Dragons

There are so many reasons why I love Lent.  

The word Lent means “spring.”  Typically this liturgical season begins in February, during the dark, snowy, cold days of winter.  Yet, as the forty days progress, we journey spiritually and, yes, even physically to a new rebirth: spring.  All of creation comes to life again.

My daughter, father, and I went for a stroll around our house this afternoon.  It is a beautiful, sunny day, but there is a little wind.  Most days I would say, “Oh, it’s too cold to go outside”–as though we don’t own coats, hats, and mittens that would all perfectly suffice to keep us warm.  Excuses, excuses.

I’m in the midst of reading the most gripping book called Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.  It’s simultaneously eye-opening and disturbing because there are things I may do so naturally with our daughter, just because it’s the norm of our society today or the way I experienced things, that have the terrible side effect of impairing the incredible gift of imagination.

Imagination is so critical.  To be able to transport yourself to another place or time, to envision a way things could be better, to dream of an unlimited number of “what ifs…”  To contemplate what is good, what is beautiful, what is real.  To imagine that this world might not be all that exists, that there might be something greater beyond the tangible, physical things around us…that maybe, just perhaps, those created elements in our world are only signposts to an even greater Good, an everlasting Truth.

At a party last weekend, three-year-old Isaac approached me with a concerned, wide-eyed look on his face.  With utmost seriousness, a Dorito clenched in his hand, he stated, “The dragon hit me right here,” gesturing to side of his face.  ”Oh, no!” I exclaimed.  ”Where is the dragon?”  Without a second’s hesitation, he pointed: the overhead fan.

What an incredible gift!  How is it that, what once came so simply to us, gradually becomes so hard?  When does a fan stop being a fire-breathing, scaly, ferocious dragon and become…a fan?

Perhaps, in part, it has to do with our setting.  At least, that’s what I have read so far in my book.

Do you realize that, for the first time in human history, men and women spend the majority of their time indoors?  That really hit me when I read it for the first time.  Sure, we have the Internet, the Wii, Ipods, etc., etc.  But what are we missing?  

As we walked about this afternoon, we discovered a thousand little stories being told all around us: the bird chirping nearby, the little trail a mouse dug through the grass, the tree stump that would make an excellent seat or table for a tea party, the daffodils lining the side of the house.  There were fluffy clouds set against a deep blue sky, just begging the viewer to call out shapes to identify them.

All this fodder for the imagination!  What was the mouse looking for when he dug his trail?  What kind of tree did we find, and what will its blossoms look like once they bloom?  What lessons the outdoors hold for us–reminders of perseverance, of hope…that even the harshest winter does not stop the coming of new life.

Our daughter was captivated by it all.  She heard the bird and promptly echoed its call with one of her own.  We basked in the sun and breathed deeply the crisp, fresh air.

I want her to see the dragon.  And, even more, I want her to imagine what is most beautiful, most true, most good.  Faith, hope, and love–these three do require a little imagination sometimes.  Looking at my neighbor and seeing the face of Christ is hard to do when your imagination has been deadened by primetime television, Youtube, and texting.

So I’ve made a resolution: spend time outdoors, even if it’s just fifteen minutes.  Spring is coming; gone now is my reasoning that it’s winter and too cold for the baby to be outdoors.  Bundle her up, get her out, and feed that imagination.

And she’ll teach me again, what I once knew myself–I will see the dragons, too.

Marriage is a Crucifixion

A few years ago, I was with a couple of friends who were having a conversation.  The one was in a relationship with a man and was sharing her deep longing for him to propose and for them to finally be married.  The other woman, a charismatic Filipino married two plus years, proclaimed, “Marriage is a crucifixion!”

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A newlywed at the time, I was a bit surprised, if not a little concerned, by her declaration.  Marriage–a crucifixion?  I remember wondering to myself if things really got that bad once the honeymoon phase was over.

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Fast forward two years and now I see exactly what my wise friend meant.  To say that marriage is a crucifixion isn’t equating marriage with drudgery and punishment.  No, quite the contrary: marriage, when fully lived out as it is intended to be, is one of the most profound expressions of love.

