Life in Lent

We are over halfway through Lent.  I love Lent, even though I am not doing such a great job of staying off Facebook (I just intend to look at a pending house rental, or wish this person happy birthday, or see this picture of my kid someone posted, but then I scroll through 20 posts.... I am struggling with an addiction I claim not to have!) nor am I going to bed early (maybe twice I've made it to bed before 11). I haven't eaten sweets, but I have had wine on Sundays (does after the vigil Saturday night count as Sunday? Another sacrifice I thought would be easier to make.)

On the other hand, I have been reading lots.  And praying more  - which is easier because our Church is offering such wonderful resources: 24 hours of adoration and confession, a healing Mass, Soup and Stations on Fridays, a Lenten study for moms with free babysitting, a Taize service, etc.  They have all been beautiful, especially the 24 hours of adoration. It is so peaceful to sit in church in the darkness of midnight.  I don't know that I hear God's voice speaking, but my heart is open and full.

And we have also had the opportunity to do some extra acts of service. Today the teens served breakfast at the homeless shelter and then we all worked at a food packaging event where we filled bags of meals composed of soy protein, spices and dehydrated vegetables, and rice. 50,000 meals were packed. It was pretty amazing and productive, as well as a fun social activity. I love opportunities like this to get together with people we don't know well but want to know better.

I also love the quiet, introspective time of Lent. The freedom to say no to extra social events.  The greater dedication to acts of corporal and spiritual mercy, the greater focus on what is essential. Attention seems heightened. Affection comes easier.  Causes for adoration are plentiful.I just read a good article about why Catholics love Lent by Fr. Raymond de Souza in the National Catholic Register.  It mentions the extra devotionals offered by parishes and beloved by parishioners - as well as non-Catholics who love Stations or Taize, or other devotions, and come to be fed, but it also notes how penance and discipline suit us:

"We proclaim ourselves an Easter people, but we are not quite ready for a life fulfilled by singing the praises of God, as we will in heaven. Lent, though, seems to correspond to where we find ourselves, perhaps sitting for a while in the ashes of disappointment or failure, or perhaps in need of timely encouragement to take up anew the discipline of the Christian life.Easter may indeed give us a foretaste of heaven, but Lent provides support while we still eat the bread of affliction.Why is Lent our favorite season? Perhaps because it best gives to us what we need on the journey, having not yet arrived at the feast."

The anticipation of the future and the pleasures mixed with the pains of long journeys bear testament to the predilection for the journey.
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Another good article: "Stuff Nobody Wants" by John Horvat.  We have a lot of that around here. But this article takes a different look at that stuff. He sees in it a connection to the past and to familial roots. The loss of respect or understanding of the provenance of things can be traced back to the breakdown of the nuclear family and to the loss of the familial stories about our heritage and our family identity."Just as most individuals see themselves as unlinked to others, so also most families today see themselves as a social unit without connection to others—even their own.

"Thus, the modern nuclear family does not see itself as a continuation of a family tradition. Its members do not see the need to maintain an old home or property that should be kept “in the family.”
To them, the family is just the sum of living members composed of a father, mother, and children. Once one reaches adulthood, the individual becomes an autonomous being with few binding obligations and no need for the old stuff of their parents.
This is so contrary to the traditional notion of the family. Throughout history, the family has always been understood to mean the unbroken unity of the whole lineage of ancestors and descendants."

I have thought often about this, mostly in relation to my own longing to be rooted to a place and to be closer to family. I have thought that my relics handed down from my grandparents and relatives are accessories to our way of being rooted in a transient lifestyle. I want to return to our ancestral home, but as we leave little bits of our selves across the country, and learn to love places that we originally only tolerated, our roots have spread - perhaps more shallow than deep, but someday we will pause and be still.

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Another penance of Lent: Doing taxes and college financial aid paperwork, which are oh so painful, but finished!  I spent hours filling out forms - online - and calculating and recalculating to make sure I did everything correctly.  Glad to have that behind me for now. It did raise some awareness of the complexities of being self-employed, even though technically I'm not.

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Is it a penance to get a letter from the school about misbehavior? Yes, most definitely it is a lesson in humility, but also in patience in waiting for a response after spring break, especially since I question that the punishment fits the crime.

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Is it penance to try to potty train? Yes. I have cleaned up many accidents this week, but the toddler is at last interested in using the potty. I owe her new underpants. As much as I looked forward to potty training, it makes me realize that this unexpected baby is no longer a baby, and it makes me sad. Her third birthday is in just a few weeks. She has been - and will continue to be, I'm sure, - such a source of light and life. She is generous with hugs and amusing facial expressions. She is cuddly and independent. I want her to stay small as much as I anticipate her growing up.  I have loved having a baby in the house at the same time we are sending college students out of the house, even though that was not my initial thought.

