good thing for me to remember today, now that I've finished my grading and am looking at all the work that must be done between now and Christmas. :-) Shine upon me.

O Sunrise,
refulgence of eternal light, and sun of justice,
come and shine upon those
idling in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Key of David

Recently I was reading the Marcia Williams Dickens book to my Petely. (If you need a last-minute gift for a child, we are all Marcia Williams fans here.) Dickens, of course, knew his prisons. This time through the cartoon version of A Tale of Two Cities I was struck by its sketch of the Bastille. I could imagine the gloom, the stench, the hopelessness -- a place so wretched that Dr. Manette could not seem to believe he was no longer its prisoner.

I was 16 when I first tasted Christian freedom, sweet and heady. I was a senior in high school and I was miserable: striving desperately to be valedictorian, locked in a struggle with my parents over where I would go the next year. I went on a retreat where I met Christ as a Person for the first time. On Sunday morning after that Saturday night encounter, I sat down in the quiet and read the letter to the Galatians.

The fifth chapter took my breath away. Jesus was saying to me, "Jamie, you don't have to live this way, trapped in perfectionism and fear. Wouldn't you rather be free?" And I said, as I have tried to say every day since then, "Oh, yes. Yes, thank you."

The Key of David does not merely open the door and let the prisoners discover, if they can, that their jailer has been deposed. I am thinking about the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan and his army turn out the Witch's dungeons. "Leave no corner unsearched!" said Aslan. Our liberator seeks us out and leads us forth, blinking, into the sunlight. Lead me.

O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel,
you who open and no one closes,
who close and no one opens,
come, and lead forth from prison the conquered,
idling in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Root of Jesse

There is so much chatter. It would be easy for me to lapse into old and cranky mode --these kids today! with their Facebook and their Twitter and their cellphones and their googling! can't they just be quiet like we were in the good old days? and also get off my lawn?

But even if I didn't have accounts with Facebook and Twitter and a serious Google habit, I would have to admit that it's hypocritical for me to grouse about chattering college kids. There's always been chatter. In college I didn't talk on my cellphone while I walked from class to apartment, but there were usually elaborate imaginary conversations playing in my head. Real silence is rare.

That's the piece of today's antiphon that struck me: the silence of the kings. When the Lord comes even the mighty will hold their tongues -- even in our culture of noise we will marvel in hushed awe. Quiet me.

O Root of Jesse,
you who are standing as a banner for the peoples,
you before whom kings will clap shut their mouths,
you whom the nations will entreat:
Come to free us now -- do not delay.

O Adonai

Betty Duffy wrote recently about a tiny baby in a Tupperware coffin and I have been thinking about my two miscarried babies, buried next to the homes we were renting at the time. One would be celebrating his fifth birthday around now -- I was due on the 17th of December -- and one would be almost 14.

After the first loss, our priest came over for the burial and then came back a few days later to celebrate Mass in our home. I have never felt more loved than I did that night, when so many people came to be with us that we could not even fit them all in our living room. 

The priest had asked me if I would say something brief after his reflection on the gospel, and I did not know if I could manage it. It was my first up-close encounter with a painful truth: sometimes you pray faithfully and wholeheartedly for something good, and the sovereign Lord God says no. I had implored him to keep my baby safe; instead her little body was cold in the ground below my dining room window. And I knew that it was an opportunity to grow in trust and faithfulness, and I knew that God had good plans for us, but right in that moment I did not want to do any growing and I was not very interested in plans for the future. I only wanted my baby.

I stood up in front of our friends and I said, I believe that God is sovereign, and I believe that he purifies us through our suffering. But, I said, I'd never thought about the purifying from the perspective of the ore, the hunk of rock that says to the refiner, "What are you doing with that dross? That's part of me."

Moses was amazed when he saw that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. How much more amazing that God has chosen us for a dwelling place, that the flame of the Holy Spirit can shine forth from us to bring warmth and light into the world. Though it burns away our impurities, we will not be consumed. He says, "I am Lord over the heartbreak, and I am the Refiner whose fire transforms ore -- rock with potential -- into a beautiful and enduring precious metal." Cleanse me.