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Marriage is all about crucifying your own personal interests, desires, ambitions…basically, your self-will.  You take all that you have and give it to your beloved.  You give your espoused your entire self out of love; you sacrifice yourself for him or her.  This goes from the menial to the extreme: from ironing his shirt to seeing him or her through a critical illness.

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That is what the marital act is all about, too: it is a permanent, total self-giving to your spouse.  When a husband and wife are both 100% giving to the other, marriage transforms into a powerful expression of love.

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The beauty of it all is that crucifixion leads to resurrection: crucifixion leads to new life.  The marital act, as a total self-giving, brings forth the new life of children. When a husband and wife put each other before their own self-interests, the marriage blossoms with joyful life.

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Crucifixion is hard sometimes, but it is necessary.  It’s hard to deny yourself and put your spouse first, particularly during those times when you must deny your pride, your hurt, your anger, your impatience.  Yet, when you do so, new life of reconciliation, forgiveness, empathy, and love will flow from your act of sacrifice.

Love Thy Neighbor

We have a lovely neighbor named Louise who lives across the street. She’s a gray-haired, broadly smiling old lady who is frequently spotted watering her geraniums by the back porch or pulling out of her driveway in a cherry red car. She’s amiable, always waving to us when we pass by, and was particularly helpful in directing us to a great garage sale a few weeks ago.

I like Louise.

The directive, “Love thy neighbor,” never really hit home to me until fairly recently. I understood how we should love the poor, the outcast, the people we really don’t care for all that much.

But loving thy neighbor in the most literal sense of the word has become one of my personal greatest challenges.

You see, we share a house. We are renting a lovely, one hundred year home that has three floors for three different tenants. Floor #1 is a non-issue: quiet college student who must be pretty studious, as she’s not home all that much and when she is, we don’t hear a peep from her. She’s kind of like Louise. I like her.

Floor #2 is us.

Floor #3 is trouble. I don’t like them. At all.

What makes matters worse is that we share a common door and staircase with them. So their comings and goings (and those of the dozen or so friends who seem to visit them on a fairly daily basis) are very apparent to us.

So why don’t I like them? It hits at the very bones of what I’m striving to do here. Pax et bonum! A home full of peace and goodness: that’s my mission!

Alas, Floor #3 is a thorn in my side. How in heaven’s name can I foster peace when they are throwing a raucous party at 1 AM? How can I promote goodness when I am stewing in anger, resentful that their yelling/laughing/obscenity shouting is keeping me awake during the early hours of the day?

Charity doesn’t mean being a pushover. We’ve taken various measures to try to keep their antics at a more reasonable level (ex: calling the police during a revelry last weekend).

Charity does, however, necessitate loving them. Ugh! Loving them? My mind rattles off a dozen reasons why every ounce of me should not love them. And should I forget, our kitchen ceiling—wet from when they irresponsibly let their water overrun—is a ready reminder of the grudge I should hold against them.

Yet…yes, even those electric guitar playing, dreadlocks-wearing neighbors…even them I must love.

How? That’s what I asked my husband, who didn’t seem quite as perturbed and unsettled as I. He asked me to put myself in their shoes. All night parties. Rock music (and not very wholesome rock music at that). Obscenities. Dubious behavior.

Do they know the joy that we have? You know, the joy that springs forth from a heart that’s close to the very source of peace and goodness?

While I don’t know for certain what exactly transpires on that third floor (and, thank you, I’d rather never know the details), I highly suspect that, no, they don’t experience at all the joy that we do.

And for that, I am truly sorry for them. So I’m not certain, but perhaps maybe that’s where love can begin.

Hope In Sadness

On Friday, February 3 a beautiful five-year-old girl named Madeline (Maddie) was diagnosed with an untreatable tumor in her brainstem.  This past Wednesday morning, five short days later, she passed away.

