Glory

The Aurora Borealis.  The Cree's Dance of the Spirits.  A collision of energy.  Aurora--goddess of the dawn.  Boreas--Greek for North Wind.

This strange, magnetic beauty has pulled me to its center since I first saw it illustrated in my 6th grade science textbook.  It is the cause of my desire to live in Alaska for one year.  I want to rent our house in CT, take a job in an Eskimo pub, and look for the lights, the glory.  Unlikely, but it's a beautiful thing to exercise the freedom to dream.

One of my former students would draw on a blank white page, slashing colors everywhere with no apparent goal.  When she deemed the masterpiece was finished, she would look up with a wild eye of joy and say, "Glory!!"  Her father, a theologian who transformed my understanding of God, often spoke of the glory of God---the ultimate vision we will attain in heaven.

Oh glory, glory, glory.  I can find You in the locust tree.  I can find you in my child's face.  But a world lit up with green and purple!?  Let me live underneath your glow.

An Eyeful

My husband and I are working on compiling pictures of Lion and Bear for a DVD Christmas present to our families this year.  Well, let me correct that statement:  My HUSBAND is compiling pictures, and I'm giving occasional feedback.  Last night's feedback was this, "some of the transitions between pictures don't allow me the eyeful of picture I'm wanting."  Just now, while making my favorite lemon curd (the sexiest thing I've ever made in my kitchen), I couldn't stop thinking about the word "eyeful."  Mouthful, earful . . . these are words I hear more often.  But eyeful could possibly be the best of all the Full Words.

I had a considerable amount of angst over my last blog post.  I was afraid of offending.  This fear is dreadfully familiar.  It keeps me from being myself, letting my thoughts and passions flow freely.  There is no anger at Protestantism.  It is my heritage.  The old hymns were born in my soul at a young age.  It is my joy to participate in my husband's expression of worship, because it is also mine.  So in an effort to articulate my love of Catholicism, I want to speak about the eyeful.

When I enter a Catholic church, I am given an eyeful of my faith.  Each statue, sculpture, mosaic, painting, and stained glass window fill my sight, and my heart comes alive with promises.  I am reminded of His words, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."  The great cloud of witnesses is pictured in the faces of saints around the altar.  Icons, images, statues---all these are windows into the Real.  What believer doesn't need reminders along the way?  Having an eyeful of Scripture---the Gospel quite literally displayed before me, is what keeps my fire stoked.

Now in the case of my current parish, I am given a different kind of eyeful.  Sacred Heart is my church home.  It is simple, poor, and quite stark for a Catholic sanctuary.  One of the only images of Jesus is a hand-drawn picture of Him pointing to His Sacred Heart, and along the edges are the signed names of parishioners.  But the liturgy is my eyeful at Sacred Heart.  I have never worshiped with a congregation more committed to its liturgy.  At Sacred Heart, the liturgy is truly "the work of the people."  On Good Friday our priest holds a large wooden cross off the ground while everyone is given the opportunity to show their reverence to the symbol of our freedom from sin.  We either bow or kiss the rough cross.  Our priest, who normally walks with a cane, embodies the Cross' image of sacrifice and love while lifting this heavy, heavy piece of wood.  He is the eyeful of my faith.  He points me to Jesus.

I used to teach second grade Catechism.  I loved teaching about the sacraments.  They are the visible work of God's invisible work.  They are my eyeful of faith.  God is transcendent, but he is always imminent.  He created us to desire tangible things, and He has designed his Church to impart the beauty of the faith with actual beauty that we can see and taste and touch.  Our worship is an eyeful, an earful, and a mouthful.  All these translate to a full faith.

Mother Mary

The sermon was on Mary's Song during our Protestant worship this morning.  It was a blessing to hear the story of Mary from a perspective I was familiar with as a child.  It took me back.  Mary, so young and innocent and trusting--how important to honor this example of youthful Christianity.  It was helpful to take my eyes off the image I've become accustomed to meditating upon:  Mother Mary watching her son being crucified, her pain impossible to imagine, a woman of surreal faith and strength.  The sermon reminded me of Christmas.  Now is the time to remember her first words noted in Scripture, "how can this be?"  Now is the time to remember her wonder.

But I can't do it.  I'm trying!  But I can't.  I want to stand up in the church service and say, "You're wrong!  Mary is not an example of all Christians!  She bore the GODHEAD.  That makes her extraordinary--holier than ANYONE."  We don't pray to Mary.  Unless by "pray" you mean, "ask for prayer."  We don't worship Mary.  Unless by "worship" you mean, "honor the singular human being who birthed God."  Protestants have worked so hard to communicate the personal nature of our relationship with Jesus, that we have forgotten about the Transcendent Majesty of  God choosing to dwell in the HUMAN FLESH of a young girl.  She became a Tabernacle.  She fed GOD with her breasts.  We can not simplify this reality.  We can not make it ordinary so as to neutralize the adoration of a feminine icon.