O LORD and leader of the house of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in a red glow of flame,
and who gave him the law on Sinai,
come to redeem us with outstretched arm.

O Wisdom

I was driving back from campus tonight with a stack of finals. Partly cloudy, the forecast had said, but I was not expecting the beauty of the stippled clouds. Harvest was unusually late this year because we had so much rain in the fall -- there was corn in the fields at the end of November. But they are shaved down to stubble now, waiting. The trees' bare branches were black against the setting sun, waiting.

I watched a sheet of cloud scud from north to south, sweeping across the sky. I thought of my own smallness, as I listened to the voice in the back of the van say "How much farther now, Mom?" Twenty-five miles, sweetheart. I imagined the skies behind the clouds, boundless space and tremendous stars, and I thought about the might of God that wrought those realms and somehow chose to be contained within a human frame, a baby's frame. I sang, "The universe declares your majesty," but I didn't sing very long because I had to stop and say, Twenty-one, Pete. Only twenty-one more miles.

The sunset was violently orange, but the underside of that sheet of cloud shone in an improbable fuchsia. I thought about how things that threaten to occlude the light of God can still reflect its beauty. And I thought about wisdom. I love this prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas, its idea that the light of God drives out ignorance as well as sin, so we can seek holiness and understanding at the same time. Teach me.

O Wisdom, you who have proceeded from the mouth of the Most High,
mightily reaching from end all the way to end
gracefully ordering all things
come to teach us the way of prudence.

Born

I have been trying not to be so grinchy about commercial Christmas. True, crabby thoughts spring spontaneously into my head when I hear "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," but I try to squelch them. (Okay, actually, in that case I don't try very hard because whoa, that is a TERRIBLE song and I still have unhappy memories of the college choir director who made us sing it with [shudder] added choreography.) When I hear others of the same ilk -- "Silver Bells," "Winter Wonderland," "Sleigh Ride" -- I'm trying to suppress my automatic inner grimace.

But I am having an Inigo Montoya moment today. (Not the "you killed my father; prepare to die" kind, the "I do not think that word means what you think it means" kind.) Christmas in these songs is all about cozy leisure activities. Chestnuts roasting by an open fire-- we're warm, we're toasty, we're getting ready for a nice snack. Jack Frost nipping at your nose-- he can't really sink his teeth in, though, because it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Christmas is not about cozy.

We are getting ready to celebrate a birth. That means work, not idleness. Before the baby comes, you prepare. You think hard about what the baby will need from you and you find it. Even if it's costly, you figure out a way to obtain it -- it's for the baby, after all, and nothing is more important than the baby right now. You get everything ready. You clean the house. You wait -- not idly, wondering if the chestnuts are toasted yet -- but expectantly, eagerly. Your whole world is about to change.

Birth is not about comfort. There is a pious tradition that the Blessed Mother did not experience pain during the birth of our Lord, but I am quite certain that she worked hard to bring him forth. Birth is like that. 

We tend to romanticize the Nativity, but I think often of how hard it must have been. Can you imagine? A first baby, a young mother, a cave in the middle of the night (or so tradition suggests). I think of the smell, the noises of livestock, the steam, perhaps, rising from a wet little body in a chill night. Hands moving swiftly to swaddle the baby, before he could get too cold. Did they think, "Why now? Why here?" I know I would have, had I been there.

I think he chose that time and place to say, Where there is privation, I am Lord. Where it stinks and you have to watch out for the piles of dung, I am still Lord. When it is not what you expected, not what you would have chosen, I am Lord even then. In the humblest circumstances, my glory is undimmed. The angels saw it and sang out: gloria in excelsis. Often we imagine the same tableau, strange and humbling, and we sing out too: our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we.