While I have friends who knew Maddie and are close to her family, I myself never had the privilege of meeting her.  Nevertheless, the lack of a formal introduction didn’t keep this little girl from touching my heart and influencing my life.

Maybe it’s because I am a mother now and have my own little girl, but Maddie’s story has occupied my mind ever since I first heard of her sad diagnosis.  It’s the kind of heartbreaking news that just leaves one absolutely confounded.  Why?  Why such tragedy and sadness, especially so sudden and so unexpected, for one so young and innocent?

On Wednesday morning I visited a nearby church and sat before Our Lord, thinking about Maddie.  I had just learned of her passing before I left the house.

As I knelt there, I prayed for her and for her family and friends.  And I reflected about what this little girl reminded me..

Her life reminded me that I need to always keep a broad perspective, to have an eternal view.  It’s so easy for me to forget that I wasn’t made for this world; I was made for a heavenly world.  This earth is just a passageway, not a final destination.  There is so much more beyond what we can see and experience here.  What comes next is unexperienced and foreign and so it slips out of our minds.  But it’s real–more real than this world even–and every day we should keep this eternal perspective.

Maddie’s story is scary in many ways.  It scared me at least.  As a mother, I have experienced a whole new kind of love.  The way I love our daughter is unlike any other love I have known.  The thing with love, however, is that it makes you very perceptible to suffering.  Should your loved one experience pain, you feel it, too.  Love makes us vulnerable.  I sat with our daughter, watching her sleep and thinking of Maddie.  What if something happened to our daughter?  What if she were diagnosed with a terminal, untreatable illness?

Maddie helped me remember: our children are not our own.  My daughter doesn’t really belong to me; she belongs to God.  Just as I do, as we all do.  In a way, we can think of our children as precious gifts, on loan to us from God.  He bestows them upon us and, while we are on this temporary place called earth, we have the job of helping each other grow in virtue to become the men and women we are supposed to be, the kind of people who, through God’s grace, could one day inhabit a heavenly homeland.  ”Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

If you saw a picture of Maddie, such as the one on her website, you see a broad-smiling, beautiful girl.  I am sure her parents were struggling with seeing her in pain.  I thought to myself how tragic that she should know such sadness in her young life.  And that’s certainly true–it is so sad.  But, as I prayed this morning, I thought there is something more than happiness.  I want our daughter to be happy, but I should want something more for her than this.

I want a happy daughter, but even more, I want a holy daughter.  I want a daughter who lives her life in communion with God, who loves Him who is Love itself and who reflects this Truth and Life in her words and deeds.  This is what Maddie’s parents, God bless them, did.  This past weekend, by special permission from the bishop, Maddie celebrated her First Holy Communion and was Confirmed.  She was, and is, a holy girl.  These parents did their best to make her days, even those when she was so ill, happy.  But they didn’t neglect the greater responsibility–to help her be holy, to prepare her soul for her Father in heaven.

This five-year-old girl, weak and frail from an untreatable condition, demonstrated to me something else of immense power: the mobilization of the Body of Christ, the Church.  There is a passage in the Acts of the Apostles that says the early Church “held all things in common.”  This refers to sharing earthly goods, such as food and shelter.  But I think it applied to spiritual goods, too.

The Church today held in common the pain and suffering of Maddie and her family.  Now, perhaps I spend too much time on Facebook and that’s why I witnessed this, but the outpouring of love, prayer, concern, and support for little Maddie was overwhelming.  There was a part of the Body of Christ suffering and hurt; we all felt it as though it were our own family and we all reached out because it was the most natural, instinctive thing to do.  Perhaps because, in a very real way, Maddie’s family is our family.

We are not alone.  Do you know what the shortest verse in the Bible is?  John 11:35.  ”And Jesus wept.”  Maybe it’s so short to make a point, to make us realize the significance of this brief passage.  Jesus wept at the death of His dear friend, Lazarus.  He knows our sadness and heartache.  He walks side-by-side with those experiencing loss…because He knows it, too.  He is close to us who suffer…because He suffered, more than anyone ever could.

