Recent reads

A book that offers escape is a welcome treat every once in a while. I binge read Neil Gaiman's Stardust this week.  Loved it. Neil Gaiman sets the standard for contemporary fairy tale writing - not that I've read a lot of this genre, but some of the young adult books the kids have picked up and I've perused seem to take themselves too seriously. Gaiman's writing is playful and hits just the right key between emulating the language of fairy tales and natural dialogue. He brings his setting and characters alive.

Stardust is supposedly set sometime in the not distant past, Gaiman suggests the 1920s, but I did imagine the characters on the human side of Wall, the fictional town defined by a wall that leads to faerie land, to be more medieval. The humans are only allowed to cross the wall once a year to go to the faerie market for a day and a half. There they can buy all sorts of wonders.  Dunstan Thorne finds his heart's desire while he is there - the gift of a grateful lodger in his small cottage. This blessing that might be a curse is passed down through generations, so that when, nine months later, a basket with a baby boy is left at the wall with the name Tristan Thorne written on a slip of paper pinned to it, Dunstan accepts the baby as his son, and his son grows up to obtain his heart's desire, too. That's where the plot takes off - with Tristan heading off to the other side of the wall to find a fallen star to give to the girl he loves.

Of course, all sorts of fantastical adventures ensue. The star turns out to be in the from of a beautiful young girl, and she is being sought, not just by Tristan, but by other inhabitants of this world, including a witch in search of eternal youth gained by eating the star's heart, and ambitious princes who seek the star to gain their father's throne.  Other characters they meet along the way bring humor and wonder to the story as well.

It's a fun romp through a place that appeals to some inner yearning in our own hearts - is there some heart's desire to live in a world like this, full of magic and talking trees, where needs are elemental?  This is a fairy tale intended for grown-ups - although excising a couple scenes could put it back on the juvenile shelves, but is it juvenile to still enjoy reading it?  Good writing should transcend genre in its appeal to readers, which is why it is so fun to reread Charlotte's Web, our current read aloud, but a little more of a slog to get through Surprise Island, a Boxcar Children book, which is fine, but the dialogue is a bit flat, and the children so good.  They do have a generous grandfather who lets them live on an island for a summer, though, a realistic fantasy.  What is it about fairy tales and fantasy that captures our imagination?  Some readers may prefer mysteries or historical fiction or science fiction or thrillers - I'll read them all.  The world of the fantastic may be harder to create - perhaps Gaiman's trick is adding some earthy humor. Or his gift for dialogue and description.  Apparently Stardust was made into a movie, but I can't imagine it improving on the book.  The charm might become silly, and the characters flat.  I probably won't look it up.  But I did enjoy having something light and entertaining to read for a couple nights.

Causes for celebrating and slumping

This week is full of birthdays: The 18th would have been John Paul II's 100th birthday. Yesterday was my mother-in-law's birthday. My son's fiancee celebrates a birthday on the 21st, as does our good friend from college. And I have my own birthday this weekend! All seem like good reasons to have a little cake tonight. We are always looking for some excuse to bake around here. 

Since it is also Laudato Si week, which honors the fifth anniversary of the publication of Laudato Si, maybe we should try to make cake that is waste-free. Does that mean we eat it all (no food waste!) and bake from scratch (no packaging waste!)?  For my own reference, here are links to some events and programs: https://catholicclimatemovement.global/.  One of the speakers is the director of the Yale Divinity School's program in Religion and Ecology. I listened for a little bit this morning.  Some good news is that the environment has received a little reprieve from the pandemic stay at home orders.