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During the past few weeks of Lent, I have also done a lot of reading. The book selection at the library has been good, and a couple of people loaned me books. I want to write about them, but it's too late now, so it will have to wait for another time.

Till then, may peace remain!

Packing up meals

A job for everyone

Art enthusiast

Artsy photos at the art museum

Making art

Admiring the blooms at the Japanese Friendship garden.

A dress I made for a niece 12 years ago. 

Broken stuff I can't seem to fix or throw away.

On Sunday services

Our third son is now enrolled in confirmation class, which started this weekend. It's a two year program here. Although I appreciate the idea of the freedom of the individual to discern readiness for Confirmation, there is a part of me that wishes the sacrament was linked to a specific age like First Communion. Since every diocese has a different program, we have had to accommodate to the diocese in which we live. Our oldest would have been younger than his classmates if he were confirmed in Mississippi, but he was older than his classmates in Guam.  We've registered our third son a year earlier than most kids here in case we don't get follow on orders to stay here, since confirmation class is a two year program in this diocese.

I was confirmed as a high school junior, but I have several friends who have skipped the parish confirmation programs and worked through their priest to have their kids confirmed after home instruction in the faith at much earlier ages.  A family member who married into the Greek Orthodox community had her children receive all three sacraments of initiation as infants. I suppose I should do more study into the history and meaning of the sacrament to make more discerning decisions about my kids' reception of sacraments, but I also don't want to place our family outside the community of the parish and the diocese.  While I don't necessarily love everything about our new parish (the Gloria makes you want to do jazz hands!), it does have a vibrant community.  The bulletin is six pages long. And the web page is the best parish website I have ever seen - the bulletin, links to ministries, links to resources, photos of parish events, etc. etc.  The youth program is active and run by a graduate of Franciscan University of Stuebenville.  So we will accommodate ourselves, rather than asking the pastor to accommodate us.

As a part of the class, the students are supposed to attend the Lifeteen Mass on Sunday evenings. Since we had planned a hike for the day, we decided to all go to the evening mass, instead of the very early morning Mass. Another accommodation.

The church was packed. More old folks than I expected. The students sat with their groups in the front. Our family sat in the middle surrounded by singing, swaying worshipers. The musicians were really talented. The priest gave a heartfelt but thoughtful homily about the four kinds of poverty, material, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual in response to the Gospel reading about the beggar Lazarus.

This service was in diametric contrast with the Mass we attended last week at St. Thomas Aquinas College. That church was designed by one of my husband's college professors, and I've always appreciated the TAC classical program, so we had been meaning to make the not long trek to the school for Mass.  The congregation there, too, was mostly adolescents and young adults, along with a number of young families. It wasn't completely in Latin, but was definitely a high mass, with the music sung or chanted by the talented choir.  The service was very reverent, conducive to prayer and contemplation.  And although we were full of the Spirit after the hour and a half Mass, we all had plenty of appetite for the spread at the convivial dining hall after the service.

From the TAC website

It is perhaps one of the spiritual riches of our faith that it provides space for many charisms.  I may prefer the high Mass we attended last weekend at St. Thomas Aquinas College because my own temperament or charism is more reserved and formal. But I'm glad that people who want the guitars and lyrics of praise and worship music have a place, too. As I sat in Mass, I thought of our dear friends at other parishes around the country.  Each place has had its own feel and style, but I still felt connected to those friends knowing they were praying the Mass that day, too. Although separated by time and space, we are joined in the eternal celebration of God's love.

On parish life

Can I add my two cents on the parish life conversation? (link, link, link, link and slightly different link. Can you tell my class is over? I'm reading blogs again.) Good points all. This topic is a conversation starter - good for creating community, evidently. It’s a conversation that my husband and I have had a various points in time when we were in parishes that were successful at involving parishioners and when we were at parishes that weren’t.  I don’t have a formula for what makes a great parish, because I agree with my sister that there is no one size fits all community.  I also think my sister is right that we shouldn’t expect our Church to fulfill all our needs. On the other hand, I think Melanie’s quote of Cardinal Ratzinger is great – our Church must be a source of brotherhood and community.  We meet for communion at Mass not just to receive Christ in the Eucharist, but also Christ in the Word and Christ in the People. In Christ, we're all family, so we should try to act like one.

When we were growing up, my parents did not hang out with friends from church. Since they were converts, they didn’t grow up with the people in our parish, and we had moved out to a rural area where we had to drive 15 or 20 minutes into town to go to church, so we didn't have any neighborhood connections, which create community naturally (as do school connections, but we were public school heathens). Additionally, my grandparents and some cousins lived in town, so my parents hung out with family or friends they had from the neighborhood or from school. 