And herein lies the greatest lesson Maddie helped me remember.  It all comes back to this–it has to.  There is always hope.  Death is never the final answer, but merely a transition.  From death, God brings life.  St. Francis referred to “Sister Death” because, for the one with faith, it isn’t the termination of everything.  There is a line during the Mass for the Dead that says “life is changed, not ended.”

For Maddie, life is changed.  While I have no ecclesiastical authority to definitively affirm this, I can say that dear Maddie, as one under the age of reason and having just received Holy Communion and Confirmation, was free of all original and personal sin.  So, I feel quite confident to believe her life has changed in a way more beautiful, profound, and incredibly blissful than we could even imagine.

The hope that belongs to those with faith is a priceless treasure.

Dear Maddie, I’m sorry that we never met.  But thank you for all that you reminded me and taught me of throughout these past few days.  I pray for your friends and family who mourn your passing.  May they know the consoling, healing, loving touch of God, who is with them in this time of sadness.  I hope, one day, we may all join you in our true homeland.

Rejoice--Always!

It had been an unsettling kind of Advent.

Specifically, I think of the events in Newton, Connecticut--tragic, frightening, heart-wrenching, absolutely perplexing.

Then, a week ago, the world was supposed to end.  As you may recall, the weather seemed very appropriate for such a day, at least around these parts.  The sky was ominous and the wind blew with an alacrity rarely seen.  Our power threatened to turn off several times throughout the day.

It seems all out of place, amidst the presents, the cookies, the trees and lights.  This is the season of JOY!  Tragedy belongs to another season, not to Advent and Christmas.

I remember as a child feeling a bit of trepidation as Christmas neared.  I wanted the day to be as perfect as possible and the idea someone might fall ill or a blizzard might prevent the beloved family party from occurring was depressing.  

Holy Mother Church is very wise and she teaches us, her children, well...if we but listen and observe.

December 25 is the joyous celebration of Our Lord's birth.  But what follows?  It wasn't until a few years ago, when I began to attend daily Mass, that I realized December 26 honors the first martyr, St. Stephen.  

So, just a day after we remember Our Lord's birthday, we remember the first man to die witnessing to Our Lord.  

Then today--still within the Christmas season--we remember the Holy Innocents: the innocent children slaughtered by King Herod, as he sought to kill the newborn king.  As I reflected on the Holy Innocents today, I immediately called to mind those innocent children killed in Newton.  

It seems then that the very first Christmas, while joyful, was in many ways tragic, too.  

Our Lady and St. Joseph had no Christmas feast, no spectacular home decked out with holly and lights.  They made do with a lowly manger.  

Not long could they marvel at the shepherd's adoration of their Child or the gifts of the Magi.  Soon they had to flee to protect the life of the newborn babe.

From the very beginning, joy was intermingled with the Cross.  

The mystery of suffering surrounds us.  It's not something for which we should seek escape, as I longed for the "perfect Christmas" as a child.  But it is something we should try to understand and, even more so, to sanctify.

For the parents of the Holy Innocents, the death of their little children must have seemed utterly unnecessary, cruel, and confounding.  But, upon their passing from this world, they would have discovered that their children gave up their lives for...God!  Their lives were given to preserve the life of Christ.  Their glory in heaven must indeed be very great.

Their suffering on earth would, in heaven, become their greatest joy.

We should rejoice in times of joy, especially during this beautiful Christmas season!  And when our Christmas is marked with suffering, we should still say with St. Paul: "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him" (Romans 5:28).

Last Friday, the day the world was to end, was by observation, quite terrifying.  I was driving in my car, the wind howling like a great fiend all around, the black clouds filling the sky.  

And then, as the hour of remembrance for the victims at Sandy Hook neared, I happened to look toward the west and there was the most magnificent, perfect rainbow, stretching from one end of the sky to the other.

So I rejoiced because God is truly our Emmanuel: God-with-us...especially in our suffering.

Merry Christmas!