My oldest son was posterior and in labor every position except sitting was painful. So I sat. When things weren't progressing, the midwife told me I needed to to turn him by moving out of my comfortable chair. She said, "This baby needs you to be uncomfortable." I am thinking of her words this Advent: what does the Divine Infant require of me? Where am I sitting placidly, reluctant to do the work he is asking of me because it is uncomfortable?

I always think, when I think seriously about birth, about the prospect of my own death -- in late pregnancy I always get to confession, always try to have my house in order. You never know what's coming. To prepare for the birth of Christ is to prepare for death to self, one more time.

This post sounds very gloomy, like Eeyore's Advent Musings. All through the writing of it, though, I have been remembering the joy of baby Stella's arrival, bright and warm and palpable in the middle of that icy night. The thing is, that kind of joy doesn't come cheap. You can't manufacture it with a cup of cocoa and a Bing Crosby album. Christmas is bigger than cozy, bigger than comfortable. I find that its joy runs deeper when I am willing to lean into the work -- the work of preparation, the work of yielding -- that comes beforehand.

I doubt they'll be changing the soundtrack at Starbucks, but you never know.

O Come, O Come

We lit the first narrow candle, and sang the familiar words that Christians have sung since before Chaucer or maybe even Charlemagne, and read out the first antiphon of the Advent season:

Proclaim the good news among the nations: Our God will come to save us.

Do not imagine us suffused with a holy glow. The almost-teen was reluctant; the grandparents (who aren't Catholic) were baffled by the breviary ribbons. The boy who interrupted me some three dozen times today was sent away from the table for interrupting yet again.

We try. It's messy. We keep trying anyway.

I have been thinking every day about my Christmas creep post. Those of you who said you didn't want to squeeze all the preparations into December -- I'm right there with you. I don't think our Christmas celebration is excessive, but it takes a fair amount of work to pull it off. It's easier for me to do that work cheerfully if I spread it out over a longer period of time. It's easier for me to think of good gifts if I make a list of people and "put it in the hopper" in advance.

I guess it's inconsistent for me to gripe about retailers who want to sell me stuff that I want to shop for.

We're always out of sync in December anyway. It's one of the things I love about a Catholic Advent. I grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination and I thought I knew what Advent was about. It was a happy time; we were getting ready for the birth of a baby. As a brand new Catholic I found the eschatological orientation of the Advent readings bracing: yes, there was a baby, and he is coming back in glory. Don't be nostalgic; be ready. I found the penitential flavor of the Advent season surprising. While consumer culture is saying 'tis the season to treat yourself, the Church is telling us 'tis the season for violet vestments and no Gloria.

The interrupting boy was sad about missing Advent prayer -- and, perhaps more to the point, missing the chocolate that always follows it. He was frustrated with himself for interrupting, but the frustration was lurching toward drama. I interrupted him and said, "Sweetie, drama is just going to get in your way here. It's going to be hard for you to stop interrupting other people, but you can do it."

I know exactly where he gets that tendency, though, the inclination to throw up his hands and say "It's hopeless! My bad habits have worn too deep a groove and I will never shuck them off!" [oops, mixed metaphor which I don't have time to unmix] It is one of the things I am slowly learning about these seasons where the vestments are violet: better to take small steps forward than to lament the inability to take a big step.

We try. It's messy. We keep trying anyway.

More Thoughts on Learning to Walk

I'm still thinking about toddlers and persistence. To wit:

1. Nobody ever says, "You stupid baby -- you should have figured it out faster." We cheer her on. Five steps in a row! You did it, sweetie! I imagine our Father and older siblings in heaven watching our wobbly steps with the same elation, and it chokes me up.
2. Learning hard things means you focus on one thing at a time. It rarely works to change five habits at once. I think that's one of the things that frustrated me about Holly Pierlot's book. If she changed her whole life in one fell swoop, why couldn't I?
3. My daughter's eagerness to try out her new skill evaporates when she is tired. When she needs sleep, she sticks with what she knows: crawling is not the way the big kids do it, but it works for the moment. This should be a lesson to her mother, who tends to stay up too late and feel vaguely tired and stuck a lot of the time.