I have been doing a little research on potential opportunities for furthering my education. I was hoping that a happy byproduct of this Covid shut down would be some online opportunities for graduate study, but I haven't found much in the field I am researching. Since teaching the Nature Writing class, I have thought perhaps I should finally finish the Ph.D. I had started 20 years ago, although to what end, I keep asking. The the number of programs that integrate ecology and the humanities are growing.  One of my summer goals is to send out a few paper proposals to revisit an academic mindset. When I envision teaching in the long term, I am drawn to a program like this over a literature program because it moves beyond the academic to the practical and connects the arts and sciences. I vacillate between the idea of moving towards a "career" and doing something more altruistic, like volunteering more or looking into foster care now that our own kids are moving out and onward and now that our military life is nearing an end in the next year or two or three... the economic downtown has caused us to revisit whether next summer is the right time for my husband to retire and find a civilian job or take another tour with the Navy.

In other news, we received word yesterday that our college kids in Indiana will be back on campus in the fall.  That's good news, although I wouldn't have minded having them around. They return for a short summer break in a week. The plan for reopening is to minimize student travel by starting school early and ending before Thanksgiving.  The reasoning is that students will shelter in place on campus.

 On the other hand, I am frustrated by a photo in the WSJ of a casino not too far from us opening. In the photo, a line of gamblers is waiting outside the door. They certainly do not look six feet apart, nor do they all appear to be masked.  On the other hand, churches are still closed, and the policies for reconvening that the bishop is suggesting to comply with government restrictions limit attendance to only a small portion of the congregation. Parishioners 65 and older are asked to stay home, and the seating arrangement suggested does not allow families to sit together, so basically everyone with young children is being asked to stay home, too.  So many more accessible options are available - and already in practice elsewhere.  Governor Newsom apparently has been advised that his restrictions on religious services may violate some law,  In the meantime, gamblers can throw all their free money from the government away on slot machines - some casinos aren't even restricting capacity.

I can't think about that anymore because it makes me angry. But while I'm ranting, I will also add my irritation at the Wall Street Journal editors in regard to a different issue.  I am rarely moved to write about political news, but the recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal's Saturday Review section by Gerard Baker was incendiary. He compares the lack of press surrounding the shooting of an elderly white couple by a mentally unstable black man after a robbery to the belated outcry over the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery to suggest that the killing of young black men by white people receives disproportionate media attention.  But a stark difference exists in these cases: the alleged perpetrator in the first case was chased down and killed.  The alleged perpetrators in the Arbery killing went home to life as usual for a few months because of their personal and professional relationships with people in the police and justice departments in their area. This gross injustice reeks of an old boy network that protects the guilty and lets the innocent suffer, as well as a shocking miscarriage of justice that negates any progress in the eradication of racism, despite the media attention that Baker decries.  What precedent is set when Arbery's murder goes unprosecuted for two months on the basis of his killers' claim that it was a citizen's arrest, even though he was unarmed and hadn't committed a crime?  

I do not fear for my young adult sons' lives when they go for a jog, or wear hoodies, or get pulled over for minor traffic infractions.  My friend, however, is afraid to allow her sons to walk alone outside. My sons are white; hers are black.  Until she no longer has to live with that fear, Mr. Baker's argument is weak and perpetuates injustice.  It reads like the words of someone who wants to deny what makes him uncomfortable, but Ahmaud Arbery's story should make him feel very uncomfortable, and horrified, shocked, and saddened that such hate crimes still happen without consequences until an outcry is raised. 

Well, I realize that this post started with happy news and ended with frustration. Is the answer to avoid the news and focus on our immediate surroundings?  Should we avoid emotional engagement with national news or try to balance the response? When should we be moved to action - to write letters to the editor and to the governor?  The news has sucked hours of my attention over the past couple of months -- now I am exhausted by it. Even though I do feel we have a civic duty to be informed about social and political issues, and to engage when we can, I am not very gifted in discerning what level of engagement is too much or too little. I am a passive consumer of news, and not a very active participant in movements against injustice. 

In order to balance my self-condemnation, we did take several bags of shelf stable food that I had purchased in my initial fear that the stores would shut down to a boy scout friend's house for his family to take to the food pantry. I am never an organizer, but I am happy to be a laborer.

