A little girl

Died yesterday.  I know you know.  A little girl was shot and killed in Tucson, Arizona (one of my favorite places on earth).

She was born on September 11, 2001.

I know not much more than that.  Imagine a life begun on 9/11 and ending in this violence.

Nearly as soon as I heard about the whole tragedy, I saw on facebook that my nephew blamed a certain former governor of a northern state, who also had an unsuccessful vice-presidential candidacy a few years back.  I am not her biggest fan, but I was sickened to see someone so quickly use this terrible tragedy to try to blame "the other side."  Then I saw that he wasn't alone.

I work in a state psychiatric hospital.  I saw the things the (alleged) shooter wrote, they look familiar to me - professionally.  They look like evidence of the disorganized mind of someone who is suffering from mental illness.

Why do we try to make sense of the senseless?  To try to blame a politician for this is cheap.

Maybe if we think it isn't so random, we can feel "safe."

This world is not safe, it never has been and never will be.  When we know this isn't our final destination, I guess that is easier to live with.

God bless those who died, those who are fighting to survive, and the rest of us too.

First Friday of January 2011

Notre Dame Catholic Church, Denver, Colorado

I woke up at my appointed time (4 a.m.) this morning and decided that my plan for the morning simply would not work.  I was supposed to spend an hour on the treadmill.  But it is First Friday.  I normally go to mass on First Friday.  So, at 4, I decided I really needed to forego my workout and go to mass instead.  And I stayed for rosary afterwards.  And still got to work very early.  

I have been thinking about how growing in holiness leads one to realize how horribly unholy one is.  Or at least This One.  At one time, I thought that going to mass on Sunday made me a Catholic.  I did a couple of other things, but my life was basically unchanged.  I still behaved pretty much like everyone else.  In time, I signed up for an hour of Eucharistic Adoration.  Maybe that is what changed my life.  

That hour from 5 to 6 a.m. on Thursdays each week came to be my favorite hour of all the week.  After about 6 months of weekly Eucharistic Adoration, I saw an ad in the bulletin for the Catholic Biblical School.  I had been checking into this school since the early 90s.  I always wanted to go because I have always had a deep love for Scripture.  But always there was a reason why I could not go.  For one thing, it is quite expensive!  But that year, in 2007, a new class was starting in a church nearby, on a night that I could attend, and I knew I could scrape up the money.  I remember calling the school's office and speaking to someone and realizing that I really, truly could do this!  I ran down the hall at work to tell a Catholic friend.  She was not thrilled for me.  I never understand why people don't jump for joy when I talk about Biblical School... but they don't.  In August of 2007, I started something that changed my life irrevocably when I attended my first Prayer Day and class.  

I thought I would turn into a Biblical Scholar.  I thought I would learn so much I would be able to argue successfully with my particularly argumentative Anglican friend who won every argument with me about my own religion.  I thought I would become a holy woman.  

And now almost four years later, I have a profound appreciation for my limitations.  I am not a very holy woman.  I am not a Biblical Scholar.  I know a lot more than I did.  I know more than most of the people I know, but that isn't something I say with pride.  I know I need to study for the rest of my life.  I am grateful that I will be able to do this.  It is the joy of my life.

I did learn enough to know that Jesus isn't some sweet guy who happens to be God and "understands" and "forgives" me every sinful thing I do.  When he speaks to the woman caught in adultery, he says "go and do not sin again," (John 8:11) he never says "I understand why you have behaved so badly, it's OK, keep on doing it."  Jesus is forgiving, but we must repent.  To repent is to have remorse for having offended God and requires a change in your life and a determination to avoid sin.  And there is no fooling God himself about whether or not we are truly repentant!  

I was also amazed to see that the God of the Old Testament was a lot more forgiving than Jesus of the New.  I always thought it was the opposite, but a careful study will reveal an entirely different story.

Anyway, back to me...  when I was a lukewarm Catholic, I was pretty self-satisfied and sure that I would someday get to heaven and get a nice pat on the back and a hearty welcome.   Now I believe in all of the things I scoffed at when I left the church and kept a big dose of skepticism about when I came back, namely: Satan, the devil, hell, and purgatory.   Now my best hope is purgatory.  

I have done so many terrible things (I know I sound like I am being dramatic, but trust me on this one), I don't know how I can ever be purified enough to be in heaven.  I had thought that confession erased all of this, but learned later that it didn't.   This is very frightening to me.  When I have read the writings of the Saints, I have been amazed at their being convinced of their own sinfulness!  If that is sinfulness, I am in deep, deep trouble!  

On the other hand, I don't want to fall into the trap of over-scrupulosity.  I think that itself can hide a multitude of sins.  But I do truly want to be pleasing to Jesus.  I want to be the person I was born to be, not the person I willfully decided to be.  I want to constantly be carrying out the will of God.  