I am also thinking that my life is out of balance. If I am thinking that I don't have time to get to daily Mass, or exercise, or stop in the Adoration chapel, or go out and do something fun in the evening -- then something needs to shift.

From tonight there are 40 days left until Christmas. I am completely unready and school pressures on me are only going to increase as the end of the semester approaches. I'd been thinking that I was going to do a 40-day countdown, and maybe I still will. But for the first five days of it I'm starting small. I'm going to pray daily for discernment about what, exactly, the things are that needs to shift. I'm going to plan meals each morning for the day, and get one load of laundry done (folded, too) each day, and not spend time on the computer unless the kitchen sink is empty. And I'm going to get to bed before 10:45 at night, which means I need to wrap this up and hit publish -- even though it leaves me feeling a little naked.

Real

Last week I was talking to a friend who said, "I read all these blogs where these women are writing about their happy lives and I wonder what's wrong with me." And I said, "Whatever else is bothering you, don't let the bloggers get you down." The thing about blogging, see, is that I choose what to present. And I could tell you that my children brought me breakfast in bed, scrambled eggs and bacon and a sectioned grapefruit and coffee, and that they had made me little secret gifts. I could tell you that my oldest wrote me a poem in which he said I was "as cool as a Star-Bellied Sneetch." ("What else was I going to rhyme with 'speech'?" he said when I asked him why.) I could stop there, and leave you a saccharine picture of life in the Gladly house.

Always remember: saccharin = fake.

Bounty

I need a new box.

When I miscarried my first baby, it wrecked me. I gathered up the reminders of her brief life and put them in a little decorative box. The ultrasound pictures ("Look," the midwife had said, "she's waving"). The intercessions from the Mass in her memory. A flower from an arrangement given me by a friend, pressed and dried.

I took the box across the ocean to Scotland, and home again two years later. I took it to the East Coast, and home again a year later. That's where I put the baptismal candles for each boy. Today I was tidying up a bit and tried to put away the candle from Stella's baptism last month.

It won't fit.

The box that was an emblem of emptiness and loss is overflowing now. It has become an emblem of bounty instead. My highest hope is that our whole family will be together one day, joyful and blameless at the wedding feast of the Lamb. That's what I think about now, when I open the box and see the little row of candles, symbols of hope and promise.

At the Holy Thursday liturgy I was thinking about all that's happened over this last year and it seemed like gift piled on gift, grace piled on grace. This afternoon I am taking the big boys and their little sister to celebrate the gift of Divine Mercy. I love this feast. When I picked my own name at confirmation it was chosen in honor of the mercy of God; when I gave my daughter her name it was also chosen in honor of the mercy of God. What a blessing it is to celebrate this day with her.

I do not have a neat ending for this post. I am writing it with the awareness that moments when everything seems like grace are usually followed by moments that threaten my equilibrium. I'm going to post it anyway. My husband has cooked a delicious Sunday brunch and I am going to eat it while it's hot. Yet another gift, gratefully received.

Imposition

The imposition of ashes, we call it. Usually an imposition is an inconvenience; something imposing is something intimidating. Both of those senses work here as well, though of course the literal meaning is "putting on." Once a year someone looks me in the eye and says, "Honey, you're going to die and your body will rot in the ground." Talk about your inconvenient truths. Talk about intimidating.

I love Ash Wednesday: the fresh start, the do-over. I grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination where we prided ourselves on doing things decently and in order. We did not begrime ourselves in church. I first saw the imposition of ashes when I was 20, and I was surprised at how hard it hit me. Remember, woman, that you are dust. I scuffed home that night in fresh snow, thinking about the dark smudge on my forehead. Once it was part of something living; now, that something is dead and changed beyond recognition. ...and to dust you shall return.

Tonight I felt that same twinge of painful knowing as the minister daubed ashes on my baby daugher's forehead. "To dust you shall return," he told her, and I winced. I was surprised to feel something different when I received ashes myself -- something like gratitude, or like relief. I walked back to my pew chewing on a beloved phrase: "and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."