So now let us turn to celebrating the gift of life and eat cake. . . 

Mother's Day and beyond

Although it seems the number of new cases and deaths from coronavirus still hasn't trended downward as much as it should as a result of people staying home, the numbers have gone down enough that a few things are beginning to open. Curbside service for shops, the beaches, the golf course, and trails are now open. The ability to walk, run, hike, bike, swim, and be outside in general has been the saving grace of this stay at home order. Our friends in Spain and Italy were much more restricted, and still seem to be.  For weeks they could only take out trash and walk their pets 80 meters. Maybe it wasn't even that far.  My friends' teen daughter was stopped one day while walking their dog, but fortunately was within the limits.  I would have been tempted to leash a child or steal a dog and declare it has a very small bladder, so that I could walk it 10 times a day. 

But those draconian efforts have drastically reduced their cases, while the new cases in America haven't been slowed as dramatically. Even so, I am relieved to see places opening for curbside service, although summer activities are being cancelled right and left. The kids' school has announced they are shortening the school year by 2 weeks (after already missing 2 weeks of school), and they are planning some component of in-person and online school in the fall. I've had several friends reach out with questions about home schooling because they are disappointed with what the school has offered, and it doesn't seem like school will be back in session full time in the fall. 

Part of me is frustrated the school is ending early - the kids have had less to do and have covered fewer concepts during this distance learning period, and they need something to keep them learning, especially since it looks like there won't be any summer group activities.  The other part of me feels like this confirms what I already thought about the long school year - they don't cover much more during the last two weeks anyway - end of year projects, parties, and review sessions take up the time.  There is some value to those activities. The projects are sometimes the best part of the year - especially in the lab sciences, when the teachers can finally break away from the AP curriculum once those tests are over. (They are being taken online this week and next. To discourage cheating, the College Board has shortened the tests to 50 minutes and made them all free response.  Will these tests sufficiently demonstrate that students have learned the equivalent material to what they would have learned in a college course? Is this because the College Board didn't want to refund money? Will colleges revise how they give credit for AP classes?) 

So now I'm planning to do some research on online courses for the summer or make up my own reading assignments to keep my two remaining high schoolers from zoning out on movies and video games all summer.  I'm still hopeful that the junior lifeguard program might take place during the second half of the summer, but I'm sure they will be inundated with applications. I'm also going to encourage my 15 year old to look for a job, maybe at the pizza place or bagging groceries at the commissary, but since he doesn't turn 16 until mid-July and competition will be stiff, I'm not hopeful he'll find one.

That's my project for next week.  In the meantime, I've found plenty of distractions to keep me from all the other projects I thought I might get done.  The distractions are pleasant projects in themselves:  my garden boxes are producing a few strawberries, cherry tomatoes, baby beet greens, and tiny broccoli florets. Mini- plants. Not enough fertilizer for bigger crops, I suspect.  We've cleaned up the garage and have added to the pile of giveaway stuff. I cleaned up some stacks of papers and a couple desk drawers and written a couple letters.

And we've taken some nice hikes - on Mother's Day we hiked a part of the Pacific Crest Trail that has a spur leading to a waterfall. I've never done this hike before because it usually gets a lot of crowds, and a National Forest Wilderness Pass is usually needed, but since the places that sell them are closed and the rangers aren't working, that requirement is waived for now.  Fortunately, it wasn't too crowded this past weekend, and the other hikers were polite about stepping off the path when someone passed.  We have had enough rain to ensure a good flow of water in the falls, as well as a proliferation of blooming wildflowers.  The hike itself is a bit exposed - it was beginning to get hot when we reached the falls, but the the kids had fun playing in the water and cooling off while enjoying a picnic before we hiked back to the car.  I love my Mother's Day hikes because they kids aren't allowed to complain. It's a beautiful thing.  I'd like to say we'll be back to do this trail again, but I keep hearing about other places I'd like to hike.  There are more hidden gems to discover. 