Perhaps if God has been able to change my heart to the extent that he has, he still has more in store for me.  I do think the changes since 2006 are God-given.  I could not have produced them.  I want to keep growing and growing towards pleasing the Lord.   I guess with that will come an inability to tolerate my own sinfulness.  I also guess no one ever told me this would be easy!

Please forgive me for my inarticulateness - I am just a beginner.  I don't know the right words.  I hope to express my heart and these are words with which I am unfamiliar.  

Thank you so much if you have read this long thing.  I am so impressed with the generosity of spirit of the Catholic Bloggers who have come by and commented.  Thank you.

How's your prayer life?

My friend Shadowlands has a wonderful post today about prayer.   I have been inspired by all of you bloggers with your prayer life.  I hope to emulate you.  

One thing I do religiously, if you will, is pray first thing in the morning.  I do brush my teeth and make a cup of coffee, but then I sit in my prayer chair and read my morning books, including the mass readings of the day, and then I do my own prayer and meditation.  This takes about a half hour.  It's not much, but it is not negotiable.  I do it every day.  The only time I don't is if I am in a hurry to get to mass.  

I pray as I go through the day, but not as much as I should.  And as far as rosaries?  I am not so good.  I resolve to be better, but I am not.  It is ironic because I love the rosary - I said it even in the years when I had left the church and barely believed in God at all.  I still held those beads and knew that Our Lady was listening to me as I said my Our Fathers and Hail Marys.  

Later, after my reversion to the faith, I came to believe that I ought to use my own words to talk to God, and I ought to use my own silence to listen.  Now I think I am changing again.  

As an assignment for Biblical School earlier this year, we read a wonderful book by Eugene Peterson, "Answering God, The Psalms As Tools for Prayer."  There is so much great stuff in that book, I could read it over and over, but one paragraph blew me away and changed the way I pray:

The Psalms likewise are infused with and surrounded by a genetic, cultural, worshiping, and believing heritage.  This canonical condition means that in the life of faith we don't make up original prayers that suit our private spiritual genius.  Prayer is not an original language, but a received language.  (p. 17)

I have since come to love the thought of the entire church repeating the same words daily, world-wide.  I love to pray the Psalms out loud and know that I am repeating the same prayers that Jesus learned as a child.   I love the idea of joining in the community of faith, that transcends geography and even time.

One would wonder why I don't spend more time doing just that!  I think I will go do that right now.

God bless you all.

Admonish Sinners?

Guardian Angels Cathedral, Las Vegas, Nevada - with a background of the Encore Hotel

I have exactly 12 minutes to write this.  With this topic, I should be taking 12 hours, not 12 minutes.  It is something that has been on my mind for the last month or more.  Maybe much much longer than a month.

One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to Admonish Sinners.  Yet we live in a culture of "Coexist" and "Live and Let Live."  We live in a culture of "it is none of my business what anyone else does."  I wonder.

This is sort of tangential to the topic, but maybe not... but this is going to be tangential anyway...  I have been plagued by one sin that I repeat, repent, confess, repeat, repent, confess, over and over and over again.... and again.... and again.  (and I am not going to tell you what it is!)  I have been so embarrassed to go to my own parish priest and confess the same thing over and over again, I have become familiar with confessionals all over the city.  I found one priest I particularly liked across town.  In August, I went to visit him again on a Saturday afternoon.  Imagine my surprise when he wasn't there.  In his place was a priest with a gruff voice and an even gruffer manner.  I shamefully mumbled this sin at the end of the litany of my sins.  Expecting the nice, nice words of a kind priest who tells me to not beat myself up.

Oh, no, that is not what he did at all!  He told me off!  He really, really told me off.  He told me how much I was displeasing Our Lord.  He said I was forgiven, but I was supposed to really repent of my sin.

Eeesh.

Do you know that to this day I have not repeated that sin?  Oh, I have been tempted.  But when tempted, I remember what that priest said, and the temptation melts away.

So maybe if every Catholic in the world would simply say something when someone took the name of the Lord in vain?  Or didn't laugh when a filthy joke was told?  Or didn't indulge in gossip?  Or encouraged their friends to go to mass or confession?  Or encouraged their friends to not have an abortion?  Or encouraged their friends to not encourage their daughter to have an abortion?   Or talked to a homosexual friend?

Just thinking... it might be a different world if we would stand up and talk about what we believe in.  It doesn't have to be obnoxious.

OK, my time's up.

God bless you all.

Generations

I have taken an informal poll of folks about my little melt-down of Sunday.  I wanted to see how many people thought my wearing running clothes to mass was a big deal.  Not too many people did.  Most of those who did were my age or older.  Not that they thought I was "bad," or "wrong," but that they understood why I felt uncomfortable about it.  