Remembering Mary calls us to emulate her humility, to remember we are simple and small and asked to do great things.  Yes.  This is all true.  But remembering Mary also calls us to stand in awe of a unique person in human history.  She is The Mother.  She is given to the Apostle John as a Mother while Jesus hung from the cross, and in turn, she is the Mother of the Church.  She is our Mother.  She is constantly pointing us to Jesus, just like she did at the Wedding in Cana.  Those who came to her with the problem of no wine (which is a REAL problem) were directed to Jesus.

I laugh when I see the bumper-sticker, Obedient Women Never Made History.  Ha!  What an ignorant statement if I ever heard one!  Mary, the most famous of all women, was of all the most obedient.  She is not God.  She is not meant to be revered more than God....she would never want that!  But she is WAY more than a special teenage girl that we can reflect upon during Christmas.  She was the Tabernacle of the Most High God.

And just to make my rant a little longer (please smile), this is precisely why the Catholic Church believes she was EVER-virgin.  Joseph cared for her as a devoted husband, but their marriage was never consummated.  She was a holy, holy tabernacle that he honored and did not touch.  The End.

Mommy Dating

Cloth diapers.  Check.  Skinny jeans.  Bad idea.  No make-up.  Check?  Bowl-cut.  Yikes.

It's the mommy dating scene, and don't tell me you haven't been there.  We meet on playgrounds and are simply desperate for companionship.  We spy the mom with a relaxed stance, a playful quality, a dusting of fashion, and we wonder if she's available.  Does she already have an intimate network of friends, or does she have room in her life for me.  I offer my number.  She accepts.  I see her another time, and she's laughing with Yoga Pants, unaware of my presence.  Do I let our previous afternoon of blissful adult dialogue morph into the mommy-walk-of-shame?  I leave with my child-in-stroller.

Being a stay-at-home mom is delightful in many ways, but when it comes to suburbia's non-answer to community, it sucks.  So we date other moms.  No one walks down the hallway of an apartment complex and joins another family for morning coffee.  Does that even happen in the urban world?  I've been told in generations past, that's how moms got through the day.  Today we meet up on Facebook, at the playground, and during library story-time.  We hope to find a moment of relief from our three-year-old's questions and our toddlers constant curiosity.  We want to meet and find support.  And if it could be as simple as connecting via text, gathering at the park, welcoming one another into our family rooms, we'd be all set.  But mommy ideologies have become so complex today.  There are lines we draw without even realizing it, and somehow we sabotage our quest for community.

I was fortunate to almost entirely skip the life-partner dating scene.  I met my husband only two short months after leaving the convent, and believe me it wasn't planned that way.  We just knew it was our destiny to be together.  I have friends who know that calling me for dating advice is pointless.  They tell me about their boyfriends, but we have an agreement that I mostly listen.  There's no pressure for me to come up with some knowledgeable experience to help them through Bad Date #7.  My best advice is, "If he's a quality man, don't give up in the first three dates....no matter how awkward things might be."  Ask me how I know.

But Mommy Dating---now that's an entirely different cinematic experience!  I'm getting SO much experience in that area that I could write the screenplay.  No one told me that I was going to have to date other moms in order to find the right friend-fit, but I'm figuring it out...like, yesterday.  This past year I had a friendship start and end over our active, first-born sons.  We met at the grocery store.  We discovered we both had unusually active toddlers---the kind that only a handful of women really understand when you describe them.  We exchanged numbers, and we actually got together!  More than once!  I even threw her a simple baby shower for the second boy she was expecting.  It was looking promising.

But now it's over.  Our parenting styles were not compatible.  I grieved.  I'm still grieving.  It seems so bizarre to lose a friend over the way my son plays with her son.  She is afraid of her child getting hurt.  Isn't that what happens when two boys get together?  In my understanding, there was nothing unusual about how our boys played.  But in her world it was just too dangerous----running and falling over each other is an alarming thing.  Really?

I shouldn't judge her.  She has every right to establish a certain level of  protection around her children.  And maybe I'm far too laid back?  I am the mother that has kissed countless boo-boos.  Regardless, we are no longer dating.  There just wasn't the right kind of chemistry.  And we both use cloth diapers!  Go figure.

I won't give up.  I'll keep dating other moms.  I will date ones that smoke pot for medical reasons.  I will date ones that don't smile when you first meet.  I will date ones that have thick accents (although I might have to stick to texting instead of phone conversations).  America has become so proud of the mantra, "Think Globally/Act Locally," but I don't think they know how that works when it comes to friendship.  Maybe I should save this for another post, but it's worth saying more than once!  Turn around and love the person right next to you, folks!  Don't look for friends that have the right fashion or parenting approach for you.  Just be a friend.  Do it now.  It's more important than Pinterest, hosting parties, and checking Facebook.

Being Understood

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "To be great is to be misunderstood."  I once had a boy tell me this quote we'd heard in honors English described me.  We were in 10th grade.  I'll never forget the hallway where we stood, the blue lockers to my right.  He was tall, well-liked by everyone.  His father was a prominent businessman in town, and I was the third daughter of a single mother, never in fashion, attempting to strike out on my own as a non-conformist.  It was the first time anyone from the popular crowd gave me credit for being more than a big clumsy girl.