Uncle Eddie's Mexican Dip ... And Why It's Important

Growing up, my family was all about tradition.  I come from a very predictable family, one that isn’t at all open to much spontaneity.  This was particularly true when it came to holidays.  I could recite–to the detail–the exact unfolding of our Christmas morning activities.  I will spare you the not-so-gripping specifics, but let me assure you that there certainly were specifics that repeated, year after year.

It almost wouldn’t seem like Christmas without Uncle Eddie’s Mexican dip, which makes its appearance on an annual basis.

Now I find myself in an entirely new position.  No longer do I have the all-too familiar role of daughter within my parent’s household.  Now I am the mother and wife in my own household.  Suddenly, the rules have changed and I am faced with the perplexing situation that…there is no tradition.

What do you do exactly on Christmas morning?  Do we open presents with wild abandon, as had been practiced in my household of origin?  Do I serve scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee cake, or do I go way out on a limb and make pancakes instead?

In a way, creating traditions is supremely exciting.  My husband and I have a blank slate of years of tradition before us and we can shape and create it in whatever way we want.  If we want to open presents while listening to the Beach Boys and wearing bathing suits–now’s the time to do it!

There is something within the heart of each one of us that craves tradition.  We seek it out and we desire that familiarity that repeats with an assurance and habitualness that provides us a strange comfort.  My husband, listening to a homily from Fr. Paul Scalia of St. John the Beloved Parish in McLean, VA, quoted me a line from the priest, something alone the lines of: Repetition is humanity’s way of approximating eternity.

Our hearts are created for eternity and so, consciously or unconsciously, that’s what we try to recreate.

Our family is still building tradition.  It seems to me it needs to be organic, developing gradually and naturally from among the family members.  So we haven’t developed all of our Christmas traditions just yet, but we’ve started.

I hope we don’t repeat the bowl of cereal for Christmas breakfast (ran out of time for anything more!), but I do intend for us to repeat a practice we did before any presents were opened: placing the baby Jesus in His crib and singing Him “Happy Birthday.”

And, it goes without saying, I look forward to Uncle Eddie’s dip next year, too!

Introducing November: My Least Favorite Month

I like just about every month of the year. Even those months in the dead of winter when those of us in the northeast have just about had it with snow and freezing temperatures—even those months I can appreciate. But November…I just don’t like it.

November and I have not had a very good track record. For about the past ten years, November has given me challenges, frustrations, heartaches, and/or disappointments. The death of a loved one, the hospitalization of another, the loss of a job, the end of a relationship—the list is long and grim.

It’s not just me though. I think November is intrinsically sad. Gone are the glorious autumn leaves and fall harvests. The trees are now bare and the plants all dead with frost’s arrival. The clocks turn back and both morning and evening are plunged into a deep darkness, so uninviting that I barely want to leave my bed or venture outside.

The Church feels this, too. The Church year winds to a close each November and eschatological overtones fill the readings each Sunday as we hear about the end of the world. Yesterday was All Soul’s Day and we remember our loved ones who have passed from this world.

Death. Sadness. Darkness. The end things.

November is a sad month.

But then, nestled in this month of sadness, is a little celebration called Thanksgiving. Ironic? No—very fitting.

It’s tempting to be overcome by the sadness. Sometimes circumstances can be so overwhelming, the grief seemingly too much to bear, that hope is almost extinguished and things are as bleak as a November evening.

Sadness, pain, and suffering need not have the final say. The souls we pray for this month are gone from us, but not really. Their lives are changed, not ended.

The trials and crosses from my Novembers past were hurtful and trying at the time. But those crosses also molded me and shaped me, teaching me lessons I will never forget.

There is always reason to give thanks. No matter the cross we carry, its weight will never exceed the blessings liberally and abundantly bestowed upon us. Remembering that and willing oneself to be grateful—even when things are bleak—forces a light into the darkness and, in that light, one’s perspective changes.

So I still don’t like November. Yet, perhaps because of what it represents and teaches, it is the most important month of the year for me.

May the souls of the faithfully departed rest in peace. Amen.