My orchid continues to delight. Is it weird to feel fond of a plant? It's like my little kitchen counter pet that I check on each day, but it thrives with neglect. I can't count how many orchids I have unintentionally drowned.  They haunt me

My Mother's Day Spa breakfast - avocado,cilantro lemon juice with soft cooked egg on English muffin, fresh squeezed OJ, and berries with Greek yogurt. And a full pot of coffee. 

Setting out on the trail

This trail runs under the highway, and traffic noise can be heard for the first quarter, but it's easy to ignore as the hike passes along a creek and heads up in the hills.

In another life I will have a camera that captures the vibrancy of these wildflowers growing out of the granite. Their rainbow hues were lovely - they made the miles pass quickly. 

The falls - not big but perfect for sliding down. There were several cascades.

 I was trying to capture a red dragonfly here.

A trip to the desert

We made a quick getaway to the desert to hike a couple weeks ago.  The trail was nearly deserted - appropriately.  I saw 3 people on a five mile hike.  It was hot - temps near 100 - but the warm sun felt glorious after the tepid temps near the ocean. The coast is in the season of "May gray, June gloom" when morning fog lingers till noon. The best season for beach trips to our area is really February, I think, or late fall. Although the beaches are open again, the air is cool and damp and not really pleasant for sunbathing - even if the lifeguards weren't driving trucks up and down with their megaphones blaring "Keep moving. Beaches are for walking, jogging, and exercising. Please keep moving."

The area we visited is near Palm Springs, which we have never visited.  In my past life, the desert was not a place I had any interest in visiting. My visions of it were formed by Coyote and Road Runner cartoons, and it crossed my mind on this trip that those Warner Brothers executives probably spent some time  in the area where we were hiking.  People go to Palm Springs from the coast to soak up sunshine and sit by pools with cocktails. Mid-Century modern style is synonymous with the vacation homes of Bob Hope, the Presleys, the Gabor sisters, and the Reagans, among other celebrities from LA who spent weekends entertaining out here. I have never really been into celebrity homes - writers' homes, saints' homes, yes - nor am I usually a sit by the pool and drink cocktails in a glamorous bathing suit sort of person (coffee in workout clothes, yes), but I do share the desire to be warm and to enjoy the open spaces and the surprisingly brilliant blooms of the desert landscape.

 The change of scenery and the escape to the "country" was a welcome break, even if brief. It felt like we were a million miles away from the Covid world, although the other hikers did have bandannas and made the quick effort to cover mouths or step aside on the trail.  I like the bandanna option for masking while exercising because it is lightweight and breathable, but seems to cover the face better than the neck gaiters, which I wore and which are thin and roll up. I actually have 2 of the Buff running headband/neck gaiters - I always used them as headbands that double as ear warmers in cool weather rather than a scarf, but I'm sure if we lived in cold weather areas, I would have loved them as a scarf. I have vivid memories of ice forming on my scarves as my breath froze while running when we lived north of Chicago.  We lived near a forest preserve where I would run frequently, and I've always had a prejudice for forests over deserts, but I can see how the wide blue skies, the warmth, the privacy from people, but the company of the resilient plants and animals that persistently bloom and reproduce in seemingly hostile conditions attract the people who live in the desert (Aside from the pink and pastel homes of the celebrity retreat culture of Palm Springs, the desert has a separate subculture of people who dwell in RVs and on remote ranches off the grid and free from the judgement of popular culture).  As we walked, I felt a fondness for this place growing as I snapped photos of the vistas and the rainbow hued blooms. Although I still don't see myself sitting poolside at a Palm Springs resort, I think I could spend a few days exploring the trails and basking in the sun and enjoying the blooms of late spring.

We imitated the lizards - soaking up the sun on rocks.

Best outhouse view ever.

Nicest outhouse ever.