I have been thinking this evening about the frustrating slowness of sanctification. I wish I could make it happen faster somehow -- isn't there a pill I could take, or perhaps a DVD with Fabulous Forty-Day Soul-Firming Exercises and a money-back guarantee if I'm not satisfied? But I'm remembering being disappointed with myself at the end of Lent in 1993 for trying and failing to do something that's second nature now. I am thinking about how our bodies and souls walk the same path with different destinations, our souls inching heavenward and our bodies slowly, inexorably, sinking toward their graves. Remember, they told me at Mass, and I am remembering.

Tonight I went to Mass alone with all 5 kids and they did beautifully. We squashed into a crowded pew but there were no turf wars; the younger boys needed a few reminders about asking questions quietly and that was all. For years I felt wrung out after going to Mass, even with my husband there to help wrestle kids into submission. If you had told me that I would go to a jam-packed Mass with five kids and no other adults -- and enjoy it -- I'm not sure whether I would have laughed or cried. They're learning. I hope we're learning together.

Last year Joe didn't want ashes; this year I told him to go forward anyway. He whispered to me in the dark when I tucked him in: "Is my ash cross still there?" I could see it faintly, I told him. "Good," he said, "I want it to stay." I am going upstairs now to wash off the remnants of mine, but I hope I will carry its message with me. "Imposition" can also mean "putting in" and that's my prayer this evening: that God will plant this knowledge deep in me, of what endures and what is passing away.

Tune My Heart

We moved several times after my husband got his PhD and before he figured out that academia was not for him; our piano traveled around with us from one little apartment to the next. I was surprised at how well it seemed to hold its tune, and surprised again when I finally made an appointment with the piano tuner. It had stayed in tune with itself but it was horribly flat. He struck a 440Hz pitchfork, and then played our piano's A, and the contrast was painful to hear.

The surprising part was how much better the piano sounded when he was all done: warmer, brighter, fuller. He explained that the instrument is crafted so that it sounds best when it's tuned just right. It's not only about the strings vibrating, but the wood resonating with them. As the piano coasted further away from concert tuning, it lost the sympathetic resonance of the wood. I have a feeling I am not explaining it in a way that an acoustician would approve, but we'd agree about the result: the instrument's tone became duller and emptier.

I remembered it this evening because the opening hymn at Mass was a favorite of mine: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The second line is "Tune my heart to sing thy grace." I've sung it a kabillion times before, but tonight I thought about my piano as I sang it. I have also been fashioned to make beautiful music. I can contribute to creation's hymn, in which the seraphim sing "Holy, holy, holy" and the ice and snow and lightning and clouds bless the Lord together. If I yield to the one who knows the instrument best, how much more pleasing will its song be?

When a piano has slid away from its proper tuning and into flat dullness, restoring its real sound is a fiddly process. The tuner goes up and down the soundboard, listening and tweaking until the notes can ring clear and true again. I'm thinking about that tonight as I reflect on a day in which cranky and sulky dominated over joyful. I'm still singing: Tune my heart to sing thy grace.

Goal Post II: A Reckless Experiment

If you read Conversion Diary, you will know about her reckless experiment with prayer and its fruits. I am going to try a reckless experiment of my own.

For the ten years that we have had an internet connection in our home, I have struggled with my use of time. It's so easy to sit down and piddle away half an hour. Or more. I have tried to set limits for myself. It doesn't work very well. I give up reading blogs for Lent, say, but then I succumb to the lure of the Ravelry forums instead. I say I'll only spend x amount of time on the computer. It always expands. Always.

I am still thinking about New Year's resolutions here. (I know the new year started two weeks ago, but I am giving myself an extension since I had a baby on the 23rd of December. Oh! I keep meaning to follow through on my promise of chocolate to the person who guessed when the baby would arrive -- more on that very soon.) Over the weekend I was in the adoration chapel with the baby and felt a tug toward a deeper prayer life -- a call, specifically, to pray without ceasing.