A few years ago, I decided to be a "trend-setter" and wear a veil to mass.  I conducted an internet search to purchase one.  I found a beautiful lace mantilla and bought it. (I abandoned wearing it after a few trials.) I read the reviews of the people who had bought one.  Someone had written that the reports of people pinning kleenex to their heads "back in the day" had to have been "urban legends."  Well, let me tell you - that is no urban legend.  We really did that.  We would no more go into church without covering our heads than we would go in without clothing today.  It just was.not.done.  It was better to have a kleenex or a handkerchief on our heads than nothing.  And everyone had a bobby pin and a kleenex or a hankie in their purse - back then.  

This makes me sound like I am a hundred years old, but when I was a child, my mother would take me downtown to go shopping - we would both wear dresses, hats, and white gloves.  I wore black patent leather shoes with white socks.  My mother wore heels and stockings with seams up the back.  My father wore a suit.  This is how we dressed.  This is how we went to church each week too.  It wasn't because we were trying to impress anyone.  It was because that was how it was done.  It was how you showed respect.   On special occasions, my father would have corsages in the refrigerator, ready to pin on "the girls" before mass.  

So, this is my mind set.  And I am beginning to realize it is very different from most of the rest of the world which is now younger than me.  They did not dress in hats and white gloves to go downtown to go shopping.  They dressed in pajama bottoms with "pink" emblazoned on the rear, and popped over to the mall.  So how shall these same people go to mass?  With hearts probably more fervent than mine, that is how!

But I cannot change the fact that I was born in 1951.  I was raised when I was raised and I have the values I have.  I still believe that I dress as nice as I can to show that I have respect for what I am doing.  Not to impress anyone, but to show respect.  I don't have mink coats or diamond jewelry - I am not dressed to impress, but I hope that I show that I know I am someplace pretty special when I am in God's house!  

And now I need to bathe and dress my body to show that I know that I am in the workplace and that I am there to work!  And that I respect that too!  

Priorities

This morning I did something I would normally not do.  Something that others would do, but I wouldn't. But I did it this morning. 

My running club normally meets on Saturday mornings.  This week our Saturday morning run was canceled due to ridiculously cold weather.  We were to meet on Sunday instead.  I knew I could not go to mass last night.  I wondered how I could go to mass this morning and still go for my run.

I figured it out.  I could go to mass 'on the way' to my run.  Which meant I would attend mass in my running clothes.  Now, let me hasten to tell you that they are in no way immodest.  But they are not church clothes, they are running clothes.  

After mass, while driving to the canyon where we ran (see above), one of my Catholic friends phoned me.  I told her how upset I was about showing up at mass wearing inappropriate clothing.  She disagrees with me about what is appropriate clothing for mass.  She told me that God is happy to have me show up wearing my running clothes.  She said He is happy to have a hip running woman at mass.  

I told her that I do not agree.  

I think I showed a blatant disregard for God and his home.  I think I told him and everyone else that mass was an after thought.  That running was important, and mass was something I could "squeeze in" on the way.  

I told her that next week I am going to go to mass at the Latin Mass Community of the Archdiocese.  I will wear a dress and a veil and go act right.  She was horrified and said I am moving backward.  

I probably shouldn't even write anything here about the Latin Mass - I certainly don't want to enter the debate, but I will just say that I want mass to be holy.  I grew up wearing a veil or a hat, and a dress, never pants (and certainly not running pants!), and praying in latin.  I know those prayers like the back of my hand.  

One time I went to the pastor of my church (who is now a monsignor) and asked him how I could become less judgmental.  I told him I didn't understand how people could come to mass in sweat pants and shorts!  I thought he would lecture me about not judging.  Instead he told me how he pondered the same thing.  He said he often thought about what his parishioners would wear if they were invited to the home of the President of the United States - they would wear only their finest! And yet, each week they come to the house of God in any old thing.   I gave that a lot of thought.

Just not when it was inconvenient this morning.

I will make amends for this....

One-One-Eleven

It is far too late in the day for me to be writing anything, but I didn't want to let this first day of the new year go by without writing something.  

I have had a wonderful day, full of friends and family.  I got to watch my baby granddaughter for the afternoon while my son and daughter-in-law took a drive to the mountains.  Their first outing without the baby since she was born almost 3 months ago.  It was so good to spend hours with this little tiny baby.  

I went to a party tonight where I was going to bring a pie.  I had wanted to make a treacle tart having read about Ros'.  But when I went to the grocery store to try to purchase treacle and golden syrup, as I suspected, these things were not to be purchased in Denver, Colorado.  So, I made a cheesecake - much to the delight of my friends.   I am going to find a way to purchase treacle and golden syrup and make a treacle tart one of these days, just not today.

I had wanted to write a prayer for 2011.  But I am too tired.  Tomorrow perhaps.  

I know that God knows my heart and he can help me form the prayer I need.

Thank you.