Prickly Pear in yellow

One hour later. By evening its life was over.

Prickly pear in pink

Barrel cactus in yellow.

View of the golf course in the distance. A lot of water must be needed to keep it green.

The bees loved this blooming tree

Palo verde

We saw and heard an abundance of birds. Finally saw the California quail in a tree.

Brittlebush

The cholla cactus. I didn't get a photo of the ocotillo blooming, but the theme of the day was Cactus ID. I knew the names of about five times; we saw several others. 

Thoughts on Saints and Villains

I finished reading Denise Giardina's Saints and Villains, a novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for my book club last weekend in a reading frenzy. I blazed through the last 200 pages of Giardina's book in about 2 hours. I was sitting outside in warm late afternoon sunshine while the kids were in the pool, so it was easy to lose track of reality for awhile, but my setting was a contrast to the book's setting in WWII Germany.

The Bonhoeffer book is a novel- I have not read his magnum opus The Cost of Discipleship, although it is now on my To Be Read list. Some years ago we watched a film about him, but I had forgotten the details. So I knew the outline of his story: German theologian killed in Nazi prison camp after being accused of being part of a conspiracy. Even though I knew the ending, I didn't want to put the novel down - proof of a good story line and character development.

I think what drew me in was the conflict Bonhoeffer feels about who he wants to be and who he is. Everyone struggles with this, but Bonhoeffer is from a well to do German family. He isn't nobility, but his father is a well-known psychologist and his mother is from an aristocratic family. So his family identity is very strongly rooted in expectations and responsbilities.  He breaks the mold a bit by becoming a theologian.  It seems his early work was very systematic, but during his time at Union Theological Seminary in New York, which is where the book opens, he is introduced to ideas of pastoralism and of social justice.  He is studies under Reinhold Niebuhr and meets Jean Laserre, a French theologian involved in labor issues. Laserre introduces himself by saying he wants to be a saint, which at first Dietrich scoffs at, but eventually realizes that is the calling of every Christian.

Dietrich also becomes friends at the seminary with a black theologian named Frank Fisher in real life, but Giardina creates a fictional friend named Fred Bishop, in order to create an episode that is probably the most fictional part, but that introduces another theme of the book - the potential for evil to flourish with government approval. After they finish their studies at the seminary, Fred is assigned to a church in West Virginia, which is not where he wanted to go. However, he hears about a mine where men are dying by the dozens. When Dietrich comes to visit before heading back to Germany, the two of them go to the mine and discover that the men are dying by suffocation from silicon. This mine and the dying men become Fred's new church - his mission becomes to try to save them and to minister to them.  Bonhoeffer never really visited this place, but the mine was real, and the company that owned it and the US government knew about the dangers and that men were being sent to their deaths every time they entered and many were buried in hidden graves. They were mostly poor, desperate men, many were minorities, and many didn't have families who could protest their unjust treatment.  Giardina draws parallels between the inaction of Americans on this issue and on racism to the way the German people turned a blind eye to the injustices of the Nazi regime.

Because that is the other issue that makes Holocaust literature so compelling - how did the German people allow such atrocities to happen? How was evil allowed to flourish?  Giardina paints a picture of the Nazi rise to power as a confluence of luck and of inaction.  The Bonhoeffer family seems to think that Hitler is a fluke and that his lack of background and education will eventually be evident and his rise to power stopped.  Also, the gradual restrictions of liberty and increase of atrocities towards the Jewish people happen slowly, almost imperceptibly, so that people accept one restriction, get used to it, and then turn a blind eye to the next one.  It is a process that could easily reoccur, even though everyone seems to think that such a thing is impossible.