I am going to work on that in two ways, both of which were prompted by another look at A Mother's Rule of Life. First, the easy part if I will only remember it, is to invite the presence of God regularly throughout the day. It's funny, but I started doing this when I was in a rough spot. I was feeling blue and easily angered, wondering if I was sliding toward some postpartum mood disorder, and so my prayers went like, "Lord, I invite you into this moment when I have just bellowed at my children." Or, "I invite you into the cleanup of this exploded light bulb which is SO not how I want to be spending my time." But maybe that was a good place to start, because I need to remember that the Lord is not a guest who only wants to visit when the kitchen is clean and the hand towels are freshly laundered.

The harder part, the part that feels a little crazy, is that I am going to try to cut down radically on computer drift by spending less time on purely recreational computer use (reading blogs, playing games, goofing around on Ravelry or Facebook or whatever comes along next) than I do in prayer. Gulp. That will be, let me make it clear, a significant shift.

I will need to do some fine-tuning of this idea. If I put writing blog posts or dealing with email into the "purely recreational" category, I will never post and will be perpetually behind on email. If I don't, it will be easy for me to let that time balloon. There is a part of me that really likes the anesthetic effect of sitting down in front of the screen and drifting for a while. But that phrase -- "the anesthetic effect" -- is key here: I don't want to be like the alcoholic who gives up drinking but starts smoking pot daily.

Maybe an important part of the balance is to invite God into my computer use as well. I don't know exactly what it will look like. I only know that I'm tired of the imbalance, and ready to make a change.

I wrote this post yesterday and got cold feet at the end. Did I want to hit publish on a post announcing that I'm going to attempt something I will be certain to struggle with? Struggle a lot, even? But I think I do. There are 350 days, 50 weeks, left in 2009. How much can I grow in prudence and detachment over those 50 weeks? No idea. But if I don't try, I'll never find out.

They also serve who only stand and wait

40w4d today. Still waiting, and thinking of Screwtape -- the sixth letter, which has comforted me more times than I can count. "It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only the things he is afraid of. Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him.... Resignation to present and actual suffering, even when that suffering consists of fear, is far easier."

The Talk

Tonight I said, "We need to talk about this for five minutes and then we never have to talk about it again." He cried. Drama loomed. Drama is utterly counterproductive in a situation like this, because it encourages you to feel sorry for yourself ("my finches died and she's so unsympathetic") or adversarial ("how dare she suggest that I was responsible?") or other emotions that only get in the way of doing what you need to do. So I didn't take the bait. He said, "I know it was my fault."

I told him that he had an opportunity to let something good come from what had happened -- that it could be a spur to work on bad habits, to take a step toward being a person who does his duty cheerfully instead of avoiding it. I didn't want to do a lot of finger-pointing; I said, "We all struggle with sloth." (In thinking this over (and over and over) I have been acutely aware of my own willingness to walk past a mess that needs tidying, or an out-of-place object that needs to go back to its home.) I told him that I would love him no matter what mistakes he made, and that he never needed to be afraid to tell me he had made a mistake. But I urged him at the same time to let his mistakes teach him what he needed to do differently next time.

Once, years ago, I was avoiding something I needed to do and I said to Elwood, "I'm having one of those who-will-rescue-me-from-this-body-of-death moments." He had NO idea what I was talking about. I might have been speaking Croatian. But that passage from the end of Romans 7 speaks so clearly to me that I assumed he would have to know it: "I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want....For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." It is one of the central tensions of the Christian life. On the one hand, it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose; on the other, you can be more or less cooperative in that work. You can't tie yourself up in perfectionist knots, and you also can't kick back, reading a novel, and expect sanctifying grace to do all its work while you relax. I am bad at this balance, and so I am questioning my ability to teach it to my children.

Tonight I wanted to say two things to my son: you need to be more responsible, and I will love you unfailingly while you are learning how to do that. How I hope both halves of the message came through.

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.