Today I ponder that statement from Emerson (a philosopher whose writings I respect) and see things quite differently.  To be great is to love yourself while being misunderstood.  What a challenge for me.  My biggest angst is wanting someone to understand me.  It's always been that way.  I yearn for someone to see that I have fears and hopes and philosophical musings while being brave, dramatic, hilarious, and a child in a big woman's body.  My husband sees all these things, but he is not much for words.  He will never articulate his appreciation for my complexity.  I want that.  I want words.  I want praise and affirmation.  I want to KNOW I am understood.
 
As a Christian and junior Mystic, I know there are words waiting for me.  I believe in the Cosmic Christ who is all and in all.  He woos me with poetry, music, and nature.  He sees my layers of being and embraces each one.  He knows me because He MADE me this way.  Of course I can be satisfied in this understanding of being understood.  But just once I would love to stand across from someone in the grocery store and look at them without fear.  We would see each other entirely.  We would see the soul in one another.  We would laugh and be amazed.  We would bow before one another saying, "I know you; I understand you" and walk away in silence.

I yearn to be understood.  But I will attempt to understand others, and make that my goal.

The Bi-Religious Conundrum

Only a few months after Mike and I were married, I was sitting in a World History class and coined the term "bi-religious" in an effort to argue a point during the lecture on the Protestant Reformation.  I was attempting to draw the professor's attention to early Reformers who still agreed with a large percentage of the Catholic church's doctrine.  I made reference to my husband and I having a compatible relationship even though we were "bi-religious," that is we participate in each other's expressions of worship--the Protestant and Catholic.

The teacher, and many others since that day, have chuckled at the term.  I am grateful for the laughter; it is my carefree way of describing the one area of our marriage that has brought about some of our more intense discussions.  Only days after getting engaged we were thrust into a week-long deliberation about where we were to make our vows.  Each decision, each hurdle, each theological dissertation at midnight (by me of course...while Mike listens patiently) have been part of the rub that adds luster to our marriage.  I've been proud of our pursuit:  to support one another in our personal expressions of loving God.  We walked into our marriage with eyes open to the adventure.  We had many questions, lots of hope, and one worry on the horizon:  how exactly would we accomplish bi-religiosity with children.

So here we are.  My Lion loves going to Mass (the church "with the candles") because of the fantastic playroom adjoining the sanctuary.  There will be special teachings offered to him when he's a few years older.  He is somewhat aware of the liturgy, the "work of the people."  We light an Advent wreath at home every night.  He extinguishes the candles like a pro-acolyte.  He is being taught the Bible in a delightful Sunday School class at Mike's church, and he's made many friends there.  But I worry.  I wonder how this is going to work in the coming years.  Am I subjecting my children to confusion?  Will they be able to synthesize their experiences of worship like me?  Will they wonder over the sacraments AND have utmost respect for the teaching of the Word?  I have NO idea.  What I fear is bias---words meant to cut down other denominations in the church.  I also worry about the lack of consistency in ONE place.  Can I trust that we are giving our children a broad perspective on Christianity?  We are letting them "travel" at a young age.  This is good.  I always envied my friends who traveled.  They saw other cultures.  They learned other languages.  If I keep my conundrum in perspective and see it like a multi-cultural family, I just might communicate joy and not fear to my children---wonder and not worry.

A Beautiful Mess?

My Lion and I made Christmas cookies today.      

I kid you not, it was STRESSFUL for me.  Ten years in a convent prepared me for a holy death but not raising my boys, "Lion" and "Bear."  I tried this last year and nearly lost my mind.  Why, oh WHY did I try it again!?  Did I think it would be easier or I would have miraculously developed the patience of a . . . nun?  For real.  Being a mother is the test of all endurance, holiness, and love.  I am sure there are many women out there that would delight in the energetic child---the way he tears the cookie dough into pieces, squishes it through his fingers, runs and jumps on the couch with a shirt covered in flour, but I am the one who takes many deep breaths and prays for mercy.  I am the one who pours herself a big cup of coffee laced with Irish Creme (the real stuff) and hopes that I won't be finding sprinkles in ungodly places for the next week.  

So.  Gazing at beauty.  Ha!  Lesson learned, Lord.  This is a mess.  My child's joy is beautiful.  But together?  Can I say this is a beautiful mess.  I hope.

Gazing at Beauty

This blog is a journey back to gazing.  I spent my twenties learning how to see, meditate, contemplate, understand, listen, and wait.  Now I am a mother of two young boys, and a life of meditation seems like a fantasy!  Still, I want to press into those moments throughout my day that reveal truth, beauty, and goodness.  Maybe it's the look on my baby's face, or the observations of my toddler that draw me into one glorious moment of contemplation.  I want to share these things with you!  Come and sit with me under the locust tree.  Look at the colored leaves in Fall, the magnificent bark in Winter, the glass slippers of rain that cling to Spring blossoms, and the hearty green limbs swaying in a Summer storm.