The part of history I wasn't so clear about was the story of the resistance movement within the German Intelligence department, the Abwehr.  Most WWII fiction and movies focus on the heroes outside of the regime.  But the Bonhoeffer family early in the regime of Hitler become involved in a plot to overthrow him. Dietrich's brothers and brother-in-laws are involved in this movement, and initially don't reveal their connections to Dietrich because he early on is vocal in his criticism of Hitler and fascism and the rise of the nationalist church. He becomes a leader in the Confessing Church, which splits from the German national church when it becomes clear that it is under the control of people who support Hitler and are willing to take his direction.  German patriotism becomes the focus instead of Christian discipleship.  Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship critiques the union of religion and politics and points to the connection of all Christians in the city of God.

One of the inner conflicts Dietrich suffers which Giardina does a good job of illustrating is his acceptance of doing little to support his family's undercover resistance, instead of taking a stand. He is a supporter of nonviolence, and at one point almost goes to study with Gandhi, but he feels compelled to stand with his people, in the sense of those who need him in Germany. Giardina connects this conflict with his argument for "costly grace" in The Cost of Discipleship: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, teh forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices .. . In such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delievered from sin. . . . Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from teh toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, absolution without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cros. . . . To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes it is not an accident,k but a necessity. .. ."

This passage is what makes me want to read the rest of Bonhoeffer's work. This is conviction and accusation.  How are we following Christ?

But Giardina illustrates how even Bonhoeffer himself struggled to discern what this looks like in practice. Bonhoeffer wants to stand up to Hitler; he doesn't want to run away from the problems and escape, although he is sent overseas a couple of times in an effort to try to connect with church leaders around the world to let them know what is happening. Sadly, his efforts are ignored by the political establishment in England and America for some time.  But his family asks him to stop speaking out.  Because he has been an outspoken critic and has gone to an international convention seeking support of the Confessing Church instead of the national church, Dietrich's family is reluctant to let him know about their involvement in the secret plot to overthrow Hitler. However, eventually he is drawn in. Giardina does a good job of dramatizing Dietrich's struggle with his conscience in this section - he must decide whether to moderate his calls to stand up to Hitler with his desire to help the resistance, which means he cannot draw attention to himself.

Also, his involvement in the assassination plot means Dietrich cannot help the Jewish people as he would like. Giardina creates a fictional Jewish love interest for Dietrich (the biggest creative license perhaps), who becomes his conscience and helps him move from inaction to action and to see he must sometimes compromise transparency to stand up to injustice.  A quote from his unfinished work the Ethics hints at this "Being evil is worse than doing evil. Better for a lover of Truth to lie than for a liar to tell the truth.  Which is worse? To stay clear of political conflict for fear of compromising the church, or to become involved out of love of neighbor and sin greatly in the process? To escape sin may be the ultimate guilt."

This is a shift from his earlier writings, and I can see why Giardina created a love-interest to explain Bonhoeffer's development. Another timely quote: "When a successful figure becomes especially prominent and conspicuous, the majority give way to the idolization of success. They become blind to right and wrong, truth and untruth, fair play and foul play. It is not even seen that success is healing the wounds of guilt, for the guilt itself is no longer recognized."

The image I had in my mind before reading this book was of a Bonhoeffer who seemed much more heroic than the main character of Giardina's book. Her Bonhoeffer is plagued by depression, unable to make decisions promptly, hesitant to make commitments, angry about the Nazis but ineffectual, not heroic enough to make a difference, and a theologian of intellectual capacity, but not exactly deep faith or a loving demeanor. It isn't exactly a flattering book, but Giardina's Bonhoeffer is very human, and the combination of intellectual curiousity and rigor, his desire to have faith, and his frustration with his inability to be effectual made him easy to relate to.  I had thought of him as nearly a saint, and he decides after hearing his seminary friend Jean Lasserre declare his intention to be a saint, that he also wants to live like one. He begins to reevaluate his own understanding of faith, but he must continually confront his own human weakness. It's a common problem - we make progress on the journey to sainthood until our humanity edges in.

