That attitude is like a homeless man’s coat: it’s ugly and doesn’t fit him.
Is it really as necessary as he thinks?
Monthly Archives: August 2006
So now what am I?
“When a child loses his parent, they [sic] are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they [sic] are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them.”
–President Ronald Regan
Words are powerful. Having a word describe where you are gives you something of a handle. A connection to your culture (if you will) acknowledging you exist by identifying you. Allowing you to identify yourself and identify with others of the same name. The same category.
When there is not a word, when “there are no words,” someone like me is left fumbling in the darkness. Looking for a foothold, trying to figure out where I (should) stand.
I have had three grandparents die now. (Technically that leaves one parent an orphan now; or is that word only used for children? I’ve always wondered.) Each time my emotion/response and sense of loss was very different. I’ve sometimes wished for an identifying word I could use for myself. I wish for a way to say, “This one was particularly devastating/impacting/significant.”
I haven’t found it yet.
“Good” is the enemy of “Best”
I’ve almost made up my mind not to try out for this season’s FLOT production. I’ve been praying about whether it is appropriate to do this (Sound of Music. Something I know, even!), and keep flopping back and forth.
And then I found this quote; kind-of felt confirmed my reluctance: “We [must] say ‘no’ not only to those things which are wrong and sinful, but to things that are pleasant, profitable, and good which would hinder and clog our grand duties and our chief work.”
It is footnoted, but then the footnote says “Source Unknown,” which I found amusing.
My “grand duties and chief work” right now do not (I believe) include singing for the community at large. I have a much smaller selected audience.
…And maybe if I don’t go, some other young woman will have an opportunity that will mean more to her than it will for me… I like that idea. I’ll pray for her.
Boredom
I’ve started reading Peter Kreeft’s The Angels and the Ants again (didn’t finish it the first time). I’m not Catholic (Kreeft is), but I like the way this guy thinks; this is the most useful book about combining sanctity with daily living that I have ever found. One chapter is entitled, How to Become a Saint While Changing Diapers. I’ll probably share some excerpts from that one later.
I started typing this excerpt to respond to another blog, and decided to include it here (in a more complete/expanded form), since I was writing it up already.
~~~
From the chapter entitled:
Boredom.
Every serious social problem that is tearing our society, our families, and our lives apart today– drugs, promiscuity, violence, infidelity, divorce– can be explained by this motive…
Here is an amazing fact: “The word boredom did not enter the language until the eighteenth century. No one knows its etymology,” according to the acclaimed novelist Walker Percy in Lost in the Cosmos.
Almost the same thing can be said of atheism: it hardly existed at all before the eighteenth century.
The relation between the two is evident: Only God and the attributes of God– Love, wisdom, beauty, joy holiness– are infinite and inexhaustible; therefore, without God everything is eventually boring.
Weren’t people bored before the eighteenth century? They got tired of cutting wood for ten hours, but they didn’t get tired of everything. That’s what boredom means.
The only possible explanation for this modern madness is this: It is not the world that is boring, but the self. Since it simply isn’t true that everything real, everything in objective reality, is boring, therefore the source of boredom must be within. The bored self projecting it’s own inner emptiness onto reality…. It reduces the big world to a small world by projecting its own littleness onto its world…
Heaven is not boring. In fact, only heaven (and heaven’s colonies on earth) is not boring…
The alternative to boredom, the cure for boredom and the cure for all the ills of the modern world that are rooted in boredom– is sanctity.
Sanctity– a relationship with God– is essentially letting God be present, letting heaven rule its colonies, establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth, in human hearts and human lives. Sanctity is essentially “the practice of the presence of God,” as Br. Lawrence put it in the title of his little classic.
Saints “do all for the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). Sanctity is not only willing to do God’s will, it is also thinking God’s thoughts. We are to love God with our whole mind as well as our whole heart (Mt 22:37). Sanctity means seeing everything has a purpose– in fact, that everything has the same purpose, that “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28); and that that purpose is the most joy-filled, glory-weighted purpose any heart has ever imagined: receiving and giving back infinite, absolute, unconditional divine love forever.
~end of excerpt~
This is definitely a challenge to examine ourselves before we complain of our environment.
The Olive Branch
I gave my current rough-draft to my brother to read.
I was very reluctant to let it leave town (i.e. have it available to others to see) but I didn’t think of it before today and he leaves first thing in the morning.
He’s been telling me to write a book (I don’t think he cares what kind, he just feels I’m capable, so he keeps trying to push me toward that), so I wanted him to read what I have so far. He’s not a big reader, so handing him 10 double-sided pages was somewhat intimidating, but I think he sees it as the effort for peace I mean it to be. Something special between him and me.
Only my husband has read it so far.
Benj made some joke during good byes that I’d better keep plugging at it (the book) and charged Jay with encouraging/pushing me back-to/forward in this project. Jay’s smiling affirmation that he intends to was more encouraging than I could say.
Just this morning (while I was spell-checking the document– the only editing I allowed myself to do today), I bemoaned the fact that I haven’t done anything new in weeks, and hadn’t read any of the highly anticipated/recommended books I ordered right before all my work halted. Jay said he expected I’d get back to it once things settled down, and pointed out there’s no real way I could have been working on things, even if my mind was there…
I really needed to hear that from him.
Poems and Grandma
She died yesterday.
It is interesting to me that I found her poem right before my brother called to say the end was really near, and he was coming to bring me back to the hospital (playing musical cars has been one of the challenges of this time).
Here’s what we’re printing in the program, as a description of her. You must read by the punctuation, not the line breaks, to sound the best.
One Year to Live
Mary Davis Reed
If I had but one year to live;
One year to help; one year to give;
One year to love; one year to bless;
One year of better things to stress;
One year to sing; one year to smile;
To brighten earth a little while;
I think that I would live each day
In just the very self-same way
That I do now. For from afar
The call may come to cross the bar
At any time, and I must be
Prepared to meet eternity.
So if I have a year to live,
Or just one day in which to give
A pleasant smile, a helping hand,
A mind that tries to understand
A fellow-creature when in need,
‘Tis one with me, –I take no heed;
But try to live each day He sends
To serve my gracious Master’s ends. Continue reading