True friendship can’t be forced, but it can be facilitated, especially in communities where people come and go. Like lots of bloggers, apparently, I am not a great one at small talk.  I tend to either have nothing to say or too much. But I appreciate when other people come up and talk to me. And as we’ve moved around, I’ve gotten better at being the person to start conversations. I don’t know that coffee and donuts after Mass is THE answer to creating fellowship, but it certainly helps.  You can tell after a couple of Sundays which families have kids that would mesh well with your own by the way they are rushing up to grab donuts. 

A couple of our parish experiences stand out. Both had priests who would tell you what to do. At our parish in Mississippi, the pastor told me in during my confession that we were going to start taking communion to the old folks’ home. Brilliant! It was not easy, but so worth it.  He also told people what they were doing for the parish festivals, told people he’d see them at the parish dinner, gave your kid a reading for the stations of the cross, made sure he assigned different people to bring stuff to this meal, that prayer service, the other event… He had a gift. And he said it all with an Irish brogue and a smile, so everyone obeyed.

This parish was large and dynamic (I just read a review of a Matthew Kelly book about what makes a “dynamic Catholic” –as opposed to just “active”, ie. churchgoing – and the short answer is prayer, study, generosity and evangelization.) There was always something going on, and usually someone reached out a personal invitation. (Southern Hospitality?)

In Virginia, our priest wasn’t quite as assigning.  In fact, he was rather shy and bumbling, but good-humored.  The effect was that he made people want to take care of him.  Pasta with the Pastor during Lent was huge, although this was not a large parish.

It’s worth noting that both of these parishes had schools. We were homeschooling in Virginia, but our kids were involved with the parish scout troop and CCD.  They made friends, so we made friends through them.  And our homeschooling friends also got together for spiritual activities like Armata Bianca and saints’ day activities. The Mississippi parish also had a school, plus an active youth group and lots of opportunities for kids to get together for service work. The teens had a yard work group that cleaned elderly parishioners' yards.  There was Friday night PLAY, where parents could drop their kids off for food and games with a catechetical bent (I can’t remember what the acronym stood for) and then go out for a date or stay and visit with each other.

I also have to give credit to Regnum Christi when we were in Illinois and Indiana for providing spiritual connections. The gospel reflection groups were what kept me involved – real, nurturing friendships were formed through them. Although I was uncomfortable with the large group’s “recruitment” mentality, I did benefit from the small group’s spiritual sustenance.  Another friend in Illinois who had a large yard and a basement hosted a rosary group with a few women from different parishes  - people she liked or thought she would like. Kids prayed the first decade with the moms and then they played, while moms finished praying and then talked. The shared prayers created an intimacy that led to real friendships – these were the people who would bring you dinner when your baby was born or take your kids for an afternoon while you napped with a new baby.

In our current situation, we attend chapel on base. It’s a very small community with almost no “ministries” except CCD  - and coffee and donuts.  We know some families outside of church from our neighborhood or the command, so we socialize together without officially organizing anything.  I keep wanting to start a youth group, but my boys don’t want me in charge. Fortunately, some opportunities have come up for the kids to get together – a dinner for foster kids, a parish picnic at the beach, a group getting together to go see a movie on base. Most of the kids go to school together so they have that connection, too. 

Wanting a little more spiritual nourishment this season, I just invited a few women over for a gospel reflection group for Advent.  Only 5 showed up, and I kind of bumbled through, not having any real vision for how to facilitate with a group of peers (didn’t want to be in teacher mode), but my daughter made delicious sour cream coffee cake and cranberry walnut bars, so maybe they’ll come back for the food!

Every time we move, the best new friends we make are those from our parish.  I do tend to show up at our new parishes and check out the faces in the pews looking for potential friends. I scan the bulletins looking for opportunities to meet people. We look for parishes that have kids in the pews about the same age as my kids because my kids often make my friends for me. 

Lately, one of my conundrums has been keeping track of the people who were my good friends at different times and places, especially as I think about writing our Christmas letter. I wonder how many of these friendships can I sustain over time and distance?  

But I don’t want to lose track of these people who really went out of their way to help me when I was struggling with small children. As I’m sitting here trying to remember what we did in different places, what I really remember are the kindnesses of a few individuals, the personal invitations from people who weren’t afraid to invite someone with 6 kids over to their house (or to a beach barbecue, at any rate). These are the people who taught me by example how the faith should be lived: they welcomed the stranger, not with idle chitchat but with real concern.  They went out of their way to offer assistance and kindness.  Thinking of them fills me with love – and sorrow that I haven’t always lived up to their example -- and wistfulness that we can’t all live in some Catholic ghetto somewhere, where we might annoy one another sometimes by too much proximity, but we might also sometimes get a foretaste of the joy of the communion of saints.