In the end, when he is imprisoned for his suspected involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler, Dietrich is allowed to again unify who he wants to be with how he lives.  Eventually, he becomes the minister to the other prisoners.  He is gradually given more freedom to roam around the prison as the Nazis grow weaker and disorder begins to infiltrate the system.  In prison, Bonhoeffer is interrogated, and Giardina creates a doppelganger out of a Nazi officer who eventually has something of a conversion experience at the end of the book, partly through his questioning of Bonhoeffer and their joint love of music.

What seems a great tragedy for the world is Bonhoeffer's death just weeks before the war ended.  It seems at one point he is going to escape death, but he is hanged along with other traitors to the Reich as the Allies are drawing nearer.  But although it seems wrong to suggest that his death may have been a blessing, it may be that the blood of martyrdom did more to spread the growth of his teachings on grace and discipleship than if he lived.

As I have been reviewing the book as I write this, I see more themes I'd like to weave in - one being the power of art to further political agendas on both sides of the spectrum. The conflict between the Nazis and communists set up a common enemy that allowed other nations to accept Hitler, as did his use of Christian rhetoric.  The conflict between the desire for beauty and comfort vs. the practice of asceticism is another inner battle for Dietrich. And so on. The subject, the setting, the plot, all make this a very absorbing book.

More on discernment

Last week we watched Bishop Barron's movie about St. Catherine of Sienna because she is one of our youngest daughter's patron saints.  The kids whined about it, but then they settled in and paid attention and even asked questions like, if she hardly ate anything why does she look pregnant in that painting?

What stood out to me was a section from the second half of the movie when Bishop Barron talks about her understanding of growing in holiness and discernment. There's a tension between loving the self and loving others and loving God.  Bishop Barron paraphrases St. Catherine's idea of a "cell" of self-knowledge.

"To obtain real charity, we have to dwell constantly in the cell of self-knowledge. ... The cell is also a well where we find both earth and water, that is knowledge of our sin and knowledge of grace ... our nothingness and God's fullness."

To love others requires we know ourselves to be in need of grace and mercy.  Love is willing the good of another, but sometimes this good is something they don't want - particularly children - but how do we offer this in a humble way?

Barron goes on to describe what St. Catherine says about humility.  Here is my paraphrase of his description of her words (transcribed by a priest):  Humility of the foundation of all spiritual growth. Obedience is tied to this. But charity is at the center because God is love. We should love God first and then love all things because of God. Our business is to work for everyone's good.  The law of love is accompanied by the law of suffering ... Suffering and sorrow increase in proportion to love. When love grows so does sorrow . . .  all love is a participation in the cross.

This suffering in proportion to love is obvious to parents, but it also is evident during emergencies. But sometimes it is the suffering of letting go:

"Love is a steady stripping away of our self love, our preoccupation with the self. Turning toward God in a sinful world is especially painful. That's why you find the cross in all the great Christian mystics."

Barron goes on to paraphrase: The more love grows in us, the more the oneness with God increases.  The more we participate in love, the more we grow into oneness with God. We are always moving forward or moving backward. Always restlessly seeking. The death of self will and union with the divine will is the direction.

One of the sorrows of life is that to say yes to one thing is to say no to another, even when that is a good thing. That is when "divine will" is perhaps most difficult to discern.   I woke up this morning feeling sad that we have crossed living overseas off our list of places we would want to be sent to work. This decision is not the kind of big sacrifice that St. Catherine is talking about, but it is a decision where we are saying no to something I desire because it appeals to me more on a superficial level than because I am devoted to the idea that the real benefits to travel as education will be realized.  The two kids who would be a senior and a sophomore have been very clear let about not wanting to go overseas. They want to stay here. I imagine they would get used to living abroad, and perhaps grow to love it. But they might also stew in anger and resentment for a long time.

I have had a hard time letting go of the hope though. I like the idea of doing the hard thing.  But there are hard things everywhere.  I often have to remind myself that the place where we are is not so important as what we do while we are there.